Kitchen Table Cult Pod

Eve and Kieryn are back for a quick update! In the last year Trump was re-elected, Project 2025 started becoming law of the land, Eve made quilts, Kieryn briefly appeared in Shiny Happy People season 2 (we get into it), and is ~a semester and finishing their Gofundme away from getting their Associates degree in Social Sciences! Show notes: GoFundMe - https://gofundme.com/makekierynsmarter Conventi...

Kieryn and Eve discuss the German family who sought (and were temporarily-ish granted!) asylum in the US to be allowed to homeschool their kids because Germany takes the rights and education of Children seriously. Show notes: https://tinyurl.com/romeikenotes This episode was produced by the lovely Mary Steffenhagen!

Kieryn and Eve explain the updated policy agenda of the Christian right. We talk about the various tools Christian nationalists plan on using to usurp democracy regardless of who wins the presidential election this year. We dive into Project 2025, the little known and even less talked about Convention of States, and the bureaucratic mechanism at the crux of it all. Notes: Read Kieryn's reporting f...

Errin Haines of The 19th* News joins Kieryn and Eve to talk about the future of journalism, being a progressive Christian while covering the news, and the liberatory nature of Black Christianity in the US. Notes: https://19thnews.org/ https://19thnews.org/topics/podcast/ https://x.com/errinhaines https://www.instagram.com/emarvelous

Kieryn and Eve talk with Carly Butler about her memoir, Apocalypse Child, what identity abuse looks like for homeschooled kids, and how it feels to reparent yourself while parenting children. Pre-order the book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/apocalypse-child-carly-butler/20702732?ean=9781773861326 Follow Carly: @carlymbutton everywhere

Kieryn and Eve chat with Michelle Dowd about her fascinating memoir, Forager. What it was like growing up in the family of a cult leader and how wild it is to get out into the real world after growing up in the woods. Check out Michelle's work and get the book! https://bookshop.org/p/books/forager-field-notes-on-survival-a-memoir-michelle-dowd/18759728 https://www.michelledowd.org/ https://www.ins...

Kieryn & Eve are joined by the organizers of Read Freely Alabama to discuss the attempt to censor LGBTQ materials in the Augauta-Prattville library and their efforts to protect the library as a community resource for everyone.

What do censorship, homeschooling, intellectual freedom, and libraries have in common? We get into it today with Eddie Kristan about the fight libraries are seeing with parental-rights extremist groups trying to censor books and the impact that has on children's rights to access information. Show Notes: Institutions on the job: Freedom to Read Foundation (IF arm of the ALA): https://www.ftrf.org/...

Eve and Kieryn chat with Cait West about her memoir, Rift, and what it's like to leave fundamentalist Christianity only to discover that the patriarchy is alive and well in the secular world and childhood pastors became politically active Christian Nationalists. **Find Cait and buy the book!!** https://bookshop.org/p/books/rift-a-memoir-of-breaking-away-from-christian-patriarchy-cait-west/20298441...

What is the future of the pro-life movement without simplistic messaging focused on Roe v. Wade to galvanize conservatives? The nuances of reproductive health science and privacy laws are up for debate, and the unity that the pro-life movement once relied on is fissuring under the pressure to rally support around the details. Banning IVF in Alabama was a deeply unpopular move by the courts, and th...

This week in the Book Club, Kieryn and Eve chat with Sarah McCammon about her upcoming book (March 19) the Exvangelicals! We talk about gatekeeping knowledge, rampant anti-intellectualism, and how changing your religious beliefs change your relationships. You can take the church kid out of the church but you can't completely take the church out of the kid. Follow Sarah: https://substack.com/@sarah...

Kieryn and Eve are joined by Anna Gazmarian to discuss her debut memoir, Devout, which comes out on March 12, 2024. Growing up evangelical means growing up with shame much of the time. Add to that depression, anxiety, religious OCD, and bipolar, and you're in for a massive struggle of faith and self-worth. With Devout, Anna unpacks what worked and didn't work for her in her struggle to keep her fa...

Eve and Kieryn discoverd the Stay At Home Girlfriend/Wife /Tradwife tiktoks and note their remarkable similarity to the Above Rubies and quiverfull mommy/daughter blogs from the 00s, but with a dash of late-stage capitalism dread as a twist. What's the motivation behind people outside of religion wanting to choose this? Listen to find out! Notes: https://www.aboverubies.org/images/stories/magazine...

Kieryn and Eve try to overview everything we know so far about Mike Johnson, explain the general concept of Covenant Marriage, and discuss his wife's humurous counseling practice. Instead of posting 4 pages of notes, here's one link: https://tinyurl.com/mikejohnsonktc

Kieryn and Eve talk about Jill Duggar Dillard's book, Counting The Cost. How and why it felt different from Jinger's Becoming Free Indeed, and how difficult it is to escape high control environments when the stakes are so high. Also, for more info on Christian Zionism: https://kitchentablecult.com/2021/06/09/s3-e8-christian-zionism-with-amy-fallas-and-garrison-davis/ https://kitchentablecult.com/2...

Welcome to book club, where Shannon Bonne, formerly known as Shannon Harris, joins Kieryn and Eve to talk about the writing process for her book, The Woman They Wanted. Shannon talks about embodiment, freedom, and following the joy after spiritual abuse. Links: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-woman-they-wanted-shattering-the-illusion-of-the-good-christian-wife-shannon-harris/19561719?ean=97815064...

Eve and Kieryn chat about the right-wing extremist pivot to taking down all public education institutions. We've talked in prior episodes about radical right-wing groups taking over K-12 education, and today we explain dog whistles of "clasical liberal" education and how even well-meaning leftists are furthering the agenda to dismantle public universities and libraries. **Notes** https://time.com/...

Kieryn and Eve sit down with Sarah Stankorb to talk about her book, Disobedient Women: How a Small Group of Faithful Women Exposed Abuse, Brought Down Powerful Pastors, and Ignited an Evangelical Reckoning. Covering the origins of the #ChurchToo movement (featuring some friends of the pod!) and how to approach telling stories involving religious trauma in a way that is healing. **notes** Buy The b...

Eve and Kieryn are joined by Aaron and Christina Beall to talk about their experience leaving the christian fundamentalist homeschooling movement and shining a public light on abuse. Read the WaPo article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/interactive/2023/christian-home-schoolers-revolt/ Follow Aaron & Christina: https://www.instagram.com/apostate_aaron/ https://www.instagram.com/christina...

Kieyn and Eve chat with Shiny Happy People producer Cori Shepherd Stern about how the documentary was made and why it's important to tell stories this way. Follow Cori: https://www.instagram.com/girlseeksworld/ https://www.instagram.com/storyforceco/ https://twitter.com/girlseeksworld

Kieryn and Eve are IN PERSON and talking about Shiny Happy People and the evolution of sharing their stories as they heal through trauma. Contribute to the CRHE fundraiser: responsiblehomeschooling.org/donate Tell Amazon you want a season two of Shiny Happy People!

Eve and Kieryn discuss Jinger's book Free Indeed, on disentangling (not deconstructing) christianity from the teachings of Bill Gothard, and share a bit about their paths out too. Show Notes: https://people.com/tv/duggar-family-prime-video-docuseries-shiny-happy-people-trailer-exclusive/ https://mxdarkwater.com/2016/01/03/preparing-a-visionary-daughter-to-do-hard-things-written-in-2010/ TikToks: h...

Kieryn and Eve are joined by friends of the pod Carmen Longoria-Green and Sarah Jones to talk about the bit picture and the meaningful ways we can fight Parental Rights Extremism every day. Show Notes: https://www.foxnews.com/video/6324958910112 https://twitter.com/responsiblehs https://instagram.com/responsiblehomeschooling https://facebook.com/responsiblehomeschooling https://dayofthehomeschoole...

In the third part of the deep dive into Parental Rights Extremism, Kieryn and Eve connect the organizational and funding dots between the orgs working on limiting children's education today to the organizations that started it all in the 1970s. Show Notes: https://dayofthehomeschooledchild.org https://www.motherjones.com/politics/1995/11/religious-right-6os-and-7os/ https://www.newyorker.com/magaz...

Hold on to your hats, Kieryn and Eve do a Deep Dive into the legal history of parental rights and what lays the groundwork for how children's rights are treated (or extremely not, as the case may be) in the US. Notes: https://web.archive.org/web/20150908152647/http://www.hslda.org/parentalrights/ https://parentalrightsfoundation.org/legal/parental_rights_tradition/ https://cite.case.law/wis/35/59/...