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- [00:00]
A
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B
There are a lot of Americans that have a very normal spiritual relationship with their religion. It's private or familial and it's something that brings light and seren their lives. If you have that type of relationship with your faith, I'm not talking about you, but we're. We're about to start talking about our white evangelical mega church Christians and the damage that they are doing to this country. And I have long felt that evangelical white evangelical Christianity is in fact a cult. And I'm not alone in thinking this. Kylie, pop up the first slide. Tim Whitaker says I'm finally saying it. The evangelical world that raised me was a cult. Next slide. I grew up in a world where disagreeing with doctrine meant you were a heretic who needed to be promptly scolded, where your church was the only biblical one and everyone else was lukewarm at best, hellbound at worst. Next one. And now we're watching the end result unfold in real time. A religious, political cult that sees Jesus as a mascot for their team, not a savior to be followed next. But they follow the Jesus of the basement. The conquering strongman, the defender of their distorted vision of truth, the punisher of outsiders, the Jesus who kidnaps immigrants and separates them from their children rapidly. That's the Jesus they worship. Trump is their version of Christ incarnate. He's been sent by God to, quote, make America great again. That's why they excuse everything he does. The lies, the cruelty, the corruption, the authoritarianism, the hatred of the other. In a cult, the leader must be defended at all costs. If the leader is undermined, the entire identity of the group collapses. So they defend the IND defensible. I grew up in the basement of Christianity, the dark, damp, musty place. That basement was a cult. After years of watching the evangelical world I grew up in, the Christian nationalism, the Trump messiah complex, the double standard around protect the children. I think it's time to stop softening the language and finally have my come to Jesus moment. I grew up in a world where questioning the pastor was considered rebellion. I'm not saying Christianity is a cult. I am saying the basement I was raised in acted like one. I didn't lose Jesus. When I left the basement, I found him. So again this is from Tim Whitaker, Pump. What.
- [03:17]
C
What are.
- [03:17]
B
What's your take on what he experienced in the conclusion he came to?
- [03:22]
C
Well, you know, this is my lived experience. And when I look back and it. This whole Trump thing has caused me to look back a lot, and I realized the church I was raised in, evangelical, you know, Jesus was kind. Jesus washed the feet of other people, all that stuff, yet he had an affair on his wife, and the whole church knew about him, but he asked for forgiveness, and so it was fine.
- [03:48]
B
Who had an affair on his wife?
- [03:49]
C
The pastor.
- [03:50]
B
Oh, okay.
- [03:51]
C
The pastor of this big, mega church. And so it was. I started excusing indefensible behavior at a very young age because it was immediately within my family and I. Apparently, the church at large, because he didn't step down. It was. I'm gonna. You know, I'm gonna get in front of the church, I'm gonna say what I did wrong, I'm gonna ask for Jesus's forgiveness, and we're just gonna keep going. And. And I think for me, that's where it started, where I was able. And I was able to say, okay, well, you know, he's doing better now, and excuse inexcusable behavior. And then when you were reading that, it reminded me of a conversation I had with a family member before the election who is. You have to be a virgin before you get married. You cannot have sex if you are not married. I mean, super purity culture. And I said, how do you reconcile Donald Trump having a new baby, having an affair with a playmate, and having sex with a porn star? If you're like, your whole thing is controlling sex, it was immediately dismissed. And in my mind, there are really two reasons why it was dismissed. Obviously, misogyny. But that's not one of my two. Because institutionalized misogyny in these evangelical churches is. It's like breathing. It's everywhere, but it is. I. I want to talk the talk, but when it comes down to it, I like money, and I want my money to stay with me, meaning tax breaks and racism. Trump hates everybody else. They hate. And it is easy for these people to excuse the behavior because they've been doing it for me my entire lifetime. Excusing indefensible behavior is a way of life, and you're able to just disassociate with it and say, well, you know, God forgave them, so I have to, too. That's.
- [05:46]
B
That's what we do think a lot of these mega churches, when they focus so much on the tithing and the growth of the church. Like I remember growing up and my friends, high school friends, if they took me to a megachurch, there was always a big emphasis on tithing. And we're growing the church. We have a new location opening up, etc. It's this focus on money and it's rarely ever a focus on really helping people. You know, I told you pumps the other day in view. I told you I was walking in New York and I saw a church in Oakland in New York. There's not that many, obviously, but it had a trans flag, a pride flag, a Black Lives Matter flag, and then a banner that said, refugees and immigrants welcome. And I thought, you know, if churches were more like that, I wonder if I would have joined one if they were more of a place where you went to have a moral centering, to get outside of yourself. And I think there's something that capitalism and evangelical Christianity have in common, and it is the focus on me. It is this me, me, me, me, me. And a lot of white evangelical Christians have this component of Christian narcissism and pumps. You describe it as, I think I'm better than everybody else, which is that level of Christian narcissism. And sometimes I go and I look at these like big mega ch. Instagram post, because I find religion kind of fascinating that so many people would be a member of a church. And it's all about like in. In the throes of all of this injustice that we're seeing. You know, like immigrants being separated. I mean, just people being murdered for sport in the Caribbean, people being kidnapped for sport and sent to El Salvador for sport, having alligators surrounding them in a prison, all that's for sport. These guys get off on it. The one thing that these churches, they never talk about any of that, which I think is really interesting because that's what if. If Jesus were real and he were here right now, that's what he would be talking about. Instead, it's so hyper focused on your personal relationship with God and every little thing you do and this personal relationship. And for me, because everybody has. Can be fucked up as a person. We all have those. We're like, oh, God, Jennifer, God damn it, you were so fucked up there. When I'm the most fucked up as a person is when I'm too Jennifer centered, you know, like, yeah, you have to take care of yourself and have boundaries to protect yourself, but you also have to bear in mind you're not the only person on the planet. So I think that capitalism and the Republican version of capitalism My pocket, my taxpayer dollars, my dime, if it doesn't affect me. You hear that a lot. And it's the same thing from evangelicals to Christian Republicanism is the me, me, me.
- [08:45]
C
Well, and, and here's the thing. The demonizing of the poor. Yes, that's a Republican. You know, I've, since Reagan, that's been what it is. But it, it starts in the churches in that we're going to help the poor because we are better than the poor. It sends a message that we're going to help the poor because we're better than the poor. But we don't. Growing up, it wasn't that we helped everybody because we were better. We got to pick and choose who we were going to help. We didn't have to help everybody. Not everybody was on the same playing field. And so it's kind of graduated in terms of who you're going to help.
- [09:20]
B
Sorry to cut you off, but I want to ask you something I think is really important. Don't you think a lot of the mega churches now, there are churches that genuinely do massive outreach and the whole mission to help marginalized and people suffering. We're not talking about those. The mega churches that do this. It's a big performative thing. It's a Bible church. Right. We're going to help these poor people here and we're going to brag about it and we're going to post about it and at the same time we're going to go vote against anything that systemically could help these people in their trajectory. And that's what I always see is a complete hypocrisy in those two components that there is as well. Oh, yeah, we, you know, we gave gifts to a poor family for Christmas and then we're not going to do anything when it comes to the ballot box because of our own personal tax dollars. We're not going to do anything to help. And then I just want to leave you with this pumps. Did you see, is it about a month ago, month and a half ago, the governor of Oklahoma, our governor. Yeah. Kevin Stitt, he was talking about homeless people. Did you see this video?
- [10:30]
C
Yeah, I saw it.
- [10:31]
B
Listener. He was talking. And this is a really, really religious person, evangelical megachurch, sends his kids to, you know, private Christian school, etc, dedicated every square inch of the state to Jesus. He said that it wasn't the state's job to help homeless people. Just very dismissively, in a very dehumanizing manner spoke about them. And this is just something I think that this. Tim Whitaker that wrote that there. I think he's right. I think that this is a cult. Well, yeah.
- [11:01]
C
And you look at Fox News and they're going to just kill homeless people. Like the empathy that you're taught in Sunday school or the empathy that I taught was taught in Sunday school is not acted out upon by the flock. That is not what we talked about. And how we behaved and excused behavior were completely different.
- [11:22]
B
All right. That's all we have for this episode. Subscribe to our channel like this episode. Drop us a comment and we'll be back later with more news.