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It's spring 2025,

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which is important to name because depending on which side of the political

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spectrum you're on and which country you're from,

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you're either in total shock with the political upheaval and the acceptance of

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authoritarian rule in America,

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or you think everything is trending your way.

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Amidst waves of confusion is a simple truth.

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The current state in the United States wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for the

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unwavering support from white evangelicals.

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So the question is, would society be better off if more people left evangelicalism?

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If you're on the fence about that,

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not sure where to land or what to say,

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this series will help as we offer tools and pathways to help more folks say

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farewell evangelicalism.

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Intro by Jesse Peters.

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Thanks, Jesse.

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All the bumper music, most all, is by Daniel Wheat.

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Check them both out.

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Welcome, friends.

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If we haven't been acquainted yet, my name is Ro Hattie.

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I'll introduce myself a little bit more shortly.

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The Faith in the Fresh Vibe podcast is a podcast on deconstructing and decolonizing Christianity.

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And usually I would have guests come on and share about their books,

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sometimes share about a topic.

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But this is the first serial season,

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which means there's a narrative that holds every episode together.

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And that narrative is rooted in the question of saying farewell to evangelicalism.

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The idea is if we display,

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show,

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reveal all of the malformed pillars that are upholding evangelicalism,

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that more people might find it in themselves to leave.

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Now, perhaps that's you.

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Perhaps you know somebody in your family,

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in your community,

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folks who are still in the clutches of evangelicalism.

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We want to give the tools.

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And since,

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hey,

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it's a podcast and you can listen in the privacy of your own ear holes,

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maybe it's you.

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Oftentimes,

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when folks are stuck in cult-like communities,

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it takes some permission to affirm all of the cracks that you've been noticing that

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don't make sense and certainly don't line up with your Christian faith.

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The first question we want to ask is, who is this for?

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Certainly the Christian folks,

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the curious Christians,

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the lapsed Christians,

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those who grew up in Christianity.

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Now,

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as many of my friends and those before us have said,

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there's not one form of Christianity,

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although the Roman Catholic Church and many evangelicals would beg to differ.

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There's just a lot of Christianities,

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different expressions that are trying to figure out what it means to live like Jesus.

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Except what happens when your tradition ignores Jesus or takes Jesus and interprets

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Jesus through a white Republican blue-eyed surfer from California who's definitely

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anti-immigrant and pro-guns and against abortion and all the other pillars of

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Christianity today.

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They don't have a lot in common with Jesus, but they have a lot of power.

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And I think that's the allure.

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In this podcast, you will hear from not just my voice, but many experts in their field.

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There'll be two prongs.

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One will be the expert voice,

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but we also,

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if we're intentional about the decolonial lens,

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we're not just going to ask experts because another form of truth will be story.

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Your story counts.

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And so we'll hear from many folks who have processed through their deconstruction

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out of evangelicalism,

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how they did it,

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what they saw,

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what was the experience,

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and maybe give a couple of clues to folks who are trying to do the same.

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Receive this invitation to embark on your own deconstruction and ignore all of the

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social media influencers who are on the way far right decrying,

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saying,

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deconstruction's so bad because people just want to sin,

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which is the most vapid and empty answer designed to oppose and probably make

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people afraid of leaving their Christian faith,

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which,

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by the way,

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is a very valid concern because a lot of folks are enmeshed so deeply within their

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church community that if you leave,

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you'll lose your entire community.

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I'm getting ahead of myself.

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That's going to be the grief episode.

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So who am I?

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I introduced myself as Rohati.

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My pronouns are he,

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him,

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and I'm recording on Treaty 7 territory in Calgary,

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in the province of Alberta,

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in the country of Canada.

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And no, we will not become the 51st state.

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You will hear most of our guests introduce themselves in similar ways.

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Some will add their credentials,

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but most all will name the traditional Indigenous territories on which their feet touch.

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That's an important component,

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a very small one,

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in an effort to acknowledge the First Peoples on the land.

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I am a writer.

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You can find my books in the show notes.

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I'm also a sometimes pastor in church language.

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You would call me a church planter.

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And I've been figuring out what it means to live out the Christian faith in a very

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post-Christian context,

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which is most of Canada,

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on the edge of inside of most church traditions.

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But I also grew up in what I would now name as white evangelicalism for the first,

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say,

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15 years of my life.

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Yet I've spent more time now outside of evangelicalism than I have within it.

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I did all of the church things like lead worship.

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preach.

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I even went to seminary after university.

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So I guess you could say I'm a bit of an expert when it comes to evangelicalism.

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Yes, it was an evangelical seminary.

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And even though I have all of those quote unquote leadership tendencies,

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if you're anything like me,

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then there were multiple moments in your spiritual experience where you said,

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wait a tick,

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something ain't right.

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Your body absorbs some type of malformed reality, whether it was patriarchy, racism, ableism.

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Well, I won't get ahead of myself.

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We'll talk about these pillars soon.

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But something in your body said no.

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And yeah, I know in evangelicalism, you're supposed to mistrust your body.

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The body shouldn't be trusted because it is spiritually profane and broken and

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decrepit and sinful and so forth and all these weird things that evangelicals say

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in order to control bodies.

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But at some point within all of that mess,

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you have to make a decision of whether or not all of the weird is worth staying.

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Now, why would we choose evangelicals?

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Simply put,

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the most powerful Christian voting bloc in America,

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not named the Roman Catholic Church,

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is an expression of Christianity named evangelicalism.

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Now,

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regardless of where you are around the world,

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chances are evangelicalism has touched your shores.

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But it's the percentage of voting population that we're after here.

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In Canada,

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about two thirds of the population,

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if they had to,

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would check the box of religious versus non-religious.

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Yet evangelicals are only about 5% of the total population.

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In America,

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there's a similar connection,

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about two-thirds of folks,

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if they had to,

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they would check the box,

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religious.

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Yet,

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those who would claim to be evangelical are about one in every four,

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or 25% of the population.

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That makes for a sizable voting bloc.

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Now, here's the problem.

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In 2016,

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white evangelicals as a whole,

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the tradition overwhelmingly supported the Republican presidential nominee.

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And we all know what happened after that.

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Now,

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fast forward eight years and all of the different weird from felony and rape convictions,

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character problems.

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What do you think happened to the evangelical vote?

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It actually didn't change one bit.

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That to me says two things.

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One, evangelicals as a whole are responsible for the reality we are in now.

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And the suggestion is if enough folks leave evangelicalism,

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many of the problems that we are facing today would be eliminated.

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But here's the kicker.

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Earlier I mentioned evangelicalism as an illegitimate expression.

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Yet, it doesn't really serve us to say that evangelicals aren't Christian.

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What I'm going to do is compare evangelical pillars,

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the important components that are part of the tradition today,

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with the teachings of Jesus.

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We're going to see how they just don't line up.

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But it doesn't serve us to say that evangelicals aren't Christian.

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They would call themselves Christian.

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And the magnitude of harm that evangelicals have incurred,

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starting with bodies on the margins and working their way up,

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is so profound that we can't detract or say they're not Christian.

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We have to hold that tension and say, listen,

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They have done that in the name of Christianity.

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They are Christians by their own admission.

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So where do we go from here?

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My hope is that we move towards a reclamation,

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towards Jesus' call,

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where the oppressed are set free,

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where the last shall be first,

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and a radical ethic of love encompasses all of our characteristics and activities

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for material liberation in the here and now.

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Now it's important for us to note that there's no central authority of evangelicalism.

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No one says you're in or out.

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There's no website you can look up and say,

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oh,

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these are evangelical churches that espouse the teachings of evangelicalism.

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There are no central teachings.

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there are themes so if you're a theology nerd you've heard of the babington

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quadrilateral it includes four different components which is bible or devotion to

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the bible it includes centrality of the cross activism which is that justice

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component that well now evangelicals are afraid and allergic to justice

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And then conversionism,

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which has been reduced to this one-line prayer to save your immaterial soul for

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eternity up into heaven.

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That's about it.

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So how is it possible then to motivate evangelicals around one central idea or belief?

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Since there are no central beliefs,

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yet evangelicals are easily motivated as a voting block around central issues,

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how do you do it?

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Well, you turn those wedge issues into central belief systems.

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Suddenly,

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the Bible,

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which reportedly was an evangelical pillar,

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is not as important as the political aspirations for social power.

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Mesh in political aspirations with fear.

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Oh, so much fear in evangelicalism.

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Fear against everything that is not matched to the white male gaze.

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And if you can add in a layer of fear of the possibility of a loss of a particular

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white way of life,

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suddenly you have motivation that's not related in any particular way to the Bible

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or to Jesus,

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but you do have enough to take a whole stack of voting believers and telling them

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where they should put their votes.

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That's how we wind up in 2025 and the calamity that is before us.

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Don't believe me?

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What was the evangelical and conservative Christian response to the final outro of

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this sermon two days after the inauguration?

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Let me make one final plea, Mr. President.

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Millions have put their trust in you.

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And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God.

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In the name of our God,

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I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.

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There are gay,

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lesbian,

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and transgender children in Democratic,

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Republican,

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and independent families,

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some who fear for their lives.

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And the people, the people who pick our crops,

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and clean our office buildings,

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who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants,

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who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals,

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they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation.

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But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.

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They pay taxes and are good neighbors.

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They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, and temples.

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I ask you to have mercy,

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Mr.

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President,

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on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away.

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and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own

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lands to find compassion and welcome here.

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Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger,

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for we were all once strangers in this land.

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May God grant us the strength and courage

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to honor the dignity of every human being,

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to speak the truth to one another in love,

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and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people,

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good of all people in this nation and the world.

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Days after the inauguration, the courageous words from the Right Reverend Dr. Mary Ann Buddy.

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She spoke these words in service when the president had to go to a service,

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kind of like a petulant child being dragged to church by his mother.

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The courage to speak about mercy.

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infuriated the president, which makes sense if you're a felon and a rapist.

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But the right-wing conservative evangelical Christian response to a sermon on mercy,

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embodying the teachings of Jesus,

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was met with so much vitriol,

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hate,

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violence.

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We expect their violence.

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They expect their violence.

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It serves as a final, not first, final clue that things are not okay in the evangelical house.

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One that seeks to embody malformed power and do whatever it takes to get it,

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regardless of who they have to throw under the bus and what beliefs they have to

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give up in the process.

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Any church tradition that seeks power to propagate their malformed beliefs rooted

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in the oppression of marginalized people first,

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to me,

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are illegitimate expressions of the Christian tradition.

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That is a substantial claim to make,

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which is why we are going to interrogate the main pillars of belief in evangelicalism.

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You will note how they don't line up to the teachings of Jesus,

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but they do line up to the pursuit of social power that centers a white cisgendered

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straight male gaze.

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Some of the pillars that we will interrogate include conspiracy theory,

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propaganda,

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patriarchy,

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the Bible,

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white supremacy,

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ableism,

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queer and trans folks,

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to name a few.

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The malformed pillars in evangelicalism and conservative Christian expressions

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actively bring harm for those outside of the church and for those within it.

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It's my hope that by exposing the malformed element that are now in the DNA of

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evangelical thought and beliefs,

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that it will provide affirmation for folks to leave the abuse that they are incurring.

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If we can expose those incoherent foundations,

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we can then tear down the veil,

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separating the mechanics of an evil engine at work and

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and the people it ensnares in pursuit of a wider ethic of love and liberation.

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So yeah, I think the DNA in evangelicalism is fundamentally malformed.

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But don't take my word for it.

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We have guests who will come and join me in that conversation, including Jared Stacey, D.L.

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Mayfield, Christian A. Smith, Mandy Capehart, Liz Grant, Mason Menenga.

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The list goes on and on, but it stops there.

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My hope is that through each episode,

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with topics ranging from exposing narcissistic leadership,

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propaganda,

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the way evangelicals are suckers for conspiracy theory,

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how they use patriarchy and ableism to control congregations,

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how they use white supremacy as a visionary goal,

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how the Bible's been distorted to fit the opinions of a choice view,

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All of this coalesce into the present day expression of evangelicalism,

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and it deserves our interrogation and our questioning as to whether or not it is legitimate.

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And for you, dear listener, whether or not you should stick around if you're still there.

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But enough from me.

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Let's start with some interviews.

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Let's begin with story.

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Remember, I noted that we're going to bring experts to speak on the why.

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But we also want to absorb some stories because often stories,

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they affirm within ourselves that we're not alone in the things that we're thinking

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or believing.

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That we can say, oh, oh, I'm not the weird one here.

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They're the baddies.

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Let's start our interviews with stories.

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And what better way than to invite a friend?

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Marla Taviano is our first guest, launching off Farewell Evangelicalism

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An appropriate start because Marla Tabiano,

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writer,

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publisher,

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she not only was a successful writer within the heart,

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and I mean the heart,

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of white evangelicalism,

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she was bought in,

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hook,

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line,

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sinker,

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stay-at-home mom,

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all of those tropes Marla embodied,

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and now she has spent half a decade meandering her way out.

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I think you'll be able to resonate with many components of Marla's story.

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Hi, I'm Marla Taviano, and I live and work on Salaguetei and Congaree lands.

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Which is where?

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Columbia, South Carolina.

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Not to start off bringing up old wounds,

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but you were in the thick of evangelicalism,

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weren't you?

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Yeah, I was deep in it.

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I was born into it and I was dead serious about it.

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And it was my whole entire life.

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And I am 49 years old right now.

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So for a solid three and a half decades, I was deeply entrenched.

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I would say I never my big,

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big,

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big catalyst was in 2012 when Trayvon Martin,

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a 17 year old black boy was shot and killed.

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And I had just started attending not.

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Well, it was been a couple of years and new church plant.

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Our pastor friend, who is a black man, it started this multi ethnic church.

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I have new black friends and one of my friends says on Facebook,

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why aren't my white friends talking about Trayvon Martin?

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I didn't know what she was talking about.

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I Google it.

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I find out and that everything just snowballed from there where I was completely

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unaware of all of the black men and boys who have been gunned down by police.

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I start reading all these books, learning all these things.

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But backing up before that, I want to say in around 2009,

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We were attending a different church at the time,

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and I was sitting at the pool with my three little girls and reading a book called

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The Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearns,

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I think his name was.

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He had some world vision or compassion or something that he did in another country.

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And he's talking about how if the gospel is not good news for this AIDS orphan in Uganda, then

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then something's missing.

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There's a hole in our gospel.

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And that shook me out of this idea of the only thing that matters is people's eternal salvation.

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Like these Democrats over here are talking about feeding people and what have you,

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but the most important thing is their eternal soul.

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And then realizing and waking up to,

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I mean,

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think about the privilege that I had to live with for that long to not realize that

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Jesus died on the cross for your sins period.

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And that's it is, is good news for everyone.

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People who have no home or they're starving or they're dying of AIDS,

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like all of these things and going to heaven when you die is the best news,

(00:23:13):
the best help that I am willing to give them.

(00:23:16):
So that's what,

(00:23:18):
I credit with really starting it.

(00:23:20):
I've been looking back through old journals.

(00:23:21):
I have 62 journals written to God, excuse me, over the course of 20 years.

(00:23:27):
And I recognize that in around 2007 and eight, I was starting to question some of the

(00:23:35):
end times theology that I had always held on to.

(00:23:40):
And that's that scared me a little bit.

(00:23:42):
So there are a lot of pieces.

(00:23:44):
But the biggest, biggest thing was was Trayvon Martin in 2012.

(00:23:48):
So by the time Trump came along in 2016, I was I was deep into it.

(00:23:54):
I had already woken up to to a lot of of things.

(00:24:00):
So there were two times when

(00:24:04):
many of my fellow American Christians were waking up,

(00:24:07):
2016 with Trump,

(00:24:09):
and then 2020 when George Floyd was murdered.

(00:24:12):
And at that time, I had moved back to the States.

(00:24:15):
I lived in Cambodia from 2015 to March, 2020, moved back to the States.

(00:24:21):
And when George Floyd was murdered,

(00:24:24):
I had people reach out to me then who had unfriended me years prior when I was

(00:24:30):
really gung ho with all my new information I had about racism and white supremacy.

(00:24:37):
And they had unfriended me and then said, OK, I see what you were saying now.

(00:24:43):
Can we be friends again?

(00:24:45):
And I've had quite a bit of that happen.

(00:24:47):
I mean,

(00:24:47):
there are plenty of people who I've not spoken to in many,

(00:24:51):
many years,

(00:24:52):
and they have no desire to ever speak to me again,

(00:24:54):
probably.

(00:24:55):
But yeah, that was my catalyst.

(00:25:05):
When you look back, thanks for sharing that.

(00:25:07):
There's all these different components, and it's cool to hear how

(00:25:12):
And maybe we don't give enough credence to this,

(00:25:15):
but how when given some options,

(00:25:19):
a lot of folks will stop and interrogate what on earth is going on around them.

(00:25:27):
And I think the Floyd murder was certainly a catalyst, especially for white folks.

(00:25:35):
But it was also something that was easily shoved underneath the rug because COVID

(00:25:41):
still was taking our attention in a bigger way.

(00:25:46):
Not like it's done now, but...

(00:25:49):
And people didn't get to the place.

(00:25:52):
Were there some features here as I try to think of like,

(00:25:55):
oh,

(00:25:55):
a listener who is kind of on the precipice of figuring out their journey and making sense,

(00:26:05):
slotting in some events to see how things are connected here.

(00:26:10):
Would you credit your willingness to dive deeper into hard things?

(00:26:18):
Actually,

(00:26:18):
if I was going to point to just one thing,

(00:26:20):
and I'm sure it's more than that,

(00:26:22):
but another catalyst that I didn't really mention was Rachel Held Evans,

(00:26:30):
who was writing...

(00:26:34):
At a time, and I probably won't get my dates right.

(00:26:37):
I'm thinking like 2010, 2011.

(00:26:41):
I can't remember when her first book came out.

(00:26:44):
It was called Evolving in Monkey Town.

(00:26:47):
And it has since been changed to Faith Unraveled,

(00:26:50):
probably because the book publishing people were like,

(00:26:53):
yeah,

(00:26:53):
this title isn't great for book sales.

(00:26:55):
We're going to switch this up.

(00:26:57):
What happened with her, she was a lot younger.

(00:27:01):
I can't remember how much younger than me she was, but our paths were so like almost identical.

(00:27:09):
The way that we were so zealous and on fire for Jesus and witnessing to people in

(00:27:14):
our public high schools.

(00:27:16):
And we just knew everything about the Bible.

(00:27:18):
And we had these airtight defenses for anything that anyone would throw at us.

(00:27:22):
So when she comes along and writes this book,

(00:27:24):
and I know that she is on fire for God,

(00:27:27):
just like I am.

(00:27:29):
And she's starting to question things.

(00:27:32):
At first, I was afraid to read her book.

(00:27:35):
And then I had to be honest with myself and ask, why are you afraid?

(00:27:40):
If she's wrong,

(00:27:42):
then keep going on your merry little way of having all the right answers and

(00:27:46):
knowing the truth.

(00:27:48):
And if she's right about some of these things,

(00:27:51):
then you've got some things you need to deal with.

(00:27:54):
So in the past,

(00:27:55):
that's another thing I've been looking back on in these journals and other things

(00:27:59):
that I can remember.

(00:28:00):
Like Marla, you're smart.

(00:28:02):
How did you fall for all of this stuff in evangelical Christianity?

(00:28:07):
And it's because I believed so strongly that it was right and

(00:28:14):
that I used my smartness to just work my way around things and figure out arguments

(00:28:20):
and figure out ways to fill in the gaps and the holes and all of that.

(00:28:23):
That's the way that I used my intelligence.

(00:28:26):
And so when Rachel comes along and she is just as intelligent as me,

(00:28:31):
probably more so,

(00:28:32):
and just as zealous as me,

(00:28:34):
probably more so.

(00:28:36):
And she is being honest and starting to question things and talking to people who are

(00:28:43):
of different religions, who are gay, all these different things.

(00:28:48):
And so when I started reading her work,

(00:28:52):
That was it.

(00:28:54):
That gave me the permission then to also start questioning things.

(00:28:59):
And it really is a slippery slope.

(00:29:03):
That's the one true thing that they say is that this is going to lead to a slippery

(00:29:07):
slope out of Christianity if you're not careful.

(00:29:11):
And it really does.

(00:29:12):
Because you've got to...

(00:29:15):
You've got to put all those pieces together.

(00:29:17):
And it's very hard to keep them together if you aren't as committed as I was.

(00:29:25):
And I was super committed.

(00:29:27):
So you've got some people who are super committed to this belief system.

(00:29:31):
You've got other people who are just kind of in it.

(00:29:33):
They don't really care as much.

(00:29:35):
And that's what I found in the deconstruction community is these are people who were all in.

(00:29:42):
These are people who...

(00:29:44):
who knew their stuff, who cared very deeply.

(00:29:47):
Otherwise,

(00:29:47):
there's just really not a whole lot of reason to deconstruct a faith that you never

(00:29:54):
worked really,

(00:29:55):
really,

(00:29:55):
really,

(00:29:55):
really hard to put together.

(00:29:59):
And so that's been, that's been my experience is, and that's why it's a little bit frustrating.

(00:30:04):
I don't get frustrated anymore about it.

(00:30:06):
I don't really care.

(00:30:07):
But when people say,

(00:30:08):
oh,

(00:30:08):
you just deconstructed so you could sin or have sex or you want this or you want that.

(00:30:15):
Yeah, no, that's, that's not it.

(00:30:18):
Or you were never saved.

(00:30:19):
Yeah.

(00:30:21):
And I always say, yeah, tell that to my 62 journals.

(00:30:24):
Who was I talking to in my journals?

(00:30:27):
Who was this God?

(00:30:29):
What were a million Bible studies that I was doing and writing and leading?

(00:30:36):
And going to church and volunteering in ministries and being a missionary.

(00:30:40):
Like I write poetry about deconstruction and I have poems that I've written to the

(00:30:45):
apostle Paul because I'm challenging him.

(00:30:48):
He's got this big list of things that he tells you,

(00:30:51):
like,

(00:30:51):
these are all my credentials,

(00:30:52):
all the things I've done,

(00:30:53):
all the places I've been,

(00:30:55):
all the,

(00:30:56):
my accolades.

(00:30:57):
And I'm like, yeah, you, you don't have anything on me, Paul.

(00:31:00):
Yeah.

(00:31:01):
I've written way more Christian books.

(00:31:03):
I was a Christian clown.

(00:31:04):
We were both Christian missionaries.

(00:31:06):
I was a Christian teacher, a Christian camp counselor, just on and on and on.

(00:31:12):
So to say that I was never saved is laughable because if I was never saved, then there's no one.

(00:31:20):
who was ever saved because there are very few people who can hold a candle.

(00:31:27):
I mean, my book sales might not be great.

(00:31:29):
Other things might not be great, but I was the best Christian.

(00:31:35):
Thank you, Marla, for sharing your story.

(00:31:38):
It's important for us to bring forward stories,

(00:31:40):
not just facts,

(00:31:41):
because within stories are truths.

(00:31:44):
We see pieces of ourselves.

(00:31:46):
We get language to make sense of our own story.

(00:31:50):
For the women who are listening,

(00:31:51):
when you hear Marla's story,

(00:31:53):
we didn't dive deep into her experience as a stay-at-home mom,

(00:31:56):
but when you're in the

(00:31:58):
clutches of evangelicalism or conservative Christianity as a woman,

(00:32:02):
there are different expectations pressed onto you and your body.

(00:32:07):
We're going to talk about those in a future episode on patriarchy.

(00:32:13):
Let's continue our stories with my friend Mason.

(00:32:17):
Mason you probably know of if you're on social media.

(00:32:21):
He is the court jester.

(00:32:24):
That's not nice.

(00:32:25):
Sorry, Mason.

(00:32:26):
Mason has used humor to diffuse the toxicity in evangelicalism and call evangelicals to account.

(00:32:34):
It's really easy to do when there's so much fodder out there for us to pick up on.

(00:32:40):
If you've seen a lot of the different memes,

(00:32:42):
especially the VeggieTales ones,

(00:32:44):
chances are Mason is behind them.

(00:32:47):
Here's Mason to share his story on deconstruction and also just little pieces and

(00:32:53):
glimpses of hope on the other end.

(00:32:55):
We're going to end this whole series on hope and liberation,

(00:32:59):
but we tease components of it with Mason's story.

(00:33:03):
Yeah,

(00:33:04):
I'm Mason Menninga,

(00:33:05):
and I host a podcast called A People's Theology,

(00:33:09):
and I also have a YouTube channel that is named Mason Menninga.

(00:33:13):
It's a pretty creative name, I think.

(00:33:15):
I mean,

(00:33:16):
I think I had the most prototypical evangelical experience,

(00:33:20):
especially for somebody who grew up in white evangelicalism in particular,

(00:33:25):
and somebody who grew up in the 90s and 2000s.

(00:33:27):
I had...

(00:33:30):
My parents had the, they had the three kids.

(00:33:32):
I, like you mentioned, grew up knowing all the VeggieTales music.

(00:33:36):
Like that was the first music I ever knew growing up was VeggieTales.

(00:33:39):
So I was,

(00:33:40):
you know,

(00:33:41):
instead of all the other like kids music that other kids that I grew up with

(00:33:46):
might've grown up singing or whatever,

(00:33:47):
I just knew VeggieTales songs.

(00:33:49):
really gotten to all of that.

(00:33:50):
And then eventually got into a John Piper phase when I was in high school,

(00:33:56):
because I thought I was like this,

(00:33:58):
like holier than thou teenage Christian that was like better than the,

(00:34:02):
all the other Christians,

(00:34:03):
because I like studied theology and studied the Bible and the gospel was so

(00:34:08):
important to me.

(00:34:09):
And I thought all of these other kids were like watering down the gospel.

(00:34:13):
And I mean, I was just like the typical holier than thou Calvinist that

(00:34:18):
Seems to really you know that that whatever that stereotype is like that person

(00:34:22):
doesn't seem to like grow up for a lot of people,

(00:34:26):
which is really interesting.

(00:34:27):
All the political stuff that came up in evangelicalism, too.

(00:34:30):
Right.

(00:34:30):
Like my parents were big at the time were big George W. Bush supporters and.

(00:34:36):
Typical conservatives.

(00:34:37):
I still remember when Obama got elected and then the Tea Party became a big thing

(00:34:42):
here in the States,

(00:34:44):
where it was basically like all these like libertarians that actually weren't libertarian.

(00:34:47):
They were like actually just straight up conservatives that were just mad at the time.

(00:34:51):
I remember getting involved in that,

(00:34:52):
that whole little like Tea Party movement when I was in,

(00:34:55):
I think,

(00:34:56):
early high school.

(00:34:57):
So,

(00:34:57):
yeah,

(00:34:57):
I just I was like super involved,

(00:35:00):
like politically in that way or at least cared about the politics of conservative evangelicalism.

(00:35:05):
I cared about the theology.

(00:35:07):
I was the kid that I still remember having one of my high school papers where we

(00:35:11):
were learning about evolution.

(00:35:12):
And so instead of like doing my paper on evolution, I did like evolution versus evolution.

(00:35:17):
think at the time i was an old earth creationist i don't think i bought into young

(00:35:20):
earth creationism so much but you know i just like did i did all the things that

(00:35:24):
like all the evangelical kids were supposed to be into uh what's that what was the

(00:35:28):
big youth group conference that went around for a while acquire the fire i went to

(00:35:32):
acquire the fire one year and then my church because we were like from south dakota

(00:35:37):
we couldn't do the big acquire the fire anymore so we went to like the beat the the

(00:35:41):
sort of b version or the diet

(00:35:43):
version of acquire the fire called dare to share.

(00:35:45):
And that's actually where I first found out about this guy named propaganda.

(00:35:49):
I don't know if you follow propaganda at all, but like, he's actually super cool now.

(00:35:53):
Uh, but that's how I first found out about that guy.

(00:35:55):
So,

(00:35:56):
uh,

(00:35:56):
yeah,

(00:35:56):
again,

(00:35:56):
like just you grow up,

(00:35:58):
you know,

(00:35:58):
youth group camps,

(00:35:59):
like just literally everything that you can think of that,

(00:36:01):
like the evangelical kid experienced in the nineties and two thousands.

(00:36:05):
I did all those things and was a part of all those things and bought into all those things.

(00:36:09):
All of it.

(00:36:09):
I was into it.

(00:36:10):
So I think I had the most prototypical experience of evangelicalism.

(00:36:14):
And I know I'm not alone.

(00:36:15):
I know there's so many other people that had that exact kind of experience.

(00:36:19):
So yeah,

(00:36:20):
I did all the things and bought into all the things that were conservative

(00:36:23):
evangelicalism in the 90s and 2000s.

(00:36:26):
Bought into all the things.

(00:36:28):
Does that resonate?

(00:36:29):
Yeah.

(00:36:30):
Does that sound like your story if you grew up in evangelicalism as a kid?

(00:36:34):
That's the power of stories because we realized we weren't the only weirdos.

(00:36:40):
I asked Mason to continue sharing,

(00:36:42):
but this time to fast forward a little bit to his deconstruction journey.

(00:36:46):
Yeah.

(00:36:47):
Yeah.

(00:36:47):
All of that happened very early on.

(00:36:49):
Right.

(00:36:49):
Like,

(00:36:50):
so for me,

(00:36:50):
like that whole deconstruction thing,

(00:36:52):
it wasn't as if like,

(00:36:53):
I went from,

(00:36:53):
all right,

(00:36:54):
now I'm deconstructing purity culture and then I'm going to do all of that.

(00:36:57):
And then I'm going to move on to, can you be gay?

(00:37:00):
And then I'm going to move on to hell or whatever.

(00:37:02):
Like,

(00:37:03):
All of it happened all at the same time, right?

(00:37:05):
So the purity culture stuff,

(00:37:08):
the sexuality question,

(00:37:10):
the sexism question,

(00:37:12):
the hell question,

(00:37:14):
the atonement theory question,

(00:37:16):
like all of those kind of questions that typically get deconstructed at some point,

(00:37:19):
they all happened at the same time.

(00:37:21):
And so,

(00:37:21):
yeah,

(00:37:22):
I was probably around like my freshman or sophomore year when I started to realize like,

(00:37:26):
First off,

(00:37:26):
like this whole thing about like women can't be pastors,

(00:37:29):
like biblically doesn't really seem to add up much.

(00:37:31):
And also, like even if it did, it's still kind of messed up.

(00:37:34):
Like some of these like professors that I have are women and they're they know way

(00:37:39):
more than I do.

(00:37:40):
They seem to be way better leaders than a lot of the men I know.

(00:37:43):
And so why would that just like why could they not have that kind of leadership if

(00:37:48):
they know more and they're just a better leader in general,

(00:37:50):
just simply because their genital is the wrong genital or whatever.

(00:37:53):
Right.

(00:37:53):
Like or their chromosomes are the wrong chromosomes.

(00:37:55):
And so that seemed to me like that just didn't make any sense anymore.

(00:38:00):
So all of those kind of questions around like the patriarchal kind of system,

(00:38:04):
they just all started to like be revealed to me where I'm like,

(00:38:08):
oh,

(00:38:08):
this whole thing is messed up.

(00:38:09):
It's connected to the purity culture stuff.

(00:38:11):
It's connected to why a lot of these people think that women can't be pastors.

(00:38:14):
It's connected to all of this.

(00:38:16):
And so it all kind of came crumbling down all at the same time for me.

(00:38:21):
And so,

(00:38:22):
yeah,

(00:38:22):
I started to really recognize like,

(00:38:24):
oh,

(00:38:25):
some of these like ideas that have had about women or at least some of the ideas

(00:38:29):
that were kind of pressed on to me,

(00:38:33):
even if I hadn't really maybe like I don't know if I would have been like 18 years

(00:38:36):
old and thought of myself as like,

(00:38:38):
oh,

(00:38:38):
yeah,

(00:38:38):
women can't be pastors or like women are like my servant or whatever.

(00:38:43):
I don't know if I really had that like internalized experience.

(00:38:49):
theology, but certainly it was the kind of theology that was pressed onto me.

(00:38:53):
And that's when I realized,

(00:38:54):
oh,

(00:38:54):
I need to like actually start to unravel some of those beliefs and start to

(00:38:59):
recognize like,

(00:39:00):
oh,

(00:39:01):
women are really hurt by some of these ideas,

(00:39:04):
some of these theologies.

(00:39:06):
And so that all happened again, probably when I was like 18, 19 years old, something like that.

(00:39:13):
And yeah, again, it was just all unraveled all at the same time.

(00:39:17):
Maybe towards the end of college and I was starting to kind of get this sense of like,

(00:39:20):
all right,

(00:39:21):
what am I going to do next in life?

(00:39:22):
Where am I going to go?

(00:39:23):
What am I going to do for a job?

(00:39:25):
All those kind of questions were starting to come up.

(00:39:28):
And I was also starting to think of like big picture.

(00:39:30):
Like what do I want my life to look like in 50 years?

(00:39:32):
Like what do I want to – what's the sort of legacy I want to leave in the next like 50 years?

(00:39:37):
Like what do I – what kind of – what do I want to contribute to the world in these

(00:39:42):
next 50 years?

(00:39:43):
So I started asking those kind of questions when I was,

(00:39:45):
I don't know,

(00:39:45):
21 years old,

(00:39:46):
something like that.

(00:39:47):
And I remember like thinking like every night for a number of nights in a row when

(00:39:52):
I was like a junior in college,

(00:39:55):
Rachel Held Evans had been so important in my life at that moment.

(00:40:00):
And

(00:40:01):
I remember like the kind of things that she would write about are things that I'm like,

(00:40:05):
oh my God,

(00:40:06):
I didn't know that anybody else had that experience.

(00:40:08):
And I didn't realize anybody else had like thought about their faith in this way.

(00:40:12):
Like she was so great at that.

(00:40:13):
She was so, so good at that.

(00:40:16):
And I remember thinking to myself,

(00:40:17):
you know,

(00:40:18):
whatever I'm able to contribute to the world,

(00:40:20):
like I want to at least be what Rachel Held Evans was for me.

(00:40:24):
I want to be like that for somebody else.

(00:40:26):
Now,

(00:40:26):
Mason's story on deconstruction was a little bit longer and it had different pit

(00:40:30):
stops along the way.

(00:40:32):
I wanted to ask Mason about his experience dealing with Theo bros.

(00:40:37):
You know the types.

(00:40:38):
Those dude bros on the internet who love to hurl violent vitriol against anyone who

(00:40:44):
disagrees with their perspective of the world or faith.

(00:40:49):
Mason, because he uses humor a lot, pokes the bear.

(00:40:53):
And as a result, he receives an inordinate amount of violent rhetoric in his DMs.

(00:41:01):
It's important to expose this side of Christianity.

(00:41:04):
So I asked him how he deals with it.

(00:41:07):
Yeah,

(00:41:07):
I mean,

(00:41:07):
I think honestly it just all – like if you pull back those layers,

(00:41:12):
all of it comes back to different forms of supremacy,

(00:41:15):
whether it's white supremacy or patriarchal supremacy or heterosexual supremacy,

(00:41:23):
whatever it might be.

(00:41:24):
Like there's all these different forms of supremacy that they're trying to protect

(00:41:28):
at all costs,

(00:41:29):
right?

(00:41:29):
Because they have –

(00:41:31):
their identities have been the normative identities in the world and they're doing

(00:41:34):
whatever they can to maintain that privilege and status.

(00:41:38):
And so even if that's not the explicit conversation that's being had,

(00:41:43):
maybe it's not,

(00:41:45):
maybe it could be about like,

(00:41:48):
How silly creationism is at some point,

(00:41:50):
if you peel this back enough,

(00:41:52):
one of those kind of layers of supremacy is going to be revealed,

(00:41:55):
whether it's white supremacy or patriarchal supremacy or heterosexual supremacy,

(00:42:01):
whatever it might be.

(00:42:01):
Right.

(00:42:02):
And so,

(00:42:02):
yeah,

(00:42:03):
there I think it always comes back to like some form of supremacy that they're

(00:42:07):
trying to maintain.

(00:42:09):
The thing is, it's not just Theobros.

(00:42:12):
We just have to look around to the exvangelical movement.

(00:42:15):
Shout out to Blake Chastain for coining the exvangelical hashtag.

(00:42:21):
The explosion of content around the ex-evangelical movement,

(00:42:25):
which is mostly white folks coming out of their evangelicalism,

(00:42:29):
has produced a certain type of response that still remains couched within whiteness,

(00:42:36):
in that deconstruction without decolonization tends to reproduce all the prior

(00:42:41):
harms we're trying to escape in bad or malformed church experiences.

(00:42:47):
I asked Mason about this since,

(00:42:49):
you know,

(00:42:49):
he's in the heart of it all,

(00:42:51):
if he's noticing similar trends.

(00:42:54):
For me,

(00:42:55):
it's pretty white-driven because most of the folks are coming out of white evangelicalism.

(00:43:00):
Yeah.

(00:43:01):
In America, because that's the largest.

(00:43:06):
And the deconstruction movement is dominated by those voices as well.

(00:43:11):
Yeah.

(00:43:11):
Yeah.

(00:43:12):
You're right that when I first started,

(00:43:14):
quote unquote,

(00:43:15):
deconstructing,

(00:43:16):
we didn't call it like that.

(00:43:17):
You know, I'm sure I don't know if I had a name for it at all.

(00:43:20):
I just was like, well, my beliefs are changing.

(00:43:22):
Yeah.

(00:43:22):
Yeah.

(00:43:23):
Right.

(00:43:23):
I like I don't know if I had.

(00:43:25):
Yeah, there wasn't a name for it or anything.

(00:43:27):
So it was around the time that I started getting more active on Twitter that I

(00:43:33):
started hearing this like term ex-evangelical and deconstruction.

(00:43:37):
And that was also around the time that I started reading Peter Rollins.

(00:43:42):
And so for me,

(00:43:43):
Peter Rollins was just like deconstruction is like a philosophical term that comes

(00:43:46):
from postmodern,

(00:43:48):
you know,

(00:43:48):
Jock Steredaw,

(00:43:49):
that kind of thing.

(00:43:49):
So for me, like deconstruction meant that.

(00:43:51):
Yeah.

(00:43:52):
And then people started to use that term as a way to describe,

(00:43:55):
like,

(00:43:56):
I don't believe these beliefs anymore that I had grown up with,

(00:43:59):
especially those who grew up in conservative evangelicalism.

(00:44:03):
And so that's kind of what that meant.

(00:44:06):
And it has just like taken on its own like industry, essentially, where like you have

(00:44:10):
People who are like deconstruction influencers where they like they basically make

(00:44:15):
a full time income,

(00:44:16):
like creating deconstruction content of like I don't believe thing anymore or whatever.

(00:44:21):
Right.

(00:44:22):
And so I I was just like, oh, wow, like this whole thing that I had just gone through.

(00:44:27):
In college, now it's just like becoming an entire industry on social media, it seemed like.

(00:44:31):
So I thought that was like really interesting.

(00:44:34):
And so it's very different.

(00:44:35):
You know,

(00:44:35):
I know that you also kind of were in like formed by like the emergent church kind

(00:44:40):
of world or whatever.

(00:44:40):
Again, you mentioned like Brian McLaren and stuff.

(00:44:43):
What that world was...

(00:44:44):
I think the world has that world had a very similar experience in the sense a lot

(00:44:48):
of those people came from white evangelicalism.

(00:44:50):
They sort of, quote unquote, deconstructed their beliefs or whatever.

(00:44:53):
But primarily that world was a more like church planning world.

(00:44:57):
Right.

(00:44:57):
A lot of those people that were in the emergent church world were people who grew

(00:45:00):
up in conservative evangelicalism were like,

(00:45:03):
I'm not that anymore,

(00:45:04):
but I'm still a Christian and I still want to.

(00:45:06):
create a church that feels authentic to who I am.

(00:45:10):
That's primarily what it seemed like the emergent church world was.

(00:45:13):
Whereas this deconstruction world is not interested in like planning churches, right?

(00:45:17):
It's just like,

(00:45:18):
we're gonna create content that helps you kind of like expose all of this like

(00:45:23):
bullshit of conservative evangelicalism,

(00:45:25):
right?

(00:45:26):
I think you're absolutely right that it primarily is a white movement,

(00:45:30):
mostly because like you mentioned before,

(00:45:32):
The people who are deconstructing or using that term are people who come from white evangelicalism.

(00:45:36):
Well, surprise, surprise.

(00:45:38):
People who come from white evangelicalism, most of them are white.

(00:45:40):
So.

(00:45:42):
I think you're right that like a lot of people coming out of that,

(00:45:46):
that that is the sort of demographic of that.

(00:45:50):
But I think and I'm sure you are kind of wanting to name this.

(00:45:53):
That doesn't have to be whiteness does not have to be the only category or the only

(00:46:01):
way that we think through deconstruction.

(00:46:06):
Our conversation around internalized whiteness and whether or not white Christians

(00:46:10):
or those lapsed Christians would even notice their formation of whiteness,

(00:46:16):
that's an important question to ask for listeners who haven't deeply interrogated

(00:46:21):
the ways racialized understandings impact their worldview.

(00:46:26):
Now, let's pivot and end this episode with a component of hope.

(00:46:33):
I will include a full episode around concepts of liberation,

(00:46:38):
of decolonial hope,

(00:46:40):
of ways to move forward in a good way.

(00:46:44):
But I thought I'd tease out a little preview with Mason's thoughts on what hope

(00:46:50):
looks like moving forward.

(00:46:53):
Your thoughts of how to start meandering through a more life-giving way.

(00:46:58):
Mm-hmm.

(00:47:00):
Well,

(00:47:00):
I'll first off say that as much as I may maybe thought of as like a deconstruction

(00:47:08):
influence or whatever,

(00:47:09):
which is fine.

(00:47:10):
I don't care however people want to talk about me.

(00:47:12):
But.

(00:47:13):
I think of my work as I'm just trying to share this kind of Christianity that I've

(00:47:21):
learned about and has been shared to me.

(00:47:24):
It's yours.

(00:47:25):
And I want to share that with others.

(00:47:27):
I think of myself as sort of like an evangelist in that way.

(00:47:30):
I just want to share this amazing gospel of Jesus Christ.

(00:47:33):
coming to,

(00:47:34):
you know,

(00:47:35):
God becoming incarnate in the person of Jesus and Jesus doing this amazing,

(00:47:40):
loving and liberating ministry.

(00:47:42):
And eventually, obviously he was killed by these imperial powers.

(00:47:46):
And then he rises again and like,

(00:47:49):
and then ascends and it's like,

(00:47:51):
oh my God,

(00:47:51):
like the end of the story isn't this guy being killed by the imperial powers.

(00:47:55):
Like there's new life after that.

(00:47:56):
I'm like, that to me, that's a story I wanna live into.

(00:47:59):
And I wanna figure out what are ways that I can live into that story today in my life.

(00:48:05):
And I wanna share that same exact story to other people

(00:48:09):
And think about all the different fun,

(00:48:11):
great,

(00:48:11):
wonderful,

(00:48:12):
powerful,

(00:48:12):
liberating theologies out there that gets us to that story and maybe help try to

(00:48:18):
figure out in our own lives.

(00:48:20):
What does that look like for me today on April 29th, 2024?

(00:48:25):
What does it look like for Mason Menega to participate in this liberating gospel of Jesus?

(00:48:30):
I know that there's hope for other people who sort of deconstruct from Christianity

(00:48:33):
and hopefully start to decolonize their not only just their theology that they had

(00:48:38):
been inherited,

(00:48:39):
that they've inherited,

(00:48:40):
but also to deconstruct and decolonize all the kind of ways that they think about

(00:48:45):
the world,

(00:48:45):
they understand the world.

(00:48:47):
And I think there's really great hope in potentially,

(00:48:49):
you know what,

(00:48:50):
there's another way that we could live in the world.

(00:48:54):
The hope is also rooted in the present in that

(00:48:58):
We see the good things and the communities on the margins who are resisting and

(00:49:06):
demonstrating a radical joy.

(00:49:09):
Like these things are happening in this moment right here, right now.

(00:49:13):
And we can join the thing that is happening in the here and the now.

(00:49:19):
Unto a more liberative way, starting with the margins first.

(00:49:23):
Fancy that.

(00:49:26):
And unrolling with what is to come.

(00:49:29):
Yeah.

(00:49:30):
I still remember, you know, I live in Minneapolis.

(00:49:34):
And in 2020,

(00:49:34):
in May of 2020,

(00:49:36):
George Floyd was murdered probably a couple miles from where I lived.

(00:49:40):
And...

(00:49:42):
What happened in the aftermath of that was seeing a community come together and say,

(00:49:49):
never again.

(00:49:49):
We will never let this happen to somebody in our community ever again.

(00:49:54):
And to see people come together in the midst of the chaos that was happening in

(00:49:59):
Minneapolis at the time,

(00:50:00):
to see people come together and say,

(00:50:02):
what do you need right now?

(00:50:03):
Do you need diapers?

(00:50:04):
Do you need a prayer?

(00:50:05):
What do you need right now?

(00:50:06):
And to see people come together and recognize...

(00:50:09):
We don't need all of these systems like the police or or whatever it might be.

(00:50:14):
We don't need these sort of systems to keep us safe and to provide for our needs.

(00:50:19):
We have each other and each other is enough for this world.

(00:50:22):
And that to me gave me so much hope.

(00:50:24):
I'm like,

(00:50:25):
whatever whatever I've heard about as like the sort of like kingdom of God or

(00:50:29):
kingdom of God.

(00:50:30):
I'm like,

(00:50:31):
that's that's being lived out right now amongst these neighbors in Minneapolis,

(00:50:34):
loving each other,

(00:50:35):
caring for each other,

(00:50:36):
making sure everybody's needs are met.

(00:50:38):
And to me, I'm like, that is the good work that I want to be a part of.

(00:50:41):
I happen to think that the story of Jesus is what animates me to do that in the world.

(00:50:46):
And that might not be the case for other people.

(00:50:48):
There's other sort of stories that other people are animated by.

(00:50:52):
But I'm like,

(00:50:52):
that's to me,

(00:50:53):
the way I think about it is what was happening to Minneapolis at the time was the

(00:50:57):
kingdom of God.

(00:50:58):
coming here on earth where people loved each other,

(00:51:01):
cared for each other,

(00:51:02):
provided for each other and made sure that they were all safe and all their needs

(00:51:06):
were met.

(00:51:07):
I still, I think back to this all the time.

(00:51:11):
Reverend Lenny Duncan,

(00:51:12):
who's been on my podcast a number of times,

(00:51:13):
I don't know if you know Lenny Duncan at all.

(00:51:17):
But Lenny one time said,

(00:51:19):
if we truly loved our neighbors as ourselves,

(00:51:23):
if we truly loved our neighbors the way that Jesus taught us to love our neighbors,

(00:51:27):
if we truly did,

(00:51:28):
we would never need the police ever again.

(00:51:30):
Because if you truly love the neighbor down the street that might be having some

(00:51:34):
sort of breakdown in their mental health,

(00:51:37):
and you truly knew that person well enough to know this is what this person needs

(00:51:41):
right now,

(00:51:42):
you would never need to call a cop,

(00:51:44):
right?

(00:51:45):
And so to me,

(00:51:47):
I'm like,

(00:51:47):
what can I do to live into this message of loving our neighbors that Jesus taught us?

(00:51:54):
And if that's the case,

(00:51:56):
what are ways then that if I actually love my neighbor the way that Jesus taught,

(00:52:01):
Maybe I'm actually participating in dismantling some of these systems that actually

(00:52:06):
keep me from loving my neighbor.

(00:52:11):
Thank you, Mason.

(00:52:12):
Thank you, Marla.

(00:52:13):
They have launched us off into episode one and the serial season called Farewell Evangelicalism.

(00:52:20):
Stories are important because within these stories, we see pieces of ourselves.

(00:52:24):
And it's really curious to me how evangelicals as a whole,

(00:52:28):
regardless of where you are across the continent and maybe the world,

(00:52:33):
you share similarities.

(00:52:35):
Because there's so many pieces,

(00:52:37):
whether it's monuments,

(00:52:38):
books,

(00:52:39):
beliefs,

(00:52:40):
systems,

(00:52:42):
they all are the same.

(00:52:44):
We all laugh at the same VeggieTales jokes.

(00:52:48):
I think there's a design behind that that we need to pay attention to.

(00:52:54):
By the way, Marla's interview was recorded around the inauguration of 2025.

(00:52:58):
Mason's interview was recorded at the end of April 2024.

(00:53:02):
Most of the interviews in Farewell Evangelicalism were recorded in the last half of 2024.

(00:53:07):
That's important because the election happened in November and that might have

(00:53:14):
changed some of their inputs and their responses.

(00:53:17):
I don't think anyone's response would have changed,

(00:53:20):
but it certainly would have gotten a lot stronger with language of resistance and justice.

(00:53:27):
Episode 2 on Farewell Evangelicalism will ask the question of how.

(00:53:33):
How is it that evangelicals across the continent wound up believing in the same things?

(00:53:39):
Well,

(00:53:39):
to figure out the how,

(00:53:40):
we need to get a bigger picture of the cultural context that evangelicalism has

(00:53:45):
operated in.

(00:53:47):
We need to start pinpointing when the beliefs flew off the rails and how a massive

(00:53:52):
group of people numbering into the millions were shaped and maybe tricked.

(00:53:59):
Thank you for listening to a Faith in a Fresh Vibe podcast.

(00:54:03):
Tell all your friends.