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Straight White American Jesus

The Exvangelicals w/ Sarah McCammon

Straight White American Jesus

Axis Mundi Media: Bradley Onishi + Daniel Miller

News, Politics

4.72K Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2024

⏱️ 66 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

SWAJ Premium IS ON SALE! $50 for the whole year! Subscribe to get bonus content most Mondays, bonus episodes every month, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/ Growing up in a deeply evangelical family in the Midwest in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Sarah McCammon was strictly taught to fear God, obey him, and not question the faith. Persistently worried that her gay grandfather would go to hell unless she could reach him, or that her Muslim friend would need to be converted, and that she, too, would go to hell if she did not believe fervently enough, McCammon was a rule-follower and—most of the time—a true believer. But through it all, she was increasingly plagued by fears and deep questions as the belief system she'd been carefully taught clashed with her expanding understanding of the outside world. After spending her early adult life striving to make sense of an unraveling worldview, by her 30s, she found herself face-to-face with it once again as she covered the Trump campaign for NPR, where she witnessed first-hand the power and influence that evangelical Christian beliefs held on the political right. Sarah also came to discover that she was not alone: she is among a rising generation of the children of evangelicalism who are growing up and fleeing the fold, who are thinking for themselves and deconstructing what feel like the “alternative facts” of their childhood. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Axis Mundi Sign up to the economist for in-depth

0:17.0

expert analysis of world events and topics ranging from

0:21.0

business and culture to science and technology.

0:23.6

You'll get the weekly digital edition, online only articles,

0:27.6

curated newsletters on politics, the markets, science, culture and China.

0:32.0

And full access to The Economist Podcast Plus.

0:35.0

The Economist is independent journalism for independent thinking.

0:40.0

Go to Economist.com and get your first month free.

0:45.3

Evangelicalism was my life.

0:47.7

I was a Christian.

0:49.4

It was my entire identity.

0:51.2

It was my entire life.

0:52.4

It was my purpose, it was everything to me.

0:56.4

And I thought that when I left, when I left the community and separated myself from the sexual shaming that I had

1:05.0

experienced that I would now suddenly be free, that I would no longer

1:09.2

struggle with sexual shame and fear and anxiety and much to the contrary what actually happened

1:15.6

is that those things did not go away.

1:18.6

It can't be just about a handful of individuals.

1:22.4

It has to be about all of us talking back about what we

1:26.9

went through and that's the only way that we're going to be heard and get representation. Linda K. Klein and Chrissi Strue from a 2008 documentary by CBS. It's titled

1:46.4

Deconstructing My Religion and also includes figures like Blake Chastain and

1:50.6

Dr. Julie Ingersoll.

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