Welcome back to you have permission, the show that aims to take both Christianity and the modern world of science and culture very seriously.

My name's Dan Koch. I'm a licensed therapist and a post-evangelical liberal Christian.

You know the guy I'm with here today, Mr. Ryan Burge. He knows a thing or two about post-evangelical liberal Protestants.

Are you one also? Are we both? I always tell people I'm evangelical sympathetic. I'm certainly not an evangelical. I don't think I've ever been an evangelical, to be honest with you. So I was for first 20 years of my life. Do you really believe? Like you were like 100% convinced like Jesus of the way, the truth in the life.

Absolutely.

I was never.

So I grew up in the same line.

No, no, no.

I was raised Southern Baptist.

Okay.

So here's a story.

So you were a bad one.

Oh yeah.

I was raised Southern Baptist.

My mom was a Sunday school teacher.

My dad drove the church bus. My grandma was the financial secretary. My grandpa was an usher. Okay.

So as evangelical as you get. All my friends, you know, the kids who were in Sunday school with me, got saved when they were in vacation Bible school, like eight, nine, 10 years old. And I'm sitting around not doing any of that stuff, like not going forward, not doing, and I remember my mom setting me down,

opening the Bible to me, you know what I mean? Like reading, I go, mom, I know. I've, I've been there. I've read this stuff before. I got saved at VBS, yeah. Yeah, like every good evangelical. Yeah. I did not get baptized. So I was 15 years old. The way I tell people was I got saved was I was laying in my bed right at one night and just go,

God, I give up. You know, like was like, I was fighting this thing. And it wasn't like an affirmative commitment as much as it was like to stop fighting. Stop. And like whenever like I came forward on that Sunday, I felt like I was standing on the aisle, you know, I felt like, I mean, listen, we can talk about spirituality all you want, right? Like, I felt like something was pushing me out into the aisle and down to the front of the church. Like, that's like, when I talk to people about like God at some level, it's ineffable, right? You know, like those moments, I cannot describe what that felt like. And it seems crazy as an academic to describe that moment. But I'm telling you, 15 year old me felt God pushed me

up the aisle. I have no problem with that. But then I think I never really was as committed to it

as everyone else was. Like I wanted to be and I played like I was, but I was never as certain

as all my friends, you know, the portrayal they gave was they were very certain and I wasn't.

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