Ep. 198 Elizabeth Neumann - The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace

Christian extremism is on the rise in the United States. Elizabeth Neumann joins us to talk about what is happening, why it’s happening, and provides some pathways back to peace. She discusses how some churches have shifted away from Jesus' message of love towards a message of fear, grievance, and a desire to assert cultural power. She outlines the factors that have gotten us to this place like uncertainty, rapid social changes, and unmet needs for belonging and significance that can make people vulnerable to radicalization. However, the church can also provide healing and peace through community and finding significance in Christ. We talk about how the church can move back to the path of peace by centering Jesus rather than politics or culture wars. So join us to hear how the rise of Christian extremism came to be and for ways we can provide a path back to peace.

Elizabeth Neumann is a national security expert, violence prevention advocate, and author of the new book Kingdom of Rage: The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace. She served on White House Homeland Security Council in the George W. Bush Administration, and as the Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism at the Department of Homeland Security during the Trump Administration. She is currently the Chief Strategy Officer for Moonshot - a tech-enabled company supporting governments and community partners to understand and prevent violence. She is also a national security contributor for ABC News.

Elizabeth's Book:
Kingdom of Rage

Elizabeth's Recommendation:
The Spirit of Our Politics

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Transcript

Elizabeth Neumann: 0:00

The threats and harassment are somehow appropriate ways for us to be interacting with one another. We've lost our way. So the the part of the call here is that the Christian community can help reestablish norms that we have lost, particularly after COVID. We were losing them before COVID, it just has gotten a lot worse. And if we can reestablish some of those norms on that lower end of the hostile action spectrum, then it makes it, it makes the pool of potential people that are going to mobilize to violence much, much smaller.

Joshua Johnson: 0:46

Hello, and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create, and the impact we can make. We longed to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host, Joshua Johnson, our show is powered by you the listener, if you want to support the work that we do get early access to episodes, Episode guides and more. Go to patreon.com/shifting culture to become a monthly patron so that we can continue in this important work. And don't forget to hit the Follow button on your favorite podcast app to be notified when new episodes come out each week and go leave a rating and review. It's easy, it only takes a second and it helps us find new listeners to the show. Just go to the Show page on the app that you're using right now and hit five stars. It really is that easy. Thank you so much. You know what else would help us out? share this podcast with your friends, your family, your network, tell them how much you enjoy it and let them know that they should be listening as well. If you're new here, welcome. If you want to dig deeper find us on social media at shifting cultural podcasts where I post video clips and quotes and interact with all of you. Previous guests on the show have included Michael where Scott Yutani and Karen swallow prior. You can go back listen to those episodes and more. But today's guest is Elizabeth Newman. Elizabeth Newman is a national security expert violence prevention advocate and author of the new book kingdom of rage, the rise of Christian extremism and the path back to peace. She served on the White House Homeland Security Council in the George W. Bush administration, and as the Assistant Secretary for counterterrorism at the Department of Homeland Security during the Trump administration. She is currently the Chief Strategy Officer for moonshot, a tech enabled company supporting governments and community partners to understand and prevent violence. She is also a national security contributor for ABC News. Christian extremism is on the rise in the United States. Elizabeth Newman joins us to talk about what is happening, why it's happening and provide some pathways back to peace. She discusses how some churches have shifted away from Jesus's message of love, towards a message of fear grievance and a desire to assert cultural power. She outlines the factors that have gotten us to this place like uncertainty, rapid social changes, and unmet needs for belonging and significance that can make people vulnerable to radicalization. However, the church can also provide healing and peace through community and finding significance in Christ. We talked about how the church can move back to the path of peace by centering Jesus rather than politics, or culture wars. So join us to hear how the rise of Christian extremism came to be. And for ways we can provide a path back to peace. Here is my conversation with Elizabeth Newman. Elizabeth, welcome to shifting culture really excited to have you on. Thanks for joining me.

Elizabeth Neumann: 3:46

Thank you so much for having me.

Joshua Johnson: 3:49

Well, you have a ton of experience in in counterterrorism, Homeland Security in the White House. And you have seen a shift from international terrorism into the US into Christian extremism. Can you walk us through what has shifted? What has changed? And where are we at right now?

Elizabeth Neumann: 4:12

Yeah, you know, in some ways, it hasn't shifted all that much. It's that we weren't paying attention to it until it started becoming really deadly. And what I mean by it, I'm talking about domestic terrorism, domestic violent extremism, and there's a whole host of categories that fall underneath that bucket. But as everybody might remember, we had the Oklahoma City bombing, which was a horrific attack. That really brought to the forefront the fact that we had militia extremist white power extremists that had been around for quite some time that had been mostly engaging in local crime or they were dead. definitely a problem were concerned for law enforcement, they often targeted law enforcement. But that Oklahoma City bombing was this rude awakening for America that we have citizens within that, for have an ideology that is bent on violence and destruction. There were a number of attacks that occurred after Oklahoma City. One of the things that people often don't realize is that the Columbine shooting, and we just observed the 25th anniversary of the Columbine school shooting this about a week week ago, that was inspired by the Oklahoma City bombing. The media reports right after the shooting kind of set the narrative and those media reports turned out to be wrong. They had actually planned to conduct a series of attacks. And thankfully, there bombs weren't built well enough to to cause more damage than they did. But we we've had this problem with us for quite some time. 911 happens in the focus shifts, two things happen. One, I think it's fair to say that, that we united as a country, because we had an external enemy. And and that's pretty common. If you study terrorism and extremism. In general, when we when you have an external enemy, you tend to not have the internal friction that occurs usually during peacetime. So we have this law. And that doesn't mean that those people with those ideologies went away, they just went quiet, or they were more focused on a different threat. Around 2008 2009, we have a series of great uncertainty with the financial crisis, there's a disillusionment because of the war in Iraq. And we start to see kind of a rebuilding of ideologies that lead to extremism. Not all of them were extremist at the time, but just at a sense of grievance was setting in in in the country. And by 2015, we start to see pretty significant increases in attacks and plots. And that uptick has been continuing, going upwards since 2015. So we're now approaching our 10th year of ever increasing violence ever increasing attacks. And when you compare the data between those that have been inspired by al Qaeda and ISIS, and those that have been motivated by what we in the United States called domestic terroristic ideology, more people have died, there been more attacks coming from that domestic ideology than from ISIS and Al Qaeda with the exception of 911. And so when the counterterrorism community started to realize something shifted, we're seeing more attacks, what is happening, this is around 2017, there's always a lag with data. It's hard in the middle of a trend, especially if it's setting in to know is this a blip? Or is this something that we need to pay attention to? So it really was in like 2018 2019, people might remember, we had the Pittsburgh, a tree of life synagogue shooting. And then in 2019, there was an attack in Christchurch, New Zealand, guy that was inspired by great replacement theory, which is a white supremacist ideology. And then later we had an attempted attack inspired by that Christ Church here in California, and another one that was much more devastating in El Paso at a Walmart. And so you started to have this like series of incidents, that arguably somewhat got disrupted by COVID. In 2020, like, When Nobody's allowed to gather in a mass place that you there's fewer targets for people to go after. So in one sense, it kind of disrupted the momentum. And another sense it reenergized a different part of the extremist environment. So now, it's not just the white power movement that was so dominant in the early part of this 10 year trend. It's also the anti government extremist movement. That has been where the the number of this the most attacks of clots have been coming from in the last few years. And all of this is occurring in a backdrop of a narrative about the United States and narrative that and actually, if you're white power, it's a narrative about Western Europe in the United States that this is Christian. And that to be a good American means that you must be a Christian. We even saw in the manifest of the buffalo shooter in 2022, where he was specifically chose a target to be able to kill as many black people as possible in his manifesto, he talked about how he wasn't a Christian, but that he thought America was Christian, and that he would die to support making America more Christian. So it's this weird, perverse co opting of Christianity as Western culture, that we have a number of people gravitating towards, you know, needing to reassert and take language we see or a politician say, take back our country, take it back to the way it was supposed to be whatever that is, whatever that means. And, and that usually has a racial element to it, it has a religious element to it, and it has has strong anti government sentiment, like just in general, the government has become too big or is in my business, or sometimes it's anti government. But what they're really mad at is the other side, usually, the liberal, progressive coastal elites are telling us how to live our life and I want them out. So this antagonism is it's kind of a dangerous mix. And I want to be really clear that it says this mix this the sentiments, the grievances are in your first amendment protected political speech. And we're totally you know, there's nothing illegal about being angry at your government. The concern I have is that we have created such massive grievance, that some small percentage, who have factors in their life that in the factory, a little complex, we can talk about that later, if you want. But there's a small percentage of people that will take those grievances, and then use them to mobilize to violence. So when your pool of potentially radicalized individuals is so large, even when you have a small percentage, we now have more attacks, more plots, more desks, because there's a bigger hole to choose from.

Joshua Johnson: 12:06

So how does this play out with within the church, and we've seen the rise of Christian nationalism, we've seen the rise of all sorts of things. And I think it's the same right antagonizing spirit of saying, we need to take back our country, we're a Christian nation, we need to hold on to the the last vestiges of power that we actually do have, so that we're not going to go, basically, I think people would say, we're not going to just look like hell. And America, we're going to actually start to look a little bit better and more Christian. So what does it look like within the church? And how did you start? Where did you start to see the difference between the church looking like Jesus, and per proclaiming the love of Christ, for all people into a place of holding on to this, this culture, that Christian culture that we

Elizabeth Neumann: 13:06

have? I guess, for me, personally, I it was probably around 2012 to 2014, that I just God's blessing, right, happened to hear a few sermons challenging. My, the way that I interpreted politics through my faith, and yeah, like something simple, like, should we have flags at the front of the church, you know, American flag? And you're like, well, it's always been that way for me, like, Let me think about that. And, and, and over time, the Lord and the Spirit just kind of worked on me to kind of get to a place of realizing like, oh, oh, I am having my political agenda drives my faith and not my faith drive mine politics. And so for me, it was a personal conviction first, and it just happened to coincide with some pretty drastic changes in the nature of our politics. And I grew up in still am principle conservative. And in that 2014 2015 timeframe, there was a lot of changes happening in the Republican Party. And all of a sudden things that were like, foregone can slip conclusions that the Republican Party is for, were kind of tossed out in the name of populism, or, you know, all of a sudden, performance became much more important, you know, we can now look back and say, Well, you know, social media became endemic in 2012. We all you know, that was the tipping point for our phones. That's when we're all suddenly online all the time. And, and so, politics reacted to that by becoming much more For him, it's oriented. It became much more about how do I get on Sean Hannity tonight? How do I get Rush Limbaugh to mention my, you know, thing? And how do I get that word out to my base. And so you, the old guard of the Republican Party was not quite sure how to deal with all of this new performative politics and there was great disruption in that timeframe. And in that disruption, you have Donald Trump come on to the world stage. And I was out of Washington at this time, I had two young kids. And that was probably a huge blessing, to not be totally attached to it. Because when I started paying attention to it again, I was like what happened? Like, if you compare like a 2012 campaign to a 2016 campaign, it is like night and day. And that's kind of what happened, I had it. kid born in 2011, and another born in 2013. So I kind of paid attention to the 2012 election, and then I just was out, and then I came back to it and 2016 I was like, Whoa, this is not the party I grew up with. These are not the Christians I grew up with, like what is happening. So it really was that juxtaposition of both the Lord, you know, working on me through scripture, it through, you know, sermons and wise counsel, and then having time and space away from the politics, and then coming back to it and going, Oh, this does not align up with what the Bible teaches this is, you know, what happened to I mean, you can just, these are so mentioned, these days, it's almost old. But you know, at the time, it was really jarring for somebody that was a college student when Bill Clinton was getting impeached. And the, the rhetoric I was taught was, he doesn't have the character for the office. And here we were, less than 20 years later, totally comfortable with an adulterer, and thrice married man, becoming our standard bearer, not only comfortable, but like, you know, praising him. And he like in claiming that he had become a Christian and like, just kind of like trying to figure out how can we put a shroud of deception around him so we can get enough people to vote for him like, it wasn't just a hold your nose and vote, it was a, there was a complicit ness to it. Like what happened, we've got to beat Hillary. So this is our guy. And so that experience for me was very, you know, just eye opening and awakening and really forced me to go back to Scripture and really understand what what is it I believe, and start to untangle a politics that had been way too dominant and almost idolatrous and, and making sure that my face was informing my policy opinions, the way I vote, that kind of thing. And despite all of that happening, I was asked to come and serve in the Trump administration. And I did, I turned it down twice. And there was a particular phone call from a friend and who we had served in the George W. Bush administration. And she was very concerned about the security situation the country was facing, and not sure who she could trust. And she was she was trying to get people to come in and serve at the Department of Homeland Security. So I did, we moved from Dallas moved to Washington, DC again, and I served for three years before leaving. So it was a it was a difficult three years because I was also grappling with, like, I disagree with the character of this person. And and yet I, you know, I have a high view of the role of the presidency, right, like duly elected by the American people, you we should be trying to help you implement your agenda to the extent that it's legal and constitutional. And there were quite a few times that it was not legal or constitutional. So so that creates tension, right, like you're trying to do. You're trying to uphold your moral values, you're out of the Constitution. And also, you know, the sense that this, this is who the American people want it. I kind of wanted to circle back to the crux of your question, because I'm just sharing more personally about like my own journey, but I, you know, in the book, what I trace is that there, it's it's not one, just one thing that makes somebody vulnerable to extremism. It is usually a variety of factors. Some of them are personal far

Joshua Johnson: 19:48

we talked through, like what the factors to get to it. Can you just define extremism for us so we know what we're talking about, and then we can talk about the factors so to move forward

Elizabeth Neumann: 19:59

to get there. or so? And that's it. I'm so glad you asked that question because definitions really matter here. Because on TV, you hear people talking about extremism and, and they they use it in such a loose way that you're like, sometimes it makes it sound like they consider anybody that's a Christian in a traditional sense as an extremist, and that is not at all what I mean. Extremism in the security sense is a reference to somebody that is going through an a change in belief system. And the definition I use is when an in group perceives a threat to their success or survival by an out group, and believes that they then need to go content, conduct hostile action. So there's two pieces to that definition, it's in group out group, which, you know, is just social identity theory we all have in groups now groups, when when we play sports, you know, our team is the in group the the out of the other teams, the out group that are it's not unhealthy, that's normal human behavior. When you get to a place where you're, you're perceiving threat to your success or survival, and you blame this outgroup. Okay, sometimes that's actually legitimate, right? Like you think of countries going to war. You know, and what Hamas did to Israel like that there is a legitimate threat to their survival, right. So it's, it's not necessarily made up. But for some, it can be a made up grievance, though, where it gets particularly dangerous is when your solution to that crisis is hostile action, and I the hostile action spectrum, as starts with bullying, harassment, intimidation, threats, most of which are non criminal, although there are certain circumstances where those can be charged, then you move into hate crimes, vandalism, violence, or destruction of property violence towards people, terrorism, and genocide is the higher end of the spectrum. When you have a group that is spinning a narrative that paints this picture of your threat, your success or survival is threatened. Which, by the way, is like our politics today, right? electoral politics is all about how the other group is going to ruin your life. And it's an existential threat. This is the greatest election of our lifetime. You know, and why, why do they do that, because it gets them votes, it raises money, fear, and anger are really powerful motivators. And marketers know that and so they're using it to get our eyeballs and clicks, and votes in money. So there's a part of me that's like, I wish we had people of good character, running our campaigns and running our media and changing our social media so that we wouldn't be constantly in this outreach cycle. But I'm also not naive, like the incentive structure is such that it would be very difficult to break. So part of the message of this book is recognize that you live in a world that is incentivized to make you angry, and scared. And, and you need to build some protective factors against just that like, because it's not healthy for us to live in constant fear and outrage. But for small percentage, that fear and outrage can lead you to think you get to this conclusion that hostile action is necessary. And that's really what makes something extremist, it's when we get to this place of you know what I'm going to do, it's not that I'm gonna go vote, or it's not that I'm gonna go volunteer, for my candidate of choice. I'm actually going to, you know, go intimidate somebody or I'm gonna go make swatting calls to tell the county clerk that I don't trust their management of elections. And that's, and that's what has been happening for most of the last four years, we have a number of lower, like names that you would never have heard of the guys that are administrating or administering your elections, who are getting threats, they're getting phone calls at home, threatening their grandkids mean, nobody signs up to be the county clerk or administer of an election. And it thinks like they're gonna make bank and this is like a big job and I'm going to become so famous like right like these are, you know, your, your retired grandmother down the street that just wants to help their community in some way and now they're getting death threats, because they we have this community or this narrative that we're swimming in, that that grandma down the street is trying You ruined your life, right? Like, just like when you take it down to that local level. And you start to realize like, okay, we're we've kind of lost our way here. If, if that's where we are, we need to threaten grandmothers and you know, people that are just trying to serve their local community or school teachers or school board administrators, that threats and harassment are somehow appropriate ways for us to be interacting with one another, we've lost our way. So the the part of the call here is that the Christian community can help reestablish norms that we have lost, particularly after COVID, we were losing them before COVID, it just has gotten a lot worse. And if we can reestablish some of those norms on that lower end of the hostile action spectrum, then it makes it, it makes the pool of potential people that are gonna mobilize to violence much, much smaller. And it is part of the difficulty when we're talking about people that are actually the ones that go and commit those terrorist attacks. It's very hard for the it's very hard for the government or mental health professionals or anybody that's working in that prevention space, it's hard for us to know which of the radicalized individuals are actually going to go commit an attack. And, and so what we need is to shrink the pool of potential people that could in order to increase the likelihood that we can either off ramp somebody get somebody help, or detect that applied is underway and disrupt it before it occurs. Right now, the problem is so massive, we can't we don't have the resources to deal with the number of people that could potentially mobilized to violence and then circling back to that radicalization question, radicalization is a process of change. It is a cognitive process of change where you are moving from a belief system that is inherently nonviolent to a belief system that embraces extremism. And what we're most concerned about in that radicalization process is the violence. But I will say like, we all have practical experience. Now when somebody gets really radical in their viewpoints. They're not pleasant to be around. It affects our relationships, it affects our churches. So even if that individual isn't going to go commit an act of violence, I would suggest that they're not disturbed. They're not demonstrating the ways of Jesus there. There usually is a root of grievance and bitterness. That is an anger that dominates their view of the world. And it makes our Thanksgiving dinners kind of difficult. And so part of what I'm hoping we can do with the book, and maybe a conversation that stems from the book is like how do we how do we work upstream to prevent somebody from radicalizing in the first place? That's

Joshua Johnson: 28:09

a great question, how do we work upstream? So I want to get into one of the ways that we do that, but first, how in the world does the church get into this place of a there's an outgroup? We don't, we think we're going to die because of this outgroup we're not going to survive anymore. So we're going to take up arms, and we're going to enact violence. I mean, a, a prime example is the Crusades, you know, all the way back and, you know, the year 1099, or whatever, that we started the Crusades and started to really just kill masses of people just because they were non believers, and they are blasphemers. It's not, not great. How does the church get there? I mean, we follow a Jesus, that was pretty anti anti violence and self like, like, if you look at somebody who's anti violence, Jesus does it right. So how do we fall follow this man Jesus and start to walk in his ways, but then veer off so far, that we get to this place of violence? What happens?

Elizabeth Neumann: 29:19

Yeah, I think there are so many contributing factors here. And and I trace a number of them in the book at it at a survey level, I actually find found it so fascinating to dig deep and then so frustrating that I can only you know, treat it like each one of them could be their own chapter and then it would be a very long book, and my editor wouldn't let me do that. So. So I actually recommend resources to dive into some of these factors. But some of the ones that I cover include things that are affecting a society wide so things like a great uncertainty as human beings we don't lie uncertain things, and we're living in an era of rapid change, economically rapid change in our morals and values. And that leaves people feeling very unstable. You saw this amplified during COVID, right? Like, for weeks we're like, what is this thing? We nobody the science hadn't caught up yet? Like, do I need to wash my vegetables when I do I leave my that groceries outside for a certain number of days like great uncertainty. And that uncertainty is something that extremism feeds on. It really loves, when things are unstable, and it comes in and it offers black and white answers to a world that is inherently gray. And I think for as Christians, this is something we need to be aware of. It's really important in as we're raising our kids in particular, that we as it's normal and natural as human beings, we want certainty we want black and white answers. But that is not what our Scriptures teach us. Right? Like, we are not to worry about tomorrow, we are to focus on the tasks that the Lord has given us for today. And he will you know, he tells us He will provide for us we don't know how right like this is the lesson of the mana. During the Israelites Exodus, it's the the lesson of don't collect mana. On Sunday, you collect enough on Saturday, so you have some on Sunday. And like being obedient, even though we don't know why, even though we don't know how God's going to be faithful. That leads that is hard. It is hard to do. And I think as Western Christians, it's really hard because we have we've we're built on the idea of pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps, not having to rely on anybody else. You know, it is a badge of honor, right to be a fully confident adult and be able to, you know, I don't need anything or anybody, I've got it all under control. And faith actually are what the way of Jesus is the opposite. The way of Jesus is weak, the weak and in the way of Jesus is being community in the way of Jesus is you don't have all of the answers. And and that's okay. Like it is so countercultural. So when we do have these great moments of societal uncertainty, I think one of the places that we failed, or where it's evident where we were weak maybe is the better way to frame it is that our instinct was to turn and try to find something to hold on to our politics. I'm going to control my church, I want my church to wear masks, I want my church not to wear masks, it was like how do I assert control because the world around me is under is out of control. So that's that's one factor. There. There are a number of other things that I traced in the book that kind of they all eventually lead to uncertainty, but it's things such as it more maybe speaking more particular to the Christian community, the rapid changes of moral values. And that I think, has been a key grievance narrative in our community that when the Obergefell decision happened, and gay marriage was legalized, we had a number of people kind of try to speculate, what where does this go? And I, sir, I certainly remember being told from the pulpit that, you know, in our lifetimes, you know, maybe maybe, you know, for your kids, we're not going to be able to teach the Bible in a traditional orthodox way with without being locked up in jail. Now, think, think about that. On one hand, they're reflecting that we've had this pretty significant upheaval in the way that we define marriage. And it's inconsistent with biblical teaching. Okay. But their answer is, so we're all going to get locked up, and you're like, well, but also, today, at least we have this blessing of a First Amendment. And the courts so far have held up religious freedom, actually, you know, by some experts, like we have more religious freedoms today than we did 20 years ago. So so there's a tendency when we see rapid change for people to take it to a potential and I'm not saying it could never happen, but it just it's not necessarily grounded in reality. So we tend to catastrophize and in that catastrophizing, we tend to, you know, we are living in fear and not necess Seriously living in reality, and this goes back to the Lord told it told us to take it a day at a time. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't have great lawyers that love the Lord, who are going to defend our First Amendment Right? Like what a blessing that that has been to us. But also, I don't know that we all need to then therefore go build up and or worry and, you know, make sure we have food stocks for the next 10 years because the government is going to come for us right like that, that in some people went there and have been living in that fear cycle for quite some time. And so the it's, it's how do we deal with the change? And what is the proper Christian response, and I kind of in chapter six get to I, I hypothesize, and I'm cautious to do this, because when you say that American church, it is so vast, and there's so many different threads. And I get so annoyed when somebody on CNN paints it with this broad brushstroke. And you're like, ah, that's like one tiny fraction of the Christian community. But I do think we're weak in the in the space of Christian formation, I think we forgotten some of the real basic things of the ways of Jesus that he told us suffering is a part of the deal, that we are to expect to have trials, and that our answer to that suffering, and our answer to that trials is not to go and take something by force, it is nerrit. To go in, and carry out an act of violence against another human being, we can take that grievance to the Lord, we can practice importing our hearts out and our anger and our frustration to the Lord, he can then receive that. And then we can also walk faithfully and just trust, right, and it has so hard to do, I really am cautious in saying that because it sounds so like a bad answer. But that is the way of Jesus and we've lost it. Right. And we've lost it. And that's what we need to recover is that the way of Jesus is not the American Dream, the way of Jesus is not that your kids are going to do better than you did. We have Jesus is not a guarantee that we get to have religious freedom. I want those things. Those are all not bad things, but they can't be our ultimate thing. Yeah.

Joshua Johnson: 37:22

So then, what's the proper way to to walk in this world of uncertainty in this world of change? And when we feel like everything around us is crumbling? What are we holding on to? That doesn't lead to I want to do harm to this other group? What are we holding on to how do we walk? What are what are the proper ways to move forward in this uncertain time?

Elizabeth Neumann: 37:53

You know, I think one of the things that when I talk to pastors and Christian leaders, and I'm usually going through data, that kind of depressing, I always start with the good news. The good news is that the countering violent extremism community, the research community, the practitioners, the people that do this work day in and day out, they have found a series of risk factors that make somebody more likely or more vulnerable to being radicalized. And they've also identified protective factors, things that can build resilience in somebody to those extremist narratives. And they, if you summarize them, and it's complex, so I always cautious in the summary. But if you summarize them, and I tell you to that, I tell you, them, pastors, church leaders, you're going to realize you already have these answers. We already have like, basically, here we have it yet again, science is pointing to a well what Jesus said 2000 years ago is the answer. So and the two things that lead somebody and make somebody most vulnerable to extremism is if they're in its underlying psychosocial needs, unmet needs, an unmet need for significance and an unmet need for belonging. Those are the two largest pieces of it. There's lots of other other, you know, little pieces, but it is inherently somebody is searching, searching for belonging and they're searching for significance. Often that search could be triggered by some sort of humiliation that they've experienced as a group or humiliation they've experienced as an individual and often is triggered by some sort of life crisis. And those those factors knowing those factors as a church we can then think about, are we helping people anchor their significance in Christ? Are we helping people anchor their belonging in Christ and in belonging, not just in a, I see myself as a part of the body of Christ. But like you're actually in community, you're not just tuning into your sermon on Sunday and then sending your check, Hey, that's my church. No, no, like you actually know people's names or you are actually invested in caring for your community. Do you know your neighbors names? Do you engage in some way? Where people you're allowing people to get to know you? I'm not saying you have to do that with every party. But like, do you have intimate relationships where people can bear your burdens, and you can bear theirs, and, and they can also speak truths where you might, you know, be stumbling somewhere like that level of belonging is, is a protective factor. And it's not shocking when you realize that those are the two main things that lead somebody to embrace an extremist ideology. Like, there's so many great books that the Christian community has written of late talking about the problems of modern society, like the fact that I think if Alan nobles book, you were not your own, our entire postmodern system is like, nope, all you need is yourself. And you're like, oh, my gosh, that's just not true. Or, you know, you're only as valuable as what you can portray on social media. And we have a whole generation of kids who are forming their identity through social media. And they're the result of that is girls are extremely anxious and have much higher rates of suicide than they did previously. And boys are increasingly apathetic, because they just kind of are giving up, like, I'm never going to be able to achieve that level of whatever I'm seeing on social media. And so why don't we even try. So we have an entire generation that is being catechized into a false sense of what it means to be human. And their response to that is, you know, they start for sound, they start looking for their significance. And, you know, well, I would say, in all sorts of ways that are unhealthy, but a small percentage of them that their answer is extremist ideology, that fills that significance void. So that's, that's, I think, the work that the church has in front of them, we have those answers, we know how to offers dignity and sick significance to people through Jesus, but also like, that's the power of, you can offer that to your neighbor, even if they're not a believer, right, because of the way that we treat one another. And we can start to reestablish this idea that in in the way that we love our neighbor, we're offering them that significance in that belonging and that helps our community,

Joshua Johnson: 43:05

I think significance, belonging is is crucial, and as necessary, and it necessary to move that around Jesus himself, that Jesus is, is lord in the midst of it. Because we could we could also as the church bring about, like identity, belonging and significance in a way that is, is about us as this sort of group and opposing the outgroup. And so that's a little new nuance that I think is going to be important for the church to hold on to Jesus at the center. And we have it, we know it. But oftentimes we have small little mission drifts that move over time, farther and farther away from Jesus himself into my significance and belonging is to whatever cultural ideology that I have more than around Jesus.

Elizabeth Neumann: 44:08

At that, so well said, You're right, that part of the core issue that many in the church are dealing with right now is the realization that the church's significance in American culture is waning. The church's belonging in American culture is increasingly pushed to the fringe and not accepted. It's not mainstream anymore. And people are reacting to that. That feels like loss to them. I used to have I used to be normal, normal in American American sense. I used to be in the mainstream. I used to have power because I was in the mainstream, and that is shifting, and I'm angry about it. I've lost Mike, I've lost control. I've lost power. People make fun of me now or people dismissed me now, and that doesn't feel good. And all of all of that is true, right? Like that grievance, that pain is very true. It's that two things, one, our answer to that grievance and that pain is, is to turn to Jesus because he can. He endured way more than anything we're doing right now, right? Like the American church is experiencing so little suffering, like to our detriment, I think, compared to 2000 years of church history and Jesus's own experience. So we can turn to Jesus when we receive that rejection, because he was ultimately rejected. And it's worth that for us on the cross. But that the second point is also true, that you're really honing in on maybe, maybe what we were what we're sad about is actually an idol. Maybe God's allowing this to be taken away from us, because it's per could, it's for good that we're not in control and get to call the shots. And and I'm not again, human emotion of loss is very real. And yet, maybe that's actually healthy for us to realize that the the mission here that that Jesus gave us was not I kind of in I am not of the Dominionists camp where we are supposed to go and build the kingdom of God, I think God will build His kingdom. And he uses us, and we get to participate in that. But we don't know what the design plans are. We just go where He calls us. And so the fact that it feels like we had this really great Christian nation, which I have, I'm not suggesting I agree with, but for some, they think like, oh, America was this great Christian nation, and now we're falling. And you're like, Okay, maybe, yeah, maybe, maybe. Maybe this the world looks very different for our kids and our grandkids and there can be sadness there. But we don't. It's it's God's call. It's God's plan. And we go where He calls us, and I don't see anywhere in Scripture, we're part of that calling is to take up arms, and to take it by force.

Joshua Johnson: 47:14

I, I don't think that you, you touched on this in your book, but I do just a personal anecdote. As I went to the Middle East, I lived in Jordan for for many years. As fascinated coming back for when we moved back here, I got called in, at the airport. And I was asked if I knew any terrorists, but anyways, that later, but as I was living in Jordan, I actually didn't experience a lot of of fear, there wasn't a spirit of fear in Jordan, I came back to America. And I, I noticed a different spirit in the air and the spirit of fear. It was a spiritual reality that was different in America than it was in the in Jordan, where there's fighting. There's war. There's all sorts of unrest and uncertainty in that area. But there wasn't a spirit of fear. I wonder what the what is going on spiritually, in different areas, I do think that there is spiritually something different that is happening in America, that this is the way that the enemy is moving us to hate each other.

Elizabeth Neumann: 48:39

I have watched with sadness, over the last 10 years as a number of people that I held in high esteem, have not handled the crises. And they the challenges of the last 10 years very well and a number have like I should, we should never only focus on the things that haven't gone well. There are so many faithful believers, and pastors and people doing quiet work, that we just the way Jesus modeled it, right. And it's it really is beautiful when you get to witness it. But there are also a number of people that you want to think that there is a genuine faith there. And yet they're so misled and deceived, and it just it reminds me a bit of it throughout Scripture, we see that God allows us to be blinded sometimes. And it God allows us, his people to you know, that the verse that I think of I think it's from Jeremiah that talks about, you know, hey, Jeremiah, you're gonna have this ministry, but or maybe it's Isaiah, but maybe it was both. You're going to preach and they're not going to hear and you're going to show them and they're not going to see in there, you know, and it's just like, the Lord has given them over and they're not According to repentant, and they're not going to turn from their ways and, and I did that does feel a bit like what we're experiencing as a country that there are people that are being sifted, and, and in some are coming out the other side with a renewed faith and a repentance and, and some were not. And that's, it's really hard to watch, especially if it's somebody you love and care for. And I, you know, there's a part of that that means that for those who whose eyes are open to you see this deception, that we should still be praying for those that are deceived, and we should still be loving them, we should still be inviting them. Because you never know when the Holy Spirit will awaken or will help them. You know, shake off the fear the spirit of fear that they're living in. But but it does, it does feel like spiritual warfare to me not like, that always exists, right? But like when you see so many people learned people, you know, people that with lots of letters after their name. And you know, who might had faithful ministries and then and then they're just really bought into the politics of the day. And and it's, it is hard. It's hard to grapple with.

Joshua Johnson: 51:33

Elizabeth, this has been really, really good. I have just a couple of quick questions here as we're running out of time. One is, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give

Elizabeth Neumann: 51:45

to a 21 year old self? I I would reassure my 21 year old self that it'll all be okay. I was when I was 21. It was right after 911. I was 21 when 911 happened or is just 22. Yeah. I would reassure I was really scared. It was scary, scary time. But I wouldn't. That's what that's what I would say to my 21 year old self, I would say it's going to be okay. Set your eyes on Jesus, and He will carry you through this.

Joshua Johnson: 52:26

Anything you've been reading or watching lately, you could recommend.

Elizabeth Neumann: 52:31

I'm making my way through Michael, where's book? And I think you had on your podcast recently. Yeah, yeah. I am enjoying that. And then I'm reading more of a domestic terrorism book, God's guns and Sedition by Bruce Hoffman and Jacob were friends of mine. That's a little more heavy on the heavy side. But I do I actually am about to launch a section of my website called the path back to peace. Where I list a series of recommendations because so much of the stuff in the book, I'm referencing other people's work. And it can only survey it and there's so much richness that that I want others to be able to dive into. Well,

Joshua Johnson: 53:19

excellent. So go to Elizabeth website, which is Elizabeth newman.org. All right, Elizabeth newman.org. Go and look that path back to peace. Go get kingdom of rage out now. Everywhere you could get your books. Where else can people find you connect with you? Where would you like to point people to?

Elizabeth Neumann: 53:43

I am on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and threads at New summits. And it's in EU su Mmm, it s Perfect.

Joshua Johnson: 53:54

Well, Elizabeth, thank you for this conversation. I thank you that you could actually help us see the rise of extremism here in the United States, and the rise of extremism within our churches and moving us into this path of violence. But then helping us figure out what is the path back to peace? Where can we move back to see Jesus as the center of the church and who we are that we could actually have belonging significance around him in the community. And hopefully we could be able to love our neighbor as well. So that there is going to be a community in the United States that actually looks really good at is not a a violent extremism type of community but as a community of love, and acceptance one to another that we can love our neighbors well. So thank you for this conversation. I really enjoyed it.

Elizabeth Neumann: 54:52

Thanks for having me.