Welcome to indoctrination, a weekly conversation series about protecting yourself from systems of control.

I'm your host, Rachel Bernstein.

Hi, everyone. I want to be able to welcome Tammy Willis back on the show. First, please go to

patreon.com slash indoctrination to be able to becomeis back on the show. First, please go to patron.com slash indoctrination

to be able to become a subscriber of the show to keep it going. Again, patreon.com slash indoctrination.

Thank you. Truly. We could not do it without you. And there are a lot of people who want to be

able to be able to be able to be able to be on the show, and I want to be able to keep it as a forum for them to be able to tell their stories.

So please help out in any way you can, patreon.com slash indoctrination.

And now, Tammy Willis had been on our show before, but we had talked just briefly about the issue around

the lack of separation in church and state. And I thought this week with the election,

it would be a good idea to discuss this, to get into this very prickly kind of discussion.

Tammy Willis grew up in Virginia in the 70s and 80s in a Christian fundamentalist church

that she now knows was a cult in the way in which it operated, abused, and controlled its members.

Her church, school, and family life was steeped in methods of control

based on fear, abuse, dependency, coercion, obedience, and at all costs, guilt, and shame. Although she's

been away from fundamentalism for 30 years, she's still coming to terms with the way in which she was

raised and how her life has been affected.

Seeing what's happening in the United States political system and the rise of Christian nationalism, as she calls it,

and a lot of other people call it, has been eye-opening and triggering.

In the last few years, it's become clear to her that governmental power and influence is being used to promote specific religious views and violate the rights of other people.

There's a clear connection between the ways in which religious groups use mind control and coercion, and how members have been conditioned to have blind faith and how those people are now part of our political system.

The constant onslaught of lies and gaslighting and the systemic invalidation of mainstream media

...