Chapel Probation

No, I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about Daveo Mathias , a talented writer and creative human who got hammered by APU's evangelical culture to the point where he stopped believing in God because of his time there. As a new freshman, Daveo got a story published in the prestigious and new at the time web site McSweeny's. And while that might have offered a young writer some serious writing cr...

Meghan and Cortland of the Thereafter Podcast join me for a wild and fun conversation about sexual loopholes in Purity Culture, online communities, and how we navigate tricky subjects like purity culture and identity in life after evangelical faith. And we ask the question of the ages: Can people have sex before curfews on evangelical campuses? It's more complicated than you might think. Or not.&n...

Dr. Bradley Onishi is a man on the rise. His podcast, Straight White American Jesus , which he co-hosts with Dr. Daniel Miller, is one of the most popular shows in the politics and religion category. Brad's book, Preparing for War- The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism and What Comes Next i s already a best-seller on Amazon during its presale days, and it's out today, January 3, 202...

A lot of people have told me to just get my book published, as if that's something I could just do. Get an agent, find a publisher, bam. Book. But, no one I ever talked to, outside of my own friends and family, thought I could write a book worth reading. Until I met David Morris. First of all, how many male Asian American (much less Japanese American) authors of non-fiction can you think of? That...

I remember Chris as a thoughtful person who was often deep in thought when she was a student. The underground LGBTQIA club, Haven, was fairly new, and the school was now fully aware of its existence and activities. Chris was part of the first group of leaders, along with Liz Cirelli, to start openly challenging the school's hateful policies and advocating for the rights of queer students. This led...

Matt Kendziera is a writer, podcaster, and drummer who has lived an amazing life full of growth and change. And like all of us on Chapel Probation, he has had trouble with the evangelicals. But despite the hard times, Matt is a supremely positive person with a personality that draws people in, allowing them to tell their stories. His book, Bring it Home: The Adventure of Finding Yourself After Bei...

Brent Walmsley has attended 3 evangelical schools, so naturally, he is no longer evangelical. From the Assemblies of God North Central, Bethel, to Fuller Seminary, he deconstructed at each stop, leaving it all in 2016 when Trump became the face of evangelical christianity. Along the way, Brent disagreed with the evangelical treatment of women, LGBTQIA people, and BIPOC people, as the culture of ch...

I needed a little break this week as I finished up copy edits of the book and worked on the amazing Straight White American Jesus series about the New Apostolic Reformation with Brad Onishi and Matthew Taylor. I wrote the scary theme music and do the editing and mixing for them. Mostly I just needed a little breather after 20 straight weeks of putting out episodes. We'll be back next week with ano...

This week we have our first staff person who worked at APU. My guest, a super cool Black woman who wishes to remain anonymous, worked at APU for 12 years and was beloved by students and her non-racist co-workers. But the culture of the staff at APU was ridiculously white supremacist and conservative, making most days at work unbearable. Anti-Blackness became the norm at places like APU in 2008 whe...

Mandy Capehart joined me to talk about her thoughts on Chapel Probation and share her approaches to helping people grieve. Her book, Restorative Grief, and podcast of the same name are great resources for anyone processing and living through grief. We talk about Mandy's thoughts about Ella's and Lina's episodes and how telling our stories helps us process trauma and develop our identities. Chapel...

Like some professors at evangelical schools, Michael Smith came to APU assuming he would be teaching at an academic institution. He quickly learned that the school was more concerned with teaching fundamentalist and conservative lifestyles than actual academic learning. Combined with the school's obsession with criminalizing sexuality and any faith traditions outside of evangelical christianity, P...

Even though the 4 of us went to an actual "top-notch" university, UC San Diego, our involvement with Inter-Varstiy Christian Fellowship meant our faith was in constant action and activity. We didn't have to deal with a university-wide culture of racism, misogyny, and anti-LGBTQIA hatred, but we embedded ourselves in a clatch of moderately conservative christianity that served to tamp down signific...

Mahrs Schoppman is a graduate of APU who developed his identity as both a queer person and a deconstructed christian while there. He is grateful to APU for providing an easy foil to pick apart the hollow theology of evangelicalism and for introducing him to his community of fellow queer students, with whom he is still friends to this day. He talks about his work with queer clients seeking healing...

Eugene was a student in my last ever Freshman Writing class at APU. We've kept in touch over the years, and I knew I wanted him to tell his story on Chapel Probation early on. After sharing an experience on the facebook group, Eugene agreed to be interviewed, and I'm so glad. We talk about the special brand of evangelical racism he encountered, his experiences being in all the different choirs, an...

Blake Chastain created the ExVangelical hashtag and helped start a movement that has grown into what is now known as the "deconstruction" movement. Through this community on both twitter and in real life, I've met so many super cool people, including Blake, who I consider a friend today. Someday we'll hang in person, but this episode actually has me wondering if we might BE the same person in some...

In this first episode of Chapel Probation After Hours we have Asha Dahya, a writer, filmmaker and reproductive rights activist talking about her work and her reaction to S2.E14 with Carla Godwin. We spend the time talking about the connection between the patriarchy and misogyny of Carla's experiences at Grace University and the dismantling of reproductive rights today. Asha is currently in the fin...

Carla Godwin grew up in Nebraska in a conservative Christian household. She settled on Grace Bible College in Omaha knowing there were limited career options for women in that world. While being constantly reminded of the expectations for women, Carla began pushing back against some interpretations of the Bible. But patriarchy and purity culture kept forcing her to question even more of her faith,...

Zach Malm came from a family prominent in the Vineyard church world and went to Seattle Pacific University where he was sorely disappointed in both the theological depth and the academic rigor. He ended up seeking these things at a new startup church called Mars Hill. Yes, that Mars Hill. The good news Is that Zach would eventually be credited with bringing Mars Hill down when he revealed to the w...

Josie Jimenez arrived at APU the semester after I left. Her 4 years culminated with the 2016 election and swearing into office Donald Trump, which made a lot of sense to her as she witnessed the rise of the alt-right at APU. But those 4 years helped Josie find both her community and her sense of purpose to push back at bigotry and oppression. As she shed her upbringing in Pentecostal and Baptist c...

John Verner and Chris Loux went to the Moody Bible Institute in Spokane, Washington in the years leading up to the Trump era. Like most guests of Chapel Probation, they came in on fire for their respective brands of fundamentalist faith, with John coming from a Calvinist background. Amazingly, these two became unlikely friends through their shared love of music, even though Chris had a completely...

While many of the guests on Chapel Probation explored and developed their identities as they actively fought against the bigoted culture at their evangelical schools, Bruce Whyte came to APU and never felt like those movements and the spaces that birthed them were for him. But Bruce was not a typical BIPOC student at APU whose mind was colonized by whiteness. Quite the opposite. Bruce just came to...

Adrianne and her twin sister Analiese grew up just blocks from APU in the city of Azusa. They had no idea that the city they knew and loved had an enclave of mostly wealthy, predominantly White people who looked down on them and saw them as unsaved because they were Catholics. And unlike other BIPOC students on this podcast who found pockets of safety in the Multi-Ethnic Programs or in Haven, Adri...

Matthew came to APU looking like the prototypical APU man. He was a White guy from Orange County who attended a megachurch, but he came to school knowing he was not a straight man. As he navigated his faith and tried to reconcile it with his sexuality, he quickly discovered that he needed to push back at the professors spewing lies and hate at LGBTQIA people. He grew tired of the ridiculously bad...

Ashley Dunston went to Vanguard University in Orange County, California, where she realized that evangelical culture coddled and supported her abusive father more than it supported her. Women get asked to forgive abuse from men all the time, and Ashley was asked to do everything she could to reconcile with a man who didn't respect her as a person for the sake of following the "biblical" principle...

Lina went to APU as a newer evangelical christian and did her best to fit in and follow all the rules. Her recent conversion, though, meant she didn't know all the cultural and social references to evangelical culture. Her decision to go to South Africa for a 3-month mission trip would become a first step out of evangelical christianity as she was thrown into a culture in transition with race tens...