Welcome to Readers Digress, the podcast where we read nonfiction books so you don’t have to (unless you want to). Join us, hosts Mollie Fox and Kate Kiriakou, as we use a nonfiction book as the springboard to discuss relevant themes and their relation to current events, pop culture, and our personal experiences.

Our first two episodes dissect Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (book description in Part 1, 2:10). Part 1 focuses on performative masculinity and the myth of victimhood in white patriarchal evangelical culture, while Part 2 analyzes how politics and capitalism propelled evangelicalism to its modern, near-omnipresent status in American culture.

In Part 2, learn how evangelicalism led us to the current political moment (2:10), hear a case study in the popular culture of evangelicalism (33:55), and the pervasiveness of evangelical culture (46:11).

Content Warning: Discussions of disordered eating appear in this episode (33:55 - 45:45).

References: 30 Rock pep talk; Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The First White President,” The Atlantic

Music by Waterboi via Pixabay