After my immediate deconstruction, I honestly walked away from religion entirely for a while.

I was so tired of the dogma and the hurt and the hate that was so contrary to what I grew up

thinking I was believing or thinking that Jesus stood for.

And as I started to even engage in conversations and entered the deconstruction space online. One of the very first accounts

that I followed was Brian Rucker, who is a writer, a former evangelical pastor who really

speaks about issues of Christian nationalism, inclusivity, as well as current events that we're

experiencing. And he's also been my most requested guest for the show. I've had so many people send me messages

or stories talking with and collaborating with him. He also has a book coming out this September

called Hellbent, and we've invited him on the show today to tell his story, his view of faith,

his journey with it, and as well as what his book really covers as far as removing fear

as part of our motivation for faith on today's episode of Flipping Tables.

Brian, welcome to the show. You are my most requested podcast interview, and I'm really

excited to actually get to meet you

instead of just follow your content. I've been following you for a long time. And thank you for being here.

Man, this is so cool, Monty. Thanks for having me. I've been following you, too. So this is fun.

It's an interesting, it's interesting to see the deconstruction explode in a way that I wouldn't have

predicted as far as there's so much conversation around it now. And you're an ex-evangelical

pastor. And I don't know anything about your early story. So what was your growing up like?

How did you end up becoming a pastor in the first

place? Yeah. So a funny thing about my deconstruction is that evangelicalism was not the first thing

I deconstructed. I grew up independent fundamental Baptist. So for me, becoming an evangelical in and after college

was like a big progressive move at the time. I felt like I, that was like my first step

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