Straight White American Jesus

SWAJ Premium IS ON SALE! 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/ In this episode, Dan interviews Michelle Down, author of Forager: Fieldnotes for Surviving a Family Cult, about her experiences and insights growing up in an extreme high-control rel...

Matt Taylor joins Brad to discuss a new breed of chauvinistic, theologically bull-headed Christian nationalists who might be better called “Christian supremacists.” These hard-liners believe that Christianity deserves a privileged space in American society — that Christians, being better than other human beings, should be entitled to a superior form of citizenship. They claim that Christians are e...

SWAJ Premium IS ON SALE! 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/ We kick things off with a humorous reflection on Dan's eclipse-chasing escapade in Vermont, drawing parallels to the comical misanthropy of Larry David. We then segue into a critical...

Subscribe for $5.99 a month 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/ In this episode, Dan continues talking with Beatrice Marovich, author of Sister Death: Political Theologies for Living and Dying. In this episode, she talks with us about the concrete socia...

Subscribe for $5.99 a month 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/ Kaylee Peterson is running for congress in Idaho. She's a thirty-something working-class mom who saw her hometown taken over by extreme right-wing politicians through coordinate funding and...

Surprise! Brad sat down with Rev. Angela Denker to discuss Fargo Season 5, a series rife with Christian nationalism and related themes: violence, patriarchy, and right-wing authoritarianism. It's also a series full of love, forgiveness, and the hope of going home. Angela Denker is a Lutheran pastor and veteran journalist. She has written for many publications, including Sports Illustrated, The Was...

Subscribe for $5.99 a month 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/ In the first segment, Dan and Brad discuss the growing call to overturn the 22nd Amendment in order for Trump to be president for more than two terms. They analyze why this is a step on the...

Subscribe for $5.99 a month 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/ Life and death are commonly seen as representing the starkest of binaries: Death is the ultimate adversary of all that lives. Dan talks with Dr. Beatrice Marovich, faculty at Hanover Univer...

Subscribe for $5.99 a month 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/ On this two-hour bonus episode, Brad and Dan are joined by Brad's former ministry partner and friend of 25 years Jason Thompson. They recount an absurd, whimsical, and somehow instructive s...

Subscribe for $5.99 a month 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/ Brad speaks to Dr. Brian Kaylor and Beau Underwood about their new book, "Baptizing America: How Mainline Protestants Helped Build Christian Nationalism." They discuss how those Christians...

Subscribe for $5.99 a month 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/ In the first segment, Dan breaks down the mess at NBC where Ronna Romney McDaniel was ousted from her position after protest by numerous on-air figures. While some have labeled this a trave...

Subscribe for $5.99 a month 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/ In this final episode exploring the idea that the Bible is without error, that it is “inerrant,” Dan looks at what happens if this doctrine is abandoned. The doctrine of inerrancy appears a...

Subscribe for $5.99 a month 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/ At the height of the John Birch Society’s activity in the 1960s, critics dismissed its members as a paranoid fringe. After all, “Birchers” believed that a vast communist conspiracy existed...

Subscribe for $5.99 a month 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/ Brad and Dan begin by discussing a terrifying law in Texas that would allow law enforcement to detain people based on any suspicion of them being undocumented. This is frightening in itself...

Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/ High control Christian communities often claim that the Bible is without error, that its teachings are absolute, and that if we read our Bibles we can learn about God for ourselves. But is that how it really works? What if, inste...

Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/ Brad goes into a deep dive into Charles Haywood, the self-proclaimed "warlord" who is using his fortune to lead the United States into a medieval Christian oligarchy. Haywood started the Society for American Civic Renewal, which...

Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/ Brad and Dan break down the revelations surrounding the Society for American Renewal, which according to the Guardian is "an exclusive, men-only fraternal order which aims to replace the US government with an authoritarian “align...

Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/ One of the effects and purposes of the doctrine that the Bible is “without error” is to provide assurance that when we read it, we have unmediated access to divine teachings. But do we? Can the Bible provide the kind of “immediat...

Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/ From a smattering of ominous right-wing compounds in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s, to the shocking January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, America has seen the culmination of a long-building war on democracy being...

Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/ Brad and Dan begin by discussing the State of the Union speech by Pres. Joe Biden and the GOP response by Sen. Katie Britt (AL). They analyze the theatrics of the civic ritual - and how the chamber has turned into something more...

Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/ When someone says they “believe” that the Bible is “inerrant” (without error), what do they mean? What does it mean to “believe” something in this way? Is believing the Bible is without error the same thing as “believing” that th...

Brad tells cringy stories from his teenage years in order to make a point: Christian conservatives often start arguments by saying that everyone has a worldview, so everyone is religious. If you don't worship God, they say, then you worship yourself or something else. Brad and Dan decode and refute this argument, while telling hilarious stories from the past. They also answer a ton of AMA question...

Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/ What happens if Trump wins? If he goes to jail before the election? If Biden wins, but the House GOP won't certify the election? Brad goes through all these scenarios with Brynn Tannehill, author of American Fascism: How the GOP...

Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/ Brad and Dan begin by demonstrating how Mitch McConnell, who is stepping down from Senate leadership because of his party's extremism, created that extremism by poking holes in democracy. His work is coming to fruition in SCOTUS'...

Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/ Christian inerrantists, those who claim that the Bible is literally “without error,” often present this as a “historical” doctrine. That is, they often claim that the view that the Bible is without error is the result of historic...