April 16, 2024

Announcing my new book, WILD FAITH!

Howdy y’all,

I want to personally thank every subscriber to this newsletter (picture me giving you a very light kiss on the cheek in the European fashion) for sticking with me over the past three years as I’ve worked on my second book. There have been ups, downs, times of living entirely sideways, and an endless series of deadlines, but I have finally arrived at the “last pass” (when authors get to stick in a few commas and a sentence or two to the final product, and then surrender it, tenderly, like a child graduating high school and moving out into the world after you’ve nurtured it for what seems like a hefty slice of your life). Now, with galley proofs in hand and a publication date ready—it’ll be coming out October 8—I’m finally ready to announce that the book is a-comin’!

Entitled Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America, the book is an exploration of a scattering of topics relating to just how we came to this time—a time when a politically powerful religious minority is willy-nilly shaping law, from the highest courts to the lowest, wreaking havoc on the rights of women and queer people, and engaging in an active attempt to weld church and state together with holy fire. Their chief avatar, the apotheosis of fifty years of political power-building, is a Bible salesman/former president/multiple indictee/guy currently on trial for mishandling stripper hush money (I love you, Stormy Daniels). We’re on the cusp of an election that may obviate any future elections, and this book tells the story of how the evangelical right turned from a fringe group of segregationists into a power bloc that has grown to dominate the Republican Party—and the nation’s judicial apparatus.

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The Sword and the Sandwich is a newsletter about deadly serious extremism and serious sandwiches. Please consider supporting this work with a paid subscription.

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Included in this journey are deep dives into the Satanic Panic, the nexus between QAnon and evangelicalism, tradwives, Christian masculinity, the history of anti-abortion terrorism, and the right-wing grift-industrial complex. And most importantly, I delve into Christian child-rearing manuals, from James Dobson to his many imitators (from the Pearls to Ted Tripp and many more), and, through interviews with many survivors of child abuse, examine the effect of generational violence inflicted by parents on their children and grandchildren. The authoritarian family unit is a microcosm of an authoritarian society—a proving ground for the kind of absolute and brutal control that passes for love in the evangelical sphere. When evangelicals say “Jesus loves you,” keep in mind that in many fundamentalist Christian homes, love is expressed with judicious strokes of a wooden paddle on a child too small to resist. That’s the kind of love they propose for everyone—a chilling prospect that should galvanize us all to resist it.

“Know thine enemy” has always been a watchword for me, and while this book is a very different animal than my first book, Culture Warlords—for starters, there’s a lot less memoir, and no gonzo element, just me interviewing a lot of people, reading a lot of increasingly horrifying books, and putting together the history of this movement in a way that is, hopefully, a coherent and page-turning whole—it is a similarly deep dive into members of American society whose worldview is consumed with hate and paranoia. Writing this book was not a fun experience per se, but it was one that taught me a lot about the country I live in, and I hope that, in quenching my own curiosity, I can pique yours.

There’s also—and I cannot emphasize this enough—a badass snake on the cover. 

I never knew that I needed this in my life, but the serpent designed by cover artist Shreya Gupta is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen and I am so glad she created this just for me. I am the woman who commands this cool snake and don’t you forget it. In my heart his name is Snako, but in practice he is meant to be a Gadsden-flag-esque menacing symbol of just what happens when you pluck the fruit of Christian nationalism—it’s something that can eat you alive.

You can preorder the book at Bookshop.org (support indie bookstores!), Books A Million, and, of course, Amazon. Also, just for you guys: if you send me a receipt for your preorder, I will provide you with either a blessing or a hex of my own devising for your beloveds or enemies! (You know I’m good for it, after the hex-your-ex Halloween special.) I can also send you an exclusive preview of a chapter if you prefer!

Writing one book took everything I had, and writing a second book—hopefully a more mature, densely reported, and thoroughgoing look at a complex topic—took more and yet made me feel more alive, and more accomplished as a writer. I could not have done it without your support, as this newsletter is my daily bread, and I appreciate each and every one of you (but especially the paid subscribers) with all my heart. I am so glad to have you all on this journey with me, and hope I get denounced from the pulpit—that means I did my job right! I’m hoping not to be inundated with death threats again, but if I do, it kind of means I pissed off the right people? You know, the people doing their best to turn America into a small-minded, burn-the-infidels theocracy. Fuck ‘em, in my opinion—and I wrote the book on it.

With all my love,

Talia