Just three weeks in the past, New York’s junior senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, popped up as a visitor in an sudden place: Holy Post, a common Christian podcast colaunched by Phil Vischer, the VeggieTales cocreator whose animated takes on Bible tales made him an evangelical icon. Gillibrand’s look was a part of her effort to rebrand herself as a faith-driven Democratic politician.
“I love discussing my faith, in particular how it informs my work and makes me a better senator. It’s important to me and I was excited to share it with the Holy Post and its audience,” the senator tells Vanity Fair.
Gillibrand broke down her reasoning throughout the podcast interview itself. “I asked my staff, ‘Please find venues and platforms and stages I can be on to talk about faith and to talk about how faith motivates me as a public servant, as a lawmaker, and as somebody in public life,’” the senator advised podcast cohost Skye Jethani. She emphasised that, counter to claims from the proper, she doesn’t consider Democrats are out of step with Christian values and language: “‘Love your neighbor’ I see as much more aligned with the brand of who the Democratic Party is than who the party of [Donald] Trump is today.”
Gillibrand’s religion isn’t information—she has attended a bipartisan Bible examine on Capitol Hill since not less than 2017—however she seemingly has a extra vibrant spiritual life than she has beforehand let on. In her dialog with Jethani, she talked about that she typically travels to church buildings round New York State to give sermons on Sundays, including that she has needed to write a ebook about her religion however has had bother discovering a writer.
Jethani, who beforehand served as a pastor and in addition writes a web based devotional sequence referred to as With God Daily, has been cohosting the podcast with Vischer for greater than a decade. The media firm, which has 112,000 subscribers on YouTube, is a small however influential outpost in the world of conservative Christians who’ve bristled at Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party, however have felt hesitant to contemplate themselves Democrats. Before the 2024 election, Vischer, Jethani, and their cohost, Kaitlyn Schiess, a common Christian speaker and writer, all mentioned the thought of rethinking the Christian method to voting. In the months since, they’ve criticized Trump with out throwing their allegiances utterly to his Democratic opponents.
Jethani tells Vanity Fair that he thinks Holy Post’s anti-Trump repute might need attracted the consideration of Gillibrand’s staff. “We have been very, very critical of Donald Trump, and that’s partly because we come out of an evangelical community that has sold its soul in many ways to this person,” he says. “I think some people who come to our podcast go, Oh, finally here are some Christians talking about Trump in a significant and critical way. They make assumptions, therefore, that we are completely on board with everything that the Democrats say and do and stand for, and we’re not. We have critiques there as well.”
Jethani says he hopes that politicians will probably be circumspect about the classes realized from 2024 and the impression of Joe Rogan’s platform. “The Joe Rogan lesson is not ‘do more podcasts.’ The Joe Rogan lesson is that people want long-form conversations with their political leaders and candidates that are not just a series of talking points. That’s easier to do on a podcast than a televised interview or a radio interview because of the format,” he says. “I agree with Senator Gillibrand that [Democrats] do have a messaging problem and getting on more podcasts would help, but then they also have to let their guard down in those settings, which I understand is risky and dangerous for a political leader.”
The stakes had been excessive when Jethani requested Gillibrand about abortion, a problem on which the hosts of Holy Post have discovered themselves at odds with Democrats. “I know Senator Gillibrand’s position and I had no interest in challenging her on that,” he advised VF. “I know the plank of the Democratic Party, and I know that it’s a fool’s errand to say, ‘We’re just going to sweep that away and change it.’ My concern is: Is this party open to people who don’t share their perspective entirely being a part of the party?”
