Hey everybody, thank you for being with me.

You know, I was thinking yesterday that even though we're living at a moment where the worst of America is on display, it's also becoming obvious that the best of America is a rising in response. And I felt in this issue of spirituality and politics, religion and politics, all of that, having been of interest to me for a long time, obviously. I have felt that so many people speaking for hate has made people who want to speak for love feel we can no longer just whisper. If hate is shouting, love better speak up. And you're seeing this in all kinds of ways. And one of the places where you're seeing it has to do with religion and spirituality. Particularly the fact that Christian nationalism has become a political movement that is doing more than just expressing the voice of Christendom in the public sphere, which I vastly support, particularly when it's the teachings of the gospel, the teachings of Jesus to feed the hungry, to heal the sick, to help the poor, to welcome the stranger. That's all wonderful. But Christian nationalism today is not about those wonderful teachings of Jesus so much as it is about exulting Christianity to a state that would actually create a theocracy in the United States, rather than a democracy. The idea that religious dictates, religious doctrine, religious dogma, would have power that our founders definitely did not want. We were founded, and this is established in the First Amendment as a religiously pluralistic nation. Now, to those who do proper this Christian Nationalist view which is all over Project 2025, which is not have to do with the teachings of Jesus that I just described, but actually has to do with the exaltation in what they call the Seven Mountains, whether it's business or politics or science or academia that only Christians would have leadership positions and so forth, there is a response that is emerging. And the response it is emerging has to do with Christian speakers, voices, influencers, pastors, something very beautiful is rising up here. And I'm excited because one of those voices rising up really brilliantly, not only as a public theologian, but also as a powerful, prophetic voice within the public, political domain as well, Brian Rekker. So Brian Rekker, thank you so much for being here. Let me tell people a little bit about you, okay? You are public, theologian speaker, writer on Christian spirituality without exclusionary dogma. Now this is what's important, everybody. Brian spent eight years as an evangelical pastor before deconstructing his faith to find a more inclusive spirituality. He will tell us all about that, but I want you to know that his first book has come out. It's called Hell Bent. Hell, the fear of hell holds Christians back from a spirituality of love. Welcome Brian and congratulations on your publication. Thank you so much for that. Is it a real thing to be here? Yeah.

You know Brian, I want to start by reading you something that I saw online. I guess this was yesterday, possibly this morning. It was Eric Trump on a podcast. And these were his words. Are you ready for this? I'm ready. I haven't heard this. So this is me hearing you for the first time. We're saving Christianity. We're saving God. We're saving the family unit. We're saving this nation. I mean, DEI is out the window, Benny. You no longer have Colin Kaepernick kneeling for the national anthem. You no longer have Budweiser going woke as hell. All of this is dead. We have a return to people going to church. Over to you Brian, take it from there. It's hard to know where to start. The thing that just jumped into mind. I mean, there's a million almost every phrase of that I could rant about. But it's interesting his usage of Colin Kaepernick, referencing when Colin Kaepernick knelt during the National Anthem during the Black Lives Matter movement in sort of a silent protest against police violence. And what's interesting about that to me is what Colin Kaepernick did just about a week or two ago was he spent his own money to order a second autopsy for Trey Reed, a young black man who was found hanging in a tree several weeks ago, lynched, and the authorities called it a suicide. But everybody knows that a young black man doesn't hang himself in a tree. And so Colin Kaepernick paid for a second autopsy which found foul play that the authorities initially missed. That's what Colin Kaepernick did. That's what he's doing right now. That just happened two weeks ago. Which in my mind is one of the most Christian things you could do is to stand for justice, especially for people for whom justice is being withheld and also not just an individual but also historically withheld,, connected to a history of lynching, of course, which this seems like it was connected to some of the feelings of resentment that the followed the death of Charlie Kirk. It seems like this man maybe was implicated with some other white men and I think it's still being investigated, but it seems like some of that was drummed up. And so as I hear that, it's interesting to me that they're just not focused on justice for the least of these, which was the focus of the ministry of Jesus. And so when they say they're making Christianity great again, I'm not surprised by that, because they love to use Christianity to further their political ends. And unfortunately, evangelicalism and Christianity America as a power structure Not all individual Christians not every Christian movement or every Christian church But as a power structure they tend to be perfectly happy to make that deal and Yeah, I to me I don't know how Colin Kaepernick identifies whether he identifies as a Christian or not But far more in line with the kind of spirituality that I would long for and that I think was in the heart of Jesus, then whatever kind of Christianity Eric Trump is talking about. You know, let's go back in your own story because you were an evangelical preacher for eight years. What was your own journey? And I asked not only because I'm interested in your journey, but because it's a journey that apparently millions of people

are taking right now. You are one of the leaders of this movement, but it's millions of people involved. Tell us about that journey. Yeah, many people are in a process of deconstructing their faith, and it's interesting because the numbers are that people are flooding out of the church, while other people are flooding into the church, into the church, often really as a result of even some of the more conservative impulses,

which is interesting.

But so my journey actually began not in evangelicalism, but in fundamentalism. So I don't know if any of your listeners would be familiar with the fundamental Christian University, Bob Jones University. Are you familiar with Bob Jones? Have you heard of Bob Jones? I am, but I am actually, but I'm also very interested in the fact that you just implied something I didn't know before and that's your term at the difference between fundamentalism and evangelical. Yes, so I will. So even evangelicalism as a movement really was spearheaded by Billy Graham and the fundamentalists defined themselves in opposition to the modernists who began to embrace things like evolution and Billy Graham, he saw that the fundamentalists were losing this debate because they were cultural separatists and they really withdrew from culture and so Bob Jones and the movement that I grew up in, we were, I was homeschooled, we were not culturally engaged. I didn't listen to secular music and I didn't even, I wasn't even allowed to listen to contemporary Christian music like Christian rock because in the fundamentalist mind, using the world's tools for God is make something worldly. It's compromised. And so for instance, our sacred music did not have electric guitars or drum beats because those were considered worldly whereas evangelicalism embraced sort of mainstream cultural ideas in order to package the gospel for the mainstream So Bob Jones you started fun and then so I grew up in a bubble big big time and I went to Bob Jones, which is where my parents went and met. And many of the students at Bob Jones were made to go there by their parents who kind of met there. That's kind of a classic story. While I was there, that was my first deconstruction, was deconstructing fundamentalism. And I kind of joke that seeing all the fundamentalists together in one place really sobered me up the kind of world that they wanted to create was a very ugly world. The culture that they created was an ugly one. No, hold on a moment. What made it ugly? What was ugly? A lot about it, but the main thing was that it was a narc culture. Fascinatingly enough. So we had a name for students at Bob Jones that really drank the Kool-Aid. In other words, they were totally bought in on the Bob Jones way of doing things. We called them bogeys. And the idea of a boge was that they would turn you in for rule breaks. There was an extensive rule book that you had to abide by as a student. For example, girls had to wear pantyhose every day. I had to wear a tie every day and it couldn't be loosened down to half-mass.

It had to be tightened all the way up.

Things like that and your hair had to be off your ears. And so a boge was somebody who if they noticed that your hair was on your ears, even though they weren't like a faculty or staff, they would still turn you in. They could turn you in for that. And that would sort of get them spiritual brownie points from within the organization.

So it was a very ruthless, gross place.

Yep. Go ahead.

So we'll get to that a little bit later, but that relates to some of what you wrote about in this in this book because it's a God of judgment, a God of blame, a God of jacuz. Right? Very much so. And a lot of that was fear-based. God was an authoritarian and being on the right side of God was very important. We talked about hell a lot in fundamentalism. I grew up with Fire and Brimstone preaching. I opened the book with a story of a phrase that we used to say at Bob Jones. Dr. Bob III in Chapel every so often every few months he would have this little ditty, this mantra

that he would recite, and he would have us all stand up and recite it with him, and we'd all say together, we would say, the most sobering reality in the world today is that people are dying and going to hell today. We would say it twice, and I really felt that in my gut, even though I didn't like the place, that was still the ideology that I was raised with, And I believe that we had the truth

and that being outside of that truth meant damnation

for everybody else and that it was a it was a fear-based religion for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, scared me too. So hold on a moment. So so so you started saying you started deconstructing your faith. But and yet an evangelical minister. I became an evangelical. And so I was introduced, and this is funny now because just the other day I responded to a clip from a pastor named Mark Triscoll, who's an evangelical pastor who is incredibly maga and he says some very problematic things. And I've critiqued him publicly. But I actually back 20 years ago in the early 2000s when I was in fundamentalism voices like his were attractive to me because he was engaged in the mainstream culture in a way that we were not in fundamentalism. We were in a very deep like bubble called the sack, a cultural ghetto really.

And whereas the evangelicals were engaged

in the public sphere, they wore jeans to church.

We wore suits to church.

Yes. like bubble cul-de-sac, a cultural ghetto really. And whereas the evangelicals were engaged

in the public sphere, they wore jeans to church. We wore suits to church. You know, they had cool music. I think mega church with the rock and roll bands. And the Christian, yeah. And so there was something appealing to me at the time as someone who was raised in such a sheltered environment that, oh, I could hold onto my beliefs and not lose that, but I could lose some of the surface things.

And that felt really good.

So when I graduated college, I...

BAM! Oh, I could hold on to my beliefs and not lose that, but I could lose some of the surface things. And that felt really good. So when I graduated college, I dove headfirst into evangelicalism and quickly found myself becoming a pastor. I was 25 when I first began pastoring. And in some ways, I think that paused my deconstruction. I think I had this capacity for growth and change in shedding some of the things that I was raised in. I disappointed my parents by becoming an evangelical. Surprisingly enough, that was a hard, you know, that was a move that was some disappointment, right? But coming past or putting me under institutional pressure, it gave me a salary within this institution and it made it difficult to continue questioning for some time. Well yes and it was a feeling that you could have it both was. Yes and I didn't want to disappoint God too. It wasn't just like I wanted to hold on to someone who I was. I was raised with yeah the belief from very early on I say in my book that I learned about hell when I learned about God. And for many evangelicals, we talk a lot about a relationship with God. You know, one of the favorite evangelical phrases is that it's not a religion, it's a relationship. Which I... That's kind of beautiful. I like that one. But the problem is that for most evangelicals, that relationship begins when they learn about hell

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