Deconstructing Christian Nationalism: Finding the Truth with Monte Mader

Summary

Cate & Ty Break It Down

Episode: Deconstructing Christian Nationalism: Finding the Truth with Monte Mader
Date: November 12, 2025
Host: PodcastOne
Guests: Monte Mader (Social Commentator & Deconstruction Advocate)

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Episode Overview

In this candid, sharply insightful episode, Tyler and Catelynn Baltierra sit down with Monte Mader to unpack the roots, evolution, and present-day influence of Christian nationalism in America. Monte, whose social media presence exploded thanks to her nuanced takes on deconstruction and fundamentalism, shares her harrowing yet illuminating personal story: from being raised in a far-right Christian nationalist household to her academic/theological awakening and eventual activism. The conversation traverses childhood trauma, the contradictions of the “trad wife” trend, the intersection of patriarchy and religious dogma, and the organized push of Christian nationalism within American culture and politics.

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Meet the Guest: Monte Mader

[02:18–03:28]

• Monte introduces herself as a former fundamentalist Christian, raised in an ultra-conservative, politically-embedded family.
• Her unique expertise stems from her upbringing: “My platform really blew up talking a lot about Christian nationalism and deconstruction. I was raised very far alt-right, Christian nationalist. My entire family was Republican politicians...I grew up in this hybrid of religion meets politics.”
• Core mantra: curiosity and asking questions—building your own understanding, not following dogma.

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Monte’s Childhood: Religion, Abuse, and Indoctrination

[03:28–10:06]

• Abusive Home Life: Monte’s mother left when she was 6. Her father, a Christian nationalist, enforced a rigid, punitive regime:

  • “He would make us memorize front and back pages of printer paper of verses about adultery … I was able to read books at four, and so even then, after church, my dad would have me write essays and little paragraphs talking about scripture...” ([04:17])
  • Severe physical and psychological abuse from both father and stepmother; periods imprisoned in a basement.

• Fundamentalism Defined:

  • “It’s a sect of Christianity based on Christian nationalism in America ... strict patriarchal family norms ... The Bible is 100% literal … also built on what's called the umbrella of authority … the father has absolute authority over the entire family. To question the father, the head of the household, or to question the pastor is to question God directly.” ([10:06])

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The "Trad Wife" Phenomenon & Gender Roles

[11:13–16:53]

• Rise of "Trad Wife" Culture:

  • Monte explains the online “trad wife” movement as a distortion of history and a fundamentalist pipeline:
    • “The idea of the trad wife…wasn’t established until the 1920s. Before, women worked outside the home in their family’s businesses, or helped their husbands, or did outdoor labor…” ([11:58])
    • “It’s become a conservative, like, Christian fundamentalist pipeline because they’re like, oh, this is God’s will for your life…your highest calling.” ([12:46])

• Consequences for Women:

  • Highlight: “The number one predictor of elder poverty in women is to be a stay-at-home wife.” ([13:31])
  • On women’s lack of resources and vulnerability in abusive settings:
    • “A lot of times, especially in domestic violence situations, women stay so long because where are they going to go? How are they going to feed their kids?” ([15:55])
  • Monte underscores the hypocrisy of “trad wife” influencer culture, where creators profit while selling an ideology that limits actual women’s independence.

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Patriarchy Hurts Men, Too

[17:10–18:10]

• Monte: “Men who want positions of power tend to benefit from these systems. But it hurts men, too...It tells men you’re a lust-driven out-of-control animal. Your only purpose…is a paycheck. The only emotion you’re allowed to feel is rage, which is so wrong.”
• Discussion on male loneliness and harmful gender scripts.
• Cate: “I’ve noticed that…it’s weird how men are indoctrinated in this masculine belief system that really actually is saying everything that they don’t like about women.”

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Christian Nationalism: History & Political Power

[19:26–25:10]

• Origins and Evolution:

  • Monte unpacks how American Christian nationalism is rooted in efforts to control power, not to foster faith.
  • “The anger of young men is very easy to capitalize on...and they can scapegoat other people. As long as they direct your anger at someone else, you won’t notice while they’re picking your pockets. It’s very intentional.” ([19:33])
  • She traces the movement from Victorian Christianity to fundamentalism & evangelical rebranding, through dominion theology and the Seven Mountains mandate.

• Key Quote:

  • “Since the 1930s, they have been building networks and pushing back against…progress…with the intention of trying to control the nation.” ([21:27])

• Racial and Social Justice:

  • “All of the major evangelical movements, Jerry Falwell, all of those people were really pushing for segregation … when Brown vs. Board of Education was passed, huge pushback from White Christian evangelicals. They felt it was their ordained right to discriminate.” ([22:17])
  • On abortion: “They didn’t care at all about abortion...until they needed something to rally people around to get the vote out.” ([23:28])

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The Selectivity and Hypocrisy of "Pro-Life"

[26:02–27:42]

• Monte: “It’s a smokescreen more than anything. …You’re telling me you care so much about life, but if that kid’s gay or brown or poor, you have no interest in caring for them. …If you really cared about the birth rate going up, then you’d focus on affordable housing…make sure everyone could get an affordable education.”
• Viral Moment: Discussion of a TikTok where a woman, pretending her baby was hungry, called dozens of churches for help:
  • “Only three churches out of 35 right now have said yes…the mosque said yes before she even finished the question.” ([27:53])

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Fundamentalism = Power, Not Faith

[30:03–31:08]

• Monte’s punchy summary:
  • “Fundamentalism is really just a political movement for power…dressed in Bible drag…They’re interested in the branding, the power. If they can put the veneer of religion on it, then they can say ‘God’s on my side, not yours’.”
  • “There’s a reason they’re always about the Ten Commandments and never the Beatitudes. There's a reason they're calling Jesus woke now.” ([30:18])

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Fundamentalists vs. Christ Followers

[31:41–33:37]

• Monte distinguishes Christian nationalists from “actual Christ followers,” noting how real followers are quieted or overshadowed by fundamentalist hate.
• On indoctrination:
  • “If you question the system…you lose your family, your community, your church…This is all driven at its core by a desire for belonging.”
  • “There’s also the fear of hell that’s obviously used. If you don’t align with these values, you’re going to throw your eternity away.”

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Monte’s Journey of Deconstruction

[33:37–43:22]

• Defining Moment:

  • Visiting Israel and witnessing genuine faith in other traditions led Monte to rethink her foundations:
    • “I’m watching them worship...shouldn’t faith make us better?” ([35:01])
  • Deconstructing the “math” of theology vs. scholarship; the realization that much of church doctrine is about power, money, and violence.

• Personal Crisis:

  • “My then fiancé’s half-sister turned up pregnant. She was 12…She had been being molested by her mother’s boyfriend since she was 9…At that time, I was a no exceptions pro-lifer. Even in cases of rape and incest. That’s what I believed at the time.” ([36:36])
  • Monte’s worldview collapses—she starts independent research, discovers the actual abortion statistics, and confronts the avalanche of misinformation from her upbringing.

• Quote:

  • “With most people, when one issue falls, the house of cards just collapses...and you realize, wow, this is a lie. This has nothing to do with the teaching of Christ.” ([41:11])

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Betrayal & Identity Crisis

[42:50–44:03]

• Cate: “Did it ever feel…heavy and really overwhelming? Betrayal—that you’re betrayed by everybody?”
• Monte: “I was enraged all the time…there was a period of time I stopped reading the Bible, was not interested, didn’t go to church…I really wrestled with, ‘am I an atheist now?’”

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Abuse in Fundamentalist Upbringing & Christian Counseling

[45:40–51:47]

• Cate and Ty relate their own experiences with religious dogma and pushback.
• Monte exposes the origins of Christian marriage counseling as rooted in white supremacist eugenics and the policing of women’s bodies/decisions.
  • “James Dobson mentored under [Paul] Popenoe, who was a white supremacist atheist eugenicist…The only people that would buy in [to his radical ‘counseling’] were conservative fundamentalist preachers.”

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Christian Nationalism as a Political Strategy

[52:04–55:09]

• Ty: “Do you think this was their plan all along? Religion is getting very much sucked into a lot of our laws…”
• Monte: “It’s been their plan for a very long time. Because, again, it’s not about the faith, it’s about power…subjugation…Christian nationalism is very closely tied to white supremacy. They are highly intelligent and highly organized, and have absolutely no restraint.”

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Cult Tactics and the Momentum of Change

[55:09–58:46]

• On cult behavior:
  • “Ladies, your job is to have as many kids as possible so we can outbreed them.” ([55:09])
  • “When you’re not allowed to question leadership, when there’s control over information…that’s literally the definition of a cult.”
• Monte and Cate discuss hope: this backlash may be an "extinction burst," a desperate last stand by a dying movement.
  • Monte: “I understand that it feels so heavy…But I think it’s an extinction burst.”
  • Cate: “When you back an animal into a wall, they get wilder...attack more aggressively.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Deconstruction:
  “When one issue falls, the house of cards just collapses.” – Monte ([41:11])
• On Trad Wife Movement:
  “There’s a reason that you don’t see a lot of trad wife creators in their 40s.” – Monte ([12:58])
• On Christian Nationalism:
  “Fundamentalism is really just a political movement for power…dressed in Bible drag.” – Monte ([30:03])
• On Cult-Like Behavior:
  “When you’re not allowed to question leadership, when there’s control over information ... that's literally the definition of a cult.” – Monte ([56:47])
• Viral Example:
  “Only three churches out of 35 right now have said yes…the mosque said yes before she even finished the question.” ([27:53])
• On Power and Organization:
  “Don’t make the mistake of thinking they’re stupid. They are highly intelligent and highly organized, and have absolutely no restraint.” ([54:33])

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Closing Thoughts

The episode ends with Cate, Ty, and Monte reflecting on the hard truths uncovered and the need for continued dialogue and questioning. Monte encourages listeners to “stay curious, ask questions, and don’t outsource your beliefs.”

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For more from Monte, check out her podcast: Flipping Tables, where she tackles the intersection of faith, power, and politics.

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Next Week: Cate and Ty promise a Part 2, going deeper into the conversation with Monte on these crucial topics.

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Transcript

[Monty]

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[Ty]

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[Monty]

So what are you waiting for?

[Ty]

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[Monty]

Now on iPhone.

[Ty]

Search for your favorites on the App Store and let the games begin. Hi, guys. Welcome back to another episode of Kate and Ty. Break it down. Today we are in Detroit, Michigan. Good old Detroit. Having our first snow, too.

[Kate]

First snow, yes. I'm not really excited about the snow, but hey, I'm really excited. Monty's here. Monty made her. We're so grateful and thankful for you to make the big old trip from Tennessee up to Detroit to talk with little of us.

[Monty]

So thank you. I'm so excited and I love Detroit, so this has been great for me. I love. I love throwing the bag in. In the plane and getting up somewhere. So thanks for bringing me.

[Ty]

Yeah, yeah, we thought it would be really cool too. It's just like, you know, we were going to, like, New York before and doing this and we were like, why don't we bring people to Detroit?

[Monty]

Like, it's definitely just telling her.

[Kate]

I was like, you know, it gets a bad rap Detroit, but it's like, you know what?

[Ty]

Downtown is so fun. There's great food, there's great people.

[Monty]

And I was telling, I was telling Ty that, like, I like a little bit of edge in a city. Yeah, I like a little edge that works for me, you know, living in New York as long as I did. And I love New York City, so that suits me just fine.

[Kate]

But how long did you live in New York for?

[Monty]

I was there for eight years.

[Kate]

Okay, you were there for eight years from what ages or what age?

[Monty]

So from that would have been 23 to almost 30.

[Kate]

Oh, wow.

[Monty]

Yeah. So seven years.

[Kate]

And. But you said before you lived in London too. You said I lived in London for.

[Monty]

Part of that time while I was in New York. So I went over to London for a little bit, came back, but I was still had home base in New York.

[Kate]

Okay, where were you born and raised?

[Monty]

Wyoming.

[Kate]

Wyoming. Okay, so talk to us a little bit about. Because I want people who don't know who you are or anything like what kind of get us caught up with. With who you are, what you're known for, all that.

[Monty]

All my. My social media. Yeah, so I am. I work full time in social media now. I recently just closed my. Because I don't have time to do all of it, but my platform really blew up. Talking a lot about Christian nationalism and deconstruction. I was raised very far alt right, Christian nationalist. My entire family was Republican politicians. So I kind of grew up in this hybrid of religion meets politics. You know, Dick Cheney just passed away. I met Dick Cheney when I was 7 because he was friends with my dad situation. So my dad forced independent study on me of theology, American history and World War II history my whole life. So I just became known really on these platforms, talking about these areas that I know this much about because of the way I grew up and really addressing especially deconstruction, what's going on politically in American history that's informing what's happening now. And that's how I ended up with a platform. It's been really fast and amazing and my community is great, but like my core tenant is curiosity. Like, ask questions, learn the information and then make up your own mind. Is. Is really kind of the mantra for me. But that's how I got my start and that's why I'm here.

[Kate]

So when you say your dad, so your dad raised like, what, what. What did that look like for you? Would he just give you a test or something? Would he quiz you? Like, yeah.

[Ty]

What was it like as a child in your home?

[Monty]

Like hair? How much, how much detail do you want? How much you're comfortable with? So I. I'll just give a little. I think this is informative. So I grew up, I'm number five of six kids originally. And my mom left when I was very young. She left when I was six. And my parents went through a really nasty divorce. My dad was a very, very staunch, like, Christian nationalist, very legalistic around Christianity, as was interpreted by him. But especially after the divorce, he really demonized my birth mother. So for instance, he would make us memorize front and back pages of printer paper of verses about adultery.

[Kate]

Oh, wow. What age is this?

[Monty]

I was six when she left.

[Kate]

Wow.

[Monty]

So young. And I was able to read books at four. And so even then after church, my dad would have me write essays and little paragraphs, talking about scripture, talking about biblical heroes. We had these books that he would make us select a topic and you had to kind of write a solo book report that we would do when we were growing up. So there was a lot of independent study. Anytime the church doors were open, we were there. We did entire courses on Christian apologetics and studying answers in Genesis. It was very intentional and very. He challenged my reading level a lot as well. I was a really good reader. So I was reading upper level books that were informative about history, classic literature when I was really, really young. But a lot of it revolved early on around scripture memorization to where we would have to memorize, my younger brother and I, a front and back page of verses every week to two weeks. And you'd get your ass beat if you didn't memorize them well enough. And so it was a very strict, very rigid kind of regimen. My older siblings eventually went and lived with my birth mother. And so my younger brother and I are the only two that were raised our whole lives together. And our home life was also really, really abusive. So there was all this. My dad was very physically violent. And when my stepmom entered the picture later, she was very physically and psychologically abusive to us. And so it was this interesting kind of crossroads of all of this scripture, all this church, all this reading, all this study, in contrast to what my home life was and the home life of a lot of people that grew up in the fundamentalist churches that I did because there was a lot of child abuse especially. And so I grew up in that kind of environment with this intellectual knowledge and understanding around theology and the Bible. I mean, I read the Bible cover to cover the first time when I was nine. Wow. And so all of this, but just a lot of conflict around, why isn't this translating to a better home life? Why is it that we're doing everything right on paper, but it's not translating in our home life?

[Ty]

And as a young kid, you picked that up.

[Monty]

Yes.

[Ty]

Yeah.

[Monty]

And I just. It just felt wrong. And for me, I was actually thinking about this today, that I was really overweight as a kid. I lost 90 pounds in high school. And so my dad would just viciously bully me, mock my weight. My dad and my stepmother would starve me because my weight was a defiance against God and I was sinning by gluttony. I was a child. And for a period of time, my younger brother and I, when we moved from Wyoming to South Dakota briefly, we had. We essentially lived two years in a dark basement because in the house, we weren't allowed to be upstairs. So if you were coming upstairs, it was to leave the house or to clean the house. You weren't allowed outside of meal time to be upstairs for any reason.

[Kate]

Why, why are we not upstairs?

[Monty]

My stepmom didn't want us there, so we just had to live in the basement.

[Ty]

And where was your, your birth mom during this whole time?

[Monty]

So she, she ended up coming back to Wyoming. Eventually she did marry the man that she left my dad with. And I don't know much about the story. I know my dad's version. She ended up coming back to Wyoming. My siblings lived with her. But I mean, I was taught to hate her. I was taught she was evil. I was taught all these things. So it really wasn't until I was 18 that I showed up on her doorstep. Just showed up one day and said, hey, I don't know if you recognize me, I'm your youngest daughter. I have questions. And I had told my dad prior to that that I was going to go talk to her. At that point, he had softened his position quite a bit. His relationship and mine had changed a lot. After I lost 90 pounds, I fell into anorexia. And it changed my relationship with my dad because it was the first time I was willing to stand up to my dad. So when I got a little bit older, I told him, I said, dad, I need to talk to her. I've gotten your side. I've got, I need to understand this a little more. But it wasn't until I was 19 that my dad found out about the abuse from my stepmother.

[Ty]

Oh, so he didn't know. But he knew you guys were locked in a basement.

[Monty]

But he, he knew that we were like downstairs all the time. He didn't know that she had flat out told us, you're not allowed to be here.

[Ty]

Oh.

[Monty]

And all the other things, like she wouldn't speak to us unless it was a job list or we were in trouble. Literally would not speak to us.

[Ty]

Wow.

[Monty]

My dad didn't. Because my dad was out working every day. Workaholism runs in the family. So my dad wasn't aware. And I got an email in College at 19 saying, I've heard this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this. Is this true? I said, oh, that's the tip of the iceberg, dad. But I, I mean, but he knew that her and I didn't get along. I moved out of my parents house when I was 15.

[Ty]

Oh, wow.

[Monty]

Because my dad was really staunch about the only reason you can get divorced, you know, biblically, is for unfaithfulness. So unless she's unfaithful, I can't divorce her. And it had Gotten to the point. So when I was 15, as a senior in high school, so I was studying for my college entrance exams the year before, and she would come into my room and she would take all of my things, throw them in the closet, and then tell me, I need you to be ready to find somewhere to stay if I have friends come over. And she would take my things out of the bathroom and throw them in my room. And it was just. I had gotten to the point at 15, I pulled my dad aside after I took my acts and I said, dad, I know you're not going to divorce her. I know that that's not what you believe. I'm not going to make you choose between your daughter and your wife. I'm out.

[Kate]

Hmm.

[Monty]

And I moved out the next day. Wow.

[Ty]

And where did you go?

[Monty]

So I moved back to Wyoming. I lived with my sister for a while because I went to boarding school in high school. So I lived with her for the remainder of that summer, and then I went to boarding school, stayed with her another summer, and then I was in college and I just never came back. Wow.

[Kate]

So what school did you go to when you're being raised in? Because I think people get confused on what fundamentalism is. Like, what. When you're raising a fundamentalist kind of family. What does that even mean?

[Monty]

So that means it's. It's a brand or a sect of Christianity where it's really, especially in the United States, it's based on Christian nationalism in America, this idea of American exceptionalism. It's very much married to, we're a Christian nation versus a nation of religious freedom. But fundamentalists are very tied to strict patriarchal, like, family norms. They very much push that The Bible is 100% literal, 100% accurate, 100% the inspired word of God, which ends up leading to a lot of abuse when we kind of copy and paste some of those systems. And so it's very much. And it's also very much built on what's called the umbrella of authority that was promoted by James Dobson and Bill Gothard, where the pastor is over the church. The father has absolute authority over the entire family. To question the father, the head of the household, or to question the pastors, to question God directly. So it's a very strict set of standards. Very strict gender roles is really what fundamentalism looks like in a practical way.

[Ty]

Okay. So it's very much like how patriarchal.

[Kate]

I mean, it's literally a hierarchy, like, very much like.

[Ty]

So you would say more or less like the old school. Type values where it's like, the man is the head of the household, you have to be submissive to the husband, the wife stays at home and does.

[Monty]

I mean, we see it online all the time now. You know, like the incel. Red pill stuff is very much fundamentally founded, you know, and a lot of them adhere to conservative Christian ideals, or they claim to, particularly for that reason.

[Kate]

Yeah, because I'm seeing like a huge, like all of a sudden, randomly, I'm like. I'm like, I never heard of the term trad wife in my life.

[Ty]

Oh, yeah, that was crazy.

[Kate]

And then all of a sudden, now I'm seeing trad wife and I'm like. And it's like, it's almost concerning because as I'm watching the videos of these. Of this trad wife stuff and what they're doing, I'm like, this sounds really weird. And then I'm noticing like so many. It's getting so popular, and I'm like, how is this old school, archaic ideology getting traction?

[Monty]

And it's not even traditional. Yeah, it's weird because you look at the 1800s, like, prior to really the. The idea of the trad wife that we think of really wasn't established until the 1920s. Like, yes, women took care of the home and the kids, but they also worked outside the home in their family's businesses, or they would help their husbands or they would do outdoor labor if they lived on property. Right. But multiple generations of family would live in one home. So you had grandma and grandpa helping with the kids, grandma's helping with home. Like, the woman was never alone in the house doing only house and kid things. That wasn't. That's not real. Because it was typically multiple generations of family. You couldn't afford to build a house for each new group of family members. You would live with family. So it was a very different structure. And it's. It's very much become a conservative, like, Christian fundamentalist pipeline.

[Ty]

Right?

[Kate]

Yeah.

[Monty]

Because they're like, oh, this is where you're meant to be. This is God's will for your life, and you need to submit. That's your highest calling. And then they never address the downsides of it. There's a reason that you don't see a lot of trad wife creators in their 40s.

[Kate]

True, very true. Yes, that's right.

[Ty]

Yeah.

[Monty]

Because by definite, they have this thing of like, complementarianism, which is like kind of separate but equal doctrine for men and women where like, yes, they're both important, they're both equal in God's eyes, the roles are different. But by definition, if you have a relationship where only one person gets to make decisions or only one person has autonomy, only one person has money, only one person has resources, that is by definition inequitable. Right? And the number one predictor of elder poverty in women is to be a stay at home wife.

[Ty]

Wow. Isn't that crazy?

[Monty]

Because she, she has no resources, right?

[Ty]

Yes.

[Monty]

And so, and when I talk about things like that, people get really upset. Like, no, no, no, no, that's great, that's awesome. If that's what you want.

[Ty]

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. The days are getting shorter. Sunlight drops at like what, 4:00'?

[Monty]

Clock?

[Ty]

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[Monty]

So many women who deeply want to be mothers and are incredible mothers. Amazing decision. It's about having the discussion of how do we make these systems equitable and how do we protect women in the long run? Because the other thing there was and there was a trad wife Creator who's very big recently getting a divorce for very good reasons. Leaving an abusive situation because of the money she makes doing trad wife content she can leave.

[Ty]

Wow.

[Kate]

Which was not a possibility.

[Monty]

All those things.

[Kate]

So the fact, her independence, her own financial income and that independence is what. Which is kind of ironic when you think about it like hypocrisy she had.

[Ty]

Yeah, like thankfully she had that though. Because I feel like a lot of women end up in those situations where they are stripped from everything and they're just a stay at home mom and then they have no way to. To get out either.

[Monty]

And that's why a lot of times, especially in domestic violence situations, women stay so long because where are they going to go? How are they going to feed their kids?

[Ty]

Right.

[Monty]

And, and it's, it's kind of the hypocrisy of, of the trad wife creators who are, who are pushing this as a you should lifestyle. I'm not talking about the women who just love doing it and sharing it. Like the women who are like, this is what you're supposed to do. How dare you. Feminism is. Feminism is the reason you have a microphone, ma'. Am.

[Ty]

Right, True.

[Monty]

Like, and meanwhile telling women to get married very young, have kids very young, give up all their resources and not think about their education while they themselves are not doing that.

[Ty]

Right.

[Monty]

While they themselves are protecting their future because it may not be abuse or infidelity. What if your husband passes away? Right? Like that's my. Like, how are you going to feed your children if for any reason your husband can't.

[Ty]

Right.

[Monty]

What happens if he becomes disabled? That's my issue with the pipeline and with Christian fundamentalism as a whole. Is it never specifically in gender roles? Is that it doesn't address those questions.

[Kate]

Right.

[Monty]

Of like, how do you keep people safe? Right. How do you protect your channel? We want to talk about being pro life is the argument they make. How are you going to feed your kids if for some reason your husband's unable to? And it's, it's just real life questions like can we start with a baseline of everyone's human?

[Kate]

Yeah.

[Monty]

Right. Like versus this is what a woman looks like or this is what a man looks like. Because ultimately. And men who want positions of power tend to benefit from these systems. But it hurts men too.

[Kate]

It does.

[Monty]

It tells men you're, you know, a lust driven out of control animal. Your only purpose, the only thing you're good for is a paycheck. And then we talk about male loneliness or the suicide epidemic. And Then we look at men and say, the only emotion you're allowed to feel is rage, which is so wrong. Which is crazy.

[Kate]

It is crazy.

[Monty]

And those standards are set up by a patriarchal system run by men that leads to. Men, when they're older, they don't know how to ask for help. They feel like if they express their emotions, it makes them less of a man.

[Ty]

Right. Or we.

[Monty]

Or if they lose their job, they commit suicide because they think that's the only thing they can offer man. Like.

[Kate]

Like their sense of value is just stuck in the provided.

[Monty]

Exactly. And that's not even. That's not even. That's the least interesting thing about you. You're a human first. You're a man second.

[Ty]

Yeah.

[Monty]

Because the way we teach masculinity doesn't teach men how to be good men or how to be fully human. It teaches them how not to be a woman.

[Kate]

Which is so weird to me. I've noticed that where it's like, oh, don't cry. Don't.

[Ty]

So it's like, literally. Yeah.

[Kate]

Which is interesting because it's like one of those things where it's like. I heard someone say that it's weird how men are pretty much, you know, indoctrinated in this masculine belief system that really actually is saying everything that they don't like about women. So it's like, the question is, do you really even like women? Because. You know what I mean? Because you're saying, well, don't cry. That's what women do. Or don't. Don't do this, don't do that. Which is. You know what I mean? Then you're supposed to, like, say that you love women at the same time. It's weird. It's. It's a really damaging thing that I've seen, like, take. It's taken on a whole new thing, I think, in the last, like, five years, which I'm not. I wasn't used to seeing it, but now I'm seeing it. I'm like, all these, like, I don't know, Andrew Tate people, these young kids, boys who are watching this stuff, and I'm like, dude. And no one's, like, stepping in. There's like, not even the dad saying, hey, son. That's. Don't, you know, don't fall into that. It's a strap. It's. It's horrible. It's like. I almost feel like it's being, like, promoted and encouraged, and it's like, we're in this, like, climate right now that is like, I'm Just seeing this, like, really concerning, like, trajectory, and it's freaky. I'm like, why.

[Monty]

Why is this happening?

[Kate]

Like, why is Christian nationalism kind of just taking hold the way it is and spreading so fast?

[Monty]

I mean, it's. And it's absolutely being promoted because the anger of young men is. Is very easy to capitalize on. They're making money, and they can make you act and join the movement if they can make you angry, and they can scapegoat other people. Now, the scapegoat may be women. The scapegoat may be feminism. It may be immigrants, it may be whoever they pick. As long as they can direct your anger at someone else, you won't notice while they're picking your pockets. It's. It's very intentional. And with Christian nationalists, this movement fundamentalism really arose in the early 20th century partly around the redefining of masculinity, because Victorian Christianity was much more about being reserved, being gentle, self control, being a gentleman, right? And when we moved, when men moved from doing traditionally very masculine jobs, right, heavy lifting, outdoor labor, into punching a clock, working for someone else, there was this conflict that arose. And I can never remember her name, but the author of Jesus and John Wayne does a really good job of explaining this, that there was this conflict around what makes a man a man. It was this new. It was a new era. What defines masculine Christian fundamentalism gets born out of this because of the hierarchical patriarchal standard. They do a rebrand into evangelicalism in World War II and post World War II because fundamentalism wasn't popular. But since the 1930s, they have been building networks and pushing back against. Against progress, essentially. It really started in opposition to the New Deal with fdr. And they're the. The family and the fellowship are the ones who run the prayer breakfast. They own the C suites for Congress. It's been a movement that has been very organized for almost 100 years with the intention of trying to control the nation. This gets pushed further along by what's called dominion theology, based on the Genesis call to fill the earth and subdue it. They take that and they translate that to be, well, Christians are supposed to dominate the earth. Well, meanwhile, Jesus said, give to Caesars. What is Caesar? You know, like, there's a clear. It's an excuse for power. And then came the Seven Mountains mandate, where they said they believe that Christians are supposed to dominate and take control all spheres of culture so that they can usher in the end times. And they use political tools and maneuvering along the way. After watergate There was the rise of the new right because they liked Nixon a lot more when they found out what he was doing. They liked the corruption. So weird. Which is crazy.

[Kate]

Yeah.

[Ty]

That doesn't sound very godlike, right? Yeah. Interesting.

[Monty]

So interesting. And really, especially in the 70s when they lost the battle of segregation because all of a lot of the major evangelical movements, Jerry Falwell, all of those people were really pushing for segregation.

[Ty]

They wanted to keep segregation.

[Kate]

Oh, yeah.

[Monty]

Oh, yes. They were very.

[Kate]

I mean, they still do.

[Monty]

I know.

[Ty]

Like, that is also not godlike. Like, what is going on?

[Monty]

That's what the school voucher program is about. It's. It's about legally reinstituting segregation academies. Because when Brown versus the Board of Education in 1954 was passed, huge pushback from Christian. White Christian evangelicals were enraged about it because they felt it was their ordained right, their religious freedom, quotation marks, to discriminate against people of color attending their schools. So what they did was they opened private Christian schools like Liberty Christian Academy was opened as a segregation academy so that rich white southern students wouldn't have to go to school with poor black kids.

[Ty]

That is horrible.

[Monty]

This really wasn't enforced by Nixon. Nixon had too many high money donors in the evangelical world. He didn't enforce the law. Jimmy Carter did, though, which is why evangelicals hate Jimmy Carter so much. Jimmy Carter came to especially Bob Jones University and said, you will stop discriminating against black students or I will take away your tax exemption. And you did. And so when they lost the battle of segregation and that started to fall out of favor, it wasn't rallying white Christians to come out and vote anymore. Paul Weyrich was like, we can use abortion. Oh.

[Kate]

And they tagged onto that.

[Monty]

They didn't care at all about abortion prior to that. In Fact, in.

[Ty]

Interesting.

[Monty]

In 68, Christianity Today released an article of the top theologians across the country debating the issue of abortion. Was it right? Was it wrong? Was that. You know. And all of them came to the clue and they had different opinions about the morality of it, but all of them came to the conclusion that it was a woman's right to choose. And when Roe vs. Wade was passed, the Southern Baptist Convention released three church edicts agreeing, saying that nothing superseded a woman's right to her own body. The Dallas Theological Seminary, which is notoriously conservative, also agreed. Affirmed the woman's right to choose. They didn't give two shits about abortion. I don't know if I'm first on the show. They didn't care at all. Until they needed something to rally people around to get the vote out. So they teamed up with Catholics who they don't like, who they don't believe are Christians, who. Because that's really been more of a Catholic issue since 1869. And they were able to sway the vote. They were able to change this rhetoric around abortion. And Francis Schaefer and his son Frank were also a big part of that. They released a film where there was a thousand plastic dolls floating in the water. And it's like, this is what's happening with abortion. When the film came out again, evangelicals didn't care. Not compelled by it at all. They were compelled when feminists began to protest the film.

[Kate]

Mm.

[Monty]

So they were able to use these political issues around abortion that they didn't care about before. In fact, they supported the passage of Roe v. Wade. They were. They've always hated feminism. Right. Because that goes against the patriarchal family hierarchy that they have established. And they were able to use anti LGBTQ rights to rally the vote. It was always about power. It was always about money.

[Kate]

And they were just looking for the next movement to kind of attach. To run with, to get their whole. I mean, that's why I feel like people don't. I think people don't really understand that it wasn't a big issue. It was. It's pretty recently that they've attached onto this abortion issue, which obviously.

[Ty]

I never knew that.

[Kate]

Yeah. Which. Which obviously comes into play when it comes to, like, you know, we're birth parents and so we really should. A baby for adoption. And so then the conversation always turns into abortion versus adoption. And it's like. And it's not that simple. And it's like. Honestly, we're to the point where it's like, it doesn't even deserve to be in the same conversation.

[Ty]

Or there shouldn't be an OR in the middle.

[Kate]

Yeah, there should be no.

[Monty]

Or.

[Kate]

It shouldn't be even. Even compared at all, because it not. I mean, there's 90% of birth mothers who relinquish our children never even thought about abortion, so you can't really connect it. But they try. They try really hard, and they rally with their. With their marches and their.

[Monty]

Well, and it's also. It's. It's. It's a smokescreen.

[Kate]

Yeah.

[Monty]

More than it's anything. Because you look at, you know, all these people screaming about being pro life, but as soon as the kid's born, they're making fun of SNAP benefits going away, which 39% of Snap users are children.

[Ty]

Yes.

[Monty]

You don't. Like, you're telling me you care so much about life, but if that kid's gay or brown or poor, you. You have no interest in caring for them. You don't want resources to go to feed that child or educate that child. You. And it's, it's such blatant hypocrisy. Because if you really cared about the birth rate going up, then you would focus on affordable housing.

[Ty]

Yeah, yeah.

[Monty]

You would make sure everyone could get an affordable education. Because now we live in a culture where most people can't survive on one income.

[Ty]

No, they can't.

[Monty]

So people have to be educated and have to be able to get a good enough job that they can feed their children. Like that should be the baseline. If being pro life is really what it's about, versus control, when it's just about control. Because how do you control the passage of wealth? You control birth. How do you control women? Well, if you can get them married and pregnant between 18 and 25, it is a lot harder for them to pursue an education. It's a lot harder for them to leave an abusive situation. It's so much easier to use subjugation that way.

[Ty]

Because poverty, that's like Ty and I, we always say all the time, like, I really don't believe that they are pro birth or, you know, pro life. If they are just pro birth.

[Monty]

Yeah, just pro birth. Because they do not care at all. Have you. I don't know if you've seen this recently. There's a girl.

[Ty]

Yes.

[Kate]

I was just gonna bring it.

[Ty]

Yeah, we should talk about it. She's amazing.

[Monty]

Oh, my God. So for those of you that haven't seen it, she's calling churches. She has a recording of a crying baby in the background. She's calling these churches, saying, my newborn is starving, hasn't eaten since last night. I'm trying to get formula. Will you help me? Only three churches I think out of 35 right now have said yes.

[Kate]

And I heard that what I just saw was a Buddhist. A Buddhist temple agreed to it, a predominantly black owned church did, and a mosque.

[Monty]

A mosque said yes before she even finished the question. Wow. It's like.

[Kate]

And then, and then I get so, I get so annoyed because I. Then I hear so many people talk about, you know, like they, they prioritize Christianity over Muslim or whatever other religion you practice. And it's like, well, here it is. She's showing you. She's blatant exposing all of this. And it's, it's crazy. I would Love to hear the response to why a mosque would say yes without even question and then 30 something churches say no.

[Monty]

Well, and it's insane.

[Ty]

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[Monty]

You know, I like fundamentalism is really just a political movement for power. That's I call dressed in Bible drag. Yeah, because there's a reason that it's always the Ten Commandments and never the Beatitudes. There's a reason that they call. They're calling Jesus woke now.

[Ty]

They are?

[Monty]

Yeah, it's woke like Jesus. Jesus is too woke. It's why they pledge allegiance to Paul far more than they do Jesus. They're not interested. They're interested in the branding, they're interesting in the power because then they, if they can put the veneer of religion on it, then they can say, well, God's on my side, not on yours. So if you oppose me, you oppose God and therefore I am at liberty to enact violence against you. Church has done it.

[Kate]

They've got to justify it. It's horrible.

[Monty]

And it's not. Has nothing to do with the teachings of Christ, who never talked about abortions. He never talked about gay people. He talked about feeding the poor, welcoming the foreigner, taking care of the stranger, visiting the sick. All of these things that fundamentalists are so adamantly opposed to. And I make the distinction between fundamentalists and who I would call like Christ followers because there are a lot of incredible Christian organizations who do so much good work.

[Ty]

I agree.

[Monty]

And there's a huge difference. And it's unfortunate that their work gets overshadowed by the hatefulness of fundamentalism that is hijacked Christianity. Really. That's why, like, my podcast is called Flipping Tables because it's based on Jesus flipping the tables in the temple and, and accosting the religious leaders who were exploiting the poor. Like, that's the point. And it's crazy. Way to miss the message, guys.

[Kate]

Way miss like you way went right over your head because.

[Ty]

Well, it's crazy because when they're all standing in hell together, what are we doing here? Like, I don't understand it.

[Kate]

Well, that's why I think people don't understand that like in, in, in your experience, like, what is the difference between like Christ followers versus, like a Christian nationalists who really. And you know, okay, I will say I think one thing that's really concerning to me is that I know that these people honestly, truly believe that they're like, they, that they're justified in what they're doing.

[Monty]

A lot of them do.

[Kate]

And that's what's concerning that you are. You literally believe that you're doing God's will by hurting and harming others. And that right there is more scary than, than any, any drag queen reading to kids. That is more concerning to me than anything because you're justified in everything. And there's nothing you can't do without, you know, using the Bible to back up what you're, you know, it's crazy.

[Monty]

And so many of them, they don't realize how they've been groomed with like, in group out, group thinking because for so many of them, they've been told since they were born. I mean, this happened to me that like, you know, and one of the big distinctions between a Christ follower and Christian nationalism is Christian nationalism is very much you're. You. Like, they're bound to the idea of American exceptionalism. It's almost the first tenet of their faith. And then the second thing is, well, you can't be a Christian unless you vote Republican is kind of this idea. But what they do is is that if you question the system or you push back or you disagree on an issue, it's, well, you can't be here. And then you lose your family, you lose your community, you lose your church. So a lot of people, even though they don't agree with certain issues, stay adhered to the movement because they know that if they disagree, they're going to lose their entire community. And everybody want. This is all driven at its core by a desire for belonging.

[Ty]

Right.

[Monty]

And they don't think that there's going to be a place for them if they leave these groups. And there's also, you know, the fear of hell that's obviously used. They feel that if they don't align with these values, they're going to throw their eternity away. Or if they question the pastor, they're questioning God. And if you're listening to this episode, you can question anyone.

[Kate]

Yeah. Like, please do, by all means, do we encourage it?

[Monty]

But they don't. They don't realize that because fundamentalism is very good at controlling what you can access. They're good at controlling your knowledge, controlling your media, controlling the rhetoric, because truth doesn't matter if you can control the narrative. Right. And for me, I remember. So one of the first social issues that collapsed for me, I started deconstructing in my 20s, and I studied theology in Israel as part of my course. I went to Liberty University. So I went to Jerry Falwell School long before I knew about the segregation academy stuff. But they require theology courses, and I had been studying theology my whole life. I was like, sure. And I had the opportunity to do those courses in Israel. Wow. And that was part of what started to change my mind, really. So I was visiting the Dome of the Rock, and I had never interacted with Muslims ever. Right. Because you're told they're so bad.

[Kate]

Right, right.

[Monty]

Sharia law and all this. And you grow up to realize that the Taliban and Christian nationalists were actually pretty close together. But I'm watching. I had never seen burkas. I had never seen hijabis. And I'm watching them come, and I'm watching. You can see some of the people, it's their first time seeing it, and they're crying and they're weeping and they're in awe. And there you see them worship. And we had visited the Wailing Wall. Same thing. You see people chanting and praying and reading and pouring their faith out. And I'm standing there at the dumb, watching this, and I'm like, shouldn't faith make us better?

[Ty]

Yeah. Right.

[Monty]

And at that time, it was after a previous Gaza incident. We weren't able to get into Bethlehem because of a bombing.

[Kate]

Oh, wow.

[Monty]

And the, you know, Israeli military's around, they've got automatic weapons, they're walking everywhere, especially in Jerusalem. You could tell, like, walking through neighborhoods. I'm like, man, one match could set this all off. You could just feel it. And I'm sitting there and I'm like, why shouldn't faith make us better?

[Ty]

Isn't that a great question?

[Monty]

If this is really about goodness.

[Kate]

Yeah.

[Monty]

And hope and healing, why is it causing so much violence? And that was where I really started to deviate from theological studies. Because theology is really the study of scripture under a pre existing religious umbrella.

[Kate]

Right, right.

[Monty]

And the difference between theology and scholarship is scholarship looks at all the material that you can access and says, okay, well, what's the truth, though? And if it. If it falls under this umbrella, cool. And if it doesn't, that's fine too. And I think that's where I really started to veer into scholarship because I'm like, this. The math is not mathing.

[Kate]

Yeah.

[Monty]

And I started really studying church history and especially John Barton's work on how we got the Bible, how the Bible was translated.

[Ty]

Yeah.

[Monty]

And the more I learned, I was like, oh.

[Kate]

Oh, shit. Oh. Oh.

[Monty]

This makes a lot more. It makes a lot more sense when it's really about power, money, and violence, how things ended up this way, why there's so much conflict, why there's so much in group out, group thinking. But also some of it was just being exposed to new information. So when I was engaged in my early 20s and my then fiance's half sister turned up pregnant. She was 12.

[Kate]

Wow.

[Monty]

And we find out that she had been being molested by her mother's boyfriend since she was 9. And I'm sitting in the room, like with the family. Obviously I'm just there as a support member. But at that time, I was a no exceptions quotation mark pro lifer. Even in cases of rape and incest. That's what I believed at the time. And I'm sitting there and I'm listening to this unfold. And I mean, the police are involved. Like this is a whole thing. And at one point, his mother called me and said, I can't get back from work in time. Can you take her to this birth class? Sure. Happy to help.

[Ty]

So they were gonna make her have the baby.

[Monty]

They were letting her choose it. Just like this was really, like, right in the very beginning, they were gonna let her Choose. So I'm like, sure, I'll take her. They were just kind of covering all the bases.

[Kate]

Yeah.

[Monty]

O. So I take her to this class. I walk in, it's all these teen girls. Only one girl's boyfriend was with her, was about her age. There was one 19 year old, the rest were 15, 16. And then obviously the youngest was. Was 12. And all of the fathers, except for the young boy who was there, were over the age of 21.

[Kate]

Ew. What the fuck?

[Monty]

And so I'm sitting in the back of the room and we were joking about this before starting that. Like I knew since I was 12 I didn't want to have kids. I'm scared of pregnancy.

[Kate]

I'm just like, no, that is just.

[Monty]

Then I went to school for pre med and then I learned more anatomy and scared me even more.

[Kate]

Yeah.

[Monty]

And I'm like, no, thank you. So I'm sitting in the back of the room in my 20s, turning green from like how uncomfortable I'm feeling. And I'm like, ma, your worldview's wrong because I'm watching this 12 year old girl. This is not her fault. I am watching all these other teen girls who were seduced by an adult man. And it really confronted me in that moment of why have I never heard the church's cry for male accountability in this.

[Kate]

Right.

[Monty]

Why is it always on women?

[Ty]

The woman?

[Monty]

Yeah, why is it? And I started to really question, like, why should someone who is a victim of something they didn't choose before? So that night. I've been an insomniac since I was 16. That night I couldn't sleep. I was up all night. I was up for full 48 hours. And I just for the first time started researching on my own. And the first stat that I found that knocked me on the floor was that 93% of abortions happen before 14 weeks. And I was like, and you're never.

[Kate]

Told that, were you?

[Monty]

I was like, I beg your finest pardon? Yeah, like I was told it's, you know, all these late term abortions. I believe until that day that after birth abortion was a real thing.

[Kate]

Wow.

[Monty]

I thought it was real because of.

[Kate]

Community that you were raising that they did. They all say this.

[Monty]

So it comes from your. Because I went to all Christian schools, you know, so like it's your teachers, it's your pastor, it's the pastor's wife, it's your parents. It doesn't occur to you as you're growing up that all the adults aren't telling you the truth.

[Ty]

Right.

[Monty]

And I think a lot of them believed it too. They didn't even realize. So I start researching and again. So I, I went to school for pre. Like, had took pre med courses because I was planning to go to either medical school or physician's assistant school. So I knew developmental stages.

[Kate]

Yeah.

[Monty]

And I was like, wait, 14 weeks? Like the brain's not even developed yet. What are you talking about? What? So I start researching more and more. And also I had been told that, well, rape never results in pregnancy. That's a lie the Democrats use to justify abortion. What?

[Kate]

Weird.

[Monty]

So I'm sitting with a 12 year old rape victim.

[Ty]

Right.

[Monty]

So I'm like, well, that's.

[Kate]

Your whole worldviews is crashing down.

[Ty]

Yeah.

[Monty]

I didn't speak to my dad for three weeks because I was so, so mad, like, at being lied to.

[Ty]

Yeah.

[Monty]

And so. And with most people, when you meet people who deconstruct from any fundamentalist religion, this could be Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, any Jehovah, any, Any fundamentalist group, they will all tell you, when one issue falls, the house of cards just collapses. So then I start asking, well, what else did you not tell me about? So I start researching like, LGBTQ rights, I start researching racial history in the United States because I had been taught that Jim Crow existed, the Civil Rights movement existed, all these things I was never taught about them. Okay.

[Ty]

Yeah.

[Monty]

So I start deep diving and, you know, I found out just the history of systemic racism and abuse. And I really studied what actually happened in slavery because we're seeing a lot of the rhetoric I was raised with kind of come up through Prager U. Especially where, well, slavery was actually really good for a lot of black people. Excuse me. But I was taught things like that. Well, it exposed them to Christianity and, well, most slave owners were really nice to their slaves.

[Ty]

Sure.

[Monty]

Well, are you joking again? You. You hear it now and it's absolutely insane.

[Ty]

But some people really believe it.

[Monty]

Really believe it.

[Kate]

You were in the thick of it. I did, yeah.

[Monty]

And I think very now, like, book smart, intellectual person.

[Ty]

Yeah.

[Monty]

And I always have been. I mean, I had a master's degree, reading level at 10.

[Kate]

Wow.

[Monty]

Like, so I was fully in, Fully conned as an intelligent person, because when that's the only information you get.

[Ty]

Right.

[Monty]

I was never taught that. And a turning point for me, especially around racial issues, I was studying the transatlantic crossing. They had never taught me about it. And I saw a photo, the diagram of the ship and how they would pack people in like sardines. And how many of Them would die. And I wanted to burn the world down.

[Kate]

Pissed.

[Monty]

I was like, how can you possibly tell me that this didn't like, that this was okay for black people when this exists? How dare you not tell me the truth? I was. It was like. And it took years. It took me a full decade to really deconstruct all of these things. But it really started with one issue, and then you realize that, wow, this is a lie. This is all a lie. And this lie has nothing to do with the teaching of Christ, which Christ himself said, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. In this is summed up all of the prophets. He laid out the baseline. And that's not the baseline you're operating from.

[Kate]

Right.

[Monty]

And.

[Ty]

And.

[Monty]

And So I had 10 years worth of unpacking how Christianity as we understand it arrived, how the Bible arrived, and all these social issues.

[Ty]

I feel like, too, like being a child, being raised in what you were and the things taught, and then you're finding out all these things that had to. Did it ever feel, like, heavy and really overwhelming betrayal? Yeah. Like you're betrayed by everybody every. You know what I mean? Like, I feel like that would be. For me personally, I feel like I would have, like, a mental, like, instability. Yeah.

[Kate]

Yeah.

[Monty]

I was. I was enraged all the time. And I. And I did have a period of time in my deconstruction where I rest. I, like, stopped reading the Bible. I was not interested. I was not going to go to church. And I really wrestled with, like, am I an atheist now now? Oh, like, interesting.

[Kate]

Okay.

[Monty]

Is all of this.

[Ty]

Right?

[Monty]

Because it is this foundational betrayal from every single person that you were raised with. And what enraged me even more was to watch all of the teachers and the people that I grew up with align themselves with Trump. Where I'm like, wait a minute, where's all this, you know, Bill Clinton can't be president because of morals, energy.

[Kate]

Where'd that go?

[Monty]

My dad made me write a letter to Bill Clinton. Are you about that? Yeah. I was like a little kid. He's like, you're going to write a letter to the president. And I did. I got a letter back from the White House. I was like, where's the energy?

[Ty]

Right.

[Monty]

Where's that?

[Ty]

Yes.

[Monty]

Really enraging.

[Ty]

Yeah.

[Kate]

Well, that's. I think that comes down to, like, that could really affect. That could have a huge identity crisis on a lot of kids.

[Ty]

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[Kate]

Which brings me to my next point about like, do you think that, like that, that kind of, you know, isolating education. I mean it. Doctrination can look like abuse to kids because they, I mean people, people get mad at me. I mean like you. But I mean like even recently, I've always kept all my spiritual stuff very private to myself. Never really.

[Monty]

That's what I believe.

[Kate]

And you know, and I, and I posted one video on Tick Tock of me of, of me praying and meditating. And it, I mean people just came at me like.

[Ty]

And the most people he got attacked by were religious Christian.

[Monty]

I was like, and they just never realized they're the Pharisees. It's so funny.

[Kate]

And then they're mad at me because I'm like, like, you know, wow, all these Christians are so upset with me or whatever. And they're like, well now you're just. Now your box was all in. Now I'm like, you guys are all mad at me. I'm like, this is not.

[Monty]

I literally posted a video with me praying.

[Ty]

Right.

[Monty]

Literally.

[Ty]

Yeah.

[Monty]

What do you want?

[Ty]

Right.

[Monty]

It's like. Well, and one of the things that my channel really blew up with was I would like take the Bible and like address issues with people directly by reading from the scripture.

[Ty]

I love it.

[Monty]

And it enraged people. I'm like, I literally just read your scripture.

[Ty]

Yeah, right.

[Monty]

I just, I read your scripture. I just read you.

[Ty]

Yeah.

[Monty]

And it's, it's absolutely. But it is it in my opinion, raising children in these systems, one we talked about earlier, like it creates abusive systems. Right. Whenever you have a system where people aren't allowed to question, where there's like really strong in group out grouping, then it just fosters abuse because it's secrecy.

[Ty]

Right.

[Monty]

And that's just the way that that is. And. But it's also abusive in the sense of like intentional grooming, which I consider to be abusive very much.

[Ty]

I agree.

[Monty]

Yeah. And you come out into the real world and this whole worldview that you've been kind of built into doesn't exist. It's not real.

[Ty]

Right.

[Monty]

And I remember, I can look back now when people would ask me before, like, when did you start deconstructing? I would up the story about my ex fiance's half sister, which was a big kind of social deconstruction for me. But I can look back now and even when I was nine, I could feel like these systems don't seem right. And I really hated how the church treated women. I picked up on that a long ways away. And I remember questioning it and pushing back. I remember I got kicked out of Sunday school.

[Kate]

So did I. What do you know?

[Monty]

When I was 9, um, and the 10 years old the teacher made a comment to me, I was wearing like a summer dress. Like a. Yeah, sleeveless, but it was sleeveless. And she made some comment to me about, you know, being careful what I wear so I don't make men stumble. Because a 9 year old making a grown man. Okay, who's the problem here? It's not the nine year old.

[Ty]

Right.

[Kate]

Just expose yourself by saying that is what I really.

[Monty]

Gross. It's so gross. So I asked her and I don't remember how I phrase it, but it was something along the lines of, well, if men are leaders, then why aren't they controlling themselves? Was. It's the summary of the question. And she got so angry she made me leave and I was not allowed back in her classroom.

[Kate]

Wow.

[Monty]

So after that I started going to adult church and I think the next Sunday was this big sermon on wives Submit to Your husbands.

[Kate]

Oh, of course it was.

[Monty]

They never. They never got to the verse about what the husband's supposed to do.

[Ty]

Of course not. Just.

[Monty]

Or the fact that that passage is actually supposed to start with submit to each other in love. It's fine. It's cool. But I was sitting there just getting progressively enraged, I bet, holding my Bible.

[Kate]

And I'm like, yeah.

[Monty]

And my dad looks over at me, he sees I'm really angry. And I didn't say anything at that time. But I went home that day. I went downstairs, changed my clothes, took my Bible, chucked it across the room. I was like, I'm not getting married then. Yeah, I just. I was like, you know, I was like, well, I'm not going to disobey God, but if that's the system and I have to submit to someone just because he's a dude, no thanks.

[Ty]

At 9 years old, hard pass. Wow.

[Monty]

But then you start to feel guilty. Oh, I'm questioning God. That's my pride. That's my ego. Oh, my God, I'm sinning. I have to go repent for my sin. And I wrestled with that, really, my whole adolescence.

[Kate]

And that's the indoctrination, abuse that I'm kind of talking about, where it's like, even if they question, like, I just feel like, how can you not look at it any other way? And how. How. What a disservice to the child.

[Monty]

Well, we see how that impacts women, especially with, quote, Christian marriage counseling. Right? Because I saw this in the church and it still happens, where if a woman is being neglected or abused, it's, give him grace. You need to make more space. You need to submit to him more. And he won't do that if he's unfaithful to his wife. It's, well, you're not meeting his needs enough. It's always put back on women. And the reason for that, and that most people don't realize, because James Dobson is kind of considered the father of Christian marriage counseling. But the founder of Christian marriage counseling is actually a man named Paul Popeno, who was a white supremacist atheist eugenicist from Pre World War II. And after World War II, when eugenics fell out of favor because of the Holocaust, he rebranded as a marriage counselor. And the only. His ideas were so radical that the only people that would buy in were conservative fundamentalist preachers. And what he taught was that white women should be advised to never take birth control. White women should be told that it's a sin to date outside their race. White Women should never be able to get divorced. Like, all of these foundational things that influence Christian marriage counseling, like telling her she can't leave her husband if he's cheating on her when the inverse isn't true. If she cheats on him, she gets kicked out of the church. James Dobson mentored under Paul Popeno.

[Kate]

Weird.

[Monty]

He worked directly for Popeno in his marriage counseling services in California prior to opening Focus on the Family. So, like, it is a system designed for subjugation, and that leads to abuse. Because, again, when you create a system where you're not allowed to ask questions, you're not allowed to leave. In instances of abuse and neglect, you're not allowed to leave. If someone's unfaithful, that's by definition an abusive system. And you're also creating a rhetoric, especially for young women, where this is their only purpose, this is their only value. Their only value is their virginity. James Dobson also said that marriage is the agreement a woman makes to exchange sex for protection.

[Kate]

Oh, wow, that's. I mean, being a dad of all daughters, it just. Some of the stuff that I see and hear, it just, like. It just creeps me out. It gives me, like, the worst.

[Monty]

It's like.

[Kate]

It's just. It doesn't make any sense to me. And that's why I'm so shocked that it's taking. Is taking hold with young people.

[Ty]

I mean, that's why one of my questions is, like, I wanted to ask you, like, do you think this was their plan all along? Because if you look at, like, the political realm right now of our country and stuff, I feel like religion is getting very much sucked and trying to get sucked into a lot of our laws and the things that are going on. And I want to go back to, you know, the part where you were like, you know, we're supposed to love thy neighbor and feed the poor and do the things, but then we have ice coming in and ripping families apart and, you know, zip.

[Monty]

Tying children.

[Ty]

Yeah. Like, you know, enrages their plan the whole time. Because, I mean. Right. And it's like. It's just scary. It's scary. It's scary. It's.

[Monty]

It's been their plan for a very long time. Because, again, it's not about the faith. It's about power. And they want power. They want power, they want subjugation. They want life built in their own image. And Christian nationalism is very, very closely tied with white supremacy. We're seeing that. I mean, that's.

[Ty]

Yeah.

[Monty]

You know, the reason that the Supreme Court ruled You can. You can stop and accost someone because they look Latina or they speak Spanish. Insane.

[Ty]

Yeah.

[Kate]

This is great.

[Monty]

It's the reason that they're gutting the Civil Rights Act. Same thing. This has been their goal the whole time. Because when I was growing up, my. You know, and my dad was training me in theology, scripture, apologetics, which is just, like, the defense of the faith, essentially, is his whole thing. When he realized I was smart. Smart?

[Ty]

Yeah, yeah.

[Monty]

His whole. Like, prior to. When I was. I was like. They did a bunch of testing on me at 10. Like, why is this girl like this? And so they did, like, IQ tests, reading tests. I was locked in a room of computers for a day.

[Ty]

Oh.

[Monty]

And when my dad got the results back and he realized it was extremely intelligent, the rhetoric for me went from your only purpose in life is to be pretty, lose weight, be married and have kids to, okay, you're going to do that, but a little later, we're going to get you to law school, we're going to get you on the Supreme Court, and you're going to overturn Roe v. Wade. Wow. He wanted me to be. That was a. That's a direct quote from my father. So he wanted me to be an Amy Coney Barrett. So this has been their intention the entire time. And what people don't realize, I. I tell people whether they're a true Christ follower or someone who's a progressive, like anyone who's opposed to Christian nationalism, Don't make the mistake of thinking they're stupid. They're not. They are highly intelligent, and they are highly organized, and they have absolutely no restraint. You cannot. You cannot do the whole. When they go low, we go high. No, no. Do not bring your fist to a gunfight. Like, they have absolutely no restraint and abuse and power and subjugation and the re. Establishment of the supremacy of the white male is really the goal.

[Kate]

Well, yeah. That's not the first time I've ever heard this. I've heard people that, like, they're like, oh, well, they are raised with all these kids, and they literally send them to these, like, private Christian universities or these specific things in order to, like. The goal is to get them to be lawmakers.

[Monty]

We were told. Insane. We were told in church that they were specifically training all of us young Christians to go into different realms so that Christians could dominate those realms, like entertainment media and then the women specifically. And this, again, direct quote from a pastor. Ladies, your job is to have as many kids as possible so we can outbreed them.

[Kate]

Oh, My see, okay.

[Ty]

It's cultish.

[Monty]

This is. Yes. Oh, it's 100. A cult.

[Ty]

Yeah.

[Kate]

Yeah. Because when you, I mean, I think people don't get that, like, you know, they get offended. When I say it sounds very culty, like, because they'll, they'll, they'll respond. And I can tell they're trying to sound kind and nice and they're using Bible verses, but it's like you don't understand that what you're saying sounds like a call. And when I say that they, I mean, they just get so, they get so offended and it's like, I'm not mean to offend you. I'm trying to, like, kind of trying to understand. Yeah.

[Monty]

Why you're pledging allegiance to this movement.

[Kate]

Yeah. Because that doesn't make any sense to me when it goes completely against what I've read in the Bible. So it's not what I'm reading. So I'm confused on where you're even getting this from. And now hearing you talk about how it's like they like apologetics, like, who even thinks to teach that?

[Monty]

Y.

[Kate]

Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. I don't have to study apologetics to defend, you know, children being fed. It's weird. I don't need to defend any of these beliefs because they're. I don't need to, you know, I mean, so the fact that there's even a course to like, hey, people are going to, you know, here's the talking points.

[Monty]

Here are the talking points.

[Kate]

Yeah. Which is so crazy that like. And that's why I kind of feel like, you know, like you said the whole voucher thing and this is. There's a, There's a weird aura and energy that I feel that is like taking over. And that's why.

[Ty]

Yeah, it is.

[Kate]

I wanted to get you on here because I'm like, this is so important. I think people are not listening. I think they're not really reading the Bible for themselves. I don't think they're challenging enough because like you said, if, if, you know, it's fear if they say, I don't believe this, but if I say this, I'm going to get cut off from all my, My community, my, My people, their family. That right there is literally the definition of a cult. When you are isolated from the community.

[Monty]

When you're not allowed to question leadership, when there's a control, access to information, participating in isolationism, even things like they used to do, like lock ins for teens and stuff, like sleep deprivation is A cult tactic. Like, a lot of this, like, is very much in alignment with that. And a lot of it comes back to the in group, out group of, like, I'm going to lose everything if I step up against this. But what. I will say that. And I understand that, like, it feels so heavy, and it feels like, oh, my God, like, it's taking over. I think it's an extinction burst.

[Kate]

It's getting back to the corner. Like, I was just. I was just saying this other day, where I'm like, you know, I feel like the reason why it seems so large and angry is because when you back an animal to the wall, they get more spit, more venom, they get bigger, they get. They get wilder, they attack more aggressively. And I feel like that's what's happening. So I do feel. I agree that there's kind of like, I'm, like, waiting for the explosion to happen and allow them to flow out so we can get some release.

[Monty]

Well, and it's. It's gonna be messy, right? Because again, we have. We're. We're dealing with people who are evil without restraint. I mean, we've seen that, like, the ice rays. If the ice raids aren't enough to convince you without restraint, I don't have anything for you. But what we're. What we're also seeing is the mistake that they have made, especially in. In this president, in this term for Trump, is they took the hoods off too fast.

[Kate]

Yeah.

[Monty]

Right. There's no pretense anymore.

[Kate]

Can't go back now.

[Monty]

They're walking around saying, yeah, I'm a Nazi. Yeah, I'm a Christian nationalist. Yeah, I'm this. Yeah, I'm prejudice. It's so out in the open that it has drawn a very clear line where you're either, you're either supporting this group that are claiming these beliefs, or you're not. And so what I'm seeing with my platform is a lot of Christ followers are saying, whoa, good. Which is like, good. I didn't like, that is not what I signed up for. And I've had a lot of cons, former conservatives reach out to me saying, you know, I. I feel stupid now. I didn't believe when people told me that this was underneath this movement, but I see it now. How do I help? How do I change?

[Ty]

Oh, good.

[Monty]

Amazing.

[Ty]

Yeah.

[Monty]

And I have a lot of people that are like, listen, I don't agree with you on everything, but I like that you're making me. I'm like, good, good. I am so excited. You don't agree with me on everything. Don't do that. Don't outsource your beliefs to me. Yeah, because when you grow up in a cult following, you're so used to people telling you what you should believe, what you should do, how you should dress that when you don't have that anymore. It's really terrifying. It's really destabilizing.

[Ty]

Man, do we have so much more that we need to talk about and jump into, but I think we're going to pause for now and come back next week with more of our conversation with Monty. So don't forget to like comment and subscribe to the show and also give us a rating. We love to get your guys feedback.

[Monty]

This November action is free on Pluto tv.

[Kate]

Go on the run with Jack Reacher.

[Monty]

Every suspect was a train killer.

[Kate]

Then buckle up for drive.

[Monty]

World War Z. Every human being we save is one.

[Kate]

Less bite and Charlie's Angels.

[Monty]

Damn, I hate to fly.

[Kate]

Launch into Sci Fi Adventure with the.

[Monty]

Fifth Element and laugh through the mayhem in Tropic Thunder.

[Kate]

What is going on here? All the thrills, all for free.

[Monty]

Pluto TV stream now. Pay never.

[Kate]

Hi, I'm Adam Rippon and this is.

[Monty]

Intrusive Thoughts, the podcast where I finally say the stuff out loud that's been living rent free in my head for years. From from dumb decisions to awkward moments I probably should have kept to myself.

[Kate]

Nothing's off limits. Yes, I'm talking about the time I lost my phone mid flight and still haven't truly emotionally recovered from that. There might be too many sound effects. I've been told to chill. Will I Unclear, but if you've ever.

[Monty]

Laid awake at night cringing at something you said five years ago, congratulations. You found your people.

[Kate]

Intrusive Thoughts with Adam Rippon is available now.

[Monty]

Wherever you get your podcasts.