From online echo chambers to real-world radicalization, the rise of political extremism among everyday citizens demands attention and action. But where do we begin to unravel the complex web of factors fueling this phenomenon? How can we, as members of the Christian community, confront and mitigate these threats?

Elizabeth Neumann, a national security expert who served under both the George W. Bush and Donald Trump administrations, met with Curtis to share her perspective on this pressing issue. In this episode of the Good Faith podcast, Neumann shares her insights on the roots of growing extremism in the United States, how it has shifted over the last two decades, and importantly, what the evangelical community can do to ignite meaningful dialogue and effect positive change.

This excerpt has been edited for length and clarity.

Elizabeth Neumann: The more I dug into it, what social science tells us about people that can resist extremism, it actually looks a whole lot like what, if you’re studying scriptures and what Paul says to do, how we endure suffering or how we walk through trials or how we encourage one another and how we need to be in community.

It’s really hard to overstate the devastating effects of what foreign, what we call ‘malign foreign influence,’ has done on our state of mind as a country.

There is a segment of Christian nationalists, it’s thankfully very small, that are building justifications for violence, and so it does put them into that extremist space even if they’re not necessarily doing the actions, they’re building an ideological justification. 

It might get really dark here, folks, really dark – and we’ve got to be okay with that. We’ve got to be okay with the fact that it might not be as great as our childhood was, that America might be in for really rough times. // We have to limit together and then find like-minded people who will keep pointing us back to Christ to help us take that next step through our trial or suffering.