Brad begins with a long discussion of the Moms for Liberty conference in Philadephia. He centers his comments on the long history of "housewife populism" that goes back to the 1950s. Drawing on work from Gill Frank and Melissa Deckman, Brad argues that Moms for Liberty stands in a long lineage of grassroots movements led by women using the mantle of motherhood to advance an anti-LGBTQ and often White supremacist agenda. Piece by Gillian Frank: https://wearethemeteor.com/moms-for-liberty-history-...
Jul 07, 2023•1 hr
Last week SCOTUS ruled that race cannot be used in the college admissions process. Many in and outside of the Asian American community see the ruling as positive for Asian American students who are supposedly disadvantaged by affirmative action policies. Brad talks with Dr. Janelle Wong of the University of Maryland about what the data tells us concerning Asian American acceptance rates, how this ruling will affect BIPOC Americans on the whole, and the ways the model minority myth is used to div...
Jul 05, 2023•32 min
Brad analyzes the recent SCOTUS decision ruling that a website designer has the right to refuse to create websites for gay couples. It's the latest attack on equality from the Alliance Defending Freedom. Brad discusses two major components of the case: The lawful expectations of businesses that are open to the public The ways that this opens the door for discrimination against numerous vulnerable groups on the basis of the freedom of speech. Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-...
Jul 03, 2023•38 min
What does the SCOTUS decision on affirmative action have to do with the Don't Say Gay bills, book bans, and attacks on school curricula all over the country? How is is part and parcel of a certain White supremacist libertarianism? What are the ramifications for how we think of education and the ways our professional and legal domains are organized? Brad and Dan answer these questions and more in the Weekly Roundup. Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to t...
Jul 01, 2023•1 hr
The language of “religious freedom,” “religious freedom restoration” laws, and so forth makes many of us uncomfortable. What does this language mean? Who deploys it? For what reasons? Where did it come from? In this first of a two-part episode, Dan explores these issues, looking at the emergence of the idea of religious freedom and how those who deploy it on today’s political and religious right have departed from its historical meaning. Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free...
Jun 29, 2023•28 min
Jon Ward's life is divided in half: two decades inside the evangelical Christian bubble and two decades outside of it. In Testimony, Ward tells the engaging story of his upbringing in, and eventual break from, an influential evangelical church in the 1980s and 1990s. Ward sheds light on the evangelical movement's troubling political and cultural dimensions, tracing the ways in which the Jesus People movement was seduced by materialism and other factors to become politically captive rather than p...
Jun 26, 2023•41 min
Brad and Dan dedicate this episode to discussing the state of reproductive rights, activism, and law one year since the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Brad begins by going through the numbers on support for abortion in the country, policy and campaign surprises since Roe's fall, and the ways Democrats and Republicans have responded. In the second segment Dan outlines the American religious groups who are suing to have abortion bans overturned in their states on the basis of religious freedom. The a...
Jun 24, 2023•55 min
In this week’s episode, Dan explores and explains the practice of infant “dedications,” in contrast with the more familiar practice of infant baptism. Why do some churches reject infant baptism, but practice infant “dedication” instead? And what does this tell us about cultural “duplication” and its role within American evangelical subculture? Check out this week’s episode to find out. Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive,...
Jun 21, 2023•25 min
Brad shares the recording of a roundtable he hosted at Americans United's Summit for Religious Freedom. He asked Andrew Seidel, Katherine Stewart, and Rob Boston what they are worried about in the year ahead - and what gives them surprising amounts of hope as we careen toward 2024. They expound on SCOTUS, public schools, LGBTQ+ rights, and more. Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismu...
Jun 19, 2023•41 min
Brad and Dan begin by discussing the reactions to Trump's arraignment in Miami - from congresspeople calling for war, to Kari Lake talking about 75 million Americans with guns, to megachurch pastors exhorting their congregations to emulate religious terrorists. Brad points out that the anger over Trump's arraignment coincides with the rise of anti-trans rhetoric - from Trump himself to the KKK. In the second segment, Dan provides a long list of ways to learn about trans issues and how to become ...
Jun 17, 2023•1 hr 4 min
Why do conservative American Christians and Christian nationalists use the rhetoric of being “attacked” and “persecuted”? Why do they perceive themselves to be “suffering” in the contemporary United States, when they experience pronounced social, cultural, and legal privilege? And how do these ideas link up with the broader valorization of “suffering” within some forms of Christian identity? Dan takes on these issues in this week’s episode. Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-f...
Jun 14, 2023•22 min
Brad speaks with Tim Whitaker of the New Evangelicals about what he saw and heard at the TPUSA Pastor's Conference in Nashville - a gathering of 1100 pastors from across the country. They discuss three main themes: COVID denial and the way it created momentum for an anti-government, anti-"woke" church movement Trans hatred and the dehumanizing rhetoric that TPUSA encourages pastors to use Christian nationalism - the various factions and debates manifest at the conference and why they should scar...
Jun 12, 2023•44 min
Brad and Dan being by discussing Trump's indictment on federal charges. They then break down the life and death of Pat Robertson - an architect of the Religious Right and someone whose influence resounds in American Christian nationalism today, from media, to spiritual warfare, to queerphobia, and more. They finish the episode with a discussion of SCOTUS' surprising decision to defend voting rights and Oklahoma's move to create a Catholic public school. Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus e...
Jun 09, 2023•59 min
With Dan still on vacation, enjoy this episode from the One Nation All Belief series: Brad speaks with Paul Southwick and Erin Green from the Religious Exemption Accountability Project. They explain REAP's mission: to help queer students on religious campuses and to get tax dollars out of institutions that discriminate against LGBT people. Through civil rights litigation, storytelling, oral history, research and public policy, REAP works toward a world where LGBTQ students on all campuses are tr...
Jun 07, 2023•26 min
Faith deconstruction - the intentional examination of one's religious faith and beliefs, leading to a profound change in, or even loss of, that faith - has received increasing attention in the past few years. But, who are the people who deconstruct their faith, what causes them to do so and where does the journey take them? Olivia Jackson's new book (Un)Certain is a collective memoir built on the stories and reflections of over 150 interviewees and nearly 400 survey respondents from all over the...
Jun 05, 2023•29 min
Brad is joined by guest co-host Annika Brockschmidt. They begin by dissecting the Target boycott staged by the American Right. Brad analyzes it by explaining how "culture wars" are conflicts over the identity of a nation - and how the celebration of Pride has led to harassment and vandalism in Target stores as a result. He also breaks down why Pride themed products have garnered these reactions, but gun violence has not. In the second segment Annika zooms in on Lance Wallnau's attempts to take o...
Jun 02, 2023•56 min
Dan is on vacation this week, so we are happy to present Brad's interview with Rev. Alex McNeill, which is part of the special series ONE NATION ALL BELIEFS. Rev. McNeill is a white, queer, transgender man, an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. Rev. McNeill served as the executive director of More Light Presbyterians for over eight years. There, he empowered faith leaders to welcome LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC neighbors into worship communities and to advocate for justice in their broad...
May 31, 2023•23 min
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence make up an unlikely order of nuns. Self-described as “twenty-first century queer nuns,” the Sisters began in 1979 when three bored gay men donned retired Roman Catholic nuns’ habits and went for a stroll through San Francisco’s gay Castro district. The stunned and delighted responses they received prompted these already-seasoned activists to consider whether the habits might have some use in social justice work, and within a year they had constituted the new o...
May 29, 2023•44 min
Brad begins by offering a metaphor for understanding how Christian nationalists and others view the United States: A complementarian marriage. The role of the cishet dad-husband as protector and the mom-wife as innocent homemaker provides a window into why so many conservatives want to ban books and are calling for dictators. In the following segments Brad and Dan examine the ways this metaphor is playing out in the work of Moms for Liberty, Matt Walsh, and others across the country. Brad explai...
May 27, 2023•57 min
On this episode of ONE NATION, ALL BELIEFS (subscribe links below): Dave Warnock was caught up in the Jesus movement of the 70s and lived the bulk of his life as a Charismatic Evangelical, serving as a pastor on three different church staffs. Following several years of internal struggle, Dave came to the conclusion in 2011 that he no longer believed in a personal God. In 2019 he was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), a progressive neurodegenerative disease with an average 3-5 year life e...
May 25, 2023•29 min
The previous episode explored how Christian churches, as well as other religious, non-profit, and volunteer organizations, exploit the idea of “having a servant’s heart,” or service or giving of one’s time and resources, for their own gain. In this episode, Dan considers how the idea of serving to the point of “suffering” elevates this abusive pattern within Christian organizations. Beginning with a discussion of the “suffering servant” idea in the Hebrew Bible, Dan traces how this idea of suffe...
May 24, 2023•23 min
What if told you 9% of Americans think only Christians should be eligible for citizenship? Or if 14% thought that their church should have veto power over American law? What if there was evidence that belief in modern day prophets is linked to political violence and extreme belief? This is exactly what sociologist Paul Djupe found in recent studies on the topic. Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and mor...
May 22, 2023•34 min
Brad and Dan begin by analyzing the surge in vigilantism on the American Right. Brad discusses how vigilantism often rises in times when there is a question of who belongs in the community - and what it means to have a working social order. Dan discusses the ways that vigilantism rises when law and order no longer work - and the perceived need for violence beyond the law takes hold. In the second segment they argue that the bevy of far-right laws passed in Florida represent the attempt to make t...
May 19, 2023•56 min
On this episode of ONE NATION, ALL BELIEFS (subscribe links below) brad speaks with Dr. Allyson Shortle an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma, where she studies group identity in the context of American political behavior. She runs OU’s Community Engagement + Experiments Laboratory (CEEL), Oklahoma City’s Community Poll (Exit Poll), and OU’s Democracy Survey of OU freshmen. Dr. Shortle’s new co-authored Cambridge University Press book, The Everyday Crusade: Christian Nationalism i...
May 18, 2023•21 min
What do Christians mean when they refer to someone having a “servant’s heart”? How does this language, so foreign to those outside of a particular kind of religious context, connect to secular volunteer and non-profit organizations? Beyond the meaning of such language, what are its social effects? How is it often mobilized to manipulate and coerce individuals to “giving of themselves” beyond the limits of what is reasonable or healthy? Dan tackles these questions in this week’s episode. Subscrib...
May 17, 2023•26 min
How do we prevent young men from being radicalized into misogynistic, White supremacists, and xenophobic movements? How can this prevent gun violence? Brad speaks with Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a professor in the School of Public Affairs and the School of Education at American University, where she directs the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL). Her most recent book is "Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right." https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/counter-a...
May 15, 2023•32 min
Brad and Dan begin by discussing the two massacres in one day that happened in Texas last weekend. They borrow from work by Umar Haique who summarizes the state of the USA as a country experiencing "ultraviolence" as a form of societal collapse. https://medium.com/eudaimonia-co/why-cnns-trump-town-hall-was-a-disgrace-and-an-insult-to-democracy-320738e60147 Brad links this to the Trump town hall hosted by CNN. He makes the case that this was the platforming of a fascist leader who has no interest...
May 12, 2023•55 min
On this episode of ONE NATION, ALL BELIEFS (subscribe links below) Brad speaks with Indu Kumar, a student fellow with Americans United who is organizing on the ground in Tennessee. She discusses the ways that students, Black churches, and other minoritized groups are building coalitions to fight gun violence and create sustainable movements. Indu explains how separation of church and state is a key issue for young people who care about reproductive rights and LGBT inclusion. She also shares her ...
May 11, 2023•19 min
In the previous episode, Dan looked at what’s going on when people tell us we are “right where God wants us to be.” But what does it mean when those same people DON’T tell us that? Why do they seem to say this at some times, but not others? What does it mean, and what effects does it have on us? In this episode, Dan explores this topic, arguing that this reflects bad theology and that it matters because of the damage bad theology doe to people. Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ...
May 10, 2023•27 min
Brad interviews writer Scott Okamoto, author of Asian American Apostate, his wry and ironic story of leaving religion while teaching at an evangelical university. Okamoto’s often-chilling accounts reveal that such schools, where prayer and trite theological debate erupt in any lecture, demonstrate anything but higher education. Stories range from a classroom declaration against interracial marriage because it causes painful pregnancies, to grading a paper entitled, “Why Obama Is a Nazi,” and to ...
May 08, 2023•51 min
