← The Messy Parts
The Messy Parts
Finding Light in the Darkness: Writer Jonathan Merritt on Faith, Courage, and Starting Over.
00:49:45
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- [00:00]
A
You have this seismic shift that happens to you, quite messy, and all of a sudden, you become an even bigger writer, a bigger success through the mess.
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B
Yeah.
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A
What's your takeaway from that?
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B
There's always light in the darkness, and you have to look for it. And so this was like, what would be a darker time? I mean, you lose everything. You know, nobody. You're trying to make your way in the world. And yet, relationally, professionally, there are things that I see, in hindsight, a pattern of provision, where the universe was making a way, and there were opportunities that showed up at just the right moment.
- [00:50]
A
This week on the Messy Parts podcast, you're going to hear from Jonathan Merritt, VP at Simon and Schuster. The interesting part about Jonathan's journey is that he grew up as a kid in Georgia, the son of a famous megachurch pastor. He was very publicly outed in his late 20s, and as you can imagine, that led to a pretty messy ride, which is really the mess behind his success. So, Jonathan, I'm so excited to have you on the couch. You and I got a chance to meet each other from the longest table. So I thought we would start with a little bit about how you grew up, because, one, you grew up quite differently from me, and now that I've done research on you, I'm super fascinated. So you grew up in Georgia, in a small town?
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B
I grew up outside of Atlanta. The suburbs.
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A
Okay.
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B
Suburbs of Atlanta.
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A
Suburbs of Atlanta. In a megachurch. First of all, what is a megachurch?
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B
Most people would say it is a church that has greater than 2,000 people coming on a typical Sunday.
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A
And your dad was the pastor?
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B
Yes.
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A
And he was on tv. He's like a TV evangelist. Is that the right term?
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B
You got it.
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A
What was it like growing up in a family? You're one of three. The middle child, right?
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B
Yes.
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A
In a family where your dad was so prominent and in that particular way, like, walk me through what a Sunday morning would be like in your home.
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B
Oh, gosh. Well, a Sunday morning was chaos, pure chaos. We're all sort of trying to get ready and to look perfect because we were sort of the mascots for our community. And many mornings we would. I remember a lot of times we would. We would have fights, like all families do when you're having a chaotic morning, you know, sort of getting ready. And when that minivan door opened, we were like new people.
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A
Minivan?
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B
Yeah. So we would get out and we would smile and we would love each other and hold each other's hands and hug each other and carry our bodies and so it was really sort of expected, not just in our immediate community, but I would say in our whole town and even across the city, that we were to be really representations of evangelical Christianity.
- [03:06]
A
But you were a kid, so did you ever wanna rebel against that?
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B
Yes, I think that's probably true of lots of kids, all kids. There wasn't a lot of opportunity to rebel because it was such a tight knit.
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A
I saw that movie.
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B
No, no, it wasn't like that. It wasn't like that. It. When I was growing up in the 1990s, Christian culture was sort of all encompassing. You know, you had Christian movies and Christian T shirts and Christian music and Christian schools, and so your life was completely insulated. Rebellion, for me is a very subjective word. It wasn't like I was, you know, doing cocaine on a mirror in the bathroom. It was like.
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A
Or dancing in a barn.
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B
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
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A
When did you know you were different than other kids around?
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B
You always knew it. I always knew it.
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A
What does that mean, always?
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B
When I go back in my mind, there's not a point where I don't have an awareness that I knew that I was not like other. The other kids in a fundamental way. And I knew that my difference was dangerous.
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A
How did you know that? Like from movies. Like, how did you know that? You just knew that, like, within you.
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B
From the time you're really a toddler, you're being educated and so you're ingesting everything what's okay, what's not okay. You know, your people who are suddenly shown the door, you recognize they're not around anymore and you hear why they're not. There are comments made. I remember, you know, we'd go into a restaurant and we would run into a church member and they would have a beer on the table and we would have a family conversation about that because no beers.
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A
No beers.
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B
No. No alcohol. No. We were like a big, like, teetotaling family. And so Southern Baptists, you know, so it was.
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A
I'm going to say, I don't know.
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B
No, you don't know. I'll tell you all about it.
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A
I do not know.
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B
So Southern Baptists, you know, they're the. It's the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. It was born in the late 1800s in the south as a reaction to the larger Baptist denomination at the time, which was preventing slaveholders from being missionaries. And so the denomination was founded to support slavery. So it's got a very dark past and probably an equally dark present because it sits at the burning heart of the Religious, right. So, Jerry Falwell, Southern Baptist. You'll probably know lots and lots of things.
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A
I know Jerry Falwell, Southern Baptist.
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B
In the public eye. Think of, like, someone wearing a suit talking about Jesus in the 80s and 90s. That made your skin crawl. And there's like, an 80% chance that they were Southern Baptist.
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A
Okay, but you're talking about your community. And so what was that like for you?
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B
Well, at the time, I think I was a true believer. It's just the only world that you know. And you learn really quickly to obey the rules and to color inside the lines and be really careful not to step out of those lines because your place in the community would be threatened.
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A
How did you know what you wanted to do when you finished high school? Like, how did you decide what your career path was gonna be?
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B
I didn't. Well, at the time, I went to college and I majored in biology and chemistry. I was pre med, and I thought I'd be a medical missionary. All I did in college was study, get grades, prepare for the mcat.
- [06:45]
A
Like, sorry, girlfriend.
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B
I had girlfriends. Yeah, I had girlfriends in high school and in college, and they were great. Actually, through my 20s, until we'll get to that point of the story later, I had lots of girlfriends. And they were wonderful people. In part. I think they were part of my own awakening, because they were so wonderful. So I had girlfriends. I went to college. I went to Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. I majored in biology and chemistry. I got out and I said, I don't wanna do. And my parents were like, you're losing it. What's going on? And I'm like, I don't want to do this, and I don't know what I want to do. And I was at work one day. This is going to sound very evangelical. What was work at the time I graduated from college, I was working as a consultant at a chemical company while I was applying to medical schools. I was there that day, and I heard a voice inside me. Well, however you want to describe that, as God or the higher self. And. And it said, you're gonna write. And I had never heard that before. I clapped out of my English courses. I had never written anything. I'd never thought about being a writer. And so I came home and I told my parents I was gonna quit my job and I wanted to be a writer. And because what I know is religion, I was gonna be a religion writer.
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A
But you started off writing, like, movie.
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B
Reviews when I first started my strategy. Because how do you Become a writer. My strategy was, if you wanna industry, do all the things no one else wants to do, then you'll at least get a foothold. So I wrote into magazines and newspapers. I started with Christian magazines, and I wrote in and I said, what do you have that nobody wants to do? Book reviews, movie reviews.
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A
I would think those would be in high demand.
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B
Well, see, you have to do homework on them, and then you get paid $30 to write it. So it's not a great way to make a living. Everybody wants the feature story or the COVID story. And what I did was I just started winning over my editors. And my opportunities got bigger and bigger and bigger. And then I went to seminary, which is a fun twist and turn. But if you want to write about religion, where do people go to study about religion? The only framework I had was my dad, who went to seminary. So I went to Southern Baptist Seminary.
- [09:15]
A
So you graduate and now you're writing.
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B
Now I'm writing for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. I'm writing for the Washington Post. Like, I made a big league.
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A
So I'm not writing. It sounds just like you hear a voice and then you start writing and you're a terrible writer.
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B
Turns out I was a good writer. That's right. I didn't know that. And then I did.
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A
And also, you had an area that you were writing about religion. Really? That's probably not what everybody else was writing about.
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B
And I knew evangelicalism as well as anyone.
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A
It's funny, in doing research on you, I listened to. To several podcasts, and oftentimes you're on podcasts with other people who knew a lot about religion. And I felt like an outsider listening to the podcast. Cause you were talking about all kinds of things that I really had no idea about.
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B
Yes.
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A
So it actually did give you a great advantage to write about something that you actually had a pretty good perspective on.
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B
Yes.
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A
Did you know that writing was gonna be the thing for you?
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B
I've only realized this in the last few years. Thank God for my therapist and spiritual director. And is like I was ringing the bell. Like, there's something that happens when you run down to the gas station and you pick up a copy of USA Today and you open up the opinion page and your name is there.
- [10:32]
A
Feels good.
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B
Especially in your 20s. Right. And I think to be seen and acknowledged and heard, which are things that I didn't feel growing up, I was getting that from this, and I wanted that, and this was the way I was going to get that.
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A
It's interesting because in some ways that's similar to your dad, because your dad also had that.
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B
Yes, that's exactly right. There are things that I have done in my life that feel so similar and yet so different, but they're very similar. I mean, having a public voice. At first, when I was writing, I would say I was like the man behind the curtain. Instead of being just an explainer of this thing, I really began to be kind of the insider critic, and I was exposing hypocrisies and.
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A
And was that a conflict point with your family?
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B
That's where things began to get really bumpy.
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A
All of a sudden you're being seen, which, you know, feels good. Right. We all look for belonging and the desire to be seen, but actually, you weren't really being seen, because at this point, it sounds like you actually knew that maybe you weren't like everybody else. And so you were sort of being seen but kind of still masking yourself.
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B
Yeah, that's right. I think I was able to be seen in my rage. People were saying, this guy's really smart. He's interesting. But the deeper parts of myself were still quarantined.
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A
So I want to talk about that because I grew up in an era where I remember actually, like, you know, I'm originally from Iran, and we were not very religious. But when we moved to the States after the Iranian revolution, I went to high school in California, and there was a guy in my class who was a senior who was gay. I think he was, like, the only person who was out. And that was pretty unusual even then, which was like, in the 80s, early 80s. People even then would show up at work and be sort of masking whether they were gay. I mean, even today, I know people who. People think they're gay. They don't come out. But it could be all kinds of other things, like their religion, how they dress. I've been in conversations where people ask if they should, you know, wear the kind of clothes they would normally wear to work. Right. Because they're trying to fit in. What advice would you have for someone who's trying to break in but also want to be their authentic self, which we know comes at a cost?
- [12:52]
B
I wasn't able to embrace my true self until I was almost. Until I was 30, basically, and not of my own choosing, which we can talk about. And I look back and I feel a lot of shame around having lost so much of my life, because I think about my teens and I think about my 20s and, like, how my life would have been different if I had found the courage when you start to think about my situation like it wasn't just that I had to unwind a lifetime of indoctrination, but then beyond that, I had chosen to stay tethered professionally to this world. So now I'm thinking, well, I don't know if this means that my faith has to go away. My family might have to go away. My livelihood may disappear. How will I make money now? I'm really deep. This is. My education is in this. I'm not qualified to do anything else. And I spent my 20s feeling that sense. It's like my number one trigger now is feeling stuck or trapped. If I show up at somebody's house for a dinner party and I don't know what time it ends, I'll feel that in ways big and small, feeling trapped is such a trigger because I spent the first nearly 30 years of my life feeling trapped in that.
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A
So that's interesting because that's definitely like a source of anxiety in that moment. What is the technique you've learned to get to the other side of that so that you're not running out the.
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B
Door for a long time? I wouldn't host people at my apartment, and I didn't know why that was. I always wanted to go somewhere else. And it's because if somebody comes to your apartment, then you really are stuck.
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A
Because how are you getting rid of it?
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B
You can't just leave. I do a lot of talking to myself in the moment and reminding myself of what is and isn't true.
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A
You talk about a spiritual practice, all these things. What does that mean? Like, what does that sound like?
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B
I think for most people, whether we call them by this name or not, our lives are filled with spiritual practices. These rhythms of our lives, these commitments we make to do a certain thing again and again because we trust that it shapes us in a particular way. So radical honesty, giving ourselves the freedom to use words in ways that truly reflect what we feel. So honesty, then, is connected to a practice of integrity, living in alignment. All great spiritual traditions will tell you this, right? You live in alignment. The thing that's inside matches the behavior on the outside to be true to oneself. This is where God is. This is where we are. This is where life is happening. And yet for most of us, we're too busy reprocessing the past or worrying about the future.
- [15:42]
A
It's so interesting. As I listen to our conversation, I have bodily reactions. I remember first coming to the States, and we moved to a suburb of San Francisco that was definitely primarily Christian. And I remember Feeling sad that I couldn't go to Sunday prayer meetings like my neighbor Christine Belport would go to Bible study. And I longed for community, but obviously I wasn't invited into that community, although I did occasionally get to go. It's interesting because. Because you also talk about being in conflict and how really it's when you come into alignment, that's a pathway. But for 30 years, you were in misalignment. I try to be helpful to people who listen or watch. Right. And I think if somebody else is having that experience where they feel like they're misaligned, what tip can we give them to get to the other side of that?
- [16:30]
B
I would say take a fierce moral inventory and say, what are the ways that I'm living my life that are not reflective of my true self, the self that I know to be the you that's more you than you've ever been, when you really still yourself and you go into the cave of your own heart and you say, who am I? Who is Jonathan? What does he want to be in the world? What are the ways that I'm not honoring that true self? And you become aware of it. And then this question is, well, what do you do with awareness? There was an old filmmaker who used to say, if there's a problem in the third act, the problem is really in the first act. There are virtues that I think we have to work on to nurture that allow us or create the possibility for transformation. And one of those is courage. And so I think everyone has to be in a constant practice of building courage, because you're gonna need courage in order to change. And usually you have to start in really, really small ways. I mean, in my 20s, after I graduate from Candler from Emory University, I joined my dad's church as a teaching pastor. So now I'm teaching thousands of people. My writing career is taking off. I've started to write published books with major publishers, and I was preaching sermons I didn't really believe anymore. And I was saying things that I knew weren't true. I still didn't have the courage to make a change. And that that took time.
- [18:04]
A
So this actually brings us to your messy moment. A pretty big messy moment. You write an article for the Atlantic about Chick Fil? A. Yeah. And you'd had the previous year, I guess you were like 29 the previous year you'd had a relationship with a man, and all of a sudden, for whatever reason, he thinks your article is anti gay. And in his blog, he outs you.
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B
I had written an article For USA Today called an evangelical's plea. Love the sinner. And there's this cliche among evangelicals where they'll say, well, you know, we love the sinner, but we hate the sin. Was sort of exposing this and saying, if you really love people you consider to be sinners, why don't you show it? What I was really asking underneath the surface was, love me. You think I'm the sinner? Love me. And there was a guy who was kind of a gay influencer who read that and reached out to me and befriended me and kind of earned my trust over time. He was living in another state, and we got really close. And so then I shared with him my struggle at the time, my own sexuality, my coming of awareness that was just starting to give myself permission to acknowledge what was true. And I was speaking at a big event in Chicago, and he lived in Fort Wayne, Indiana. And he said, I'd like to come down. Let's have dinner. He did. We had drinks, we make out in his car, and we don't have sex. That was it. Pretty harmless, actually. As an adult now looking at it going, not much really happened, but at the time, it was, like, monumental. And so I go back to my hotel room that night thinking, like, what am I gonna do? I've built my entire life on, and it will all be gone. Everything will be gone. And yet there was something inside of me that came alive in that moment that I didn't want to die again. And it was so conflicting. I said to him he wanted to kind of start a relationship and explore this. And I said, I can't talk to you anymore. So I cut it off with him, and I went back in the closet. I mean, I sort of was just peeking out of the closet, but I went back into the darkness. And a couple years later, you know, Chick Fil? A, there's this massive controversy. And I wrote an article that was called In Defense of Eating Chick Fil A for the Atlantic.
- [20:50]
A
And it was because people were boycotting chicks. They were boycotting chicks on their stance.
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B
And I was making an argument. And I said in the article, this has nothing to do with my views of gay marriage. It's an argument about whether it's feasible to tie your consumerism with your politics in a capitalistic culture. The next week, I get up and I sit down at my laptop. I open my laptop, and I'm gonna prepare my sermon. Cause I'm preaching that week. And I log into my email, and it says, google Alert. And the title was Jonathan Merritt. Come out. I clicked it, and it goes to an article written by this person I had mistaken to be a friend. And I knew my life was over. My life, as I had always known it was over.
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A
How did that feel?
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B
At first, it was totally unbelievable because I. I had never really. You know, I think there are a lot of people you talk to a lot of people who are queer, and they'll, like, play this out in their minds. But, like, I had never played this out. I thought, I'll die in the closet. There's just no. There was no way that I was gonna lose everything. For what? I didn't have, like, a plan, you know, There was no, like, I've been outed. Go bag. So I got up and I went to my room.
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A
Did you cry?
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B
I was stunned. I was in shock. I had a pack of emergency cigarettes in my table next to my bed.
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A
That in itself is fascinating.
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B
Fascinating. You have to find ways to really handle your stress when you live in a pressure cooker. So I went out to my back porch and I smoked an eternal cigarette. And I remember standing out there thinking, when you walk back in that house, everything that you've ever known is over. And I had no idea what is on the other side of that door. Will it be as bad as I think? Will I lose everything? Is there a way to crawl back inside the closet and protect some of what you've built? I didn't know.
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A
Well, you could have called him a liar.
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B
I could have called him a liar. However, in the piece, he sort of insinuates he has proof. And that day, when you're texting a lot, there is proof. And I couldn't even remember that had been three years at this point. I'm like, does he have pictures? I know he has text messages. What will this person post online? And how much shame and embarrassment will come from that? So I knew that I had to find a way through. I didn't know what that would look like, but I knew I had to find a way through.
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A
So you smoke the pack of cigarettes or one I don't know, and you go back in. Is your phone blowing up?
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B
I walked inside and I called my dad, and he was on vacation. So he would go on vacation for a month, and then I would take over and preach. And I explained the situation to him, and. And he went into sort of business mode. All right, we're packing up. I'm going to come home. We're calling together people, and we're going to figure out the way through this.
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A
He goes into immediate crisis comms mode.
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B
Yes.
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A
But he doesn't reject you.
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B
No. And I. And. And I think there are a lot of ways. When I think about my relationship with my dad, even until today, he is who he is and I am who I am. And yet the miracle that continues to manifest between us is just a lot of small graces that add up to something, not nothing. And that was maybe the first.
- [24:42]
A
So from that moment on to when you fully came out, how long was that?
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B
Well, I stayed in the church for another year, and I've done an interview with Christianity Today. The Washington Post had written an article on it.
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A
So what was the crisis comms plan like? Pretend it didn't happen.
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B
The crisis comms plan was, we're gonna get everybody together at the church. Cause everybody is now hearing about this through media outlets, and you're going to basically confess. I had a very good friend who did crisis comms who flew in. It was helping me. And thank God for her because her approach was so radically different. She was a little ahead of her time. So it wasn't like, defend, deflect. It was like, take all the air out of the room, make sure that there are no questions to be asked. So I told my entire story, and I'm weeping on stage, thousands of people. And then my dad preaches a sermon. And on a story from the gospels of the adulterous woman. So there's a story, it's very famous, where this woman who's been caught in adultery is brought before Jesus. And the religious leaders say, the law says we should stone her. Should we stone her? And Jesus famously says, let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
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A
So it's a redemption story.
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B
So in his own way, I think it was a kind of compassion to say, well, if Jesus does not condemn those, then we don't condemn either.
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A
But did they in fact forgive you in that moment?
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B
Well, what happened was, I think radical honesty, radical vulnerability invites radical vulnerability. So maybe not for everyone. Not for everyone. We lost some church members, frankly. We had some of our best friends, people who were in leadership, who said, we're out. We don't want to be. If this guy's staying on, we're out. The majority of people were surprisingly compassionate because Christians, evangelical Christians, fundamentalist Christians, are fine with you being gay so long as you don't do gay things. And that was an emerging view. That was not the emerging view in the 80s and 90s. In the 80s and 90s, if you were gay, you had to pray the gay away. You had to go to conversion therapy. I didn't use the word gay even at that time to describe myself, because that was a big, powerful word and I didn't have the courage yet to use it to describe myself. But we have this service. I'm on the way home, and I hear the whisper again, the same. It was the same that told you to write, and it said, you have to leave this place. And I knew that it had told me the truth.
- [27:46]
A
It took you about a year to leave.
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B
It took me a year.
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A
And you came to New York City.
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B
It took me a year to leave, because leaving takes courage, and courage takes time. And it took me a year to leave because where would I go? But I was in New York City. I was at a press junket down in Tribeca, and I went to have lunch with a friend who she had moved here with her family from Atlanta, has, you know, three kids. They're living in a small apartment in Battery Park City. And I'm going, why did you decide to move to New York? And she said, you know, Jonathan, there are times in life where there comes a whisper. And it's a totally legitimate life decision to say no to the whisper. But if you do, it will go away and it will never come back again. And that was like sand in my shoe. And I'm looking around New York and I'm thinking about this, like, childhood dream that had sort of faded away. I'd always wanted to move to New York. There's a history and a heritage of people coming to New York and finding that different versions of themselves were true. And New York will give you an opportunity to try on any version of yourself. And that's sort of the magic and the promise of New York. I'm on the airplane, I'm flying home, and I said, I have to leave this place. And I landed on September 13, and by November 3, I had sold everything that I had. I had rented out my house, I parked my car at my parents house, and I was in a rented minivan driving to a neighborhood I'd never heard of to live with people I'd never met in an apartment I'd never seen. And that was 12 years ago.
- [29:28]
A
How did your mom and siblings react throughout this whole thing?
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B
On the one hand, I think they were mystified and confused. No one has ever left. In my family, my brothers, their spouses, their kids, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, everybody lives within driving distance of each other. So it sort of was like, what are you. If you're moving, why would you ever Move to a godless place like that. I think my parents also had some worries because we're in the wake of what's just happened, and they're thinking, my God, what does this mean for him? What will he do? Who will he become?
- [30:07]
A
But they never thought that they would just excommunicate you.
- [30:10]
B
Not from the family, but I did them the favor of sort of excommunicating myself from the church. My dad was really clear from the very beginning, and he. I remember he's told me this story a hundred times. One of the people that my dad has always idolized is Billy Graham. He's the most famous Christian evangelist in American history and was sort of a spiritual advisor to presidents. There was this famous story where in an interview, he was asked, Dr. Graham, what would you do if you found out you had a child who was gay? And he said, I would love him even more. And that, I think, made a real impression on my dad. I don't know if he knew at the time that I was gay, but I think he knew something was different. I think he made a commitment to himself that if the thing that he feared the worst was true, he would love me even more. And he's made good on that, I think, over the years. That has not meant that. He's changed in ways that I wish he would change. So he told me that story when I was getting ready to move to New York. And he said, you will always be my son. You will always be welcome in my home, despite our disagreements. And that was a real gift to me because I knew that at least I wouldn't lose my family. I had lost some friends, unfortunately. I had lost quite a bit of work. But I knew at least I would always have a home to come back to. And that was a gift.
- [31:56]
A
That's an incredible thing.
- [31:57]
B
Right?
- [31:58]
A
There was a grounding in that.
- [31:59]
B
Yeah, for sure.
- [32:00]
A
A pure love in that.
- [32:01]
B
Yeah.
- [32:02]
A
You know what's interesting to me is clearly community. I go back to this. Has it been a big thing for you? I mean, I had fantasies of living on a street with all my relatives. Right. There's something about that. Even though, like you, I love New York, and I feel like New York is a place you can be whoever and it gives you voice. You picked a career that was lonely. Like, writing is not a team sport. You move to a city where it's. I find amazingly welcoming, but also crazy in a lot of other ways. How did you find community when you got here?
- [32:34]
B
Miracle of all miracles, you might say that God made a Way. I had friends of friends who said, I've got a friend in New York, you should meet them. And I would meet them and then we would become friends, the best of friends. My roommates would introduce me to friends. I had one of my best friends who then moved here a couple months after me. She said, well, if you can do it, I can do it. And she moved here. She still lives here. We're great friends. She lives in the same neighborhood I do. So there were these little graces that happened relationally. And I began people who were Christian in the way that I was becoming were reaching out to me from all over the country. So then I was going to speak in their churches, at their conferences. So I'm traveling, I'm speaking. And then my professional career really explodes in New York in a way that it had not in Georgia.
- [33:27]
A
So you're incredibly successful. I mean, here's like, I'm going to write. And then you become a very well known writer. You have this seismic shift that happens to you, quite messy. And all of a sudden you become an even bigger writer, a bigger success through the mess.
- [33:44]
B
Yeah.
- [33:45]
A
What's your takeaway from that?
- [33:47]
B
You know, I think that there's always light in the darkness and you have to look for it. And so this was like what would be a darker time. I mean, you lose everything, you know, nobody. You're trying to make your way in the world. And yet relationally, professionally, there are things that I see in hindsight, a pattern of provision where the universe was making a way and there were opportunities that showed up at just the right moment. Rather than wake up and dwell on the ocean of sadness that I was also living in, I would wake up and say, I can't do anything about the sadness I feel. But what I can do today is I can reckon with the possibility that exists and I can step into that. And so I would notice these little things that had big possibilities and I would put all of my effort and my attention on those things so that the goodness would come forward. And that's what gave me, I think, year over year over year, gave me the strength and the courage to keep going.
- [34:56]
A
There's so many people going through struggle either because it's a tough job market to enter in, or because they're pivoting or they're in their third chapter and there's just so much unknown. Or give me an example of one of those things that is a good lesson for someone or just a tip, right? For somebody going through that struggle, trying to get to the Other side.
- [35:17]
B
Every spiritual tradition has a place for breath. My life could be falling apart right now, but I have my breath. I'm here when I could be not.
- [35:33]
A
What does breath mean? Like me breathing?
- [35:35]
B
Breath. Your breath. You know, in the Christian tradition, the Hebrew word is ruach, which means breath. It also means wind. It also means spirit. We have life, we have breath. We have a moment, we have possibility, we have opportunity, because we are here instead of not here. And that is a gift. So anyone who says, like, man, I have all these terrible things that are happening, first of all, you don't bright side. A person like that, you go, that's really horrible. And I'm sorry, but if somebody is wondering, then where do I begin to look for those? The light in the crack. The first is you can look in your own breath. You can sit and say, I am here. And it's better than the alternative. So that's not going to help you get a job, but it will perhaps keep you from falling into the pit of despair.
- [36:26]
A
You're definitely a preacher. So you've chosen recently to join a corporate entity.
- [36:31]
B
I did. I went the opposite of what everybody else does, Right. You're on your own. You're making your way, and you decide to go corporate.
- [36:37]
A
We're like, hey, I'm gonna go become a VP at Simon and Schuster. Yeah. What made you make that decision?
- [36:43]
B
Well, I'll tell you the real story, which is.
- [36:46]
A
As opposed to the fake story.
- [36:47]
B
Well, I would. I would tell you the resume version.
- [36:50]
A
No, I'll take the messy real version.
- [36:52]
B
Because this is the messy version. So I developed, actually, when I was living here in Chelsea, I had started this practice. I read the Artist Way, and I was doing morning pages. And then she had written another book about guidance where you can dialogue with your higher power. So I've started doing this morning prayer practice. And in it, I began to realize what I wanted was security.
- [37:18]
A
I say health insurance.
- [37:20]
B
Health insurance is a big part of security. I had spent. I think one of my core traumas growing up was I didn't feel secure. I. It felt like everything was precarious. And then I chose this career where you're always kind of building the road so you don't fall off the cliff. And that was really irritating under the surface. It was giving me anxiety in ways I was just beginning to reckon with. And so in this prayer time, I say, I want security in my professional life. Well, at the time, one of the things I was doing to make money was I was a literary agent, and I had and Literary agents. If people don't know you represent authors, you sell books to publishers, and you take a commission. So I had sold a book by a woman named Bethany Joy Lynz, who was a celebrity, and her book was called Dinner for Vampires. Life on a cult TV show while also in an actual cult. And I sold it to Simon and Schuster, to an editor there named Sean Manning, and it became a massive book, a big bestseller. And in the process, Sean was promoted to publisher. We go out to dinner and me and Bethany Joylands and Sean, to celebrate the book, she gets up and goes to the bathroom. And he turns to me and said, have you ever thought about working in house? And I said, no, I've never thought about that. I have a great life. It's free. I make good money. And he said, well, I have a job, and I can't shake the fact that I think you need to come do this. And I, like, laughed it off. I thought, I'm not having this conversation. And then sand in the shoe, I go home, and it's the only thing that I can think about. So I sent him an email and I said, I don't know if this was just a casual comment, but in the off chance that it wasn't, I'd love to know more and more. And he said, no, it wasn't. I've thought this for a long time. I've seen your work. I think you'd be perfect for this job. So I said, what is it? And he said, it's vice president, executive editor role, which is a substantial role. So in publishing, you have the big five, which are the big five publishers that basically they're 80% of the market. HarperCollins, Hachette, Penguin, Random House, Simon and Schuster, and Macmillan. And Simon and Schuster is the. Was the only one of the big five that didn't have anyone overseeing faith, spirituality, religion. And he said, why don't you come and you oversee this category for the flagship imprint? And I'm thinking, this is a historic imprint.
- [40:12]
A
Perfect job for you.
- [40:13]
B
It's like my whole life has come together for this moment. I could curate a list that was capacious and interesting. And I thought, this is not the kind of thing you say no to. So I took it.
- [40:29]
A
You manifested a job?
- [40:31]
B
Some people would say that, I suppose.
- [40:33]
A
Do you feel like an outsider because of your religion or anything else now that you show up at a corporate job?
- [40:39]
B
That's a great question. And I will say yes and no. No in the sense that I feel like I'm a part of my team. I feel supported by my boss. I feel like I have the resources I need to establish Simon and Schuster as an industry leader in this category. I feel very confident about that. I think sometimes people can feel like religion is a little fringy or maybe it's just. It's hard to even comprehend for secular New Yorkers. And so I sit on an editorial board. This is the way that books get made. We meet once a week and it is all of our editorial team, plus marketing and publicity and sales people weighing in from different perspectives. And I present a title that I would like to make an offer on. And there are times where you can tell people are like, what is he talking about? And why would anyone want to read this book? But what's interesting from a marketplace standpoint is nonfiction is really suffering, except with my category, religious publishers. Last year, year over year in hardcover saw 108% increase year over year. We haven't seen anything like that in the market.
- [41:57]
A
What do you attribute that to?
- [41:59]
B
So after many, many years of people thinking that religion was going the way of the buggy whip, it is. Now there's a resurgence, particularly among Christianity. The latest data from Pew has shown that it's at least leveled off. The decline has leveled off. It seems to be somewhat increasing. There was an article this week that said Gen Z now leads of all demographics in church attendance.
- [42:24]
A
They want community.
- [42:25]
B
Gen Z is going back to church. So that's a big part of it. I think community is a big part of it. I think in a world that feels so uncertain, spirituality at least is a framework, a worldview that helps you kind of orient yourself in the world. So spirituality is a uniquely embodied experience. It's uniquely experiential. And I think that makes it perhaps the most durable category of nonfiction books, at least in our lifetime.
- [42:59]
A
If somebody wants to get into publishing, because now you have a very fancy corporate job, what is the advice you would give them?
- [43:05]
B
I'd ask a very important follow up question, which is what kind of publishing you've got self publishing, which is a very, very low bar. There are lots of places out there you can self publish. They'll put your book on Amazon, which is probably where 80% of a book will sell. Then there's this emergence of something called hybrid publishing. So as publishing has been in this tumultuous period, a lot of people from my industry have left and they formed these hybrid publishing companies and you pay them to publish your book. But you get a publicist, an editor, just like you would at a New York House, you get the same system, which you wouldn't get in self publishing at a paid premium. And these companies have distribution deals with Penguin, Random House or Simon and Schuster, so your book can get ordered by bookstores. That's a valid route, and a lot of people do that. If you want to get into traditional publishing, there's some bad news and then some good news. The bad news is, is that unlike years past where the thing was pros. Can you write? Do you have a good idea? And can you write which still matters, by the way? Platform matters. They want to know, do you have an audience? Do you bring an audience with you? How will people know about you? Have you tested this content on Instagram or on substack or on a podcast? So we want to see some kind of audience, because when we're running our P and L, we know well, we'll convert a certain number of people. You've got, let's say you've got media experience. Can I place you on a TV show? Are you good in a Q and A setting? We're looking at kind of that whole package of what a person brings. And so I would say if you're wanting to publish a book, the first thing to do is probably not sit down and create a manuscript. It's to determine what your core message is and then to put your message in that world in a meaningful way with a lower bar.
- [45:01]
A
Really, it's about marketing 100%.
- [45:05]
B
I think it is 100% about marketing. Marketing and PR. Everybody has to be their own marketer and their own publicist. In addition to being a writer.
- [45:14]
A
Everybody today needs to be a brand. Do you think that's true?
- [45:17]
B
I think that's in almost every industry. I think that's true.
- [45:21]
A
And how much does it matter for you to be an authentic brand coming full circle in our conversation?
- [45:25]
B
Well, I think it matters. It matters in an internal and an external way. It matters for your own sanity. It matters for your own health. And I think when you live in alignment, I think the universe honors that. But I would say, in addition, people have, like, you know, bullshit sniffers. There's so much content out there, you can tell when a person is just telling consumers what they think consumers want to hear. Doesn't mean that you can't still grow a platform. We all know there are platforms out there where you. That person is full of it. And yet they're good enough. They're good enough at the tricks. But I think what people really, really crave is authenticity and vulnerability.
- [46:10]
A
You know what I'm gonna say to you Messi is in.
- [46:12]
B
Messi is very much in. I trust messy more than I trust put together. Cause who's put together? Nobody is not messy. So if somebody is pretending to be not messy, I know that they've either lost touc themselves or they're a liar.
- [46:30]
A
I'm going to do rapid fire.
- [46:32]
B
Okay.
- [46:33]
A
A career myth that you think is a waste of time.
- [46:35]
B
That you have to have a college degree to get a good job.
- [46:39]
A
Something you did that you would never do again.
- [46:41]
B
I would never sign a multi book contract. People make these commitments to deliver on an untitled book. And then you end up. I lived in pressure trying to fulfill a contract for a book that I didn't know what it was going to be. They didn't know what it was going to be. I think we made make very small commitments. Remembering that life is dynamic.
- [47:03]
A
Something you tell your younger self it's gonna be okay. Something you would tell yourself to do before you're 35.
- [47:10]
B
Fall in love.
- [47:12]
A
How do you pick yourself back up?
- [47:14]
B
Now there was a Catholic priest that talked about this process. And I do this as well. I start with solitude, my innermost self. And with God. I do that early in the morning. Sometimes it could go an hour or more. And then I moved from solitude to community. I grew up. I loved Fred Rogers. Mr. Rogers.
- [47:38]
A
Me too.
- [47:39]
B
And imagine being a gay kid. And here's this surrogate father saying, I like you just the way you are. There's nobody in the whole world like you. You've made this day a special day by just your being you. I just return. I preach the gospel of Fred Rogers. I'm okay. You're making today special by just being you.
- [48:01]
A
How messy would you say your messy part was in a scale of 1 to 10?
- [48:08]
B
You know, it feels huge to me. It feels like. Yeah, it feels like. It feels like a 10.
- [48:15]
A
When was the last time you cried.
- [48:17]
B
Other than almost in this interview? I'm a crier. I'm a crier. So I cry every single week. I cry at sad movies. I cried last night talking to a friend. I've cried with you. We might do it again. Depends on what the next question is.
- [48:31]
A
When was the last time you failed at something?
- [48:35]
B
Well, I'm always trying to buy books and not buying books. So that's one. But I'll say the other thing that I have failed at is so far, relationships. But I'm going to get it right soon enough.
- [48:49]
A
We're putting it out into the universe.
- [48:50]
B
We're putting it out.
- [48:51]
A
What was the last mess that led you to success.
- [48:54]
B
I think in some ways, my mind goes back to this job because it is all of the many messes that have led to this moment which you've so deftly traced throughout this conversation. Every single one of those has led me to this moment. It is all of those messy steps that have led me to today. And, you know, that's. I think, something that. That's the power. It's the power of recognizing that the messes of yesterday have led you to the graces of today that allow you to live not with regret, but with gratitude, even for the hard and messy things.
- [49:28]
A
Jonathan, thank you so much for coming on. It was an amazing conversation. I love that you almost cried. It's like bonding. Okay. That's it.
- [49:39]
B
Thank you so much.