Author of DISCIPLES OF WHITE JESUS: The Radicalization of American Boyhood (March 25, 2025) - PRE-ORDER NOW! Pre-Order on Bookshop Barnes & Noble Comma (Minneapolis)
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WHAT CAN'T BE CONFINED
MINNESOTA STAR TRIBUNE
Dec. 25, 2024
For me, this time of year used to mean standing before a crowded church, preaching about the good news of Christmas to pews packed with good, wholesome, Bible-believing American Christians.
On more than one occasion on those Christmas Eve’s past, I stood desperately (if not literally) in the pulpit, clinging to it like a port in the storm, trying to claim some semblance of a message for Christmas that wasn’t weighed down by the commercialism, capitalism and gross inequality that hampers our holiday season.
Again and again, from the coast of California to the prairies of Minnesota, I preached some version of this message: that Christmas was not ultimately about the presents but about the presence, that somehow being together in a holy space and bearing witness to a God who gave much more than God ever received, would counteract all the ways in which we too as church leaders — and me, as a parent of young kids — fed into the idea that the meaning of the season was he who dies with the most toys wins, a theme, by the way, that fits pretty well with our current political discourse and winner-takes-all mentality.
This Christmas, I was not preaching. And so, five days before Christmas Eve, I tried to find that message of presence over presents in a place far from the bustling gaiety and consumer cheer of our packed local shopping malls and churches. On Dec. 19 in Stillwater, I sought the presence of Christmas in prison.
CITIZENSHIP IN TRUMP'S AMERICA
MINNESOTA STAR TRIBUNE
Dec. 14, 2024
In the wake of Trump’s re-election, some Democratic voters in blue states Googled their options about moving out of the country, and they renewed their passports.
Still, these 501 newly minted Americans came to Brooklyn Center and swore an oath that they would “support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America.” That they would “bear arms on behalf of the United States … perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by law … .”
I wondered how both things could be true: that these people swearing this oath on this day, after the re-election of this president, could be willing to give so much to a country that had so often been willing to crush them under its heavy boot.
AN AMERICAN RECKONING: TRUMP'S RE-ELECTION AND WHO WE REALLY ARE
MINNESOTA STAR TRIBUNE
Nov. 15, 2024
By 10 p.m. on election night, it was clear that the picture of America that had been painted by old-school pols like Biden and Democratic pundits on CNN like David Axelrod, and overconfident Never-Trumpers in the pages of the New York Times, needed to be filed away on the dusty shelves of the never-to-be-repeated past.
I’ve been researching Trumpism, especially among Christian voters, since I wrote my first book, in 2018. And I spent much of the past year focusing specifically on the young white men and boys drawn to radicalization, violence and right-wing politics for my new book. If I had to point to one reason why Trump won re-election in 2024 despite an unhinged campaign and rapidly advancing age, I’d say it was this:
Trump knew who we are better than Democrats did.