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Truce - History of the Christian Church

Truce explores the history of the evangelical church in America, from fundamentalism to pyramid schemes to political campaigns. Host Chris Staron uses journalistic tools to investigate how the church got here and how it can do better. The current season follows the rise of the Religious Right, examining the link between evangelicals and the Republican Party. Featuring special guests like Rick Perlstein, Frances Fitzgerald, Jesse Eisinger, Daniel K. Williams, and more.

history christianity

All Episodes

53:52

Republicans and Evangelicals: Bill Bright, Campus...

Truce - History of the Christian Church ·

2025/12/16

Give to help Chris continue to make TruceWilliam R. “Bill” Bright was born in 1921 in Coweta, Oklahoma. Though raised in a religious environment, he initially pursued business success and personal ambition. While attending the University of Southern California, Bright experienced a dramatic spiritual transformation through the influence of Christian leaders like Henrietta Mears. This encounter led him to surrender his life to Jesus Christ and ultimately shaped his calling toward full-time

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36:15

Republicans and Evangelicals I Jerry Falwell (part 2)

Truce - History of the Christian Church ·

2025/12/02

Give to help Chris make more TruceThe New Right had a plan--to bring evangelical Christians together as a voting bloc. But how to do that? They chose a few targets, people with big followings, and courted them. Jerry Falwell was an obvious choice. He was a fundamentalist preacher, televangelist, and the founder of Liberty University. He also had a propensity for the dramatic, seeing the end of days around every corner. The New Right did not like President Jimmy Carter and did their best to turn

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40:15

Republicans and Evangelicals I Jerry Falwell (part 1)

Truce - History of the Christian Church ·

2025/11/18

Give to help Chris make TruceJerry Falwell was a prominent American pastor, televangelist, and conservative political activist whose life and ministry had a significant impact on American evangelicalism and politics. Born on August 11, 1933, in Lynchburg, Virginia, Falwell grew up in a family that was not particularly religious. However, after becoming a Christian during his college years, he dedicated his life to ministry. He attended Baptist Bible College in Missouri, where he developed the

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47:29

Republicans and Evangelicals: Abortion

Truce - History of the Christian Church ·

2025/11/04

Give to help Chris continue to make TruceA lot of evangelicals are now single-issue voters, and that issue is abortion. But that was not always the case. In fact, for a great deal of American history, abortion was largely seen as a Catholic issue. There are, of course, exceptions. But most evangelicals and Protestants were divided on the subject, even favoring abortion when it came to preserving the health of the mother, or in cases of rape and incest. On this episode, Chris interviews historian

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45:26

Republicans and Evangelicals: The Death Penalty

Truce - History of the Christian Church ·

2025/10/21

Give to help Chris continue making TruceIn the late 1960s and early 1970s, the United States went years without using the death penalty. Not a single person was killed by injection, firing squad, hanging, or electric chair. But by the late 90s, we were killing around 100 convicted criminals per year. What happened? In 1972, the Supreme Court handed down its decision Furman v. Georgia, which negated state capital punishment laws across the country. This meant that some of the worst criminals in

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29:56

Republicans and Evangelicals | Bob Jones University...

Truce - History of the Christian Church ·

2025/10/07

Give to help Chris continue to make TruceBob Jones University v. United States (1983) was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that addressed whether the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) could deny tax-exempt status to private religious schools that practiced racially discriminatory policies. Bob Jones University, a fundamentalist Christian institution, prohibited interracial dating and marriage among its students based on its religious beliefs. In 1970, the IRS revised its policy to deny tax-exempt

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5:32

A Personal Message and Exciting News!

Truce - History of the Christian Church ·

2025/09/23

Give to help Chris make Truce!Do you love Truce? I love making Truce! Together, we can continue this important show. Would you help Chris reach his goal of $40,000? You can send a check to: PO Box 3434 Jackson, WY 83001 Or give through Patreon, Paypal, Venmo, or a credit card on the website! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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64:06

Republicans and Evangelicals | George Wallace

Truce - History of the Christian Church ·

2025/09/09

Give to help Chris continue to make TruceGeorge Wallace was, as historian Dan Carter put it, "the most influential loser in American history". He was the governor of Alabama and lost multiple bids for president of the United States. In the process, he spread his racist views throughout the country. Wallace is a vitally important figure in American history. His success in pulling in votes from racists attracted the attention of establishment politicians. He showed men like Richard Nixon that there

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31:30

Republicans and Evangelicals I Boston Against Busing

Truce - History of the Christian Church ·

2025/08/26

Give to help Chris make TruceWe talk about racism in the United States like it only happens in the South. But the nasty truth is that the North is also guilty of racist behavior. This is evident in the way that we behaved when schools were integrated by bus. Brown v. Board of Education called for public schools to integrate. However, it took decades for many public schools to carry out this directive. It wasn't until the 1970s that the Boston schools were forced to integrate. But how? Schools are

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46:35

Republicans and Evangelicals I Segregation Academies...

Truce - History of the Christian Church ·

2025/08/12

Give to help Chris make the Truce PodcastIn 2 Samuel 24 David is told that he must buy a certain piece of land in an act of repentance for his sins. The man who owns the land says that he'd like to give David the land and the animals to sacrifice. But David turns him down, insisting that he won't give to God something that cost him nothing. This story demonstrates something that may be missing from the Christian world today. Sacrifice should cost us something. Sacrifice should be a sacrifice. In

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32:09

Republicans and Evangelicals I Segregation Academies...

Truce - History of the Christian Church ·

2025/07/29

Give to help Chris continue Truce. Update: I would like to apologize for an error I made in the original version of this story. I stated that tuition payments to private schools are tax-exempt on the federal level. They are not. They sometimes are on the state level. The episode has been edited to reflect the correct information. When Brown v. Board of Education passed the Supreme Court in 1954, segregationists stepped up their efforts to keep black children out of their schools. If they couldn't

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74:04

Scopes Monkey Trial - 100 Year Anniversay

Truce - History of the Christian Church ·

2025/07/18

Give to help Chris continue making TruceI made these episodes a few years ago, but since it is the 100th anniversary of the Scopes "Monkey" trial, I thought we should revisit them! Tennessee was the first state in the United States to crack down hard on the teaching of evolution in public schools. Others had dabbled, but Tennessee went all the way. The ACLU wanted to challenge the validity of the case in the courts. In order to do that they needed an educator to teach it, get busted, and be

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52:00

Republicans and Evangelicals I The Late Great Planet...

Truce - History of the Christian Church ·

2025/07/15

Give to help Chris make the Truce Podcast Hal Lindsey published The Late Great Planet Earth in 1970. It was a HUGE hit, selling over 35 million copies by 1999. It was also produced into a film narrated by Orson Welles. That film was shown in movie theaters and church basements and made a splash. The movie is a repackaging of premillennial dispensationalism, which I covered last season. It presents a particular vision of end-times theology, which wrongly predicted that the world would end around

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56:21

The Camino del Norte part 2

Truce - History of the Christian Church ·

2025/07/01

Support the work of the Truce podcast at www.trucepodcast.com/donateIn the last episode, Chris and his brother Nick started their journey along the Camino del Norte, part of the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain. Now, join Chris as he looks at some of the forces on pilgrims hiking the trail. From the Twelve Tribes religious group and their Yellow Deli restaurants to a spiritual guru in Guemes, people are trying to leverage hikers. Despite this being a Catholic pilgrimage, most of the people

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52:16

The Camino del Norte part 1

Truce - History of the Christian Church ·

2025/06/17

Give a little help Chris make TruceOn this bonus episode, Chris takes you along with him as he hiked 250 miles on an old Catholic pilgrimage route called the Camino de Santiago. The Camino has a complex history and is actually comprised of more than one trail. The Norte, the oldest (if you take the Primativo), is along the northern coast, the Frances runs east-west through the middle, and the Portuguese routes are north-south from Lisbon to Santiago. You can walk from Turkey following a

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31:42

Republicans and Evangelicals I Boardroom Jacobins

Truce - History of the Christian Church ·

2025/06/03

Give to help Chris make Truce. A little goes a long way!In November of 1965, a young lawyer published a book called Unsafe at Any Speed about the dangers of driving a Chevy Corvair. The car could become unstable and possibly flip if driven in poor conditions or without proper training. The lawyer? Ralph Nader. It took a while for the book to find its audience, but soon it was on bookshelves across the US and made a celebrity our of Nader. Soon he and his "Nader's Raiders" were on a spree,

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32:30

Republicans and Evangelicals I The Failure of...

Truce - History of the Christian Church ·

2025/05/20

Give to help Chris make TruceGerald Ford's administration was in trouble. The country was experiencing stagflation, where prices were going up but employment was going down. What could he do? He announced his desire to lower taxes. This proposal was met with opposition by... Ronald Reagan. Reagan was worried that these cuts would increase the national debt. Then, just a few years later, Reagan changed his mind. Two major things happened. One was the invention of supply-side economics (also called

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45:03

Republicans and Evangelicals I The New Right

Truce - History of the Christian Church ·

2025/05/06

Give to help Chris continue making TruceA small group of men calling themselves The New Right had a major role to play in bonding some evangelicals to the Republican Party. Yet many Christians don't know who these guys were or how they used money and influence to accomplish their goal. Let's meet the fellas. One was named Paul Weyrich. Weyrich's contribution to the movement is that he knew how to organize people, a skill he learned from watching liberal protests. He was a former radio newsman from

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53:41

Bonus: Compelled: A New Song

Truce - History of the Christian Church ·

2025/04/22

Give to help make Truce more sustainableThe Compelled podcast is hosted by my friend Paul Hastings. It's a testimony show that walks listeners through people's lives so that we can hear how God continues to set people free through faith in Jesus. This episode is part of an ad-swap that Chris did with Paul to get the word out about Truce, but it also serves as a reminder to us that God is still working in the lives of His people. You can learn more about the Compelled podcast at

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28:28

Republicans and Evangelicals I Milton Friedman and...

Truce - History of the Christian Church ·

2025/04/08

Give to help Chris continue to make TruceMilton Friedman is one of the most important economists of the last hundred years. His ideas were quoted by many evangelical writers in the 1970s and 80s, despite his not being a Christian and few of his ideas being in the Bible. Figures like Jerry Falwell loved the guy. Ronald Reagan adopted many of his ideas, though they disagreed on things like the increasing national debt. Friedman played a major role in the popularization of the school voucher concept

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