2. How We Became Woke Radical Commies…for Jesus

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Tim & April Show - Episode 2: "How We Became Woke Radical Commies…for Jesus"

Host/Author: The New Evangelicals
Release Date: February 25, 2025
Description: Where we unravel faith, politics, and culture.

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1. Introduction and Purpose of the Episode

In this poignant episode, hosts Tim Whitaker and April Ajoy delve deep into their personal journeys from evangelical fundamentalism to embracing progressive Christian beliefs. They aim to provide listeners with an authentic understanding of what propelled them to question and ultimately reject Christian nationalism.

Notable Quote:

Tim Whitaker [02:04]: "Enjoy this episode of me and April's story of how we went from evangelical fundamentalist to radical Marxist commie socialists for Jesus."

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2. Personal Backgrounds and Upbringings

Tim's Journey:

Tim recounts his upbringing in a conservative non-denominational Baptist church in New Jersey, heavily influenced by Calvinist theology. Homeschooled for nine years, he was immersed in a strict environment where modern worship was discouraged, and hymns were considered demonic. His father, a passionate drummer, introduced him to drumming within the church, cementing his deep involvement in Christian ministry.

April's Journey:

April shares her experience growing up in a Pentecostal household in Dallas, Texas, where her father and grandfather were prominent preachers. Immersed in a charismatic church environment, she actively participated in mission trips and worship bands, embracing the vibrant and expressive facets of Pentecostalism. Her early years were marked by a strong emphasis on purity culture and strict gender roles.

Notable Quotes:

Tim Whitaker [14:06]: "I grew up in a very conservative Christian environment... The church I went to, April did not have modern like worship... playing drums in the church."

April Ajoy [22:58]: "I was a pastor's daughter... our church was non-denominational, but my grandfather came from Assemblies of God."

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3. Early Influences and Initial Beliefs

Both hosts were deeply entrenched in their respective Christian traditions, which intertwined theology with politics. Tim was active in organizations like Child Evangelism Fellowship, teaching young children about the gospel using tools like the Wordless Book. April, on the other hand, was involved in large-scale evangelistic efforts, believing strongly in America's Christian foundation and the moral imperatives taught by her church.

Notable Quotes:

Tim Whitaker [17:25]: "I was part of a really beautiful young adult group called 11th Hour... one of the most formative experiences of my life."

April Ajoy [47:02]: "We believe that America was founded as a Christian nation... a well-known name in specific small circles."

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4. Recognizing Cracks in Beliefs

Both Tim and April began noticing inconsistencies between their teachings and real-world events. Tim questioned political narratives when conservative media praised Donald Trump despite witnessing behaviors that starkly contrasted evangelical values. April grappled with personal family revelations and observed hypocrisies within her church, especially concerning views on sexuality and leadership.

Notable Quotes:

Tim Whitaker [08:33]: "Trump has spent 25% of his time in office on the taxpayer dollar, by the way. Golfing."

April Ajoy [33:30]: "I realized how messed up it was when I had said similar things to other people... I just knew I was wrong on other things."

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5. Personal Trauma and Its Role in Deconstruction

Tim's father's battle with cancer and subsequent passing profoundly impacted his faith. He struggled with the realization that prayers for healing went unanswered, challenging his foundational beliefs about God's intervention and predestination.

April faced her own crisis when her brother came out as gay, contradicting the rigid doctrines she was taught. This personal revelation forced her to reconcile her love for her family with the intolerant teachings of her upbringing.

Notable Quotes:

Tim Whitaker [55:25]: "My dad was diagnosed with stage four non-smoker's lung cancer... four months later, he passed... God does not always answer your prayer."

April Ajoy [68:23]: "Six months later, my brother comes out to visit us... 'I've been attracted to the same sex since middle school.'"

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6. The Impact of Donald Trump and Political Shifts

The emergence of Donald Trump as a political figure served as a catalyst for both hosts to question the alignment of their faith with the evolving political landscape. Trump's controversial actions and rhetoric, juxtaposed with the evangelical support he garnered, highlighted a dissonance between proclaimed Christian values and political allegiance.

Notable Quotes:

Tim Whitaker [61:53]: "The moment that Trump gets nominated... his actions were a no-brainer... people started supporting him despite his immorality."

April Ajoy [83:26]: "I was being demonized because I didn't vote for the most antichrist candidate I've ever seen."

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7. COVID-19 Pandemic and Further Realizations

The COVID-19 pandemic intensified skepticism towards established evangelical leaders and their responses. Tim observed the shift to online worship, viewing it as unnecessary and conflicting with biblical teachings about the true essence of the church. April witnessed the demonization of protective measures like mask-wearing, challenging the notion of Christian responsibility towards neighborly love.

Notable Quotes:

Tim Whitaker [72:46]: "I was thinking, 'If Jesus says love your neighbor, why is it tyranny to wear a mask?'"

April Ajoy [87:32]: "I saw firsthand how low my spouse got when they couldn't be themselves... Beecher came out as non-binary."

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8. The January 6th Insurrection and Its Aftermath

The January 6th Capitol insurrection was a pivotal moment for both hosts. Witnessing Christians storming the Capitol, waving Christian flags, and praying for their actions to be justified shattered their perception of Christian involvement in politics. This event underscored the dangers of conflating faith with extremist political ideologies.

Notable Quotes:

Tim Whitaker [81:37]: "I saw a Christian flag, the same one I pledged allegiance to as a child, being paraded around the Senate chambers as a sign of conquest."

April Ajoy [91:16]: "I saw those Jesus flags out there... I realized I had been a Christian nationalist too."

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9. Founding the New Evangelicals

In response to the cumulative disillusionment with Christian nationalism, Tim and April founded "The New Evangelicals." Their mission is to expose and resist the intertwining of evangelical faith with extremist political agendas. They aim to foster a community that aligns more closely with the true teachings of Jesus, emphasizing love, inclusivity, and social justice.

Notable Quotes:

Tim Whitaker [103:03]: "The White evangelical Christian nationalism that you see is taking over our country. That's what radicalized us."

April Ajoy [103:58]: "Christian nationalism does not follow the teachings of Jesus... We're going to resist Christian nationalism."

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10. Call to Action and Conclusion

Tim and April urge listeners to support their movement by subscribing, liking, and sharing their content. They emphasize the importance of standing against Christian nationalism to preserve both democracy and the authentic Christian faith.

Notable Quote:

Tim Whitaker [104:23]: "They radicalize us to be this way. Now we're going to fight back."

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Conclusion:

Episode 2 of The Tim & April Show offers an intimate exploration of two individuals' departures from deeply rooted evangelical beliefs. Through personal anecdotes, critical reflections, and a passionate condemnation of Christian nationalism, Tim Whitaker and April Ajoy illuminate the challenges and necessities of redefining faith in a complex political landscape. Their journey underscores the importance of authenticity, love, and resilience in the pursuit of a faith that aligns with the true essence of Jesus' teachings.

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How to Listen:

For those interested in hearing the full conversation, the episode is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other major podcast platforms. Engage with Tim and April by subscribing to their channel and joining their live discussions every Monday and Thursday.

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Note: This summary is based on the transcript provided and aims to encapsulate the essence of the podcast episode for those who have not listened to it.

Transcript

[Tim Whitaker]

This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. It's tax season, and we're all a bit tired of numbers, but here's one you need to $16.5 billion. That's how much the IRS flagged for possible identity fraud last year. Now, here's a good number. 100 million. That's how many data points Lifelock monitors every second. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it, guaranteed. Save up to 40% your first [e-mail]. podcast terms apply. Hi, April.

[April Ajoy]

Hi. That was long.

[Tim Whitaker]

I know. We. We recorded a long episode. Again, we always do this.

[April Ajoy]

I know. That's what. That's why when you were saying, like, we need to do this segment and this segment earlier, I was like, with.

[Tim Whitaker]

What time it is what it is. It is what it is. Friends, this is a special intro just from the podcast people. Hello. Okay. No one else sees this. I know, and I appreciate all of you who have already subbed to the channel. It means the world. This episode's kind of an anomaly. We. We just shared our stories. We want all of you to know what got us to do this work in the first place. So that's what this is. That being said, in the spirit of full transparency, we are still figuring out exactly what to do with the podcast because we go live on YouTube on Mondays and Thursdays, which, by the way, I love doing, but we don't want you guys to feel like we're not talking to you, that we're talking to someone else. So we're trying to figure out what's. You know, podcast people are often different than YouTube people. So I would love to know, if you're out there listening on the podcast, what kind of format do you like most? I mean, do you want to hear the episode kind of chopped up into different segments on, like, a Tuesday, Wednesday thing? Do you want just one long. Here's the full, unedited version of what we talked about on the Live now on podcast. That would be helpful. I mean, April, I'm not sure if you want to add to that, but that's what I think I want to know from the podcast community.

[April Ajoy]

Yeah. I don't know.

[Tim Whitaker]

You're so spent. We just recorded for two hours.

[April Ajoy]

Talking for two hours.

[Tim Whitaker]

You're right.

[April Ajoy]

I'm like, okay, for real humans, this is just real on authentic.

[Tim Whitaker]

Just real.

[April Ajoy]

I don't like. I gotta get my kids in 15 minutes.

[Tim Whitaker]

Dim.

[April Ajoy]

Hurry up.

[Tim Whitaker]

I get it. I get it. So, anyway, friends, enjoy this episode again. Let me know what you think. You can email us info athenuevangelicals.com podcast@the new evangelicals.com shoot us an email, give us your feedback. We are working on making this just as good for podcasts as it is for YouTube. Appreciate all of you. Enjoy this episode of me and April's story of how we went from evangelical fundamentalist to radical Marxist commie socialists for Jesus. You're good at these jingles.

[April Ajoy]

I know. I'm spent. I'm delirious now.

[Tim Whitaker]

All right, goodbye.

[April Ajoy]

You're listening to a new evangelicals production, the Tim and April show, where we unravel faith, politics and culture.

[Tim Whitaker]

Okay, we're live. Hi, everyone.

[April Ajoy]

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Tim and April Show.

[Tim Whitaker]

Here it is. Hello, good to see you. We are live, our second ever and honestly, this is our first full live stream on the new channel. So welcome in friends. Hello. Good to be with you. I am Tim Whitaker, joined here with April Ajoy. We are the hosts of the Tim and April show, helping you decode Christian nationalism in the wild. And wow, what a time to be alive, April. Because Christian nationalism is all over the place right now, especially in politics. So we really time this one up.

[April Ajoy]

Yeah, you know, I growing up a woman in the church, I was always taught I need to be Esther for my such a time as this. And I feel like Christian nationalism just everywhere. I'm like, well, my such a time as this is here. I've been prepared and trained for this moment.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yes, yes. You really have to be that bold, bold Esther, to resist the king of tyranny. Friends, it is good to be with you. Couple quick housekeeping things. First off, if you're new to the channel, please make sure to subscribe. This is a very new channel powered by the new evangelicals. And we're really trying to launch this thing as widely as we can because we know there are many people out there really with similar stories to April and I and we're trying to find a better path forward right in our faith and trying to understand what's going on and also not be gaslit by the fire hose of propaganda that is being aimed at us 24 7. So please make sure to sub to the channel and like this video, especially if you're watching right now likes help YouTube know. Oh, more people want to see this. So that would be really awesome. Today will be, I don't know, kind of a unique one off, honestly, because this is a new show, it's attracting a new audience and there might not, there might be people out there watching or listening to this who are not aware of our stories and how we kind of went from being deeply embedded in Christian spaces that were either Christian nationalist adjacent or just straight up Christian nationalists and why we ended up leaving and starting in my case to work as the New Evangelicals in April. In your case, starting your own social media platform that blew up and now you're an author and now you're the co host of this channel. So I think that that's going to be today's kind of major theme. We are working on developing this show. We really plan for this to be a live show. So a lot of what we're doing is trying to plan little bits and segments to kind of help break up the show format. Keeping people just keeping you guys entertained to a degree, but also letting you know that you're not alone in your faith. So we are working on this. So if you have feedback or questions or comments on how we can do a better job, we love to hear it. This is a new format. We've taken what used to be called the recap on the New Evangelicals podcast and we moved it over to this channel because it became so popular. And April and I both said there's a lot more that we could be covering than just a once a week recap. So here we are.

[April Ajoy]

Here we are. Yeah. And I do think one angle that we, that we've both talked about too, is that we don't want it to be. Well, obviously we'll talk about heavy stuff. We don't want it to be so, so heavy because the news already is so heavy that we can bring some sort of humor and levity into it or a wit, a bit of Joy as some may call it, almost our name of the show. A witta Bit of Joy. Yeah.

[Tim Whitaker]

Instead, now it's the tna.

[April Ajoy]

Are we going to make that joke every time?

[Tim Whitaker]

I think we have to. I think we have to. I mean, if you were here on the first stream, we brought up the point that, yes, we're aware of, of the acronym of Tim and April. We're not going to use that acronym anymore at all. But I think it's fun to accept.

[April Ajoy]

As a joke every single episode.

[Tim Whitaker]

A little lol, a little lol. So, yeah, well, do you want to introduce, I think a segment, just a small segment that we're really going to try and do as often as possible. I would say every time we go live, it's good to have this. We want to track. You know, Trump made some promises. In fact, I have this audio of him saying we're going to bring prices way down. Okay. Yeah, we're going to bring prices way down. And also, there's a narrative in Trumpland that Donald J. Trump didn't have to run for President. Trump, he was a wealthy man, but he worked so hard. He cares about America so much. He left his throne at Mar a Lago to be part of the. The working man's resistance. So I figured what we would do is we should track the price of eggs, and we should also track how many days golfing Trump goes while in office. So we have. There's actually a website that. A website that does this. It's called Trump Golf Track, and it tells you how many days in office Trump has been in or how many days Trump has been in the office and then how many days he spent golfing and then also the price of eggs. So let me just ask, because a lot of you who are listening to this on podcast will not know the answer to this. Just take a second and ask yourself, out of 35 days in office, how many days golfing do you think Trump has spent? April, if I didn't show you this number, what would be, like, your honest guess?

[April Ajoy]

Well, knowing how much he golfed the first time, I don't know, I'd probably say four or five.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah.

[April Ajoy]

Like maybe. Yeah.

[Tim Whitaker]

Okay. Trump has spent nine days out of his first 35 days in office golfing, which gives him a percentage of, at this point, 25%. Now, I do anticipate that will go down. I would imagine the longer you're in office, the more it's gonna level out. But as of right now, Trump has spent 25% of his time in office on the taxpayer dollar, by the way. Golfing.

[April Ajoy]

Yeah. Wow. What a guy.

[Tim Whitaker]

Well, could you imagine getting hired at a brand new job, arguably the most important job anywhere in the world, and spending the first 25% of it out there on the golf course.

[April Ajoy]

No, but can I. Honestly, there's a piece of me that would rather him golf every day than actually control what's happening. You know, like, I feel like, like, the more he could spend away from breaking stuff.

[Tim Whitaker]

Right.

[April Ajoy]

I mean, he's. The problem is, is he's already, you know, nominated and put people in places where they are breaking stuff for him. So that's annoying.

[Tim Whitaker]

That's correct. That's correct. Yeah, that's right. Yes. Yes. And again, for those who aren't watching live with us, the price of eggs currently is $8, which is about a 35, 40% hike since he took office. So once again, didn't he say at.

[April Ajoy]

Some point that on day one, he was going to lower the prices of eggs?

[Tim Whitaker]

I think he said this. We're going to bring prices way down. There you go. Bring prices way down. They are in fact, up. They are, in fact up.

[April Ajoy]

Yeah.

[Tim Whitaker]

Way up. And I think, April, what, What, what frustrates me. And this is. This is the line that you and I are always trying to walk, Right? Because we understand that in any society, things are complicated. I understand that even, you know, as Trump takes office, that things happen beyond any one person's control that can drive prices up or down. I understand that. Okay.

[April Ajoy]

Yeah.

[Tim Whitaker]

But we both know that if. If Harris was in the office, this would be the talking point all day from the right. About how high the price of eggs are. And so I just feel like, to be consistent, we need to lay this at the feet of Trump and MAGA and say, here you go. Your guy promised to lower grocery prices, including eggs, on day one. Egg prices are actually through the roof. And I haven't heard Trump really talk about it. I haven't seen an executive order signed about it. And we are dealing with a huge influx in the cost of eggs at this point. To the point to. It's. It's to a level where even in my local diner, me and Sarah, I didn't tell you this, April, Sarah and I go to a diner every Friday. It's like our little breakfast, you know, routine, and we go to the same space. It's really good. Me and her got. We each got one meal and we got a cup of coffee each. How much do you think she got? An egg omelette and I got like, a breakfast skillet. How much money do you think it cost us to eat for two people at this, at this Jersey diner breakfast.

[April Ajoy]

Your meals were probably like, what, 10 bucks each?

[Tim Whitaker]

Okay, so you'd like maybe like 25, 30 bucks total?

[April Ajoy]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tim Whitaker]

It was $50. They raised prices.

[April Ajoy]

Four star restaurant.

[Tim Whitaker]

No, it's a Jersey diner. If anyone knows about Jersey diners, they're not exactly known for being a four star restaurant, which is fine. We love that. Okay, $50 for Sarah and I to eat breakfast. And they said, yep, prices are really high right now. We had to redo our menu and raise the prices. So I'm just saying. I'm just saying. I would love. I would love to see some accountability here, but we're not going to see it now. We're going to see deflection. Oh, it's the bird flu. It's this. It's that. Which, by the way, could all be true, but they don't give the other side that same courtesy. Right. Technically, Joe Biden did lower inflation, like the government lowered inflation throughout Biden's presidency. But prices were still high for a lot of reasons. I get that. Right. And it's a fair point to make. But they laid that at Joe Biden's feet every day for over a year. And now price. The price of eggs are even higher. And they're like, well, guys, he's only. It's only been a month. It's only been a month. Come on.

[April Ajoy]

The way.

[Tim Whitaker]

It's so frustrating.

[April Ajoy]

It is. It is incredibly frustrating. Well, you know what? Anyway, so that's going to be a regular segment. We're going to check the price of eggs and how many times Trump's golfed just on a regular basis just to figure that out. But for today, we were gonna go way back to the beginning when we were wee little lads.

[Tim Whitaker]

Oh, wee little lads. We little lads in our awana outfits.

[April Ajoy]

See, I was not awana. We were Pentecostal. So we did a Royal Rangers and Missionettes. Right. So we've seen a few comments over the last. I don't know, I guess almost a year since we've been doing this because people either are unfamiliar with me or unfamiliar with you. Background as new people. Come on. So we're like, towards the beginning of our new show, we are going to just kind of give our background where we come from, how we landed, where we are, the whole shebang. Do you want to start first? What's your background?

[Tim Whitaker]

I don't know. I mean, it's a Tim and April show now. I'm starting first. I'm going to get roasted in these comments. I can see it now.

[April Ajoy]

Okay, so you want me to go first because you don't want to get roasted.

[Tim Whitaker]

I'm just being silly. I'm just being silly. April.

[April Ajoy]

Yeah.

[Tim Whitaker]

We can kind of start together, I guess. Yeah. So the background of my story is that I grew up in a very conservative Christian environment. I was homeschooled for nine years. I went to a church that was kind of like John MacArthur. Ish. So, you know, John MacArthur is a Calvinist. He believes in what's called TULIP. It's an acronym that stands for, you know, different beliefs about Calvinism, that you're totally depraved, that God's chosen you before the foundations of the world to be saved or not, et cetera, et cetera. And I grew up in that world. I mean, most of my like young adult and early childhood. In fact, my, the church I went to April did not have modern like worship. It was a hymns only church. So as a piano player and hymns and anything else was seen as like demonic and satanic and worldly.

[April Ajoy]

What denomination was that?

[Tim Whitaker]

Well, this was like a non denominational Baptist church that I went, I went to in New Jersey. But that, that was like the, that was totally the vibe that I grew up in. And I, you know, I, that's what you're brought up and that's what you believe. Because you, you know this, when you have people telling you how the world works as a child, you just inherently believe them. I have a 2 and a 4 year old. If I tell my 2 year old, you know, this is a cup or a mug, he doesn't go, is it? He goes mug. He just takes it at face value. So when you have, you know, older adults telling you that you're totally wicked and depraved and that if you don't pray a prayer and become a Christian, you're going to burn in hell forever, that's just the new objective reality of how the world functions. So I grew up that way for most of my life.

[April Ajoy]

So you say you were homeschooled for nine years. Did you go to Christian school or public school? The other April.

[Tim Whitaker]

April. I don't want to brag, but I went to a top tier Christian school and I graduated five. Top five in my class.

[April Ajoy]

How many were in your class?

[Tim Whitaker]

There were six. I was number five. So I grew up that way. And when I was 11, so okay, so short story, a short version of this is when I turned 11, they got a new pastor. And the pastor was like, yo, let's try some modern day praise courses. And this was the real basic stuff, like shout to the Lord, Lord, I lift your name on high. That kind of stuff, right? And my dad was a rock and roller back in the day. So he brings his guitar out and he goes, hey, we need a drummer. But I don't want to like split the church up over drums. What if my 11 year old kid starts playing? Who's gonna get mad at the 11 year old? That's me, I'm the 11 year old in this case.

[April Ajoy]

I'm sure plenty of people did.

[Tim Whitaker]

So, so my dad buys a drum set, a cheapo drum set. It had the word, it had the word radical on the bass drum head. So he duct taped it so no one would be offended. And that's how I started playing drums in the church. I mean, I Became a professional player after a few years. I grew up playing my entire life, but I was really in that world. And of course, you know, this April, even though we were not Pentecostal, Right. We were what were known as cessationists. So speaking in tongues was not biblical. That kind of world was. Yeah. I mean, no offense, but I was taught that people like you were demonic. You were just straight up demonic. You probably worshiped a false God. You. You did not believe the Bible because, you know, the Bible says women should not be able to preach or teach in church. And Pentecostals, well, they believed in women. Women pastors. And that's. That.

[April Ajoy]

That's a big football.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah, big football.

[April Ajoy]

Yeah. Well, if it makes you feel better, we thought Calvinists were stupid.

[Tim Whitaker]

Well, jokes on you, straight up.

[April Ajoy]

Like predestination. What. What's the point? Why do we do anything if we're all just predestined? And it's not. We don't have free will. So dumb.

[Tim Whitaker]

It's funny hearing. It's funny being this far removed from everything and hearing from two different people. How we grew up in the same culture, but on two different sides of it. Right?

[April Ajoy]

Yeah, it's.

[Tim Whitaker]

It's like different sides of the tracks in the town. Like, you're still part of the town, but it's still a very different experience. And it's true. I mean, we. We would pass the Assemblies of God church every morning, and I just knew, like, well, they're. They're charismaniacs. Like, they're crazy. They don't believe the Bible. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, no, no, for real. I believe all that. And then I got involved with, like, you know, just the. From. From there. The funnel. The funnel is wide. That leads you into the culture of. Of evangelical, like, fundamentalism. Right? You can get there from Pentecostalism. You can get there from my John MacArthur cessationist background. And so you kind of discover like. Like. Like this sub world of youth group events and curriculums and books and organizations that are just kind of ready to. To get you on fire for Christ. And I found them pretty early on. One of the biggest ones was a. A missions org called Child Evangelism Fellowship. Huge missions organization aimed at kids. And I got involved with them when I was 14 and was part of that org until, like, maybe. Maybe. Maybe like my early 20s or something, where I would teach kids about the gospel. I would lead them through, like. Like. It's called the Wordless Book. Ever heard of that, April?

[April Ajoy]

The Wordless Book?

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah. Ever hear about that?

[April Ajoy]

No. Maybe. Sounds vaguely familiar.

[Tim Whitaker]

Let me see if I can grab an image.

[April Ajoy]

I don't know. Maybe it was more Baptist.

[Tim Whitaker]

Well, this was like. So the wordless book. It's a book that has no, Obviously no words. It's just colors. And the colors Here. Here we go. Perfect. We'll use this one. The colors all represent something. So here it is. This is called the Worldless book. See how it's green, gold, black, red, white, and gold on the inside? And so each one of these colors represents a different part of the gospel message. Like, the gold part represents that God lives in heaven. And then he came down. And then the black page, now called the dark page, which is good, represents sin. And the white page represents God's purity and holiness. And the red page represents Christ's blood on the cross, et cetera. So I grew up teaching this to kids. Part of what I did was I would teach them this prayer. So I was someone who was really all, all in. I was all in on the church thing, on the Christian thing. Prayed a prayer and, and took in the whole world. And then I found the subculture, like, the hardcore Christian world of, like, bands like Emory. Remember, I'm still drumming at this point. I'm really falling in love with drumming. So I, I, I was really sucked in to this vortex in this world of Christian everything. But it was still, it was watching what the world was doing, and it was making it Christian and safe to be a part of, but it was kind of sterilized, right? So, okay, you can take all the hardcore Christian, or you can take all the hardcore music, just make it Christian and it's okay. So you're kind of gutting it up like, it's rebel, like, lyrics that, you know, the hardcore comes from. But it's Christian now because they're talking about God, so it's okay. That kind of vibe was a huge, huge part of just how I grew up. In my teens, I had a Mohawk. I would skateboard around town. I had a huge shirt that said abortion is homicide on it. I would skate around town being like, yes, you did. I did. I did. On the back, it had three statements. It said, you will not silence my message. You will not mock my God. You will stop killing my generation. That was what this shirt wore. So I was, I was a part of that for my entire life. And maybe I can stop there and catch you up. Now I want to hear your side.

[April Ajoy]

Yeah. Of your childhood. The, like, the, you will not stop killing my generation or whatever that is. Silly in and of itself because probably by the time you're wearing that T shirt, you're no longer the generation that you would be talking about, like abortion wise, like the babies still coming in.

[Tim Whitaker]

Right.

[April Ajoy]

You know?

[Tim Whitaker]

Right, right. Yes.

[April Ajoy]

You just, yes. Just logically it doesn't make sense. Yeah. So hold on. Did you listen to secular music at all?

[Tim Whitaker]

Not really. No. I was really not. I, I, my, my first ever secular CD I bought was the Yellow Cards, Ocean Avenue. And I snuck it into my house. I snuck it into my house.

[April Ajoy]

Yeah, got it. Okay. So unlike you, I did speak in tongues. I spoke in tongues when I was 6 because we were Pentecostal. My dad was a Pentecostal preacher, my grandfather was a Pentecostal preacher. So I grew up going to church where my dad and my grandfather co pastored the church. And it was like a 4,000 member church in Dallas, Texas in the 80s and 90s. And it was really before you had like these giant, I mean large churches existed. But I think the term like mega church wasn't really a thing quite yet where you had all these satellite campuses and stuff. So it was a, it was a pretty good sized church. My dad and my grandfather were both on like Christian TV and Christian radio. I think my grandfather had like a daily radio program. So I grew up very much like preacher's kid. And in certain circles, especially like charismatic circles in Texas, like the Midwest, really in America, like there were certain circles where my family was like a well known name.

[Tim Whitaker]

Okay.

[April Ajoy]

Where my dad and my grandfather, like it was a big deal in very specific small circles, not outside of the circles. No one knew who we were. So we grew up believing that, you know, name it and claim it. As long as you have enough faith, God will answer your prayer. God performs miracles, that there's nothing too big for God. All things are possible. We thought people who didn't speak in tongues, like we knew people who didn't think you could truly be saved unless you spoke in tongues. Yeah, we didn't necessarily believe that, but we did believe that if you did not speak in tongues, you were not experiencing all of God. Like you were just kind of like a lesser Christian.

[Tim Whitaker]

Would you say that you were like part when you were in it, would you call it like the Word of Faith movement or like, like the name it and claim it? Like how did you define what you, what you guys were. Because I was never told, like, oh, you're an evangelical Calvinist. You were just taught you're a biblical Christian. That's the phrase, right? That's the phrasing that we use internally. What did you guys call yourselves?

[April Ajoy]

We mainly just call ourselves Pentecostal. Like, we were. Our church was non denominational, but my grandfather came from. He was ordained Assemblies of God and then left the Assemblies of God because of the politics. Like, we literally had a joke in our household where we said, for all have sinned and fallen short of the Assemblies of God. And having gone to two Assemblies of God colleges, I can confirm that they had extra sins. Like, they just made up, like sin. Like there were just too many rules. It was. It was quite stupid. Yeah. So grew up in that. So my. I was homeschooled too, until middle school when my dad became a pastor. So he was evangelist who traveled. We would travel on a bus around the country and my dad would speak in different churches and then I would sing. We would travel around the world. Our me, my two brothers and my mom would sing before my dad would preach. It was like a family affair. We would do all these missions trips. We would, you know, raise money to, like, start orphanages and give out toys and food and wow. Like, it was my entire life. Like, my entire identity was the church Christianity. Like, I. I became a Christian when I was three when I said the Sinner's Prayer. And like, from that moment on, I was like, I'm going into ministry. I'm going to follow in my dad's footsteps. I'm going to take over his ministry whenever he retires or passes one day. So it was just like, I was all in as well. It's interesting though, because in high school, I joined my senior year. Our worship band and youth group was actually like a rock worship band. And our worship leader was also the main worship pastor, but he wrote a lot of original songs and all of a lot of his worship songs had screamo parts in it. And so I joined and so we had like a screamo worship band that we would. We'd sometimes travel and do worship nights. And it was actually a lot of fun. And I also loved Emory and got into my own little rock phase as well. But I listened to more secular music than you.

[Tim Whitaker]

I have to give you guys credit, though, the Pentecostals, you guys were always cutting edge on the music side. Like. Like what. What led me to go from my more Calvinist theology to more of a charismatic bent was the. The youth group band I found down the street that was like, we need a drummer and we're playing all the cool, fun stuff. That was my gateway into. They have lights and they're Playing Hillsong, all the cutting edge stuff. So props to you on that because you. You guys were always ahead of the curve when it came to that stuff.

[April Ajoy]

Did you listen to Carmen growing up?

[Tim Whitaker]

I listened to Point of Grace for him. I did Twilight, Paris, Avalon, you know, that was those.

[April Ajoy]

Carmen.

[Tim Whitaker]

I mean, I'm sure I did, but it wasn't. He wasn't like, in, like, my. My parents rotation. And then when I kind of got older, I found, you know, this OC Supertones 5 Iron Frenzy DC talk. Right. The more edgy Emory. It kind of led me down that path long term.

[April Ajoy]

Okay, well, Carmen was rad back in the day. He was like the gateway drug to, I guess, rhythm for some white people.

[Tim Whitaker]

No, I get that. I get that.

[April Ajoy]

He was such a performer. Anyway, it doesn't matter. We're not here to talk about Carmen, which he's passed, by the way. And unfortunately, he was a trumper. Yeah, before he passed, big time. I mean, who. Who wasn't in that world, I guess, at this point. Right.

[Tim Whitaker]

So. So you were all in. I mean, you. You believed. You. You were eating up the theology, the beliefs about, you know, name it and claim it and that, you know, God's on our side, et cetera. What was it super political for you? Because, honestly, looking back on my, I don't know, childhood slash, like adolescence, it wasn't crazy political. The most political it got for me was like, march for life. You know, we want to see abortion stop in America. But it wasn't like, oh, my God, the Democrats are coming for us. Like, there was definitely this talk of, like, the world and secular and don't send your kids to non Christian colleges. Like, that was in the air I breathe. But it wasn't super political from the pulpit, but was it for you?

[April Ajoy]

Yes. Okay. Yeah. But I would say initially, like, when I was a child, it wasn't really that political. Like, it was more about where we are trying to save souls and spread the gospel and, you know, help people was more the goal. But there were definitely political undertones. Like, and my dad, like, I was very close with my dad, and so he. I asked him a lot of questions and he would kind of explain. Explain the world to me. And I do remember when I was 10, when Bill Clinton had his scandal, my parents had the news on, and he, you know, when he says, I did not have sexual relations with that woman, I remember my dad, I was like, what's happening? You know, I didn't fully understand. And my dad had said, well, he cheated on his wife. Like, he tried to, like, give it. You know, basically, he was like, he lied to his wife, and if he would lie to his wife, how much more would he do to the American people? That's bad. So of course he's lying to us. And I remember, like, drilled into my head was like, he's a Democrat and Democrats are bad because they're not holding him accountable where Republicans are Christians and they're good, and they are trying to hold him accountable and want to impeach him because morals matter and character matters in a president. And that was drilled in my head from a kid.

[Tim Whitaker]

Okay, you just unlocked something. You unlocked a core memory inside of me, actually. But before we do that, let me just say, if you're welcome, if you're watching this stream for the first time, you just hopped in. Welcome. Please make sure to give this video a like and sub to the channel. We do this every Monday, every Thursday. Today is a unique episode because we're sharing our stories of kind of what got us to this point. Someone asked, how did. How did you and I meet, April? We will answer that in a few minutes. We will get there, I promise. So the memory that this unlocked for me was that I look back now and think about exactly what you said. First off, I grew up on talk radio, so I listened to Rush Limbaugh consistently, Sean Hannity consistently. I remember that thing with Bill Clinton and my dad and my parents being like, oh, my God, I can't believe that he did this. Which, by the way, to their point, they're right. I mean, you could even argue it was sexual assault, right? Like, Monica Lewinsky was, like, in her early 20s. How can you consent when. When the world's most powerful man, you know, does that? Right? So I. I'm. I'm not excusing that at all. I agree. I would never vote for Bill Clinton, you know, if he was ever running for president again or something. And also I remember in my church, if someone got divorced or if, like, someone. Someone's marriage was, like, on the fritz, it was a death sentence to that person. Like, they got judged hard because you don't divorce, you don't cheat on your spouse. Like, you stick through that marriage at all costs. So even though it's funny, we grew up again in different spaces in this evangelical world. There were definitely some through lines and sexual immorality, AKA divorce, or cheating on your wife, or, God forbid, a girl gets pregnant out of wedlock at. Wedlock at the church, which happens several times. Oh, my goodness, like, the end of the World. Right. Because sex is sacred, and we don't want to violate that. So I grew up. I grew up in a very similar position that you did as well. 100% well.

[April Ajoy]

And also the 90s and, like, 2000s were peak purity culture world. And I grew. I grew up. Like, I had. I came of age at the height of purity culture. And it's interesting because I think because I was a pastor's daughter, I got, like, I was kind of in the room or at the dinner table when we'd go out to eat after church, hearing what the adults were saying. So it was less of what was directly taught to me and more of just, like, what I picked up. Being a kid.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah.

[April Ajoy]

In that world. And, like, I. I remember, too, like, ingrained from that same story were people blaming Hillary for what Bill Clinton did, where there was like, well, if she just. She never put out, like, I. I was able to put piece things together as a kid where I was like, oh, the wife has to satisfy her husband all the time, because that's a need, and that's what the wife is supposed to do. And, like. Like, I grew up, and my dad, too. I mean, I was very close to my dad, and I think if he were still alive now and we had this talk, I think he'd feel bad about this, but he would brag about my virginity from the pulpit, like, probably starting from when I was, like, 13, because I. I mean, and at the time, I was, like, proud of it because I. Like, I was vowing to do that.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yep.

[April Ajoy]

But then, like, in hindsight, I was like, why are we talking? Like, why? I was a kid. That's weird.

[Tim Whitaker]

You were a kid.

[April Ajoy]

But it was. But it was totally normal in that world where, like. And, like, everyone else was. Would come up to me, like, we're so proud of you. Which is interesting because, like, my brothers were making the same vow, but no one ever, like, made over them for making that vow. It was like, oh, April, so great. Like, you're gonna inspire so many young women to stay pure and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, like, how many purity pledge cards I signed and I had a purity ring for that I asked for. I mean, to be fair, like, I bought it, like, hook, line, and sinker. Like, I was in. And like. Like, in my head, I remember, like, we would play these games of, like, oh, my gosh, what if you got pregnant? Which I couldn't have got pregnant because I wasn't having sex. But literally, in my head, I thought, like, oh, my gosh, if I Ever did. For how, however that would happen, I think I would secretly go have an abortion and just live with the shame of knowing I murdered my baby because I knew that's what it was. Than have to ever admit that I had sex before marriage. Because I really felt like if I ever like my dad, this is how I felt based on growing up in that world. But I felt like my dad would rather hear me confess that I had killed someone than confess that I had had sex before marriage.

[Tim Whitaker]

Right. That's how much pressure right. Is in that space. Because you're right. And it was different on the guy side of that. It was different. It wasn't the same thing, but it was still a lot of pressure. The pressure was you're going to become a sex monster, and you have to hold it in metaphorically and literally until you get married. And when you do, you will be so satisfied. Like, we were just taught that we're just waiting for the sex buffet when we get married to someone. Right? And, like, it was our job as men to war against the flesh and to fight the battle internally and to, like, never acknowledge that, like, feelings that you have are normal or just typical biological teenager stuff. Right? So in my head, every day, it was like a war against, like, whatever I thought lust was. If I saw a body part for too long, I was like, oh, my God, I can't believe it. Or, you know, whatever it was, it was like a consistent shame game of, like, I, you know, my body is inherently, like, problematic because I have these desires, and the only way to fix them is if I war against them all the time. I literally created in my head, you know, in Lord of the Rings, like, that. That cave troll in the first one, right. I literally envisioned lust as that cave troll. And it was my job to defeat the cave troll every time I was tempted. And if I defeated it, I was doing the manly thing. And if I. If I fell into it, then the thing beat me and I. I beat myself up for it. In fact, this created such an anxiety complex inside of me because I'm also on the Enneagram. I'm a type 6, so I'm already kind of just predispositions towards anxiety. But I. I was so worked up that When I was 17, I had my first kiss with my girlfriend. And I was so worked up. No lie, I threw up afterwards. Like, I. I had to. I threw up into the bushes because I was so anxious that, like, I went too far or that, like, something bad's going to happen or that this is Wrong or inappropriate. So it's interesting because, yes, I signed the purity pledges as well. And I did all of that stuff. And for me, I. I wasn't paraded around as like, you know, the virtue of purity. That wasn't. That wasn't what I had to deal with. I was dealing with the fact that anything I thought about was automatically, like, totally depraved and horrible. And how could you think about this stuff and war against your flesh 24, 7, 365. Like, that was what I was taught to do. And I was promised that once I get married, all of that will just go away because I'll be able to have sex whenever I want, and I'll always be in the mood to have sex whenever I want. And my partner will be a willing participant whenever I want and I'll have no more problems. It will just solve it for me. So that, that was the sex talk I was, I was given.

[April Ajoy]

Oh yeah. I mean, similar. I. I didn't have the exact same metaphor in my mind, but basically in your metaphor, I would have viewed myself as the cave troll, as like this constant temptation for men that I had to like, try to not be that. Like, I remember being in Texas and wearing sweaters over my summer dresses so that my shoulders weren't like, basically having a heat stroke before I caused a. A man to lust after me. And also just like, like all these people today, like conservatives who talk about how, you know, the left sexualizes children or drag shows, sexualized children, which is like, it's just such projection because I remember being a child and this didn't come from my parents, but just from. From Sunday school, from kids, church, from youth group that was. That were telling little girls, you need to cover up your shoulders and dress modestly or men will lust after you. And I, like, I. It wasn't until I was adult, looking back, where I realized how problematic that was that I. That the church actually sexualized little girls because men can't control themselves. But they put that burden on the women and the. And literally children.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah. Yeah. This is going to be a huge theme. The reason why we're kind of parking here is because it plays a big role in what led us to go. Wait, something doesn't make sense before we continue because I think it's time to get kind of to like the turn of when we started realizing maybe it's not correct. Let's take a short break. We'll come back and we'll get into it. Hang tight.

[April Ajoy]

What makes a great pair of glasses at Warby Parker. It's all the invisible extras without the extra cost. Their designer quality frames start at $95, including prescription lenses plus scratch resistant, smudge resistant and anti reflective coatings and UV protection and free adjustments for life. To find your next pair of glasses, sunglasses or contact lenses, or to find the Warby Parker store nearest you, head over to warbyparker.com that's warbyparker.com hi, my name is Leanne. I live in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I'm 65 years old, and both my husband and I grew up in a fairly conservative evangelical church. But about 20 years ago, we began to question some of the teachings in that church and we embarked on our own process of deconstruction and reconstruction, although it didn't have a name at the time. And we have recently started attending a wonderful church that is full affirming and fully inclusive of our LGBTQ siblings in Christ. And we absolutely love it. It's the best faith experience of our lives. And I so appreciate Tim and the new evangelicals team. I so appreciate the online resource. And I have become a donor because I believe so strongly in the really important work they're doing and I would encourage anyone listening to consider doing the same. Thank you.

[Tim Whitaker]

All right, we're back.

[April Ajoy]

Welcome back.

[Tim Whitaker]

Welcome back. Welcome back. If you're just joining the stream or maybe you're listening to this later on, please make sure to give this video a like welcome back to the Tim and April show and subscribe to the channel. So we're sharing our story of kind of how we went from growing up in this world of evangelical Christianity that led us on the path to Christian nationalism. And then we went. When we decided to take a detour and say, actually something is way wrong. So one piece of my puzzle, April, that I want to kind of fill in here and then we'll kind of get to what caused us both to go. Something isn't right. I took a long term, I guess, maybe midterm, short missions trip overseas. I was in Germany, Finland, and Belgium for a month in each country. And one of the things that we did in Belgium was we worked. We worked with a church that met in small groups around the cities of Brussels. The city of Brussels. And I will say in the beginning, I was really sus because I was still pretty conservative. I was still pretty Calvinist. And this church met in bars, bars around the city of Brussels. And I told my buddy who I was with, I said, dude, like, there's alcohol in bars. I don't Think this doesn't feel very biblical to me. You know, this doesn't feel like, like a biblical church model. But I was, I had to go. I mean, I'm not going back home, right? So I went. And one of the people that we stayed with, they gave me a book called Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola. And honestly, this book is still very impactful to me today. Frank's thesis is that most of our, most of our, like, church systems and structures and rituals come from pagan culture. Like a stage and an audience. That's a pagan thing, not. Not a New Testament thing or a paid clergy member is a pagan thing, not a New Testament Testament thing. So keep in mind too, and I'm sure you're. You felt maybe the same way. I was very much radicalized, right? To be like this all in Jesus person. I wanted the true faith, I wanted the true gospel. I wanted to be super biblical. And so when I got this book and I was like, wait, what? Like, most of like the mega church structures that I've been a part of are like, pagan in nature. It really set me on this course of being very critical of my own faith tradition. Now, this was way before tne or before Trump came on the scene, but there was a part of me that was kind of, maybe we can say like, like the seeds were planted, right? Because I was starting to have a few questions. I was like, well, did God really predestined everyone before the foundations of the earth to either go to heaven or burn in hell forever? And they have, like, no choice but to pick one. And also because I was drumming in a more charismatic space, and I'm realizing that they interpret the Bible differently, I was starting to be like, well, wait a second. I thought the Bible was super clear. I thought that, like, these verses only had one interpretation to them. So there were like little cracks in my foundation that were forming. I'll. I'll never forget Rob Bell. I'm sure you remember Rob Bell. He wrote all these different books, right? Yeah. And one of them was called Love Wins. And in, in one chapter of that book, he just questioned if maybe God's love reaches people, even those who are in hell. And there was a huge backlash from evangelicalism, right? I mean, John Piper's tweeting at him, Francis Chan, and at Time Press and Sprinkle, they write a book trying to answer this. And so I started realizing, like, well, I was getting curious and I wanted to know, is this the only way to view these things? At that time, I was still very much in the basement of Christianity. So all resources were pointing me back towards the answers that evangelical fundamentalism gave me. But I was starting to realize that there were some cracks in the foundation and theologically, for sure. But also I started realizing that the church is really aimed at the culture and judging culture, including gay people. Now, to be clear, I grew up and was not affirming for most of my life that changed more recently out of the grand scheme of things. But I started realizing, like, wait a second. You know, in 1 Corinthians 5, the apostle Paul tells the church, don't judge those outside the world. I'm sorry, don't judge those in the world. Judge those inside of the church. And he says, what business is it of mine to judge those who are, quote, unquote, sexually immoral outside the church? That's not your job. So even back then, as a conservative Christian, I started realizing, like, wait, why are we always talking about the threat of gay people? Why are we always talking about people outside the church when the responsibility from Christians was to hold those inside the church accountable? So even way back then, there were certain cracks in the dam, so to speak, that were starting to form. And that was the beginning of me wondering if the steps that I saw in that basement led somewhere other than what I was told, which was a desert wasteland of atheism and secularism.

[April Ajoy]

How old were you when that happened?

[Tim Whitaker]

Like, I would say, like. Like, 18 through, like, 22, because I was. I was also part of a really beautiful young adult group called 11th hour. It was not part of a church. We formed it ourselves. We were a bunch of radicals who just wanted to love each other as best as possible and explore theology. So we were very committed to this. And it was, to this day, one of the most formative experiences of my life when it came to community and loving people. Well, so I was kind of in a unique space where I was with these people who were thinking about these things as the same way I was, but were also very much committed to, you know, the authority of the Bible and to taking the gospel seriously. But we started realizing these cracks maybe in, like, my early young, you know, young adult years into, like, my mid-20s.

[April Ajoy]

Yeah. Okay. So I think. I think one of a common theme, like, when people start to deconstruct is that it happens for most, a lot of us, very slowly over years. It's not a. It's usually not like an overnight thing, which was the case for me as well. And I think, you know, because there is a lot of cognitive dissonance within this ideology already, there's always little things that happen along the way that you are taught to just kind of dismiss. Well, this doesn't make sense, but I'm not supposed to doubt it. So I'm just not going to think about it. There's like some disassociation going on. So there were a lot of little things like that that happened for me too. I definitely after 911 we got way more political and we. And also a lot of overseas churches stopped having meetings as much and stopped having what we called crusades.

[Tim Whitaker]

Oh, you call them crusades?

[April Ajoy]

Oh, like Billy Graham crusades.

[Tim Whitaker]

Oh no, you're right, you're right.

[April Ajoy]

They were called crusades. When you would go and rent out a stadium in another country and do worship services. That's what they were called.

[Tim Whitaker]

Never put that together, but you're totally right. Oh my goodness.

[April Ajoy]

I know, I know, it's wild. But after 911 they stopped happening as often. And so then we started focusing more on America. And my dad wrote a book in the early 2000s called America say Jesus on the front cover. He had a prophetic warning that said unless America defines her God, which is Jesus Christ, that God will lift the veil of protection on our nation and America will experience bloodshed like never before. And that was kind of in response to George W. Having Muslims pray sometime and kind of trying to, you know, where George Bush did a lot wrong, but he was trying to include, you know, more interfaith stuff, which ecumenical. Yeah, which really pissed off a lot of the conservative Christians around me, including myself. And so we believe that America was founded as a Christian nation.

[Tim Whitaker]

Right.

[April Ajoy]

And that God had supernaturally blessed America through all of our wars and through everything that we ever did. And I was also taught a very whitewashed version of American history, that what we did to indigenous people was actually really good because they, they had Jesus now. And you know, like, very like Christopher Columbus was a good Christian missionary. Very twisted ways of, of thinking, but it's how I grew up. So it was just what I knew. Also homeschooled for a time.

[Tim Whitaker]

I was.

[April Ajoy]

Yeah, yeah. And so when I was in high school, we did an America say Jesus caravan for a couple months in a 40 foot bus that had America saved Jesus written all over it. And we drove it from South Florida all the way to California, up and down the Las Vegas Strip, stopped in Branson to be on the Jim Baker show, went up to D.C. it was a whole thing. And if you saw the ad earlier, that was me singing my own original song that I Also wrote to go along with my dad's book called America say Jesus. So I was all in. And we believed that things like abortion and gay marriage and all of these things that we considered sin were leading to things like Hurricane Katrina or 911 or things like. And we were never ones that said it out loud, but we were just. We kind of believed that the reason bad things were happening to America was because America was not as Christian, and we had gone down this moral decline. And the only way to get back in God's really good graces was to elect Christians, aka Republicans. So in high school, I made a MySpace group called I'm a Christian, therefore I'm a Republican. I got very into politics. I joined debate. Like, debate class, debate club. Like, I debated people on the Republican side, but very Christian nationalist. But the funny thing is, is I would have never called myself a Christian nationalist.

[Tim Whitaker]

Right.

[April Ajoy]

I thought I was just being a good Christian, standing up for biblical values, willing to die for my faith. And because Christians in America were persecuted. Like, I fully believed that Christians were persecuted despite having never been persecuted.

[Tim Whitaker]

April, before you go forward, why don't I do this? Why don't I give you the five statements that PRRI uses to measure how much someone believes in Christian nationalism. That will also give people some kind of framework for this. And let's see how much young April would agree with this.

[April Ajoy]

Okay.

[Tim Whitaker]

All right. Let's see how. How Christian nationalist you are. Point 1. The US government should declare America as a Christian nation. Do you completely disagree? Mostly disagree. Na. Not applicable. Mostly agree or completely agree with that? Past April.

[April Ajoy]

Past April would have said Christianity should definitely be our nation's religion. Like, main religion. Just like English should be our main language. But I would have said other religions could be allowed.

[Tim Whitaker]

Okay, so we'll.

[April Ajoy]

We'll go like, but not. Not the official.

[Tim Whitaker]

Right? Right. Like. Like 90% agree. We can declare America a Christian nation, but allow other people to worship how they see fit.

[April Ajoy]

Yeah.

[Tim Whitaker]

Okay. Number two, U.S. laws should be based on Christian values.

[April Ajoy]

Correct? I would have said absolutely, completely agree.

[Tim Whitaker]

All right.

[April Ajoy]

I believe there is, like, no morality outside of God. Like, you could not be good outside of Christianity.

[Tim Whitaker]

Oh, well, of course. I mean, that's why you had the evangelical apologetics industry, right? You had Ravi Zacharias and all these people trying to tell you how the Christian God that they worship is the only way you can get real morality. For sure. Okay. Point three. If the US Moves away from our Christian foundations, we will not have a country anymore.

[April Ajoy]

Yes.

[Tim Whitaker]

America saved us, baby.

[April Ajoy]

100%.

[Tim Whitaker]

Okay. Completely agree. Point four. Being Christian is an important part of being truly American.

[April Ajoy]

Yeah. I would have said, yes.

[Tim Whitaker]

God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.

[April Ajoy]

Yeah.

[Tim Whitaker]

All right. Well, congratulations. Yeah. I mean, you would have been. Yeah. You were a Christian nationalist 100. And I think for me, I would be probably past him. Would probably be somewhere along the. Like. I mostly agree, but with some caveats to some of this stuff. Like, I don't know if me at 21 would have been like, God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society. But what I would have said is that, is that living, you know, God's way or living the way of Jesus is the best way to live life. So it should be prioritized in American society because. Because it's the best way to live. So I would have gotten there through, like, a different kind of set of. Of messaging.

[April Ajoy]

Right. And I don't think I would have phrased it that way either. Like, I. You, You. You were still a little bit politically correct back then. Like, when we would talk about it and I would say, like, I would never want. I would never force somebody to become a Christian or do anything. But did I believe Christians were the best candidates to be in charge of everything? Right. Yes.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so. So you were a Christian nationalist, then. Congratulations.

[April Ajoy]

Yes. No, I know. That's why I wrote a book about it.

[Tim Whitaker]

I just wanted people to know that you have the street cred, you know, because April, you know this, right? What's the big critique of those who deconstructed? You were never real Christians to begin with. You just wanted attention from the world. You never believed what you used to say you believed. No, like, April and I were all in on this stuff 24, 7, 365. We read the books. We were preaching the messages. I mean, one piece. I'll just add on to this, April, to kind of get in there with you. I remember when cef, Child Evangelist Evangelism Fellowship, they were. They went to the Supreme Court to get the right to teach the Good News clubs in public schools. And they wanted us to pray that God would open up the door for them to bring the gospel to boys and girls in public schools. And I did. And I taught. I taught that stuff in my local. My local public school after. After school ended. So, yes, I absolutely prayed and believed that, you know, we have to. We have to be a force for good, and we have to be a Christian nation, because that's the best way to live. I will Say I didn't know exactly what that meant. And the more I went down the path, the more that definition for me really diverted from where things ended up.

[April Ajoy]

Yeah. Do you want me to start saying what? I guess the first thing where that made me change was actually had nothing to do with politics really. Because when you are a Christian nationalist, whether you know it or not, your political ideology and your theology are like very intertwined. They're basically one and the same. So once you start doubting one, they both become vulnerable and it doesn't matter which one it is. Like, you pull the string if, even if it's a political ideology, the other's gonna go. If it's theology, the other's gonna go. So for me, the first thing was actually theology. And I started questioning my Pentecostal beliefs first. Because in 2011, I was 23, my dad was, he was only 57, was diagnosed with stage four non smokers lung cancer. The doctors gave him six months to live. So obviously the Pentecostals in us and then like all over the world, like came together. We're like, we're gonna lay hands. Like, he was in and out of the hospital for months and everyone there was always a new Pentecostal showing up because they wanted to get the glory of the big healing prayer. But I just believed, I had no doubts that God was going to heal my dad because that's what I had been taught and I had, I had seen what I had believed were miracles before. It's like, of course God's going to do this miracle for my dad. He's given his whole life for God in this ministry. But four months from the diagnosis, he passed four months later. And that absolutely wrecked me because my dad was also kind of the voice of God in a way for me. Like, I just took whatever he said as like he heard this from God and I was very close to him. So not only did I kind of lead or lose my spiritual leader, but I lost my dad. And now I'm also dealing with this, this realization that God does not always answer your prayer.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah.

[April Ajoy]

Even if you have enough faith. And in the aftermath of my dad's passing, I became very frustrated with a lot of Christians because I was absolutely destroyed. Like, my entire world stopped. And a lot of Christians in our lives could not accept the fact that God just didn't answer our prayer. So they would say things like, well, you know, God probably just didn't answer your prayer because you have some sort of unresolved sin in your family or because your dad was living outside of God's will, and you should have stayed an evangelist instead of becoming a pastor or. Well, God did answer your prayer and gave him his ultimate healing in heaven. And for whatever reason, that one actually pissed me off the most because, like, God knows that is not what I meant when I prayed for it. And there was this kind of toxic positivity in the church that could not handle me being sad. And we're like, why are you. You shouldn't be sad. Your dad's in heaven. You'll get to see him again. Don't be sad. You know, like, it's like, that's. What is that gonna. How is that gonna help your witness to other people if they see you sad when you can be? You know, it was just a lot. And I remember just being so angry with a lot of Christians around me at that time that I. I just kind of went inward and became. It was the first time I actually allowed myself to question things. And. And then also, in hindsight, I realized how messed up it was when I had said similar things to other people when they were going through stuff like that, because I also didn't know how to handle God not answering prayer. So that was really the first big thing for me, was actually a theology thing. But that kind of left. Left me open to realizing I could be wrong on other things.

[Tim Whitaker]

I had two mine. My initial major cracks I remember happening were both political and theological. The first political moment I had was I grew up. I grew up in construction, and we were on the job site, and Rush Limbaugh was on. This was, like, maybe two years into Obama's second term, and Rush was doing what Rush does. You know, Obama's destroying America. He hates the country. And I remember thinking, wait, but Obama's been president for, like, six years now, and we're all still here. Like, the country's still working. What am I. And I thought to myself, like, am I missing something? Like, what. What. He can't possibly be as bad as they're telling me, because if he was, the country would be destroyed. Like, I was just using my. My logical faculties, as undeveloped as they were, while I'm sitting there rolling a wall like this, going, wait, Rush. Like, it's been six years. And, like, we're all still here. Like, I'm. We're still. We're still functioning. So that was kind of the first crack. And I was always someone. I'm not sure about you, April. I was always a curious person. I was always wondering, how do other people see what, to me is so clearly the wrong side of this issue. There has to be something I'm missing. So that was kind of the first crack and the second one. Theology, right. Growing up. And I was kind of like a mutt of evangelicalism, because the friends that I had were also Pentecostal. Like, I. I discovered Misty Edwards and, like, you know, speaking in tongues and. And laying hands on people like. Like my friends prophesying over them. But we also took the Bible very seriously. I mean, we discovered Paul Washer, for those of you who know. For those of you who know who he is, very reformed, fire and brimstone preacher. And we're listening to him in the car. We're like, wow, yeah, like the true gospel. We want that, right? So I was still, like, wrestling through this Calvinist belief set I was given of God predestinating. And my brother, who's not a Christian, one day he just told me, I guess God predestined me to burn in hell forever. And I was like, I. I don't know if. I don't know if I can. If I can deal with that. I don't know if, like, I can accept that. And then, of course, the other. Of course, we all know that pastors have primed your brain to answer that question, right? Who are you, oh, God? To talk. Who are you, oh, man. To talk back to God.

[April Ajoy]

Yes, Right.

[Tim Whitaker]

Like, you. You can't ask that question. But I couldn't stomach the thought of my brother burning in hell forever while I was in heaven only because God predestined it to be. So. Those were kind of like two of the moments that I remember big time. That really got me thinking on top of. And again, to be very clear, I was not affirming, okay, I believe that being gay was sinful, but I noticed how there seemed to be a real emphasis on the LGBTQ community. I even had a really bad blog, a super amateur level terrible blog that would talk about how, look, the Bible calls out greed all the time. Why aren't we talking about the greedy? Like, why aren't. Why aren't. Why aren't we consistent with how we talk about sin? Those things, for me, really punched in some of the cracks in the foundation. So I had, like, some small leaks, but it was definitely in 2015, 2016, where, for me, those cracks got really freaking fractured. So are you cool if I kind of share my experience and we'll get yours?

[April Ajoy]

Yeah, sure. Go for it.

[Tim Whitaker]

Before I do. Friends, welcome into the stream. This is the Tim and April Show. We are just Sharing kind of our story. How did we get from growing up super conservative Christian to doing this show and what went into that? So if you're watching the stream, thank you. Please make sure to give this video a, like, it is so easy to do and it helps, helps get this video out to more people. And please make sure to sub to the channel because we are focused, laser focused on this channel and on growing it, being here twice a week live with you all. So thank you so much. So, okay, so here's what happened, right? At this point, I'm fully in the church thing. I'm drumming all the time. I'm taking my faith very seriously. I'm inhaling all of the books that, that Christian evangelicalism will give you, right? I'm, I'm reading Brian McLaren. I'm also reading Shane Claiborne and I'm reading John Piper. Like, it all works in my head somehow. It's another election cycle. I'm kind of tuned in now more to the political world than I ever have been before. And you know, this guy Trump comes on the scene and in the beginning, during the primaries, yeah, you, during the primaries, like, I remember, I remember vividly the talk radio people I listened to, like Mark Levin, for example, absolutely hated Trump. He's a grifter, he's a con artist. He doesn't like you, he doesn't want you. He's a bully. These are conservative commentators saying this, right? No one in my church really liked him as far as I could tell. There was just this vibe of like, oh, no one's going to take this dude seriously, right? And at the time, I like John Kasich. I'm like, oh, I like John. He seems kind of, you know, I would say at this point, I was.

[April Ajoy]

Like, that's who I liked too.

[Tim Whitaker]

Okay, right. So you get me, right? I mean, at this point, I'm more of a moderate, probably. Like, I'm definitely pro life, I'm definitely anti gay. But I realized that in a secular society, my gay neighbors have the right to get married, right? So I was more moderate on these things, but I was still definitely conservative. Trump comes on the scene and he starts, like, getting popular and I'm like, okay, this is weird. And then I start hearing, like, pastors and church people that raised me talk about Trump and kind of express their support. And I'm like, this feels really weird. And then he gets the nomination, right? And I'm like, okay, I, I, this is, this is bizarre. Like, what's happening? This guy is a bully. He's really nasty again. I'm thinking about the things as a child, I couldn't even say crap. I couldn't say shoot. It was too close to other words. Right. I could, I, I had to have a very clean, clean mouth. And bullying was not okay in the spaces I grew up in. Like, I was taught to be a very nice person. Like, integrity was a big piece of the puzzle that I was taught to fill in as a child and young adult. Right. I had to be a man of integrity, sexually, ethically, etc. And then, like, this is the moment that I will just never forget. Like, I to this, I think this will be a lifelong watershed moment. Right. Trump gets the nominee or whatever, or he's running for president. I'm like, this is crazy. And then the infamous Hollywood Access tape comes out, right? Yeah, Trump. Trump comes on and it turns out on a hot mic, he talks about and is bragging about grabbing women, making out with them and grabbing them by the. You know what?

[April Ajoy]

Yep.

[Tim Whitaker]

And I hear, I hear the audio and my jaw drops. Right? And now at this point, what, what is this, 2015?

[April Ajoy]

Yes.

[Tim Whitaker]

I think I was married then. Yeah, I think I was married then. I was, I was going to be married. And like, I'm just thinking about, you know, me and my partner, we saved ourselves for marriage. We did everything correctly. You know, I'm like, oh, this, this guy is a total sexual abuser. Like, again, I was still in church, still very conservative, but I was like, oh, this is a no brainer. And I thought to myself, there's no way, there's no way Christians, meaning evangelicals, are going to go for this guy after this. Like, this is going to be the nail in the coffin because we know, April, how we grew up, like, these are humongo, no nos. Not to mention he was on his third marriage on the COVID of Playboy. I'm like, this is it. Like this, this is this guy's toast. And then I started hearing the rhetoric. We need a commander in chief, not a pastor in chief. That's just locker room talk. And when I tell you, when I tell you, my flabbers were gassed, I could not believe what I was hearing. I truly could not believe what I was hearing as a man who grew up in this world, who couldn't even serve as a volunteer drummer on the worship team if I was with my girlfriend for too long alone, even if we did nothing wrong because we had to, quote, abstain from any appearance of evil. Right. And God couldn't use someone who was sexually immoral there's no way I could serve in church if I was sexually immoral. Meaning having, in theory, consensual sex with my girlfriend. Forget the abuse part. Just consensually engaging in sex with my girlfriend kicked me off of any kind of church platform. This man's bragging about grabbing women by the genitals and laughing about it. And they're telling me, hey, dude, we need a commander in chief, not a pastor in chief. I. And I had a. I had an amateur podcast. Me and some friends were podcasting. And, like, that was the. That was the first sledgehammer blow to that dam, right? I mean, it was like, now we have a problem. Now I'm getting real curious, like, okay, what is happening to my tradition? What is happening to the people who raised me this way, who are now telling me that if I don't vote for this guy, I'm not doing the will of God? That was the first major crack for me.

[April Ajoy]

So I. I had a major crack around that same time, too. Obviously, everything you just said about Trump broke the dam. But right before that, actually, like, in early 2015. So this is, like, one of those stories that honestly keeps me believing in God and, like, having faith. Because it's like, one of those things that. I can't explain this story, but I'm going to share it because it's a big piece of this. I have a dream. Twice in my life, I've had a dream where exactly what I dreamed happened later. So this was the second time. And I had a dream, I guess, spoiler alert. But I had a dream that I was sitting at my kitchen table where I lived in Virginia at the time, and that one of my brothers flew out and was sitting at the other end of the table. We were, like, on the two heads of this long table. And he came out to me as gay and was bawling and said, you know, that he had always been gay since middle school and was crying and it was so real. It was like one of those dreams that, you know how usually dreams, like, you know, you're in a room, but the room doesn't look like the room. This dream, the room was exact. Like, it looked. It looked like real life. I remember waking up and I was married at the time. And I told Beecher the dream. I was like, oh, my gosh. I had this dream that Andrew's. That Andrew came out to me as gay. And Beecher's like, well, do you think he is? I was like, I have no idea. Like, we grew up in a Very homophobic household. I mean, the whole, that whole environment in the church in the 90s and 2000s was super homophobic already. It was just an essential part of being an evangelical. And so I remember, like, I, it kind of gave me some time, you know, but also like, I couldn't just call up my brother and be like, hey, are you gay? Because if he wasn't gay in that world, thinking someone was gay was an insult.

[Tim Whitaker]

Totally.

[April Ajoy]

You know, like, so I wasn't just gonna ask him because I was like, well, I don't want to put it in his head because we didn't understand how being gay or being queer worked. Like, I was like, I don't want to put in his head and then becomes gay. Which is so wild to think about now. But so, but I slowly started thinking like, okay, well if he is gay, I need to prepare myself for this. So I kind of got to the point I looked into like side B theology a little bit and I was like, okay, so I, and, and I had become somewhat friends with gay Christians, but they were struggling, you know, like, they weren't, they weren't identifying as gay, but they, you know, quote unquote, struggled with same sex attraction.

[Tim Whitaker]

Right.

[April Ajoy]

And they were warring against their flesh. Correct. Where previously, like I had grown up, like, if you had those desires at all, you couldn't be a Christian and that God had to completely deliver you from that. Otherwise you were given over to a reprobate mind and you were an abomination. And that a demon was always involved with someone having same sex desires was what I was taught. Right. And that it was a choice. Someone didn't, was never born that way.

[Tim Whitaker]

Totally.

[April Ajoy]

So, so six months later, my brother comes out to visit us and I like intentionally kind of was hinting that I wanted, if he was that way, I wanted him to feel safe, to come out to me. So I was just like, you know, I think, I think you could be a gay, you could be struggle with homosexuality and be a Christian. And, and he was like, yeah, yeah, I think so too. And I'm like, what do you think about that?

[Tim Whitaker]

Any thoughts?

[April Ajoy]

But even, but even still, like, even though I was hinting at it in my head, I was like, there's no way. There's no way he's gay. Like, I've had, I've said so many homophobic things. Like he, he said it too. Like we grew up in the same world. Like, there's just no way. This is my brother, you know, and he was a Christian. Like he believed all the same things I believed. And so we got back to our house, it was just me and him. He sat in the spot where he was in my dream. I was on the opposite end. And he says, april, I need to tell you something. And then just starts bawling like, I've never seen him cry this hard in my life. And just said he's always, he's never been attracted to the opposite sex since middle school, been attracted to the same sex, spent night after night since then begging God to make him straight. And it's just like bawling. And my heart absolutely broke in that moment. And I just walked over the other side of the table and I just hugged him. I was like, it's okay, I love you. And I immediately knew, I didn't know what was right. I didn't know what I believed theologically necessarily, but I knew I was wrong. And in that moment, I was like, I have to choose my brother over this book because I like it played in my head, like, I have said so many awful things about people who struggle with same sex attraction. And it was my brother the whole time. And it was just kind of this wake up call of something's not right, I've been taught something wrong. And I immediately was like, okay, I don't know what I believe theologically, but I'm not going to fight this politically anymore. Like, I. There's just too many things that I don't know. And that was in 2015. So simultaneously, Donald Trump's also coming onto the scene. And ironically, I was working at CBN, the 700 Club at the time. The moment that, the moment that the. The Supreme Court ruled in favor and legalized gay marriage, the news broke while I was in my CBN cubicle. It was like, ding, ding, ding. And all of a sudden I, I kept hearing like this wailing and gnashing of teeth. We're like, oh, Lord, come quick. Like the world is ending. And I was like looking around, I was like, what, what on earth? Are we under attack? Is there like a terrorist attack? And like cnn, it was like the Supreme Court's legalized gay marriage. And in that moment, like, I, I didn't feel upset, but I also, you know, it was, it was just like a really confusing time because it was like one of the first moments where I realized I was at odds with the Christians that were around me, right? And they acted like this was the end of the world. But I was, I was hearing that background of that just utter despair. I'm pretty sure someone was crying while watching the live stream from outside, like in the Washington, like, park in front of the monument. And like, they were just so happy. Unadulterated joy. And I could not feel upset. Like, there was even a piece of me that was happy for them. And in my head, I'm like, what is wrong with me? Like, am I going down the slippery slope?

[Tim Whitaker]

Right, right.

[April Ajoy]

But it was just like one of those things where I, like, my real life experience went against what I had been taught. Because I had been taught, if someone is gay, all they have to do is come to Jesus and Jesus will make you straight. And that didn't happen for my brother.

[Tim Whitaker]

Right.

[April Ajoy]

And so. And I was like, well, I'm sure that didn't happen for a lot of people. And I also realized too, how much Christian media plays a role in this false idea that you can be, quote, unquote, healed of being gay. Because I had pitched in one of our producer meetings having a. He was a Christian, gay, celibate man who talked openly about him being gay, but that he was choosing to be celibate. Which at the time, I was like, this is probably the way to go. I haven't figured it all out yet, but I know, like, I. I believe that they were born that way, and I don't know why God would make them that way. But regardless, I pitched this and I was like, I think this, this is real life. I think a lot of people, quote, unquote, struggle with this and could be encouraged by the fact that they're not alone and that they're not an abomination and, you know, that they can still find a place in the church while being themselves. And it got immediately shot down. And I remember being told, like, well, no, that's going to discourage people from being able to get their ultimate healing. And I remember thinking, like, we are deceiving so many people by only telling stories where people, quote, unquote, get a miracle or get healed when that is not the reality. And I'm also coming in with the background of, like, my dad was not healed. And I think more people don't get an answer to prayer. And I think it takes more faith to still have faith after you don't get a miracle than to be promoting all these stories where these amazing things happen. Because that's just not the reality for most people.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah, 100%. It's that clash of the religious dogma that you grew up believing is true versus the reality of how the world actually works at times. Right. Whether it's. It's praying for a Healing that doesn't happen, or it's. It's someone being gay. Whatever it is, it's like you're taught in this. You know, I'm not sure how many. How many people out there listening did not grow up in the world that we grew up in, but it's very difficult to fully communicate how insular that whole world is. Like, they do have answers for everything they do. It's not like they don't have answers. There's. There's answers for every single question that you could possibly think of. They thought about it. But all roads point back to, like, this religious dogma that makes you choose between either your own intuition or your own lived experience. And what they tell you is. Is the clear, you know, teaching of scripture or the Christian tradition. And that creates a lot of, like, dissonance inside of you because you. You get to a point where either your intuition or your lived experience finally makes you realize or think about how reality. Reality might be different than what you were taught it is. Or you shut down that part of your brain and just believe the dogma over. Over everything. Right? And I think what's. What was. What was tough for me at this stage in the game, and we're going to kind of speed it up here because this is when the first domino falls. But what makes it so difficult for me was that I was taught that truth matters. I was taught that morality matters. I was taught that sexual morality is not postmodern. It's a modern. You know, it's an objective truth about how the world functions. Sex before marriage is sin. And so it was really difficult watching the same Christians who taught me that suddenly create new reasons why whatever Trump did wasn't that bad. Right? Or maybe, yeah, it's not great. But, hey, in the grand scheme of things, Tim, this guy's on our team, and I'm sitting there just kind of like. But you radicalized me not to give up an inch when it comes to sin, quote, unquote. You're the ones who taught me that when the world tells me to move towards them and compromise, to plant my feet firmly in the ground and tell them to move towards me, it was really difficult and jarring to watch this world that I thought was standing on truth actually tell me to move and to kind of compromise the beliefs that they gave me. And that was. It sounds like for you too, April. You know, with what's happening in the background, with your own personal life, plus this reality that, like, hey, you can grab women and people will still vote for you the name of Jesus. Like, wait, then what does sexual morality even mean? Like, what are we actually talking about here? If these things are way more malleable than I was led to believe, and why was I held to this standard? And God couldn't use me if I broke it. But Trump can be used by God to run the country and have our nuclear launch codes, even though he's on his third marriage, he's on the COVID of Playboy and he brags about grabbing women, not to mention everything else. Like, I saw the bullying. I saw the dehumanization. I saw the lies as well. But again, in church world, in the evangelical world, sex is like. It is the focus of. Of. It's the standard for purity. I mean, one of the reasons why being gay is wrong, right? In their world is. Is because it's sexual perversion. They. They just do despicable things, you know, and so we can't tolerate sexual perversion. Well, actually, you can. You can. You actually endorse and openly tolerate actual sexual perversion, like sexual assault. So I'm not sure for you, April, but from there, once that domino fell, then things started unraveling very quickly because then we walk into the Black Lives Matter, right? And I'm reading books like the Color of Compromise by Jamar Tisby. Then we walk into Covid, and I'm like, wait a second. Why are pastors that I know telling me that wearing a mask is tyranny? And I want to. I want to be really clear for the audience out there. At this point in my journey, none of this was political. Meaning. I wasn't thinking about this from a Republican, Democratic perspective. I was thinking about it from a Jesus perspective. I was thinking about, okay, if the greatest commandment is to love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love my neighbor as myself. Why is it tyranny to wear a mask during a global pandemic that is killing people? That seems like a great way to love our neighbor. That requires almost nothing of us. Like, really putting a mask on our face requires so little of us. And yet I have Christians saying, no, this is tyranny. Do not comply. Right? Social distancing orders were difficult, for sure, but we didn't know how this thing spread. And we had no vaccine yet, and we had very little information. Right? And of course, look, I mean, could anything be done better? Of course everything could be done better. No one's debating that. But this idea that we're being shut down for our faith, it didn't make sense to me. And here's why. And then I'll get back over to you with COVID in particular. Don't forget my background that I said earlier. Right. I come from this, like Frank Viola, small churches are the answer. We have to move from this event centered, mega everything to this community centered structure. Because I have, I have that in the background. I had that experience at 11th hour living in community with really good people in my life who I'm doing life with. So when Covid happened, I'm thinking, wait a second, guys. We all know that church is not somewhere you go, Paul, in the Bible, you don't go to church. You are the church. Right. And so I'm thinking to myself, this could be a great way for the church to actually go back to its roots and to be in little embodied communities following all social distancing orders, of course, but to love oneself and one's neighbor in small, little micro groups away from this mega church everything. So to me, it didn't seem. It didn't seem at all that controversial. I wasn't. My thought was never the state shutting down the church. How could you? You can't shut down what? But you can't shut down the gathering of believers where two or more are gathered. Right. You could easily. In New Jersey, a very liberal state. I think the most. The most severe it got was they wanted you not to have more than like two non family members in your house at any given time to kind of slow the spread. Great, great, great. So call up two of your neighbors who go to your local church and meet on Sunday mornings and have a little get together, be connected again. There was, There was such an opportunity for that to happen.

[April Ajoy]

Yeah.

[Tim Whitaker]

But instead I saw pastors. I knew, this is a pandemic. We're being shut down. This is tyranny. I'm like, guys, again, I'm just thinking, I'm thinking, quote, unquote, biblically here. There are ways to do this really well. Instead, we watched everyone shift to this online church model, which I thought was just so unnecessary and so annoying. So those three things, I call them kind of the unholy trinity, right? You have, you have Black Lives Matter, you have Trump, and you have Covid all happening at one time that for me, everything is unraveling. I'm like, wait a second. I don't think I was on the right side of many of these issues. And it was actually Sean Foyt, the worship leader, the faith over fear guy. He was the guy. I got so frustrated seeing his stuff during a global pandemic he was the guy that gave me the thought, maybe we need a new evangelical movement. That's when I first thought of the name the New Evangelicals. It was October of 2020. I was on my front porch watching Sean do his we're being persecuted bit. And I said, I'm so tired of this. I'm a worship drummer. I'm still in the church. I'm tired of this. We need a new evangelical movement or something. And that's when I thought of the name the New Evangelicals.

[April Ajoy]

Yeah. Very similar for me as well. Covid and Black Lives Matter were big pieces in my wake up call. But also, I think how quickly I was demonized because I didn't vote for Trump in 2016. And I didn't even vote for Hillary because I hadn't fully, like, same in my head, it was still a demon rat. Like, you couldn't vote because of abortion.

[Tim Whitaker]

I voted third party abortion.

[April Ajoy]

Yeah. I also voted third party in 2016, but I could not bring myself to vote for Donald Trump because of everything that you just said and the, the amount of people from my dad's church and from his, like, ministry life that, I mean, I got personal messages saying my late father would be disappointed in me for not voting for Donald Trump, that I was thwarting the will of God and going against what God wanted, that I would be judged for not voting for Trump, that he was God's chosen. And then in the same breath, they're literally demonizing me where, like, voting for Trump almost became a sacred act. And if you didn't vote for him, it was sinful.

[Tim Whitaker]

Right.

[April Ajoy]

And I, and I just, just like you, I just remember being like, Donald Trump just a few months ago said he's never asked God for forgiveness. We all heard that Hollywood tape. I think at a minimum, he should have asked God for forgiveness for that. And they were just like, oh, no, no, no, no. And so that was just a big wake up call of how quickly, despite my lifelong work in the church and in ministry and literally I went to Christian colleges. I went to Pat Robertson's Regent University for, to get my master's. I was working at the 700 Club before we moved to Tennessee. Like, my entire life was to spread the gospel like I was in it.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah.

[April Ajoy]

And suddenly I was being demonized because I didn't vote for the most antichrist candidate I've ever seen in my entire life.

[Tim Whitaker]

What?

[April Ajoy]

It was just kind of like, excuse me, so. And right. And so then the next few years, you know, it was before Tick tock I didn't get tick tock until 2020 when I started really speaking out loud when I figured some more things out. But I just remember I went a little more introspective, and I knew, I knew they were wrong about Trump. Like, I knew, Like, I, I, I just knew in my spirit, like, I really believe that the Holy Spirit was leading me to make these decisions. Like, I did not feel a peace about voting for Trump, and I did not. Like, I just felt at peace about even accepting gay people and becoming queer, affirming, like, it was all spirit led. And I was constantly demonized for that by the people in my own church who screamed about doing life together. And we're all a community and come as you are. Oh, but not if you're going to be a Christian and not support Trump.

[Tim Whitaker]

That's right.

[April Ajoy]

Right. Then we're gonna have a problem.

[Tim Whitaker]

That's right.

[April Ajoy]

And so, and then, and so I just finally asked myself, okay, if I know they're wrong about Trump, what else have they taught me that they're also wrong on?

[Tim Whitaker]

Yep, Yep.

[April Ajoy]

And though that, that literally just pulled the string. And so I kind of, I literally went, like, theological point by theological point, and I went hardcore deconstructing, especially during the pandemic because we were all home. And what else did I have to do but completely have an existential crisis about everything I believed. Yeah. And so I, I just dug in deep. I was like, okay, what is abortion really? When do abortion rates go down? Do bans help? Like, I went through all of the things, all the talking points that I used to scream about that I knew that I knew that I knew that I knew. And suddenly I was like, oh, okay, I was wrong. I was wrong about a lot of stuff.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yes, yes, exactly. I want to, I want to kind of do our final segment here and talk about kind of going from, you know, is anyone else out there like me? To discovering this whole world of deconstruction. So let's do this. Let's take, let's take one more break, a short break. We'll come back in a few minutes. We'll kind of talk about what led me to starting tne. What led you to start your channel, and then what led us to kind of come together and start this work, and then we'll go from there. All right, we're back. Friends, welcome in. Make sure to give this video a. Like, we are wrapping up the last section of kind of how we went from point A, growing up in conservative Christian fundamentalism to point B. So April, essentially for me, right, we got to the point where Trump happens, Black lives matter happens, Covet happens. And I say to myself, we need a new evangelical something. Now for me, I was quite terrified of even thinking about that because I was a no name volunteer at a random church in South Jersey. I had no connections, I'm not a pastor, I have no credentials. But essentially I, no one had the name the New Evangelicals. Like I, I, no one had it. I thought, well, this is a good name. I kind of like it. Let me just grab it for a rainy day. I'm not sure what I'm gonna, what I'm gonna do with it. I don't really, I mean, at the, at the time I was project managing, I had a lot of questions. I was kind of waking up to the reality that something is wrong in my church tradition. But I didn't know if anyone out there was thinking about this. I had no clue if there was like others asking the same questions I was asking, minus some people here and there. Eventually someone, a friend of mine said, look, dude, just start the Instagram account. Like just, just convert your drumming account because I was a drummer, convert that account to tne the New Evangelicals and just see what happens. Like if it fails, it fails. Now I was terrified because I am a type 6 on the Enneagram. So the idea of being mocked or people laughing at me or trying something audacious, only to have it fail is like crippling. But yeah, December 1, 2020, I, I, I made a video in my upstairs attic and I said, hey, this is the New Evangelicals. It was just an Instagram account. There was nothing else. And there was certainly no, no long term vision of what it's become now with two shows and everything else. But I just had to know, like, am I the only person out there? And so I just started asking questions on Instagram stories. I would ask a question about tithing or the church or whatever it was, and people would, would, would give me their answers. I would screenshot them anonymously, then share them back in the stories and just started kind of growing from there. And then the account, over time, it just, it really grew and it kind of blew up. And two things happened that really set me on this path, I think long term. The first was January 6th. So December 2020, I start tne January 6th, 2021, a bunch of people with flags and Bibles and other kinds of Christian iconography storm our Capitol building. And I'm watching this live on my computer and my jaw is just Dropped and dropped, and it's over, over and over again. I'm like, wow, I'm watching history here. I can't believe this is happening, right? We're watching windows being broken. We're watching an angry, violent mob do this. And then I see something I will never forget. I see a Christian flag, the same exact Christian flag I pledged allegiance to in my Awana classes back in the day and that I pledged allegiance to at my vacation Bible schools and my youth group, right? That same Christian flag is being paraded, paraded around the Senate chambers as a sign of conquest. And then I see a prayer to Jesus, thanking him for this opportunity to do what they did, and my jaw just went through the floor. I, I, I, I was so awestruck, asking myself, how did the faith that raised me lead to this? Why am I seeing worship songs that I sang in church being sung on the Capitol grounds as this is happening? Why am I hearing a prayer to Jesus, the same one that I gave my radical allegiance to? Why am I seeing this being said after? For the first time, I think, in American history, the peaceful transfer of power was stopped by a violent mob. And I also knew in the back of my mind that if this was a bunch of Muslim people, right, I knew, I knew how they would talk about it. This is a holy war. This is Sharia law. The radical Islamists are coming for America. I knew how talk radio would talk about this, but because it was Bibles and Christian flags and Christian songs, it was, it was not a big deal. Wasn't a big deal. It's not what you saw. So that was the first moment that really made me go, okay, this Christian nationalist thing, I, I gotta get the inside scoop, because obviously I missed it. Whatever I was a part of, if it was in these circles I was swimming in, I didn't have the eyes to see whatever it is that led to this. And then the second piece that really set me on this path was in April of 2021. My church of six years gave me the ultimatum to either stop serving as a drummer with them, as a volunteer, or to stop doing what I was doing online. Now, I wasn't full time. There was no nonprofit, we weren't fundraising. There was no structure, nothing. It was just me behind an Instagram account asking questions. But because I was asking questions about queer inclusivity or if tithing was biblical or not, that was a bridge too far for my church. And they gave me that ultimatum. They said, you either have to stop doing what you're doing online or you have to stop doing what you're doing with us as a drummer. And I shook that pastor's hand on the spot. After six years, after being an all in volunteer, spending hundreds of hours for free. Cause I wanted to. And I said, I resign. And I walked out and never went back to that church. And it was, it was painful. I mean, it cost me my entire community of people that I was doing life with, so to speak, and that I really believed in. There's a whole history there that maybe I'll unpack a different time. But that, that was really painful because I felt or I believed that because we held the same beliefs about Christianity that we could make room for each other. And also we have the same values. But I realized that you can have the same beliefs and have very different values. And it was a jarring moment. But that, that moment for me was. I think something happened where I said, I don't know what. I just started. I don't know what's going to happen with tne. I don't know where we're going, but there's something here that I have to explore and kind of let the community develop along with me. And it's too important to stop doing and I'm going to keep going. And that was what, almost three years ago now. And so to be where we're at now, you know, being on YouTube and TikTok and Instagram and being able to bring you on as a co host for this show. Now we have two different shows, right? The new evangelicals podcast, the Tim and April Show. To be one of the major players in the progressive Christian thing we're trying to think about is just been. It's been completely humbling, you know, and it's been an amazing journey because once I left that church, I was given the permission structure to start not only asking different questions, but to start coming to different answers as I was able to interview biblical scholars and theologians that were outside of my tradition. And that's how I got here. And then you and I met through this work. I discovered you on TikTok years ago and we always kept in touch and we got, you know, pretty friendly over time. And we started the TNE recap a year ago and now we're here. That's the story.

[April Ajoy]

Yeah, the. The insurrection was. I had already pretty much. I was pretty fully deconstructed by the time the insurrection happened thanks to Covid and being stuck at Home and TikTok. But the insurrection, when I saw those Jesus flags out there and my. And Beecher and I, my spouse, recognized not one, but two people that were infamously arrested for the insurrection. And we knew both of them from church. That was when I realized, oh, I had been a Christian nationalist. I was one of them, because before that, I had kind of distanced myself. I was like, well, I've just always followed Jesus, and that's why I'm here now, because Trump was really what led people astray. But then that was my epiphany moment where I realized, oh, no, I was also a Christian nationalist before, too. It just tried. It just wasn't as obvious because, you know, the Republican candidates back then weren't as obviously immoral as Donald Trump. Yeah, yeah. But. But anyway. But I. I have to say this because. And I know we're running out of time, so I'll say this very shortly, but that was one thing that was also happening simultaneously through this entire thing from when I got married back in 2014 to, you know, well, present. But my spouse, Beecher, had gender dysphoria, which we obviously didn't know what that was at the time. But I barely even really understood trans people because my war, when I was growing up in Christian nationalism was focused more on. On homosexuality and gay marriage. You know, the trans issue, I feel like, has kind of taken that. Although I don't know if you saw. But a Republican recently said that it's not going to be if. But when they overturn gay marriage, of.

[Tim Whitaker]

Course, I'm not surprised. We've been talking about this for years now, right? Yeah, absolutely.

[April Ajoy]

Yeah. So my spouse, Beacher, I have literally walked with them from them figuring themselves out, which they had gender dysphoria since they were in the fifth grade. Had no idea what it was. Also grew up in the church. And through our whole marriage, we. We. We try. I have tried casting the demons out because I didn't know. I was like, I don't know why you want to wear my clothes sometimes. Beecher didn't know either. Like, maybe it's an addiction, maybe it's a demon. Maybe it's. I don't know, a kink. Like, we really, like, we had no idea. And every. Every. We tried every avenue that the church told us, like, prayed, we fasted, memorized scripture. Like, at one point, Beecher's room just had, like, hundreds of Bible verses all over their walls that they were just repeating over and over again to try to, quote, fix themselves. But in 2020, so they were also forced home to kind of recognize themselves. And so they came out to me that fall as non binary. And then came out publicly, like, a couple years later. But that was also like, I. I saw firsthand with my spouse how low they got when they couldn't be themselves.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah.

[April Ajoy]

And I realized, okay, this is a life or death death situation. Like, Beecher did not want to live having to play the perfect Christian husband man role because it felt so foreign. And it just. It just. It wasn't them. They were being forced to. To, you know, not be who God made them to be. So that. That was like, also just playing in the background more privately, because anytime we would talk to someone at church about it, it was like, oh, that's definitely a demon. And we're like, no. I tried casting it out as the token Pentecost.

[Tim Whitaker]

Well.

[April Ajoy]

And no demons came out.

[Tim Whitaker]

I. Hard.

[April Ajoy]

Yeah. Yeah. And then January 6th, and then, honestly, just like everything you mentioned. Honestly, to this day, I. It still is flabbergasting to me that. And we talk about it every single week. I feel like it's like, is there a line? How many lines does this man have to cross before we realize he is not of God? Like, even. I mean, honestly, even if you're not a Christian, he's not a good. He's just not a good person. He's. He's a misogynist, he's racist, he's xenophobic, he's a narcissist. He's clearly in it for himself. He doesn't care about the people who voted for him. He likes that they voted for him and that they gave him power. He's not doing anything to help them. How many of his cuts have hurt Trump supporting farmers or Trump supporting veterans?

[Tim Whitaker]

Like, I think that's been the most shocking thing for me. Four years later, or however many three years, it just. It's been such a jump from where we started, even when the insurrection happened, to now, like, seeing how far this whole evangelical thing has gone and how much they've tolerated. Right. This is the same party or a group of people that tell you we, you know, tolerate. Being tolerant isn't always a good thing. They're the most tolerant people I've ever seen in modern American history of, like, authoritarianism, of propaganda, of. Of Nazi salutes, of sexual assault. I mean, and I mean that. I mean that literally. Not only do they embrace a man who was found liable of sexual assault. Right. But they embrace a world of politicians and of leaders who are themselves abusers. Matt Gaetz, that guy is seen as. As a hero. And even in the theological spaces. Right. We both know the story of John MacArthur protecting two different men who, who molested their own children while they were on his staff. And people still talk about John MacArthur like he's like the second best thing since Christ himself. It is unreal to watch over and over how every accusations actually a confession. And I think, and it goes back.

[April Ajoy]

To which we talked about to tie this in purity culture and the way, the way this ideology views sex and especially views women and children as almost like what good Christian husbands own, right. Like women are our sexual objects so they can look past Donald Trump assaulting people or Pete Hegseth assaulting people even if you know the allegations, whatever. Because I was always taught, well, boys will be boys, right? You know, can you really blame them? They can't help what they have between their legs. And really the woman shouldn't have been in that position in the first place. Like that's right, like that is, that is taught in the church. I grew up believing that too. And so, so like, even though I don't understand because being on this side of it now, it's like, ah, like what? How can you guys do this? But then on the other hand I'm like, oh well, the theology make gives room to elevate people that assault women because women are viewed as less than.

[Tim Whitaker]

That's exactly right. And you know, I think the last thing I'll say about this and we can probably end up wrap, or we can wrap the show up because it's been, we always say just an hour, we're almost two hours in, right? But it is true. I mean we, we just, I, I, we have to say it like over and over again, right? Like these folks are not consistent with what they claim to believe. The Bible has so many passages about how we love the immigrant, how we welcome the stranger and they cheer when we deport the immigrant. Right? They cheer when the White House releases an ASMR video of them chaining up human beings made of the image of God and sending them off to God knows where. And it is very difficult to take a faith group seriously that claims to care about truth and integrity and family values, right. And loving one's neighbor and have it expressed in a way that is so clearly the opposite. And then when you point it out, they don't actually know how to respond, so they just deflect. Well, you're just woke. Well, you're just a liberal. Well, Joe Biden, it's like, well, yeah, that's what you do when you can't actually answer or you can't or you murder babies, right? Yeah. When you can't. When you can't. When you're too prideful to call out your own cognitive dissonance, you deflect. And. And I think it's important for. For people to know, especially we're doing this, friends, to give you all the primer to why we're doing this show. Okay? The whole reason we have this story, we're going to save it to podcasts and YouTube, is so people can look back and understand why we do what we do. Because for April and I and a lot of people who deconstruct, they leave Christianity altogether. And that's totally fine. That's not a judgment thing. It's just a fact thing. Right. And I get why they do that. But for April and I and for many others, we left evangelicalism because of our radical allegiance to the way of Jesus. We didn't find it congruent with what we were taught and also what we read about in the Bible or what we hear about in the Christian tradition beyond the basement of fundamentalism. And it turns out there's a whole house, there's a house full of rooms of different ways of being Christian. And so April and I, and we say this kind of tongue in cheek, but in a way, we kind of see this as like our repentance because we were part of that world helping to make the sausage, inadvertently or not. And now we feel an obligation as Christians to expose the Christian nationalism that is animating a Trump regime, because a lot of people who didn't grow up this way don't understand how militant, how zealous, how. How extreme some of the people are in these spaces that really, I mean, this non hyperbolically want to take over the country and rule from the top down and replace our Constitution with some deranged view of biblical law where women are stoned for being caught in adultery and gay people are in prison. That's not. That's not a fake. There are Christians out there today who are close to power, by the way, who want to repeal the 19th Amendment, who want to overturn a burger fell. And we really feel like, as Christians, as two Christians, we have an obligation to stand up twice a week live on Mondays and Thursdays, and then wherever it lands after that, to say absolutely freaking not. We're gonna call this out and we're gonna resist these people every freaking step of the way. Because guess what, white evangelicals, you radicalize us to be this way.

[April Ajoy]

Way.

[Tim Whitaker]

You did this. You want to know who created Tim in April? The White evangelical Christian nationalism that you see is taking over our country. That's what radicalized us. And now we're going to fight back.

[April Ajoy]

Yeah, I was told I should love my neighbor and love my enemy. And now that I'm trying to do that, they're like, okay, socialists.

[Tim Whitaker]

So, you know, I want affordable health care because Jesus says, heal the sick. All right, Yakami. Like, wait, what?

[April Ajoy]

Yeah, okay, Marxist trained Marxist.

[Tim Whitaker]

I mean, Jesus said liberate the oppressed. Like, I guess call him a Marxist. I don't know. Like, what are we talking about here?

[April Ajoy]

Yeah, no, I totally view this as my repentance too, because I was as loud as I was for the majority of my life on the conservative Republican, Christian nationalist side. And I realized I was wrong and contributed to the machine that we see today. That is a very dangerous threat to both democracy, but also the Christian faith. Faith.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah.

[April Ajoy]

It is not college professors pushing people away from Christianity more than what Christians are doing right now. What evangelicals are doing right now are creating more atheists than anything. And to be clear, I know we have a lot of atheists that are here and I love you and I'm never going to try to convert you. I have no desire to do that whatsoever. But yeah, I'm like, I just have to be just as loud now on the other side. And maybe one day I'll look back and say, you know what, I was probably. I was wrong on that. And that's fine. I always want to be open to being wrong. But right now I know Christian nationalism is wrong. I know that it does not follow the teachings of Jesus. And as someone who has followed Jesus pretty much my entire life, it really pisses me off that they're dragging Jesus's name through the mud while they're storming the Capitol with a noose.

[Tim Whitaker]

So no.

[April Ajoy]

Yeah.

[Tim Whitaker]

So friends, how can you help? This is a brand new show or this is our second episode. It's a brand new channel. I will just tell you in April. Will attest as a content creator, it is a lot of work to grow anything online. It just takes time and energy. The way you can help us and this is real is by liking this stream, subscribing to the show and if you feel compelled, please share this content. I would love if you were if you liked what we had to say sharing this episode. It also lives on podcasts as well. You can find it there on Spotify and Apple podcasts. Sharing the show with other people is really an easy, effective, cost you nothing way to get this out to more people. I will tell you, and I know April is with me the next four years. You need more voices like April and Eyes and many others who grew up this way to help expose what's actually going on here. And we're going to be doing that. We're doing that Mondays and Thursdays live at noon. We're here all the way with you. We are not going anywhere. Your support means the absolute world. And we thank you for sitting in on this live and listening to our stories. Hopefully it kind of fleshes out. Yeah, hopefully kind of fleshes out, though, what got us here. Okay. We are completely committed to Jesus and that's exactly why we resist Christian nationalism. Right. That's exactly why. So anything else, April, before we sign off? Land this plane.

[April Ajoy]

Fight fascism.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah. Woo. All right, friends, talk to you later. Sat.