Erick Erickson On Politicized Faith

Erick is a radio host and writer. He was an old-school blogger at RedState, serving as editor-in-chief, and he later became a political contributor for CNN and Fox News. Today he hosts the “Erick Erickson Show” on WSB Radio in Atlanta and runs a popular substack of the same name. He’s back on the Dishcast to discuss his new book, You Shall Be as Gods: Pagans, Progressives, and the Rise of the Woke Gnostic Left — though it also criticizes the “gnostic right”.

You can listen right away in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app). For two clips of our convo — on the post-Christian right, and the anti-Christian Trump — pop over to our YouTube page.

Other topics: the drop in churchgoing and the rise of the nones over the past few decades; how Covid broke the church-going habit even further; how plagues reshape societies in other ways; Augustine; how churches are sending missionaries abroad rather than to the US; conspiracy theories; the purported “secret knowledge” of the first Gnostics; how the Bible canon was shaped; Bart Ehrman; Erick in the inerrancy-of-the-Bible camp; his wife’s cancer; the issue of cremation; sacraments as physical acts; the Resurrection; how Jesus sought out and loved the abnormal; gnosticism on the political left; transgenderism; Scientism; climate change as apocalyptic; Greta Thunberg; how Reagan and Thatcher addressed the ozone layer; Thatcher being the first to talk climate change at the UN; the comorbidities of many kids seeking transition; the Cass Review; the language police; Michael Anton’s “Flight 93 Election”; the border crisis under Biden; his student loan forgiveness; resurgent anti-Semitism on the left and the right; protesting at the homes of politicians; the overreach of the Alvin Bragg case; the queer criticism of gay marriage; why “emotional labor” is the lifeblood of a democracy; the Ten Commandments vs critical queer and gender theory in schools; the blasphemy of crosses on January 6; the MSM’s failure to simply explain the opposing side; and how America in the 2020s is becoming a version of The Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Stephen Fry on his remarkable life, Eric Kaufmann on reversing woke extremism; Anne Applebaum on autocrats, Lionel Shriver on her new novel, Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy on animal cruelty, and Van Jones on race in America. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

On last week’s episode with Tim Shipman on the UK elections (which were held yesterday), a listener writes:

I’m so sorry about your mother and hope you’re with your family now. I trust you’ll feel free to disregard any questions from readers and listener if you need to. But if you’re able to answer, I’d be curious to know what you think about Nigel Farage. 

Tim Shipman said that Farage doesn’t occasion the same fears about neo-fascism in the UK as Trump does in the US. I don’t follow UK politics closely enough to know whether Farage has the same authoritarian bent, the same disdain for the separation of powers, and the same demand for personal over constitutional loyalty that Trump does, though he doesn’t seem to. 

But Farage does pal around with some appalling people, like Trump and Orbán. I don’t know how much to read into that. Is that just what you have to do if you’re a populist right-winger, even if you don’t threaten liberalism the way Trump and Orbán do? Or is it a case of birds of an illiberal feather flocking together? 

Shipman’s comment that Farage has muttered about Ukraine having provoked Russia to attack — a Kremlin talking point — was totally unsurprising. Scratch the shiny surface off a populist right-winger, and something ugly is underneath. It’s noteworthy that Farage walked those mutterings back quickly, because he realized they wouldn’t fly in pro-Ukraine Britain, but they seem to suggest that his instincts are not altogether friendly to liberalism. Or maybe I’m attaching too much significance to this. Your thoughts?

The bottom line on yesterday’s vote is that Farage’s party did incredibly well and is now the third largest party by percentage of the vote in the UK. The winner-takes-all system meant that Reform’s showing took enough Tory votes away to give well over a hundred seats to Labour, primarily. That’s due to the Tories’ total and utterly befuddling betrayal on immigration. Which is due to Boris.

I don’t like Farage but he represents something real; he is well liked among the lower echelons of the British class system; immigration has been his crusade and he is probably as responsible for Brexit as Boris Johnson. He’s not Trump. I also think he has a point in criticizing the West’s approach to post-Soviet Russia, although it clearly cost him some votes. The Tories will now have to decide what to do with him, because, for the first time, he’s won a seat in the Commons and may well emerge as a de facto opposition leader. The Right’s civil war will take on new energy now.

Then there’s Keir Starmer’s Commons triumph: a simply massive majority which gives him the power to do whatever the hell he likes. If my reader is worried about elected dictatorship, the UK already has one for a government with this majority. The restraining factor is how low the percentage of the vote Labour won.

Starmer won fewer votes and a lower percentage of the vote than Jeremy Corbyn in 2017 and 2019. He got a paltry 34 percent of the vote. (The despised and exhausted Tories got 24 percent. Reform won 14 percent and the Liberal Democrats — a kind of woker Labour — got 13.) But with just a third of the vote, Labour won two-thirds of the seats. They focused their resources relentlessly on targeting districts they could win while leaving the national message less clear. It was a brilliantly executed maneuver.

Put all the left-wing parties together, you get 53 percent of the vote, or a bit more if you add lefty regional parties like the Scottish nationalists. The conservative Tories and Reform— combined, they were Boris’ coalition in 2019 — add up to 38 percent. Keir is going to have a potentially large number of MPs capable of making trouble, a very weak mandate for some very vague policy commitments, and some huge problems.

I don’t envy my old friend in the coming months and years; but congratulations on your triumph, mate.

On another recent episode of the Dishcast:

I really enjoyed the conversation with Elizabeth Corey, and I learned a lot about someone you have spoken of so frequently. Thank you for expanding my universe a bit! And who knew that Billy Joel was a student of Oakeshott??

“I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints”:

From another new fan of Oakeshott:

Loved the Elizabeth Corey discussion. I just ordered Oakeshott’s The Voice of Liberal Learning — mainly for my college son, but for me too.

Just an update on my mom before we continue with emails and dissents. To say the least, it has been a truly terrible week. Dementia and pre-existing mental illness have come back with a vengeance as she dies — and my siblings and I have been enduring countless yelling, groaning, grimacing, and screaming so loud you can hear it from the parking lot. She’s on the maximum legal dose of oxycodone and midazolam — and yet she keeps screaming as if she is in pain (she just cannot be). This has gone on now for six days, and it is simply unendurable to see someone die in such extreme distress. It has revived so many memories of her acting out in our childhoods — the screaming fits, the anger, the breakdowns, the soul-piercing groans.

I had to take a day away today to preserve what’s left of my composure and capacity to keep going. If you pray, please pray for her to have some final peace, which seems to be eluding her, even as she is drugged up to the eyeballs. And pray for those of us who love her. It is tearing us apart.

On last week’s column on the disastrous debate for Biden, a reader dissents:

I read your post and promptly rolled my eyes. My God, have you lost the ability to not let your knee-jerk, emotional first response dictate how you feel? Yeah, the guy had a bad debate. He’s old, he’s human, and unlike most of us everyday folks, his bad days and off moments are captured on camera and analyzed ad nauseam. So? I still see someone who is smart enough to surround themselves with competent, capable people. I still see someone with enough grace and humility to acknowledge his bad performance, take it on the chin and keep it pushing. I still see a decent man — who is flawed, yes, but is someone I know is capable of empathy and kindness.

No. No. No. The idea that this man can serve as president for another four years is insane, as I said last week. It’s an insult to the American people. The fact that it has been hidden as much as it can be up till now should rightly fill us with rage.

The other scenario which is, to my mind, insane, is nominating Harris as the automatic heir or making her POTUS now so she campaigns as an incumbent president. The first problem: she has less-than-zero ability to campaign. She connects with no one but those in the woke cult; and actively repels everyone else. She was appointed from a pool of candidates that excluded all men — as Biden loves to do. He only considered black women for his SCOTUS pick. There is nothing more consistent in the Biden administration than aggressive and open systemic race and sex discrimination, and Harris is the result. For every campaign stop she makes, she will get people to vote for Trump. Which may be why the Democratic Party, in its staggering incompetence, may well nominate her.

Another reader urges perspective:

Your boy Ronald Reagan had Alzheimer’s while in office, and we made it through that okay. It is a matter of having good people around the president, which Reagan had, and which Biden has. And, if a president becomes incapable or dies, that is what vice presidents are for, and Harris would be a decent president. It would be better if Biden were younger and could communicate better, but I am much less concerned about him in office for four more years than another Trump term. It is too late in the process to change horses, so let’s stick with the horse we rode in on and avoid losing our democracy.

No. No. No. Reagan’s Alzheimers only really began to kick in later in his second term; and he could still give an address or speech that was kick-ass. Biden is clearly a victim of creeping dementia already, and will likely not last a second term. And Harris a “decent president”? Succession by Biden’s death is the only way she could ever be president. And she is utterly without administrative experience or political talent. She couldn’t even make it through a single Democratic primary. Please. We need an open convention, a real debate, and a completely new nominee who could actually beat Trump.

Another dissent:

I think I am going to stop reading your columns now. It’s one thing to accuse Joe Biden of being too old for the presidency, but you accused Jill Biden of being abusive towards her husband for supporting his decision to debate, which borders on defamatory. There is nothing abusive about supporting your spouse’s career path. There is no evidence she has neglected or injured Joe in any way. In fact, she is probably more supportive of him than anyone else. She is one of the best First Ladies this country has ever had.  

Since she must know better than anyone else how incapable her husband is of being president for four more years, and still persuaded him to run, I do hold her partly responsible for plunging us into a crisis because of something she deliberately hid from view. And putting that man into a zone where total humiliation was inevitable is either pure delusion or elder abuse. Sorry but not sorry. She should be grilled by TV interviewers and the Congress about her clear attempt to deceive the American public in a critical election campaign.

This next reader sees where I’m coming from:

Nothing to disagree with in your column; I’ve always thought rallying behind Biden was an obvious and painful contradiction with the supposed stakes of a second Trump presidency. But one thing that deserves more emphasis is the sort of contempt Biden’s presumptive nomination has always represented.

It’s not as though his condition is an issue invented by the debate. Any poll at any time in the last few years has shown Americans think Biden is too old, and the Democratic Party has refused to listen, and media largely fell in line with attacking the whole question of his fitness. This issue has been treated so smugly (as you point out regarding Scarborough) that I would think some people are insulted enough to stop paying attention to the official narrative at all.

I just cannot fathom how eight years since Trump’s ascendance have taught the media/prestige class/Democratic machine absolutely nothing. It truly appears that liberal apparatchiks want to elect Trump through the constant vilification and condescending treatment of huge swaths of the electorate, and Biden’s age is part of that. 

You often point out that many people with ordinary reservations about high rates of immigration being tarred as cruel racists does not, in fact, resound very well. Neither does insisting that the naked emperor is, in fact, impeccably dressed. This smug self-assurance keeps getting slapped back by right-wing movements in Europe, and it certainly can continue to take slaps here. I’m a realist about the perspicacity of the average voter, but treating people as if they are blind, stupid, and so unimportant as to be brushed aside like a wired toddler is galling on a level that deserves to be punished.

Indeed. The sheer arrogance of a handful of people pushing this manifestly unfit president into a second election staggers me. These oldies — from RBG to HRC to JRB — so love their power they would rather wreck the country than do what’s right. Fuck ‘em. Hillary is responsible for Trump’s first term. Biden will be responsible for his second.

As for the mainstream media, it’s just more proof they are an appendage to the administration, doling out propaganda and lies, clinging to left-narratives even when all of them have imploded on meeting reality. I’ve really come to despise most of them. Another indictment of the MSM:

The mainstream media only recently began to cover the age issue, and only because it saw that the narrative of Biden‘s likely dementia is really hurting him in the polls.