"Rebels for Christ"

Mr. Kristof: When you go out and you come across some brutal injustice, soldiers who've massacred people, then the immediate tendency is not only to feel sympathy for those who've been butchered, but also to believe their stories. And, you know, in fact, it turns out that victims lie just as perpetrators lie. And they are so outraged by what has been done to them that they often exaggerate, and you have to be just as meticulous and insistent upon verification when you're talking to those victims as you would be skeptical when talking to the perpetrators.

Ms. Tippett: Something that really struck me in the documentary and this is also things you wrote about. You met a warlord, a Congolese warlord. There is so much paradox there. I mean, for starters, right, this line between who's the victim and who's the perpetrator is thin, right? Because, I mean, he started out as a victim.

Mr. Kristof: Yeah, and perpetrators usually claim that they are victims and that is why they have to massacre the other side.

Ms. Tippett: Yeah. Then there was the religious fervor, that Christian fervor, which seemed — I mean, in this case because it was filmed, I got to watch it too.

Mr. Kristof: Well, you know, I couldn't believe it when this warlord who, you know, was well-known for being involved in mass killings and mass rapes and just brutal predations of people there, he came out with a button on his chest that said, "Rebels for Christ." You know, where did that come from?

Ms. Tippett: In fact, the warlord's officers and soldiers prayed over refreshments they offered Nicholas Kristof and two student journalists he brought along on that trip to Congo.

(Sound bite of "Reporter")

Ms. Tippett: I have to tell you that I was watching this and my 12-year-old son walked in and he hadn't seen anything else. He said, "You know, those guys don't seem so bad." And you know what he was seeing too. I mean, there was a real charisma about the warlord maybe not so much, but the people around him.

Mr. Kristof: Yeah. I mean, frankly, that is often true. You know, if you go and — I often do try to go out and sort of seek out the perpetrators partly because, frankly, I want to understand what it is that drives some people to go and butcher children. You know, what makes those people tick?

Ms. Tippett: I mean, what have you learned about that?

Mr. Kristof: I've learned that people have an amazing capacity for self-delusion, to feel themselves threatened and then this is the only way to address the risks to those they care about, and that, in general, even the most savage butchers will treat their own little community, their own clan, their own friends and, fortunately for me, their invited guests, with, you know, considerable courtesy and warmth and friendship. [1]

Later on they talk about Evangelicals.

Ms. Tippett: You wrote, I think this was in 2008, you wrote about Evangelicals as the new internationalists. You wrote this: "Liberals believe deeply in tolerance and over the last century have led the battles against prejudices of all kinds, but we have a blind spot about Christian Evangelicals. They constitute one of the few minorities that, on the American coasts or university campuses, it remains fashionable to mock." What was the response you got to that column?

Mr. Kristof: It was absolute outrage from the coasts.

Ms. Tippett: Yes, and the university campuses?

Mr. Kristof: And the university campuses. And people who were, you know, incredibly indignant and saying that, you know, these are people who are spreading bigotry and hatred, and the proper thing to do is precisely to stand up to that kind of hatred and bigotry. I'd say, from the Evangelical community, there was sort of a stunned, but somewhat welcome — you know, people were pleased, but sort of surprised. I'm not sure if it's that column or a different column, but writing about Evangelicals' work in Africa, the headline was "Hug an Evangelical." And a little bit later, one of the Evangelical organizations that I never agree — maybe it was Focus on the Family, of course, which I disagree with 100 percent. They had a headline saying "Hug a Liberal."

Ms. Tippett: Oh, that's good.

Mr. Kristof: Yes. It was the beginning of our …

Ms. Tippett: You created empathy.

Mr. Kristof: Yes, exactly.

Ms. Tippett: You know, in some place, you suggest that bleeding-heart liberals need to reach out to bleeding-heart conservatives. I was going to ask you if bleeding-heart conservatives reach out to you. That sounds like maybe an example of that.

Mr. Kristof: No, they actually have. That really is something I believe in deeply, that, you know, if you look at sex trafficking, for example. This is one of the true outrages on the scene today, that there are probably more girls who are trafficked against their will today than people who were enslaved at the height of the slave trade. And they are more disposable because they're worth less money; their sales price is lower today than it was in 1860, after adjusting for inflation. So there's this huge issue here, and liberal feminists, secular feminists, are doing great work on it. Right-wing Christian Evangelicals are doing great work on it, but because there is this incredible gulf of mistrust between them, they tend not to cooperate. You don't even tend to have a similar vocabulary with which to address the issue. The right tends to talk about prostitutes; the left tends to talk about sex workers.

Ms. Tippett: Oh, that's interesting.

Mr. Kristof: And each side is just very suspicious of the other. But we're not going to make progress on this and, you know, we're not going to get those pimps in jail where they belong unless left and right and secular and religious are more willing to hold their nose and work together. [1]