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In this episode, we have to understand Christian faith does not promise us omniscience.

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Welcome, friends.

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My name is Rohadi, and I am recording on Treaty 7 territory in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

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This is the Faith in a Fresh Vibe podcast, a serial season entitled Farewell Evangelicalism.

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Where are we going in this episode?

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In order to say farewell to evangelicalism,

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we have to make sense of how evangelicals wound up in the place that they're in now.

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Remember in episode 1,

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we discussed how we're in this moment in 2025 because of the white evangelical vote

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remained completely unchanged for the Republican nominee.

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So let's state the obvious here.

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There's an enormous chasm that separates evangelicals and the actual teachings of Jesus.

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And what are the actual teachings of Jesus?

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I would say read the Gospels, and in particular, Matthew 5.

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That's a good foundation.

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But evangelicals no longer adhere to those teachings, at least in public.

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How are these choices,

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and many of them bringing active harm on marginalized people groups,

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justified?

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It's really simple.

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You move the goalposts on what does it mean to be a Christian.

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So how do you convince entire movements,

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regardless of their specific church tradition or denomination,

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to adopt the new field of what matters?

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Well, you utter those veiled threats that Dr. Graves shared with us in episode two.

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The real feeling that white evangelicals have about losing their inherited social

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privileges they've benefited from since colonization.

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Say that the white way of life is under threat and you can motivate a lot of white people.

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In this episode,

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we talk about the susceptibility in evangelicalism to conspiracy theory,

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tracing back the relationship between conservative Christians,

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white culture preservation,

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and the type of church culture required to support the entire malformed machine.

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We then pivot to describe how it's possible to reject fundamental teachings of

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Jesus in favor of partisan politics that lately only exist to enrich the

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ultra-wealthy class at the expense of literally everybody else.

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It becomes crucial for us to name how it's possible to sway so many evangelicals.

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Because we can't just blame every individual evangelical or conservative Christian.

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We're actually naming in this episode and this entire series about how rugged

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individualism is one of the failures of Western culture.

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So we can't just blame the individual.

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Rather, we need to pinpoint the gatekeepers in the industry of conservative religion.

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And that's the leaders, the pastors.

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For that,

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I've invited my friend Dr.

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Ed Eng to discuss the psychology behind malformed components in evangelicalism that

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in fact produces a type of leader.

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The cultural conditions in evangelicalism are indeed designed to attract the most toxic,

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narcissistic suckers to lead wonderless churches of folks already afraid of losing

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their white or white Christian way of life,

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who are also easily manipulated to claw even deeper towards militancy and

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self-preservation regardless of the damage incurred and produced.

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Add in the dash of conspiracy theory and propaganda to keep the machine rolling,

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and you have a recipe for the disaster that we're in now.

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So let's get started.

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My first guest will be Jared Stacey, who is a theologian and ethicist, former pastor as well.

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He has a PhD in moral and practical theology from the University of Aberdeen.

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But his research focuses on the intersection of theology and politics.

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You might have heard from him on Time or NPR or BBC.

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He has spoken specifically on ethics,

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extremism,

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and conspiracy theory vis-a-vis US evangelicalism.

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Jared Stacey on deck with a little interlude from Daniel Wheat.

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The apocalypse came

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Like a thief in the night Shifted our vision and challenged our sight Still trying

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to figure when heaven will start But it seems most of us chose hell for our part

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Welcome, Jared.

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First off, can you name the lands on which your feet touch?

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Yeah, Potawomic land is Fredericksburg, Virginia, just south of DC.

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I asked Jared to ease us into a conversation on conspiracy theory,

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and it starts with a history lesson.

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Way back in ancient Rome.

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Back 2000 years.

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So, no, I like how you... I will start with Rome.

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And I'll start with actually one of my favorite conspiracy theories to talk about.

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Because it has to do with...

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a Roman emperor by the name of Nero.

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And Nero committed suicide.

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And there was a legend that grew among the Roman elites and also the Roman poor,

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which is a really interesting combination.

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There were those who loved and benefited from Nero and there were those who hated him.

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And there were some elites who mourned that he was gone.

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And the spectacles that he provided for the poor, too, was something that was missing and lost.

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So this legend developed, right?

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When it's ancient, we call it a legend.

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When it's modern, we call it a conspiracy theory.

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that Nero was going to come back,

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that Nero wasn't dead,

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that he was going to come back,

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and that he was going to bring armies with him from the east,

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and he was going to march on Rome and restore Rome to its glory.

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That happened around AD 68.

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And in the book of Revelation,

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which today gets kind of trotted out for evangelicals to sort of decode everything

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going on.

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Yeah.

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there's a reference to Nero and,

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and this idea that this beast is going to have this wound and,

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and it will be a mortal wound,

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but the beast will survive and people will marvel at the beast,

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right?

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This is all symbolic language,

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but it was really recognizable to the early Christians at that time that,

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Oh,

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Hey,

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like this is a reference to the power of empire and the propaganda fire puts out

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300 years later.

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Rome is falling.

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Barbarians are invading and people are blaming Christians.

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Over 300 years later, Christians are now the dominant religion in the Roman Empire.

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And this bishop from Hippo named Augustine writes this defense and says,

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it's not the Christian's fault.

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That's his main,

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you know,

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it's reducing a brilliant work down to,

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you know,

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hey,

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it's not our fault.

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That's a massive oversimplification.

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Sound bites, right?

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Yeah, my point is the legend of Nero's return was popular with Christians, too.

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And it was so popular that Augustine mentions it as sort of,

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hey,

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this is what people believe the Antichrist was,

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that Nero was going to return,

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that the Antichrist was going to rise,

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and that there would be this big battle,

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and that Christ would come back.

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I mentioned that one because it's so foreign to us here and now because it's

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dealing with Rome in 368,

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but it's oddly familiar.

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It's oddly familiar.

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And the reason I share it is because I want to invite people to really consider two things.

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The first is that part of the reason that people believe conspiracy theories is

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just because we're limited creatures that we're always trying to narrate beyond our

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capacity to know and to see.

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We're always trying to fill in the gaps.

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And there's something very human about that, about that desire.

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And then the second reason I bring it up is because of the way that Christianity

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presents itself as a claim about what we can't see and what ends up happening.

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And there's so many other variables to discuss here about modern people.

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But when it comes to the way that conspiracy theory gets entangled in Christianity,

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it doesn't have to be this way.

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That's what I want to tell people.

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It doesn't have to be this way.

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But in order to untangle this,

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in order to disconnect the suspicion that leads to conspiratorial narrations from

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Christian faith,

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we have to understand Christian faith does not promise us omniscience.

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That Christian faith held among creatures like us provokes uncertainty and mystery

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before it ever gives us the keys and the sight to see what's going on behind closed doors.

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Because what so easily happens is that people say, I believe that Jesus is alive and not dead.

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Right.

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And there's an uncritical link between that claim, that central claim of Christianity.

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It's a really uncritical line that we kind of plug in to this when you treat the

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resurrection as sort of the prime alternative fact.

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there's a really uncritical way in which it shares its power with a really

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corrosive form of suspicion is to the way that Christian faith lends,

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wrongly,

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falsely,

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lends its authority to claims of suspicion and stories of suspicion that Christians

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in the here and now try to tell about the world around them.

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And that's the theological crisis at stake.

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So my question...

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For those who are listening,

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if you try to dispute a conspiracy theory held by a Christian,

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it's very hard to get them to disbelieve it because they held it not just as a

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human being,

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but as a Christian,

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that you are not only instigating a crisis of fact,

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but you're also instigating a crisis of faith,

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because if they have to rethink this fact,

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it's also getting their faith.

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And that's what no meta fact checker can ever get at.

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That's where the church's responsibility comes in.

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It's the church's job to counter conspiratorial narrative,

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because you're going to have propaganda and conspiracy all over the place.

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Doesn't matter the age, doesn't matter the time, it's going to happen.

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What helps is a participating church that counters the narrative with the teachings of Jesus.

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But here's the problem.

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What happens when the church and the denomination are part of the ruse?

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Here's Jared again as we take the examples from ancient Rome as foundation and we

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propelled them into the present.

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There's not a single period.

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So roughly we're talking about 300 years from the time that the evangelical movement began.

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And that's arbitrary.

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But the guild of historians has to do something.

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They have to put a finger on the timeline and say, this is when it started.

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Tell me why I should care.

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Yeah.

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Yeah,

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we're looking at 300 years and over these 300 years in America,

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there's never a time where you won't find evangelicals making use of conspiratorial

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narrations in their articulation of the gospel.

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So let me let me I'm going to skip a stone.

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I'm going to skip a stone across and we'll just get it.

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Before the American Revolution,

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there were – and after,

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there were always anxieties over slave revolts.

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And that was one of the earliest conspiratorial anxieties that shaped American society.

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And evangelical preachers like George Whitefield,

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who's probably one of the most well-known,

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Benjamin Franklin went to hear him.

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He was a celebrity.

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He preached –

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a gospel that made slave owners angry because he actually did preach it to enslaved people,

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but he preached it in a way that was domesticating the enslaved.

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You need to be a good slave.

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So he was a maverick, but he didn't go far enough.

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And the whole premise of this was it was a gospel that promised to pacify the white

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anxiety for slave revolts.

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And that conspiracy theory, in many cases, is a true one.

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Because there were slave revolts.

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It did happen.

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But the white anxiety over the possibility of slave revolts was a very real threat

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and one that was built into the social order.

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And so you're going to hear me saying social order all the way through because what

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ends up happening is oftentimes the gospels evangelicals preach assumes Christendom.

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It assumes an empire,

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a social order that's supposed to be static,

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just like the God,

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immutable God that they're called.

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Right.

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So like I'm not getting into I want to hit pause.

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I don't I don't want to suggest that God changes endlessly, but he's immutable.

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That's part of Christian confession.

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Right.

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But our experience,

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our way of narrating our encounter with this God,

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the easiest way I could say is the difference between Moses going up to Sinai and

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seeing the fire and the wind and Elijah going up that same mountain and only

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meeting a still small voice.

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This is a living God.

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So so evangelicals want to rush to dogma and doctrine to kind of.

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trot out God's immutability.

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But that's the difference between theology and ideology.

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We're talking about this static system, a Christian biblical worldview.

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So that's another element.

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But that worldview always kind of shows itself in this commitment to a static social order.

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And the earliest one was these slave revolts.

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When you fast forward,

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past the Civil War, into Jim Crow.

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We don't have the time to go into that,

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but the conspiracy theories about Jim Crow and what it would mean to give African

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Americans the vote.

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When you fast forward to the Great War,

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World War I,

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conspiracy theories about immigrants and Jews were a dominant feature of

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fundamentalist preaching,

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fundamentalist evangelical preaching at the time.

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OK, and we would recognize a lot of these today.

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So Billy Sunday was a very popular revivalist.

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He preached during the Great War.

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He said,

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you know,

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that if they say that we're the great melting pot,

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well,

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it's up to us to cut off the slag that doesn't melt into Americanism.

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Yeah.

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And the and I want to emphasize that even later.

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When the topic changed from immigrants and Jews to communists,

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these conspiracy theories did not arise from within evangelicalism.

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They were absorbed by evangelicalism because they were permeating the white America consciousness.

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So we have to be clear in saying that evangelicals are largely,

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you mentioned earlier the sort of cynicism and feeling like the church isn't going

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to change.

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And it made me realize that when it comes to forming Christians,

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the evangelical church,

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as I understand it,

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has been formed by it.

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We talk about being radical,

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but we come out being deeply formed to the tenets of free market capitalism and

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call that Christian free.

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Yeah.

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And we are fundamentally unable to even have the language to articulate the various

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isms that provide us with the things that we say are obvious or clear or biblical.

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Hang on, hang on.

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You think capitalism is that bedrock foundation to that?

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I think it's a key part of it.

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When you trace the historical legacy of conspiracy theory in America in general,

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there's always that conservative notion that labor is going to rise up against capital,

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right?

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So you're dealing with –

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in the political sense,

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a lot of the Cold War conspiracies about communists always were a continuation of

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the narrative in the 30s that the New Deal and FDR was the advent of the Antichrist

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and tyranny.

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And those end up just being a theological dressing for the concern of labor.

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And so again,

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there's an economic material component here that I don't want people to miss out on either.

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So you go all the way through up to the deep state kind of concern in the 80s and 90s.

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Let me give you another final example before we get to the MAGA world,

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which I think is really apparent to everyone.

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But I've said this before in recounting this history that I think one of the things that –

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shows the way that conspiracy theories as storytelling acts are so popular among

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evangelicals is also because we don't tell our story accurately either.

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That some of the at the root of our desire to spin stories about our political and social moment

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is also a willingness to forge a sort of forgetfulness over the sort of people that

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we've been in the past.

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And that's why I think this history, recounting it this way, has a moral power.

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It's not to say that evangelicals are the only people with a penchant for conspiracy theory.

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That's just not the case.

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America is the land of conspiracy,

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and we're always sort of endlessly suspicious of these things.

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But when I say there's something that happens when evangelical absorbs this stuff,

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We become a people who are more interested in what something can do for us and how

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it can serve this urgency and desire for the gospel that we have.

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And this hit home for me personally when I was a kid and the school shooting

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happened at Columbine.

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And when I was I was in youth group when that happened.

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And.

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For three years,

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the Columbine martyr narratives were a really core key component of giving me,

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mapping for me,

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what it meant to be Christian.

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And I literally,

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quite literally began entertaining,

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like,

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well,

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how do I know if I'm a Christian if I can't answer yes at gunpoint?

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Yeah.

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Okay,

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by now you're getting a sense that conspiracy theories and propaganda have a

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designer and that we get to a place of belief for a certain group because someone

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shaped and formed their thought to believe those things.

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When we consider contemporary movements, that's how we got here.

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we can start to pinpoint activities in evangelicalism across different associations,

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denominations,

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think tanks,

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and so forth.

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When we can name how these organizations have contributed to thought,

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we can start to ascertain why evangelicals believe the things that they do.

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I asked Jared if he can name some of the intersections of who is behind designing

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conspiracy theory in right-wing conservative Christianity.

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The first thing is something that's actually nameless.

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And that's just that we're all breathing the air of modern individualism.

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That's nameless, but it shapes how we understand the way the world works.

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Every conspiracy theory has this common feature where it narrates the world in

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terms of personal cause and effect,

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that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election.

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Joe Biden,

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it says,

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sat in his office and told this Democrat operative and that Democrat operative,

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don't count those votes,

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don't do that.

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And at base,

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that is a way of re-narrating the world in terms of how you think it works,

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which is personal,

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individual actions.

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And evangelicals,

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because we often hold the idea that salvation is a personal,

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mechanistic conversion,

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like pray this prayer,

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boom.

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And that was always trotted out in the Cold War as a way to stand against communism.

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You know, like...

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We need personal revival, personal repentance, and because we're capitalists.

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We're not communists.

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We're capitalists in America.

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So that's a complexity that doesn't always get talked about.

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But for people like modern people like us who just kind of assume like,

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oh,

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yeah,

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the world works because we enact choices that have effects,

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that's not – the world is more complex than that.

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There's a complexity and even a chaos to how the world works that our ways of

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narrating the world fail to accommodate and reflect.

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And conspiracy theory in many ways fails because it's a character.

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Like it's almost comical, like that it's just personal actions.

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Yeah.

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The conspiracy theories that have been proven true in some respects,

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like the Tuskegee experiment,

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these things are very complex,

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and they often escape our ability to narrate them.

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So that's one nameless thing.

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But what we can do is we can look at material network analysis.

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Who relates to whom?

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What are the terms of this relationship?

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How does this work?

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Yeah.

(00:22:34):
And then there's also the theological beliefs that sort of give justification and

(00:22:39):
motivation to that.

(00:22:40):
I think one figure where it kind of concentrates in and it does a lot of those

(00:22:43):
things for people is Tim LaHaye.

(00:22:45):
So Tim LaHaye was a co-author of the Left Behind series.

(00:22:50):
Oh, yeah.

(00:22:51):
And right alongside Columbine,

(00:22:54):
the Left Behind books for me were a huge form of my own devotion as a kid growing up.

(00:22:58):
Historian Daniel Hummel says that the Left Behind books in so many ways –

(00:23:03):
primed the american population for q anon that that the the notion of hidden chaos

(00:23:11):
and all that kind of and there was those books feature a one world totalitarian

(00:23:16):
government right left behind didn't invent that apocalyptic uh but they sold 80

(00:23:22):
million copies of that and someone got paid

(00:23:26):
Exactly.

(00:23:27):
So Tim LaHaye was a theologian, he was a pastor, and he was also an activist.

(00:23:31):
And not only did he co-write these books that were wildly popular and gave

(00:23:36):
many americans their eschatology even if they're not a christian they he built

(00:23:40):
their their fear as well as their eschatology exactly yeah exactly um but he also

(00:23:47):
was an activist and uh and he was the first president of something called the

(00:23:51):
council for national policy now the council for national policy was created in the

(00:23:56):
80s and it was basically made to counter

(00:24:01):
Similar coalitions on the American left.

(00:24:04):
But when – Ann Nelson has a great book that kind of does a lot of the analysis with the CMP.

(00:24:12):
But Tim LaHaye was its first president.

(00:24:14):
Tim LaHaye in one of his books, Defending His Theology –

(00:24:19):
opens up and says that he believes that the Illuminati are real and that they've

(00:24:24):
been trying to destroy Judeo-Christian society for 200 years.

(00:24:30):
And I talk about that.

(00:24:33):
That's a receipt, right?

(00:24:34):
So here we have someone who's kind of said,

(00:24:35):
I'm an avowed conspiracy theorist,

(00:24:37):
like this is happening,

(00:24:39):
the threat.

(00:24:40):
Yeah, no one batted an eye.

(00:24:41):
Okay.

(00:24:42):
Yeah, no one batted an eye.

(00:24:43):
Now, the CMP is still around.

(00:24:46):
And in 2019,

(00:24:48):
the CMP counted among its ranks the three largest Christian radio networks in America.

(00:24:57):
Put a pin in this moment because we come back to the question of media and the who

(00:25:02):
is behind the propaganda and the conspiracy theory.

(00:25:07):
It's by design,

(00:25:08):
and if we can name the who,

(00:25:09):
we can pinpoint some of the sources of what has shaped informed belief systems.

(00:25:15):
Okay, let's jump back in.

(00:25:18):
One of those was Salem Media Group,

(00:25:21):
and one of the talk show that it hosts is Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA.

(00:25:27):
So Salem hosts Charlie Kirk.

(00:25:30):
When 2020 rolls around,

(00:25:31):
in the years leading up to 2020,

(00:25:34):
a lot of the CMP's private meetings that were actually leaked included a lot of...

(00:25:42):
meetings or a lot of talks given about stealing elections, almost priming the pump.

(00:25:51):
When things got really acute in 2020, a lot of what Charlie Kirk put out

(00:25:58):
on the internet,

(00:25:59):
and I've got the tweets,

(00:26:00):
you can go back,

(00:26:01):
they're easily indexable and searchable.

(00:26:04):
You can find a lot of these leaders with ties to the CMP,

(00:26:07):
and it intersects money and denominations and all these sorts of things.

(00:26:12):
It's a really easy way to articulate,

(00:26:14):
here's a bunch of the architects whose theological beliefs converge with ideology,

(00:26:20):
converge with material benefits of money and prestige,

(00:26:24):
those sorts of things,

(00:26:25):
power.

(00:26:27):
And so it all kind of coalesces and concentrates in the CMP.

(00:26:30):
And there's other ways to talk about it for sure.

(00:26:34):
But when you look at the CMP and Tim LaHaye and all of it,

(00:26:37):
it just kind of intersects really nicely.

(00:26:39):
To give people an example, these beliefs are not just floating up in the air.

(00:26:44):
No, no, no.

(00:26:46):
They are driving real material connection and networking that wields a particular power.

(00:26:56):
The songs they heard on Sunday,

(00:26:58):
now in the afternoon on the way back,

(00:26:59):
you're listening to Charlie Kirk on the same TV show.

(00:27:02):
So on the same radio program or the podcast, right?

(00:27:04):
So the media –

(00:27:06):
the media kind of networks,

(00:27:08):
these have a way of fusing,

(00:27:11):
you know,

(00:27:11):
worship with the conservative word.

(00:27:15):
And when, when you fuse those two together, it's really difficult to unpack.

(00:27:17):
Well,

(00:27:18):
like,

(00:27:18):
yeah,

(00:27:18):
like good Christians should believe that the Democrats are going to steal the election.

(00:27:22):
Right.

(00:27:23):
Who,

(00:27:24):
who's we,

(00:27:25):
you know,

(00:27:25):
pastors can bemoan all day,

(00:27:27):
the influence of media,

(00:27:28):
but it's usually always directed at the secular media,

(00:27:31):
at adventures like PR and,

(00:27:34):
We have no language or capacity to talk about the way that we just assume,

(00:27:41):
you know,

(00:27:41):
that's political.

(00:27:42):
This is biblical, right?

(00:27:44):
And that move has a way of self-justifying the architecture that we've built around us,

(00:27:52):
the networks that we've built around us,

(00:27:54):
that in so many ways...

(00:27:56):
normalize,

(00:27:58):
give permission and give potency to propaganda that we really don't even have the

(00:28:05):
language to talk about.

(00:28:06):
And I come back to thinking like the church should be the place actually where

(00:28:10):
these slogans and these things are actually emptied of their power.

(00:28:15):
But unfortunately, the exact opposite seems to be happening, especially when it's so easy.

(00:28:21):
I know this personally, it's so easy

(00:28:24):
be a pastor in evangelicalism and benefit from it have a really nice religious

(00:28:29):
career play the game you play the game or else the result is is that you're going

(00:28:33):
to lose all of your inheritance and and that privilege at least for the leadership

(00:28:38):
which is why you don't see a lot of shifts because of these folks who have no

(00:28:42):
transferable skills and what else are you going to do if you stand for truth you

(00:28:47):
will be thrown out of your church

(00:28:56):
Thank you, Jared, for opening the door to the history behind conspiracy theory.

(00:29:02):
We've identified the ways that evangelicals are susceptible to conspiracy theory

(00:29:06):
and the ways that they use conspiracy theory to accommodate and accomplish their goals.

(00:29:12):
It's by design.

(00:29:14):
Remember episode two,

(00:29:15):
the naming,

(00:29:16):
the different intersections and moments in history where evangelicals have been

(00:29:20):
very intentional to guide their congregations to not merely vote in a particular way,

(00:29:26):
but to believe in a particular way of life.

(00:29:30):
This in turn produces certain types of communities

(00:29:35):
It changes their culture.

(00:29:38):
And to make sense of the cultural realities in evangelicalism,

(00:29:42):
I've invited my friend Dr.

(00:29:43):
Ed Ng to come and share a little bit from the psychology behind why evangelicals

(00:29:50):
believe the things that they do.

(00:29:52):
We'll have a little bit of an intersection interrogating narcissistic leaders who,

(00:29:58):
by and large,

(00:29:59):
you can find them all over evangelicalism.

(00:30:02):
Why is that?

(00:30:04):
Here's Dr. Ng carrying on this conversation in farewell evangelicalism.

(00:30:11):
My name is Ed Ng.

(00:30:13):
I'm a registered psychologist here in British Columbia.

(00:30:16):
Well, I reside and work on the unceded and ancestral territories of the Musqueam Nation.

(00:30:22):
We start our conversation by exploring a social theory that explains a lot of the

(00:30:28):
cultural reasons and rationales of why evangelicals believe the things they believe.

(00:30:34):
The theory is called Terror Management Theory.

(00:30:38):
Yeah, yeah.

(00:30:39):
Well, it was not my theory.

(00:30:40):
It was posited like about 10 years ago in a book form,

(00:30:44):
but it's always kind of been with us in one way or another.

(00:30:49):
What it really kind of says,

(00:30:51):
terror management theory,

(00:30:53):
is that when we're afraid,

(00:30:55):
we tend to reach for black and white or simple or yes or no solutions,

(00:31:01):
something that's more concrete rather than something that considered maybe in the

(00:31:07):
gray areas or

(00:31:08):
you know, a both and sort of, you know, muddle.

(00:31:12):
But when we're afraid,

(00:31:13):
we tend to reach for solid things,

(00:31:16):
concrete things,

(00:31:17):
things that we can attach ourselves to.

(00:31:18):
So whether that's a leader,

(00:31:20):
or whether it's an ideology,

(00:31:23):
or something that makes us feel like we belong,

(00:31:25):
and that we have some sense of certainty,

(00:31:28):
we reach for those things.

(00:31:29):
And so what creates that idea of black and white in a lot of ways can be the leaders that can

(00:31:35):
espouse a certain ideology.

(00:31:37):
And so this is how Mussolini,

(00:31:40):
Hitler,

(00:31:40):
Donald Trump,

(00:31:41):
they come to power in part because they promise a sense of certainty.

(00:31:45):
They promise that they're going to fix things.

(00:31:47):
And that appeals to people who are afraid.

(00:31:49):
Because they think,

(00:31:50):
good,

(00:31:50):
now we're going to have somebody doing what we exactly want you to do,

(00:31:53):
which is to fix it.

(00:31:55):
And they're able to locate the problem.

(00:31:56):
The problem is...

(00:31:57):
This people group, that people group, whatever it is.

(00:31:59):
Yeah, and I'll fix it.

(00:32:02):
And the communication of that problem is, in fact, crystal clear.

(00:32:07):
And it's so simple.

(00:32:09):
It is simplistic, in fact.

(00:32:10):
Absolutely.

(00:32:11):
Intentionally.

(00:32:13):
And that's one of the ways that makes it...

(00:32:17):
absorbable.

(00:32:18):
I don't know if that's a word, but.

(00:32:20):
Right.

(00:32:21):
Sexy is another word.

(00:32:22):
Or just interesting.

(00:32:24):
Yeah.

(00:32:25):
Or just attractive for people who are quite honestly like languishing,

(00:32:32):
looking for a sense of clarity.

(00:32:33):
Yeah.

(00:32:34):
You know,

(00:32:35):
so part of terror management theory comes around part because we've been dealing

(00:32:38):
with a lot of fear over,

(00:32:40):
gosh,

(00:32:41):
decades now.

(00:32:42):
When you think about it,

(00:32:42):
you know,

(00:32:43):
I'm Gen X and they say of Gen X,

(00:32:46):
one of the distinctives is that we grew up during the height of the Cold War.

(00:32:50):
I remember when I was 10 years old,

(00:32:51):
I was looking at Maclean's magazine,

(00:32:53):
and there was a big mushroom cloud in the front of it.

(00:32:55):
And I can remember.

(00:32:58):
There are so many movies that came out in the 80s about nuclear war and about the

(00:33:03):
aftermath and about just how awful it's going to be.

(00:33:06):
I wouldn't say it was necessarily traumatizing, but it certainly sensitized a lot of us

(00:33:11):
to this feeling of fragility in our lives.

(00:33:13):
Now,

(00:33:13):
how that affected us,

(00:33:14):
I don't really quite know,

(00:33:15):
because that's something people are still piecing together.

(00:33:17):
But we grew up in this era of fear,

(00:33:20):
especially of communists,

(00:33:21):
especially of Russia,

(00:33:22):
well,

(00:33:23):
Soviet Union at the time.

(00:33:25):
And then,

(00:33:26):
of course,

(00:33:28):
in the modern era,

(00:33:29):
or post-2000,

(00:33:32):
after 9-11,

(00:33:33):
we've had this wholesale vilification of people from what's known as the Middle East.

(00:33:40):
because of that act of terrorism.

(00:33:43):
But then,

(00:33:43):
of course,

(00:33:44):
the never-ending wars we've had all over the place in that part of the world,

(00:33:49):
the dissatisfaction from these forever wars,

(00:33:52):
much more in our face now with climate change,

(00:33:55):
these intractable sorts of problems and issues,

(00:33:58):
these are not so easy to understand or digest.

(00:34:01):
Yeah.

(00:34:01):
And so people are looking for easy answers.

(00:34:04):
Who's the enemy here?

(00:34:05):
That's the enemy.

(00:34:06):
Good.

(00:34:06):
Let's go kill him.

(00:34:07):
What can I do about it?

(00:34:08):
You know, vote for this guy.

(00:34:10):
Got it.

(00:34:11):
You know, he's going to make it OK.

(00:34:14):
It's so fascinating that you go back into Gen X and the Cold War, because this is where we.

(00:34:22):
can pinpoint in conservative Christianity where the rise of left behind of late

(00:34:28):
great planet Earth,

(00:34:30):
this eschatology of escaping this world for heaven in the clouds was very alluring

(00:34:35):
and also highly,

(00:34:36):
highly,

(00:34:37):
highly,

(00:34:37):
highly successful.

(00:34:38):
I think like 80 million copies Tim LaHaye sold?

(00:34:42):
yet he was also a strong proponent of conspiracy theory and led people and led also

(00:34:49):
significant policy think tanks around the shaping of the conservative right as you

(00:34:58):
name these components here

(00:35:01):
when we see these and it wasn't sudden because i think when i look back at folks

(00:35:07):
who have named deconstruction and guests on this podcast in from america almost all

(00:35:14):
of them have named 2016 and donald trump as the turning point yes in their

(00:35:20):
deconstruction

(00:35:21):
But when I look at the rapid escalation of the religious right and maybe in the

(00:35:28):
sense the resurgence of at least evangelicalism in the United States and that type

(00:35:33):
of right wing populism that has emerged across the world,

(00:35:37):
but certainly here in North America.

(00:35:40):
That happened, my sense is, around COVID, the pandemic.

(00:35:45):
But you never, and you would have got there, named the pandemic.

(00:35:49):
So in many ways,

(00:35:50):
the pandemic was the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of opening the floodgates.

(00:35:57):
Oh, my goodness.

(00:35:58):
Yes.

(00:35:58):
No, and 100%, because climate change is one of those slow-boiling frog sort of things, right?

(00:36:04):
You know, where it's like...

(00:36:05):
sure you know how bad is it really you know we had a bad period a good winter

(00:36:09):
whatever it was just once yeah exactly what's one degree so you know yeah what's

(00:36:14):
what's what's what's two degrees celsius really i mean yeah but but i like the warm

(00:36:18):
weather there's no snow here like oh it's great california here in vancouver so

(00:36:23):
anyway um but all of a sudden you have this worldwide emergency of of this of this

(00:36:29):
disease that we don't know much about and

(00:36:32):
Yeah,

(00:36:32):
and when you're faced with that amount of fear in that short amount of time,

(00:36:37):
all of a sudden,

(00:36:38):
people's lives are disrupted,

(00:36:40):
and they have no idea,

(00:36:41):
no way of coping with it.

(00:36:43):
You have all of these,

(00:36:44):
you know,

(00:36:45):
church leaders who don't know what to say about it,

(00:36:48):
because they're not prepared.

(00:36:49):
They're not thinking in terms of,

(00:36:51):
boy,

(00:36:52):
when this eventual pandemic happens,

(00:36:54):
what will I prepare my people to do,

(00:36:55):
or how are we going to do,

(00:36:57):
right?

(00:36:57):
Yeah, never.

(00:36:59):
You know,

(00:36:59):
people reach for,

(00:37:00):
again,

(00:37:00):
when they're confronted with terror,

(00:37:02):
they reach for easy answers.

(00:37:03):
They reach for scapegoats.

(00:37:06):
And in a very literal sense of,

(00:37:09):
can we put our sins on this goat so we can send this away from the community and

(00:37:13):
resolve our community of sin?

(00:37:16):
Man,

(00:37:16):
that's another example of how religious formation,

(00:37:20):
and in this case,

(00:37:21):
Christianity,

(00:37:23):
how formation in Christianity actually set the stage to adopt a lot of fringe thinking.

(00:37:31):
Because it's kind of already in the DNA of how to think for generations of Christians.

(00:37:39):
Right, right.

(00:37:40):
Yeah.

(00:37:41):
I will point to what I think is a pendulum swing because of Obama.

(00:37:47):
And that sucks to say.

(00:37:49):
We're blaming Obama.

(00:37:51):
We're not.

(00:37:52):
It's all your fault, Obama.

(00:37:54):
And what I mean by that is that two terms of a black man in office really activated

(00:38:02):
people on an unconscious or subconscious level,

(00:38:05):
especially in the United States.

(00:38:08):
It's fascinating to me.

(00:38:09):
When I lived in the States doing my doctorate,

(00:38:12):
the discussion there is much more around race than it is here in Canada.

(00:38:18):
The race is black and white.

(00:38:19):
Asians are persona non grata there.

(00:38:23):
an invisible minority, so to speak.

(00:38:25):
But I think in a lot of ways, a country that was founded off of the enslaved labor of people,

(00:38:39):
cannot ever really fully escape that gravity.

(00:38:43):
And so when you have somebody whose lineage traces back to the people who were enslaved,

(00:38:49):
there's a usurping of what's unconsciously maybe this feeling that this is wrong.

(00:38:56):
But because of the general morals of progressivism and this idea of hope that he

(00:39:02):
brings forward,

(00:39:03):
it's that,

(00:39:04):
no,

(00:39:04):
we're going to jump beyond

(00:39:06):
We're going to jump beyond like this,

(00:39:09):
this really kind of weird tickle of hatred or unfamiliarity or fear I have around

(00:39:14):
black people.

(00:39:15):
And we're going to elect a black president.

(00:39:18):
And I think,

(00:39:20):
you know,

(00:39:21):
after after he was done his two terms,

(00:39:24):
there just was a pendulum the other way.

(00:39:26):
And this is primarily with, you know, white people.

(00:39:30):
And

(00:39:33):
And of course,

(00:39:35):
you could say a lot about Asian people and their voting records and Latinos for

(00:39:38):
Trump as well and all that stuff.

(00:39:40):
But again,

(00:39:44):
I think that there's a very deep unconscious swing back towards what Frantz Fanon,

(00:39:50):
the psychiatrist,

(00:39:52):
called a colonized mind.

(00:39:54):
That there's this idea of white supremacy that runs very, very strong through all of us.

(00:39:59):
And there's this idea that we're never going to be a fully golden age nation until

(00:40:04):
we get our white man back in power.

(00:40:07):
Our conversation took a pivot as we interrogated additional inputs that are

(00:40:12):
creating the malformed rationale behind why evangelicals are doing and believe in

(00:40:18):
the things that they do.

(00:40:20):
I guess the first thing I want to preface all this is by reminding myself that God

(00:40:27):
is the ultimate materialist.

(00:40:28):
He made everything.

(00:40:29):
And as a creator has said, like, this is all good.

(00:40:33):
However, where we've stepped off,

(00:40:36):
course,

(00:40:37):
is when we hold this as the highest good and the consumption and the throwaway of

(00:40:44):
material goods just for the sake of whatever it is we're doing,

(00:40:52):
trying to get the newest and best and feeling good about ourselves,

(00:40:55):
I guess.

(00:40:57):
So I guess thinking through how we ended up where we are within white

(00:41:02):
evangelicalism and this idea of materialism,

(00:41:05):
what I see in churches,

(00:41:07):
all the churches I've ever visited,

(00:41:09):
is a concentration of wealth and power.

(00:41:13):
And this idea, this conflation of economic prosperity, financial prosperity, and godliness.

(00:41:21):
That hasn't changed in like 2,000 years, man.

(00:41:24):
That's like, it's been around since the dawn of time.

(00:41:26):
We've always admired rich people, right?

(00:41:29):
And,

(00:41:29):
you know,

(00:41:30):
one beef of mine I have with the churches I've grown up in is,

(00:41:34):
did we always nominate people who were probably the godliest,

(00:41:39):
the most ardent followers of Jesus to become our elders and deacons?

(00:41:43):
No.

(00:41:44):
We always chose the rich people.

(00:41:46):
Tell me you grew up in an Asian church without telling you.

(00:41:49):
Yeah.

(00:41:50):
Right?

(00:41:50):
And it's like,

(00:41:51):
well,

(00:41:51):
you know,

(00:41:52):
Uncle So-and-so,

(00:41:53):
like,

(00:41:53):
he owns his own business,

(00:41:56):
and he has,

(00:41:56):
like,

(00:41:56):
a fleet of Mercedes,

(00:41:58):
and so he must be.

(00:42:00):
God's favorite him, right?

(00:42:01):
Oh!

(00:42:01):
Dang!

(00:42:02):
This is, like...

(00:42:06):
The biggest way back for you.

(00:42:08):
Anon, again, is rolling in his grave, quoting Jesus on Last Shall Be First.

(00:42:14):
Like, there is a parable about this that is the core characteristic of this faith.

(00:42:19):
Yeah.

(00:42:19):
Anyways, I digress.

(00:42:20):
But, you know, and so, but that's not just, you know, Asian churches, right?

(00:42:24):
I think in any church,

(00:42:26):
people have chosen,

(00:42:27):
typically chosen,

(00:42:28):
there's some sense of behavior indicating that

(00:42:31):
you know, to some degree, character.

(00:42:34):
But we've looked at way too much of that, obviously, right?

(00:42:37):
We've seen this and taken that and run with it.

(00:42:40):
We're drifting into territory along the lines of,

(00:42:42):
like,

(00:42:42):
why do churches tend to idolize such a people?

(00:42:47):
It's because there's this,

(00:42:48):
again,

(00:42:48):
this conflation of,

(00:42:50):
well,

(00:42:50):
these people are materially prosperous.

(00:42:54):
That must mean God has blessed them.

(00:42:56):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

(00:42:59):
But then if God has blessed them,

(00:43:01):
it must be because they lead these really,

(00:43:04):
really good exemplary lives for me.

(00:43:07):
And so,

(00:43:08):
you know,

(00:43:09):
prosperity gospel is really old,

(00:43:11):
but it's also something that,

(00:43:14):
you know,

(00:43:14):
I would say within maybe like the last 50,

(00:43:18):
60 years has really taken a hold in America and become part of so much of a lay

(00:43:23):
person's theology.

(00:43:25):
That as long as I keep doing the right things,

(00:43:27):
as long as I keep appearing the right ways,

(00:43:30):
the blessing is going to flow.

(00:43:31):
You know, my bank account is going to be full.

(00:43:32):
I'm always going to have, you know, way too much for my own good.

(00:43:37):
It's curious that many of my guests have named capitalism as one of the malformed

(00:43:43):
intersections or pillars.

(00:43:45):
Although it's in society, it is a key component in evangelicalism.

(00:43:49):
Another pillar is individualism.

(00:43:52):
Although there is a story, a myth...

(00:43:55):
called The Manifest Destiny That Many Americans Adhere To.

(00:43:59):
And that includes components of bootstrap,

(00:44:02):
capitalism,

(00:44:03):
just pull yourself up,

(00:44:04):
try a little bit harder,

(00:44:05):
and you can make it for yourself.

(00:44:08):
It's always about for yourself,

(00:44:10):
never about how can we make life better in our neighborhoods,

(00:44:14):
cities,

(00:44:15):
and beyond.

(00:44:16):
I asked Dr.

(00:44:17):
Ng to share his thoughts on the intersection of rugged individualism and how it

(00:44:22):
plays into our day-to-day.

(00:44:24):
Not merely for white evangelicals, because I think this one goes broader.

(00:44:29):
But I will say that one of the key components to evangelical beliefs are rooted in

(00:44:36):
a very individualistic sinner's prayer that you can't find anywhere in the scriptures.

(00:44:43):
Oh, it's absolutely had a huge impact.

(00:44:45):
So I want to bring in this book-length study by these sociologists.

(00:44:51):
First name's forgotten,

(00:44:52):
but Denton and Smith,

(00:44:54):
about 15 years ago,

(00:44:55):
they published this book called Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.

(00:45:00):
And moralistic therapeutic deism is what they observed of all these congregations

(00:45:05):
they visited around America,

(00:45:07):
what they observed in the worship services,

(00:45:09):
what the concerns were,

(00:45:10):
what the teaching was like.

(00:45:11):
And what they said is essentially a middle-of-the-road evangelical church,

(00:45:17):
in America is concerned with a moralistic,

(00:45:21):
therapeutic,

(00:45:21):
deistic kind of performance of faith rather than,

(00:45:26):
well,

(00:45:26):
that was the earmark.

(00:45:27):
I don't know what the rather than would be.

(00:45:29):
But the earmark of it,

(00:45:30):
the hallmark of American-style Christianity,

(00:45:32):
which is exported around the world,

(00:45:34):
by the way,

(00:45:36):
is, is this moralistic, therapeutic deism.

(00:45:38):
Now, what is it?

(00:45:39):
Well,

(00:45:40):
this moralism is this idea that as long as you are doing the right things,

(00:45:44):
there's more of an emphasis on that as opposed to allowing Jesus to be

(00:45:51):
your righteousness.

(00:45:53):
So I think I characterize it as an emphasis on following the rules and doing good

(00:46:00):
instead of being good and allowing ourselves to dwell in Christ.

(00:46:05):
From this moralistic impulse,

(00:46:06):
you get things like purity culture and this idea of true love waits.

(00:46:11):
Right.

(00:46:12):
But we're doing the right things.

(00:46:14):
Like,

(00:46:14):
you know,

(00:46:14):
I would never have an ax before marriage,

(00:46:18):
except that you've now made it all about one thing and to the solution of many

(00:46:24):
other things that may go into like a deep and vibrant faith.

(00:46:29):
Again, there's this whole impulse we have around making it simple for ourselves.

(00:46:35):
What's behind moralism?

(00:46:37):
Why do we like that so much?

(00:46:38):
Well, it's because it's simple.

(00:46:40):
I mean, you gave us, there's 10 commandments.

(00:46:41):
You just got to follow those, right?

(00:46:43):
I wish.

(00:46:44):
That's it, right?

(00:46:46):
But it's also subjective.

(00:46:48):
Ironically,

(00:46:49):
it is subjective and it's not merely the simplicity of it,

(00:46:55):
but it is the design to control of it.

(00:46:58):
Yes.

(00:46:59):
And those subjective rules then become things that just don't matter.

(00:47:05):
Purity culture,

(00:47:06):
as I'm saying a prayer to get to heaven,

(00:47:10):
specifically like that,

(00:47:12):
to the expense of core items that do.

(00:47:16):
Justice, love, mercy, empathy.

(00:47:20):
So we did the moralistic, unpack the other components for us.

(00:47:23):
Therapeutic is the second one and deism is the third.

(00:47:26):
And therapeutic,

(00:47:27):
I mean,

(00:47:27):
it's this idea or this feeling,

(00:47:30):
this feeling that we need to have a good feeling,

(00:47:32):
you know?

(00:47:32):
Yeah, we call it praise and worship.

(00:47:35):
There's no lament there.

(00:47:37):
The praise of the experience, right?

(00:47:38):
So the only experience that matters as a Christian is to feel good.

(00:47:43):
And if it's not... That's Sunday morning.

(00:47:45):
That's Sunday morning right there.

(00:47:49):
But, you know, there is that impulse in a lot of us.

(00:47:51):
Like, I don't feel good, you know.

(00:47:53):
And so if I don't feel good, I'm not going to stick around.

(00:47:56):
So I remember when I was a pastor,

(00:47:58):
you know,

(00:47:58):
we used to have people complain that we were like,

(00:48:00):
well,

(00:48:01):
you know,

(00:48:01):
we like your reality.

(00:48:02):
We like your authenticity.

(00:48:04):
But when are we going to stop being so depressed all the time?

(00:48:06):
What are you talking about?

(00:48:09):
Like, I don't love your neighbor.

(00:48:11):
This is so depressing.

(00:48:13):
But it is an impulse, I think, that is quite strong in American churches for whatever reason.

(00:48:17):
Unquestionably.

(00:48:19):
Well, we could draw it all the way back to the idea of pursuit of happiness, right?

(00:48:23):
So there was this book called Habits of the Heart.

(00:48:26):
It was written in the 19th century.

(00:48:27):
I bet that's on my shelf.

(00:48:29):
It's either that or it's threw it out this year.

(00:48:31):
I bet it's on my show.

(00:48:32):
Threw it out?

(00:48:34):
Oh.

(00:48:34):
But they make the point that,

(00:48:38):
you know,

(00:48:38):
the original framing of the Constitution,

(00:48:41):
the definition of independence is not the pursuit of happiness.

(00:48:44):
It is actually pursuit of property.

(00:48:47):
But they changed it.

(00:48:48):
in a pursuit of happiness because not everybody wants property is happiness right

(00:48:51):
they realized however those impulses are still there for one yeah so you have again

(00:48:57):
that consumeristic materialist i didn't know that the heart of it was in fact

(00:49:02):
property to begin with yeah that's that's like right out in the heart of capitalism

(00:49:08):
Yeah, very much so.

(00:49:10):
So that's why that book is so important because it's like, you don't remember.

(00:49:12):
And of course, like people who majored in history, which I didn't, would know this, right?

(00:49:16):
They're like, oh, of course, yeah.

(00:49:18):
But you can see how the intentions of the founding fathers,

(00:49:22):
I guess,

(00:49:22):
were still kind of playing out,

(00:49:25):
are still playing out in these like cultural distinctives.

(00:49:29):
So going back to therapeutic, it's this idea that we need to be happy.

(00:49:34):
And if you're not happy,

(00:49:37):
all the time you're not doing it right you need your quiet time ed so where this

(00:49:44):
bridge is into my field is that um less so these days but but a lot of you know

(00:49:50):
really sincere christians are like i'm unhappy

(00:49:53):
Or I'm anxious.

(00:49:54):
And one of the very first things I will do with people I'm working with is

(00:49:57):
sometimes I will say,

(00:49:57):
well,

(00:49:57):
of course you're unhappy and anxious.

(00:49:59):
Have you seen how difficult this world is?

(00:50:02):
I do know what's going on.

(00:50:04):
Be honest.

(00:50:05):
Yeah.

(00:50:05):
Yeah.

(00:50:07):
And like, well, you know, but, you know, I want to find that peace as all understanding.

(00:50:10):
I'm like, sure you do.

(00:50:13):
And have you looked outside?

(00:50:14):
Right.

(00:50:15):
Exactly.

(00:50:15):
It's still pretty tough outside.

(00:50:17):
So how are you going to face it?

(00:50:18):
How are you going to bear with it?

(00:50:20):
not bearing your head in the sand, it's going to be growing the strength to carry it.

(00:50:25):
It's going to be aligning yourselves with the Spirit of God to do what He's doing, right?

(00:50:31):
That's the therapeutic side, though, the impulse in us to want to be happy, of course.

(00:50:35):
Like, we...

(00:50:37):
We want to go wherever we feel good.

(00:50:39):
And that's just a natural, normal, human psychological process, right?

(00:50:44):
If you're a congregation that's,

(00:50:46):
you know,

(00:50:46):
got a preacher who just keeps on harping on like the sad and awful and trying

(00:50:52):
things in life is going to empty out pretty soon.

(00:50:54):
Because people, generally speaking, don't want to hear that.

(00:50:58):
They want to hear about hope.

(00:50:59):
They want to hear about salvation.

(00:51:00):
They want to hear about

(00:51:01):
things that make them feel good, right?

(00:51:03):
Yeah.

(00:51:04):
Well, that explains my church.

(00:51:06):
Thanks, Ed.

(00:51:07):
Your church?

(00:51:08):
Why so small, Rohedi?

(00:51:10):
Yeah.

(00:51:11):
Because eight people want to sit there and take it.

(00:51:14):
No,

(00:51:14):
but the final one,

(00:51:15):
deism,

(00:51:16):
is this theological impulse we have of wanting to keep God separate from his creation.

(00:51:22):
So deism is this

(00:51:23):
theological construct of how this idea that God is this,

(00:51:29):
you know,

(00:51:29):
divine watchmaker who has wound up,

(00:51:31):
created this intricate universe,

(00:51:33):
right,

(00:51:34):
intricate creation,

(00:51:35):
and has wound it up like a watch and just let it go.

(00:51:37):
And it's ticking on its own, you know, because that's what a good watch does, right?

(00:51:41):
A well-designed watch will keep on going forever, right?

(00:51:43):
It ignores God's constant

(00:51:47):
physical interventions into our world, most notably, right, the incarnation of Christ.

(00:51:51):
But deism is this idea that,

(00:51:53):
like,

(00:51:53):
I'm actually more comfortable with a God who's not incarnated.

(00:51:56):
I'm more comfortable with a God somewhere out there,

(00:51:59):
up there,

(00:51:59):
you know,

(00:52:00):
the man upstairs,

(00:52:01):
you know,

(00:52:01):
kind of thing,

(00:52:02):
instead of a God who is living and active and amongst us,

(00:52:05):
right?

(00:52:06):
Because that's pretty threatening.

(00:52:11):
Well, hopefully these two guests have not left you with more despair than hope.

(00:52:18):
But that's kind of part of it.

(00:52:19):
Naming the malformed conditions that are producing the harm in white evangelicalism.

(00:52:26):
Thank you to Jared.

(00:52:27):
Thank you to Ed.

(00:52:30):
Next time on Farewell Evangelicalism,

(00:52:34):
we start to unpack the tools that are used to propagate conspiracy theories and beliefs.

(00:52:42):
That tool?

(00:52:43):
It's called Propaganda.

(00:52:47):
Episode four, coming at you.

(00:52:49):
You can't understand it just by hearing it told.

(00:52:57):
You must walk your path through