Straight White American Jesus

Brad welcomes Dr. Steven Hassan to discuss strategies for talking to red-pilled relatives who have gone down the rabbit holes of MAGA-ism, Q-Anon, and other forms of high-control religion and conspiracy. The author of the Cult of Trump and Combating Cult Mind Control, Dr. Hassan was member of the notorious Unification Church in the 1970s. Dr. Hassan experienced firsthand the devastating effects of...

Brad and Dan begin by discussing the shocking decision from the Alabama Supreme Court proclaiming embryos to be human beings. They dissect the legal, philosophical, theological, and political dynamics of the ruling - and breakdown the Christian nationalism baked into the opinion written by Chief Justice Tom Parker. They then turn their attention to Oklahoma, where a non-binary teen died days after...

The doctrine of inerrancy isn’t convincing philosophically, theologically, or factually. Yet it remains a cornerstone of belief within a conservative Christian circles. What explains its persistence? In this episode, Dan begins exploring this issue by suggesting that the doctrine of inerrancy, despite all of its intellectual failings, speaks to a deeply felt need within a particular kind of religi...

Brad's interview with Dan Partland, director of God and Country, a new documentary that examines Christian nationalism in the United States. Based partly on Katherine Stewart's The Power Worshippers, it includes many prominent voices speaking out against Christian nationalism - Andrew Whitehead, Jemar Tisby, Andrew Seidel, Anthea Butler, and many more. Brad speaks with Dan about what drew him to t...

Brad and Dan begin by discussing Trump's comments on NATO and how they reflect eight years of Putin transforming the American Right's view of America's role in the world. This leads to an extended discussion of Mike Johnson and his reticence to send support to Ukraine without a border deal, even though that is what the Senate sent him. Democrats turned the table, perhaps, on the immigration issue...

What do those who insist that the Bible is inerrant, literally “without error,” do if they’re finally confronted with contradictions or errors in the biblical text that no one can plausibly explain? Does this lead them to abandon the doctrine? Do they finally have to give in to the evidence of the text they themselves claim as an authority? No! Instead, they marshal one, final, ultimate defense of...

In a new Atlantic article, Ronald Brownstein reports on Trump's plans for a second term - using National Guard troops in American cities to round up migrants; massive camps for undocumented persons; the deportation of ten million people - in short, an operation to reshape American society by putting anyone suspected of not being a real American behind barbed wire or on a plane to another country....

Brad and Dan take a winding tour through a bundle of issues: the GOP's failed impeachment vote; the lampooning of their own bill in the Senate; Red Shirts beating a Latino man live on Fox News; Elise Stefanik saying she wouldn't have certified the election if she was VP; book burning political candidates; a woman who has faith that God has chosen Trump for the presidency. The common thread: Democr...

Inerrantists who claim that the Bible is “without error,” right down to the individual words of the text, also recognize that the Bible is full of factual inaccuracies. How do they reconcile these two positions? How can they acknowledge factually inaccurate claims and still insist that the Bible is “without error”? One theological strategy is to insist that the Bible is without error only in what...

Brad speaks with Dr. Kelly J. Baker, author of Gospel of the Klan. In the first segment, Brad outlines how TPUSA is akin to the 1920s Klan. Then he speaks with Dr. Baker, who outlines how the Klan was seen as a patriotic Christian organization that put God and country first. Sound familiar? In its time, the Klan was not considered a beyond the pale White supremacist group. It was part of mainstrea...

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Brad and Dan begin by discussing the right-wing meltdown about Taylor Swift and the Super Bowl. They point out the misogyny at the heart of the discourse, as well as the Christian nationalist and patriarchal dimensions. In the second segment, Brad analyzes the trucker convoy headed the Border - centering on how its participants are using J6 as its inspiration to be warriors for God. In the final s...

Those who claim that the Bible is “inerrant” are clear that this applies to the “autographs,” or original manuscripts, of the Bible. But we don’t have ANY of those original manuscripts. What does that mean for claims that the Bible is “inerrant”? And even if we did have those originals, most of us can’t read the Bible its original languages. Can a translated Bible still be inerrant? In this episod...

In the first part of this episode, Brad talks with journalist Annika Brockschmidt about what under reported or under the radar things she is watching in 2024. Annika walks through a number of court cases on reproductive rights and what they will mean for access to the abortion pill. She also analyzes the violent rhetoric Trump and MAGA Nation have been employing over the last month through the len...

Brad and Dan begin by discussing what happened to Ron DeSantis. Taking stock of pundits who blame his failure on policy or lack of people skills, Brad argues that DeSantis lacks the aesthetic and eroticism to be a fascist leader. He was never Trump+. Just Diet Trump. The MAGA movement wants a strongman autocrat - and so he didn't have it. In the second segment, Dan reports on "man camps" around th...

When inerrantists say that the Bible is “without error,” one of the things they mean is that the very words of the Bible itself were chosen by God. When they say that the Bible is “God-breathed” or “inspired,” this inspiration goes all the down to the biblical authors’ very choice of words. Why is this important to them? What does this claim mean? Does it remove the human element of the Bible’s pr...

Exclusive to SWAJ - the Freethought Caucus in the House of Representatives held a seminar on Mike Johnson's Christian nationalism. Rep. Jared Huffman chaired the panel and heard comments from Dr. Matthew Taylor, Rachel Laser, President of Americans United, and Darcy Hirsch of the Interfaith Alliance. We are the only media outlet to distribute a recording of the event. Subscribe for $5.99 a month t...

Brad and Dan begin by discussing the ways White evangelicals pushed Trump to victory and Iowa - and then dispel a bunch of myths about why White Christians keep voting for him. They also dig into reactions to a mainstream media source calling out Christian nationalism (hint: White Christian nationalists weren't happy). In the second segment the hosts examine Charlie Kirk's characterization of MLK...

The claim that the Bible is inerrant is a claim that it is the sole and absolute authority in matters of religious truth. For millions of American Christians, that also means that it should be the source of social policy and legislation that shape public life for every American. Those are BIG claims. So what is the evidence for inerrancy? Why should we accept these claims for the Bible? As it turn...

Part II of Brad's interview with journalist Tim Alberta, author of the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: Evangelicalism in an Age of Extremism. In his intro, Brad goes through his criticisms of the book. They come down to three main points: It is a normative project in a journalistic format; it reproduces the theological frame it is trying to fix; it poses a neat separation of the religious and t...

On the eve of the Iowa caucuses, Brad and Dan first take stock of two wild but related claims by Trump: He is immune from the law and chosen by God to enact it. Sounds more like a medieval monarch than a democratically elected president . . . In the second segment, the two hosts analyze how Iowa, the center of American politics this weekend, became deeply red while its neighbors - Illinois and Min...

“The Bible is without error.” This claim, the claim that the Bible is “inerrant,” is what lies behind most Christians’ claims when they insist they are “preaching the Bible,” that they attend a “Bible church,” that “the Bible is true,” and so on. When most conservative Christians claim to be “literalists,” what they mean is that they are “inerrantists.” But what does this claim mean? Why is it so...

Part I of Brad's interview with journalist Tim Alberta, author of the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: Evangelicalism in an Age of Extremism. In his intro, Brad goes through what he learned from the book - and hints at his criticisms of it (those are coming next week). In the interview, Brad asks Tim about his experience as a pastor's kid, what changed in evangelical culture during COVID and the...

More Americans think J6 was not big deal than ever. Why? Because the myth of the Big Lie has festered in the three years since the Insurrection, creating an alternate reality in which Donald Trump is not responsible for what happened - and the event wasn't that violent. Brad and Dan break down the statistics and take stock of where we are 3 years from the riot and less than a year from the electio...

“I believe the Bible is literally true.” Such is the claim of many self-professed biblical “literalists.” Academics and journalists who study American religion also often describe conservative Christians, in particular, as “literalists.” But in this episode, the first of several related to the understanding of the Bible within popular American Christianity, Dan argues that no one is actually a lit...