Straight White American Jesus

Brad and Dan begin by discussing a bombshell report at the New York Times outlining Trump's plans to completely transform the executive branch if he becomes president again. Brad analyzes how the playbook he and his team are using comes right from Orban's takeover of Hungary's government from within. In the second segment Dan analyzes the reports that Ron DeSantis is trying to create his own perso...

Why do those on the religious and cultural right often describe transgender or gender-nonconforming identity as a mental illness? What is the relationship of “gender dysphoria” and trans or gender-nonconforming identity? Why would some who target trans and gender-nonconforming people claim that they are doing it because they care for them? And finally, how can we support trans and gender-nonconfor...

Brad speaks with veteran journalist Sarah Stankorb about her new book Disobedient Women. Disobedient Women is not just a look at the women who have used the internet to bring down the religious power structures that were meant to keep them quiet, but also a picture of the large-scale changes that are happening within evangelical culture regarding women’s roles, ultimately underscoring the ways tec...

Brad and Dan begin by discussing the fallout from the 303 Creative SCOTUS case in the form of a hair stylists who claims they will not serve anyone who introduces themselves using pronouns. This follows on a predication made when the ruling came down: Bigots will use the licence of "expression" to justify turning away people on the basis of sex, gender, and so on. In the second segment they discus...

The language of “religious freedom” is often used as a code for the preservation of traditional White Christian privilege in the US. But it is also used as a code for efforts to use religious ideology to influence the secular government, so that the beliefs of a minority of White conservative Christians in the US is forced onto the population as a whole. Dan explores this dimension of the contempo...

Last weekend Moms for Liberty held their national conference in Philadelphia. Annika Brockschmidt attended the conference. She talks to Brad about the protests outside the conference, conversations with rank and file members, and speeches from Trump, DeSantis, Haley, and many others. Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Dis...

Brad begins with a long discussion of the Moms for Liberty conference in Philadephia. He centers his comments on the long history of "housewife populism" that goes back to the 1950s. Drawing on work from Gill Frank and Melissa Deckman, Brad argues that Moms for Liberty stands in a long lineage of grassroots movements led by women using the mantle of motherhood to advance an anti-LGBTQ and often Wh...

Last week SCOTUS ruled that race cannot be used in the college admissions process. Many in and outside of the Asian American community see the ruling as positive for Asian American students who are supposedly disadvantaged by affirmative action policies. Brad talks with Dr. Janelle Wong of the University of Maryland about what the data tells us concerning Asian American acceptance rates, how this...

Brad analyzes the recent SCOTUS decision ruling that a website designer has the right to refuse to create websites for gay couples. It's the latest attack on equality from the Alliance Defending Freedom. Brad discusses two major components of the case: The lawful expectations of businesses that are open to the public The ways that this opens the door for discrimination against numerous vulnerable...

What does the SCOTUS decision on affirmative action have to do with the Don't Say Gay bills, book bans, and attacks on school curricula all over the country? How is is part and parcel of a certain White supremacist libertarianism? What are the ramifications for how we think of education and the ways our professional and legal domains are organized? Brad and Dan answer these questions and more in t...

The language of “religious freedom,” “religious freedom restoration” laws, and so forth makes many of us uncomfortable. What does this language mean? Who deploys it? For what reasons? Where did it come from? In this first of a two-part episode, Dan explores these issues, looking at the emergence of the idea of religious freedom and how those who deploy it on today’s political and religious right h...

Jon Ward's life is divided in half: two decades inside the evangelical Christian bubble and two decades outside of it. In Testimony, Ward tells the engaging story of his upbringing in, and eventual break from, an influential evangelical church in the 1980s and 1990s. Ward sheds light on the evangelical movement's troubling political and cultural dimensions, tracing the ways in which the Jesus Peop...

Brad and Dan dedicate this episode to discussing the state of reproductive rights, activism, and law one year since the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Brad begins by going through the numbers on support for abortion in the country, policy and campaign surprises since Roe's fall, and the ways Democrats and Republicans have responded. In the second segment Dan outlines the American religious groups who...

In this week’s episode, Dan explores and explains the practice of infant “dedications,” in contrast with the more familiar practice of infant baptism. Why do some churches reject infant baptism, but practice infant “dedication” instead? And what does this tell us about cultural “duplication” and its role within American evangelical subculture? Check out this week’s episode to find out. Subscribe f...

Brad shares the recording of a roundtable he hosted at Americans United's Summit for Religious Freedom. He asked Andrew Seidel, Katherine Stewart, and Rob Boston what they are worried about in the year ahead - and what gives them surprising amounts of hope as we careen toward 2024. They expound on SCOTUS, public schools, LGBTQ+ rights, and more. Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, a...

Brad and Dan begin by discussing the reactions to Trump's arraignment in Miami - from congresspeople calling for war, to Kari Lake talking about 75 million Americans with guns, to megachurch pastors exhorting their congregations to emulate religious terrorists. Brad points out that the anger over Trump's arraignment coincides with the rise of anti-trans rhetoric - from Trump himself to the KKK. In...

Why do conservative American Christians and Christian nationalists use the rhetoric of being “attacked” and “persecuted”? Why do they perceive themselves to be “suffering” in the contemporary United States, when they experience pronounced social, cultural, and legal privilege? And how do these ideas link up with the broader valorization of “suffering” within some forms of Christian identity? Dan t...

Brad speaks with Tim Whitaker of the New Evangelicals about what he saw and heard at the TPUSA Pastor's Conference in Nashville - a gathering of 1100 pastors from across the country. They discuss three main themes: COVID denial and the way it created momentum for an anti-government, anti-"woke" church movement Trans hatred and the dehumanizing rhetoric that TPUSA encourages pastors to use Christia...

Brad and Dan being by discussing Trump's indictment on federal charges. They then break down the life and death of Pat Robertson - an architect of the Religious Right and someone whose influence resounds in American Christian nationalism today, from media, to spiritual warfare, to queerphobia, and more. They finish the episode with a discussion of SCOTUS' surprising decision to defend voting right...

With Dan still on vacation, enjoy this episode from the One Nation All Belief series: Brad speaks with Paul Southwick and Erin Green from the Religious Exemption Accountability Project. They explain REAP's mission: to help queer students on religious campuses and to get tax dollars out of institutions that discriminate against LGBT people. Through civil rights litigation, storytelling, oral histor...

Faith deconstruction - the intentional examination of one's religious faith and beliefs, leading to a profound change in, or even loss of, that faith - has received increasing attention in the past few years. But, who are the people who deconstruct their faith, what causes them to do so and where does the journey take them? Olivia Jackson's new book (Un)Certain is a collective memoir built on the...

Brad is joined by guest co-host Annika Brockschmidt. They begin by dissecting the Target boycott staged by the American Right. Brad analyzes it by explaining how "culture wars" are conflicts over the identity of a nation - and how the celebration of Pride has led to harassment and vandalism in Target stores as a result. He also breaks down why Pride themed products have garnered these reactions, b...

Dan is on vacation this week, so we are happy to present Brad's interview with Rev. Alex McNeill, which is part of the special series ONE NATION ALL BELIEFS. Rev. McNeill is a white, queer, transgender man, an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. Rev. McNeill served as the executive director of More Light Presbyterians for over eight years. There, he empowered faith leaders to welc...

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence make up an unlikely order of nuns. Self-described as “twenty-first century queer nuns,” the Sisters began in 1979 when three bored gay men donned retired Roman Catholic nuns’ habits and went for a stroll through San Francisco’s gay Castro district. The stunned and delighted responses they received prompted these already-seasoned activists to consider whether the...

Brad begins by offering a metaphor for understanding how Christian nationalists and others view the United States: A complementarian marriage. The role of the cishet dad-husband as protector and the mom-wife as innocent homemaker provides a window into why so many conservatives want to ban books and are calling for dictators. In the following segments Brad and Dan examine the ways this metaphor is...