Berkeley Talks

In Berkeley Talks episode 211, Bradley Onishi, a scholar of religion, an ex-evangelical minister and the co-host of the politics podcast Straight White American Jesus, discusses Project 2025, Christian nationalism and the November elections.“Project 2025 is a deeply reactionary Catholic vision for the country,” said Onishi, who gave the 2024 Berkeley Lecture on Religious Tolerance on Oct. 1. “It's a Christian nationalism fueled by Catholic leaders, and in many cases, reactionary Catholic thought.”Many see Trump’s vice presidential running mate J.D. Vance, a first-term senator from Ohio, as bolstering Trump’s outsider image, said Onishi. But it has gone mostly unnoticed that Vance is a radical religious politician, even more so than former Vice President Mike Pence.  “Vance's Catholicism has barely registered as a driving factor in his political profile, and yet it serves as an interpretive key for understanding why Vance was chosen and how he brings a populist radicalism to a potential second Trump