Truth be told, I was on the road most of this week and away from my alleged “office” in the Tennessee Hills.
Thus, I took a very rare break from writing the “On Religion” column for the Universal syndicate. I say “rare” because I literally went 20 years before I took a vacation at all. Well, I did miss one week because I was unconscious during a kidney-stone attack. Things happen.
Just before charging up the car and heading out, I did spend some time with veteran evangelical writer and folk musician on his weekly podcast called “The Catch.” Thus, I will offer this bonus podcast as a substitute for the column that normally fills this weekend slot here at GetReligion.org and, a day or so later, at Tmatt.net, even though this is not a media-criticism feature (for the most part).
Listeners can find this episode at Apple podcasts (click here) or at BlogTalkRadio (click here).
The topic? I have known Fischer since the 1980s and I tried to pull him into a flashback chat about music, the late (and great) Mark Heard, acoustic guitars, guitar strings, etc. I did work in a famous Heard lyric about his dilemma in the “Christian marketplace.” That would be: “I’m too sacred for the sinners and the saints wish I would leave.” Preach it.
Fischer had other ideas for the conversation — as in another discussion of how the word “evangelical” turned into a political label, with “evangelical voters” playing a crucial role at the ballot box, especially for GOP folks in heated primaries.
Naturally, old guy that I am, I flashed back to my history as a Jimmy Carter campaign volunteer at Baylor University in the 1970s, back in the era when — to be blunt about it — many evangelicals were culturally conservative Southern Democrats.
Then came Roe v. Wade and a series of cultural earthquakes at the U.S. Supreme Court that shook everything, including lots of pews and pulpits. Before you knew it, candidate Ronald Reagan was telling a flock of ministers: “You can’t endorse me, but I can endorse you.”
Evangelicals have been arguing about various kinds of political puzzles ever since — long before the great myth that there was a unified, monolithic “evangelical” bloc that really, really wanted someone like Donald Trump to wear a golden crown.
So that’s a hint at what’s inside this visit to “The Catch.”
Dive in.