Money, Lies, and God
- Author Katherine Stewart
- Narrator Patricia Rodriguez
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
- Publish Date 18 February 2025
- Run Time 11 hours and 37 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Political science and theory.
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What to expect
Bloomsbury presents Money, Lies, and God by Katherine Stewart, read by Patricia Rodriguez.
"An indispensable citizen’s guide to the anti-democratic MAGA Right in America."–Congressman Jamie Raskin
"Meticulously researched, elegantly written, and hard-hitting."–Kristin Kobes Du Mez
The acclaimed author of The Power Worshippers exposes the inner workings of the “engine of unreason” roiling American culture and politics.
Why have so many Americans turned against democracy? In this deeply reported book, Katherine Stewart takes us to conferences of conspiracy-mongers, backroom strategy gatherings, and services at extremist churches, and profiles the people who want to tear it all down. She introduces us to reactionary Catholic activists, atheist billionaires, pseudo-Platonist intellectuals, self-appointed apostles of Jesus, disciples of Ayn Rand, women-hating opponents of “the gynocracy,” pronatalists preoccupied with the dearth of white babies, Covid truthers, militia members masquerading as “concerned moms” and battalions of spirit warriors who appear to be inventing a new style of religion even as they set about attacking democracy at its foundations.
Along the way, she provides a compelling analysis of the authoritarian reaction in the United States. She demonstrates that the movement relies on several distinct constituencies, with very different and often conflicting agendas. Stewart’s reporting and comprehensive political analysis helps reframe the conversation about the moral collapse of conservatism in America and points the way forward toward a democratic future.
"An indispensable citizen’s guide to the anti-democratic MAGA Right in America."–Congressman Jamie Raskin
"Meticulously researched, elegantly written, and hard-hitting."–Kristin Kobes Du Mez
The acclaimed author of The Power Worshippers exposes the inner workings of the “engine of unreason” roiling American culture and politics.
Why have so many Americans turned against democracy? In this deeply reported book, Katherine Stewart takes us to conferences of conspiracy-mongers, backroom strategy gatherings, and services at extremist churches, and profiles the people who want to tear it all down. She introduces us to reactionary Catholic activists, atheist billionaires, pseudo-Platonist intellectuals, self-appointed apostles of Jesus, disciples of Ayn Rand, women-hating opponents of “the gynocracy,” pronatalists preoccupied with the dearth of white babies, Covid truthers, militia members masquerading as “concerned moms” and battalions of spirit warriors who appear to be inventing a new style of religion even as they set about attacking democracy at its foundations.
Along the way, she provides a compelling analysis of the authoritarian reaction in the United States. She demonstrates that the movement relies on several distinct constituencies, with very different and often conflicting agendas. Stewart’s reporting and comprehensive political analysis helps reframe the conversation about the moral collapse of conservatism in America and points the way forward toward a democratic future.
Critics Review
An eerily prescient guide to the phantasmagoria of our political moment . . . Money, Lies, and God covers a lot of terrain, but it’s Stewart’s exploration of right-wing ideas that makes her book stand out . . . Books like hers function not as weapons but as maps, navigating a way around the edges of the abyss.
Money, Lies, and God paints not only a devastating picture of the state of American democracy but one that also contributes texture and context to understanding the current American political moment. American democracy isn’t simply dying. It is, as Stewart observes, being murdered.
Organized, clear, and compelling . . . journalism of the highest order . . . This is an important book and it couldn’t appear at a more opportune time.
Among the dozens of books that have attempted to identify the forces that Trump rode to power, this is one of the most closely reported and cogent.
Stewart displays her skills as a veteran investigative journalist as she exposes the root causes and key players of this antidemocratic movement . . . for many it will be a wake-up call; a call to recognize and respond to a movement that threatens to both undermine democracy and distort American Christianity.
Stewart is a talented writer, weaving together narratives and research to help us understand how our politics and public expressions of faith became what we see today . . . After reading through the first 12 chapters, you’ll be ready to join Stewart as she lays out some next steps in her conclusion. Because that’s the work we need to do now. And this is a book we need now.
[Stewart]’s eyewitness account is riveting and will terrify anyone who believes in democratic governance . . . a compelling read.
Stewart insightfully identifies the anxieties that lead everyday Americans to embrace what is clearly an antidemocratic and authoritarian political movement. . . Money, Lies, and God was written before the 2024 election. It may seem even more relevant now than it did when it was written, given the Trump administration’s crafting of policies that fit the Christian nationalist agenda, including attacks on transgender people, the deportation of immigrants who were in the United States legally, and the gutting of the Department of Education, which has long been a target of people seeking to move tax dollars to private schools. This book will unsettle many readers, which is a testament to the care and power with which it is written.
[Stewart] crafts a gripping account and insider perspective on the complex, highly organized, well-funded anti-democratic movement growing in America. I can understand why people do not want to look too deeply. This is not a book for those looking to assuage their fears. It is, instead, a book that rings an alarm bell and calls us to bold awareness.
Drawing on 15 years of reporting . . . Stewart’s fine-grained and eye-opening investigation meticulously outlines the loose organizational structure that keeps these strange bedfellows banded together—with a focus on the lines of connections between the movement’s funders, intellectuals, and foot-soldiers. This offers urgently needed background on the 2024 election results.
An in-depth look at the chief strands that make up the American far right . . . An impassioned takedown of a ‘militant minority.'
Here is the life-and-death story most news outlets have missed. Under the evermore intense pressure of multi-billionaire donors determined to shackle democracy and entrepreneurial Christian nationalist leaders eager to take away our freedoms, the Right has radicalized since 2020 into outright fascism, full of menace and exhortations to violence against a majority they have worked diligently to dehumanize. Katherine Stewart provides a bracing must-read story of how the varied streams have merged into a mighty river moving toward massive destruction—and explains to readers how together we can divert it.
Katherine Stewart has written what may be the most important political book of the day, exposing the networks of dark money funded, ultra right-wing subversives who have already done enormous damage to our Constitution and the rule of law and are now perilously close to overthrowing the American government as we know it. With persuasive precision and undeniable documentation, Stewart names and connects the dots, refusing to normalize the frighteningly abnormal, confronting powerful forces that too few reporters comprehend, let alone describe.
A stunning, sweeping account of the coordinated movement to destroy the American experiment through dark money, political organizing, ideological distortion, thuggery, and authoritarianism, Money, Lies, and God is required reading for every person who wields a vote. Not since Dorothy Thompson has a writer documented fascist organizing so persuasively and cogently; this book places Katherine Stewart among the most significant journalists of her generation.
Katherine Stewart has written a book that pierces through the fog and noise to reveal the dangerous forces gathering, planning and plotting against liberty. She echoes the warnings of Dorothy Thompson about fascism: 'There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth, and the persistent refusal to analyze the causes of the happenings.' Stewart hits the mark.
Writing here as part investigative journalist, part sociologist and part political philosopher, Katherine Stewart provides an indispensable citizen’s guide to the anti-democratic MAGA Right in America. In Money, Lies and God, the whole gang is here in their dubious political glory – anti-Vaxx Internet provocateurs, pro-Putin anti-abortion zealots, authoritarian Harvard Law professors, anti-gay fanatics, billionaire funders like Tom Monaghan and the Koch brothers, crazed neo-fascist thinkers, exurban megachurch power players, Opus Dei, right-wing political bosses, Michael Flynn, John Eastman, Roger Stone and the well-paid apparatus of political and juridical reaction and corruption. This is a vibrant ideological ecosystem but Stewart explains why the vast majority of Americans must reject its dark vision and defeat its politicians.
Meticulously researched, elegantly written, and hard-hitting, Money Lies and God provides a riveting account of the forces that have brought our nation to the brink. If this book comes too late to save our democracy, it will offer the definitive postmortem.
From the halls of Congress and state legislative buildings to the city council chambers and school boards of your town, America’s democracy is under threat as never before. How did we get here? In this powerful piece of investigative journalism, Katherine Stewart uses good, old-fashioned digging to provide the answer. Stewart follows the money, exposes the major players, identifies the foot soldiers and explains the radical philosophy underlying an alarming scheme by Christian Nationalists and other extremists to replace our democracy with a theocracy. Stewart has laid bare the plot. The next step is up to us.
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