Tuning in

Doing national and international media isn’t my favorite thing. I consider it part of my job—if I can use my historical expertise to bring clarity to issues we’re facing, I’ll do it. In the months leading up to the election, I felt the added burden of educating the electorate on what I knew to be at stake given my knowledge of Christian nationalist networks and their plans for the country. (So much for those efforts!)

In addition to US coverage, I also gave several interviews to French television (in translation), to Germany’s GEO magazine, and to the Dutch newspaper Nederlands Dagblad, which sent me the lovely page below.

The number of interviews I did in the weeks leading up to the election left little room for anything else and I was hoping for a reprieve on the other side of things. Unfortunately, things didn’t quite turn out that way.

In the immediate aftermath of the election I gave several more, including one to NPR’s Morning Edition you can listen to here. (I also talked with another major outlet on Christian nationalism and the second Trump administration, and that should release any day now.) Truth be told, it was harder to muster the energy for this kind of work on this side of the election. I realize it’s still valuable, but it feels less pressing. It’s something I’ll be sorting out in the days ahead.

In between things, I hosted an Election Postmortem at Notre Dame. As I’ve shared here, it was wonderful to connect with other scholars and practitioners concerned about the future of American democracy. The first session featured Notre Dame’s David Campbell and Karrie Koesel, Chris Parker of UCSB, Robert Jones of PRRI, and journalist Katherine Stewart (moderated by Mike Rea) and covered what happened in the election and its runup.

The second session (love the thumbnail here), focused on what to watch for in the days ahead and featured Rachel Brown of Over Zero, Lilliana Mason of Johns Hopkins, and Elizabeth Neumann, Matthew Taylor (Institute for Islam, Christian, Jewish Studies, and myself, and was moderated by Laura Callahan.

This week, after taking a little time off for Thanksgiving, we’re back at it at The Convocation Unscripted.

Once again, we’re recording this week’s session as a free live Zoom webinar. Join us tomorrow, 12/19, at 5:00 PM ET.

To reserve a spot (it’s free but limited to the first 1,000 registrants), click on the button below to register. Once you register, you’ll receive the zoom link for the event. Cameras and audio will only be on for The Convocation Unscripted team, but we’ll have the chat open—this is our favorite thing, fielding questions from the chat and watching all the cross-talk. If you haven’t experienced this yet, I highly recommend tuning in live!

(You can also catch up on any episodes of The Convocation Unscripted you may have missed either on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.)

With the exception of continuing with The Convocation Unscripted, I’m hoping to step back from as much media coverage as possible. My primary goal will be finishing the next book. To that end, I’ll be limiting speaking as well—although I do have some fun trips planned here in the US and internationally in the coming months. I’ll share more on that in the new year. (And for historian friends, I’ll be at the ASCH in Chicago a couple of weeks from now where I’ll be on a panel honoring the great Robert Orsi.)

On a final note, I’m happy to report that not only is my tree now decorated, but please notice also those presents—*wrapped* and under the tree!