Matthew Taylor: Why We Podcast

David Ames 0:11
This is the graceful atheist podcast United studios podcast. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheists podcast. My name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Remember, we have a merchandise store on T public, you can get all of your graceful atheist and secular Grace themed items there, the link will be in the show notes. If you're in the middle of doubt, deconstruction, the dark night of the soul, you do not have to do it alone. Join our private Facebook group deconversion anonymous and become a part of the community. You can find us at facebook.com/groups/deconversion I want to take a moment to celebrate this is the 200th episode of the graceful atheist podcast. A huge shout out to Mike t for all the editing work over the years. And a huge shout out to Arline who's single handedly carried the podcast over the last couple of months. I'll talk a little bit more in the final thoughts section about where the podcast goes from here. But celebrate with me that we have gotten to this huge mile marker. onto today's show. My returning guest today is Matthew Taylor. Matthew was on the show in 2019. Matthew is the co host of the steal unbelievable podcast. He and his colleagues, Andrew and David originally wrote a book in response to Justin Brierley. He's unbelievable book. And both the book and the podcast are kind of a response to that. Matthew has been a good friend over the years, and I was really glad to have him back here for the 200th episode. And today we discuss why we podcast what it is that drives us to do what we do and what we hope that the community gets out of it. Here's my conversation with Matthew Taylor.

Matthew Taylor, welcome back to the graceful atheist podcast.

Matthew Taylor 2:22
Hello, David. Fabulous to chat again with you who really is it's been a while we've just been talking Off mic about that. It's it's great to actually to see each other again as well and not just hear the voice.

David Ames 2:33
Yeah, absolutely. Just to set some context for everyone else. You are the co host of still unbelievable podcast that is in many ways a response to Justin Brierley is unbelievable podcast. You've written a book on that same subject, you've done a bunch of things I'd like to hear just from your words. You know, some of the projects that you've been involved in? Yes,

Matthew Taylor 2:54
quite few. So the whole thing all started with still unbelievable the book which came out a year after Justin brollies, unbelievable book came out. And we that's not where my story starts. But that's where this story starts. And so that came in, I jumped on board with that project made some great friends as part of that project. And out of that project was born the podcast still unbelievable, which I know most of we've, in the last few months passed through 100 episodes, which is great, but such episodes about for almost five years. So we're not as regular as other podcasts which we could mention David. And but so that came out. And we we did try a couple of podcasts. Actually, I did also do the asking at centers podcast for a while. And we we merged into that, but It rapidly became very obvious that we're trying to juggle similar content on two different feeds. And it made no sense whatsoever. And so asking atheist, anything in the proscenium feed, which it merged into, just quietly got dropped, because it just made no sense to carry on with that. I'm very happy with the decision that we made. We weren't going to get there. Like we weren't going to let go of the still unbelievable name because we like we like the brand still unbelievable. We like that it's a throwback to just embroideries, unbelievable podcasts, which anybody who talks in this space knows about so we feel that it was a good thing to keep on to that brand. And that brand has got us onto the radar of a couple of publishing houses. So it means that we do occasionally get an email from a publishing house saying, here is a book that we think you guys might like, which is a wonderful place to be we've had this past year 2023, enter and I have featured three authors on still unbelievable. Each one of those was a fabulous conversation, that conversation which I appreciated. I learned lots from each of those conversations. I'm really glad to be able to feature those kinds of people. And I don't pay for a book which for me is a double When. So I'm putting a lot of effort into still unbelievable. But we're we're not really a network, but we're part of a community of podcasts. You obviously one of them. David, who was part of the still unbelievable book project everyone's skeptics and seekers, we feature him and we're very tightly involved with him because Andrew and David Andrew, my co host, still unbelievable for those who don't know. So we're all we we are talking regularly and featuring each other regularly. Then there's Clint Haycock and ex American pastor here in the UK. On the mind shift podcast, I really like, Clint, I really like the way he thinks I really like the way he produces his podcast. So I've been on that for a while. But you know, yours and his podcasts were both right at the early days when I was featured on them. Early Days of lockdown. In fact, when I was, we didn't even know what COVID was when I was on your podcast. So the world has changed, and it's changed. Yeah. And what I've liked about that interim period is there's been an explosion of really good community groups, lots of Facebook groups, all around the kinds of space that that we talk in, people helping each other some UK centric ones, which is beautiful to see, as well. Because if no one can tell from my accent, I am based in the UK. And it's really good to see those. So I've joined quite a few of those. I'm not very active on them, because I am literally so busy. But it is really nice to see the communities building there and people helping people. And it's great, great to see that. And I like to think that these voices, though to verbal on all these podcasts are helping to facilitate that. Because when I was deconstructing podcasts weren't a thing. It was blogs. And I found a small blogging community when I was doing my deconstruction. And those guys really helped me being able to blog through some of my thoughts, and to be able to read other people's thoughts and us comment on each other's posts and help each other and support each other. I love that community. And those people I know I've moved out of that community, I'm now into podcasting. But I still look back fondly on those time because I needed people I needed people who understood me, I needed people who understood my fears in a visceral way, which nobody I knew we skin could comprehend. And those people at the other end of that keyboard, those people at the other end of those monitor screens, I never, I didn't need to hear their voice, I didn't need to see their faces, I just needed to read their words and their words were full of compassion, their words are full of love, their words are full of understanding. And I needed those people while I was going through that process. And technology is allowed much more dynamic ways of providing that. And I love the podcasting community that is doing that, or the various podcasts that have sprung up talking about that. And I love all the various Facebook groups, which provides some really, really good support to people. And it's wonderful to see that happen.

David Ames 8:11
So both of us have gone back and listened to your, your first episode on this podcast. That was in 2019. And a couple things that that just struck me about it. One is, you know, you can hear, I think both of us, but me in particular, you know, trying to figure out what is it that we do here? And the other is just what you just said that, you know, we weren't interested in bashing Christians. What we were interested in is finding community for people who were having doubts, deconstructing de converting what have you, and you in particular, were expressing that compassion for people going through that process? Yes,

Matthew Taylor 8:50
I was quite surprised that see how much that came across in the episode that recorded because I do need to give a health warning still unbelievable, can be a difficult place to be for people who are still sympathetic towards Christianity. I make no excuses for that I self described as spiky. Yes, graceful doesn't apply to me. And I'm glad that you do what you do, because I couldn't right. And so we are very different in that way. But our end goal and our desires for those who are in the place that we were both in however many years ago, it was, is necessary. And I do occasionally get emails from people saying that still unbelievable has helped them because it's helped them to frame their thinking. And that's what I tried to offer we still unbelievable. I critique Christianity in very particular ways in some of our episodes. And I think that's helped to frame some people in terms of how they think about Christianity and how they think about their experiences and how to frame the doubts that they are experiencing. and how to put words and logic and even science to some of those doubts. So just to put a little bit of a caveat Yes, I am for supporting the Deconstructor but there will be some spiking us on still unbelievable. So be aware of that I don't try to be a friendly place for Christians

David Ames 10:22
understand, and I think I think you also expressed the support for truth. And I think you said it by saying you wanted to stand up against inaccuracy. Yes, wherever that was. So I think both of those themes came across in your your earlier. Yes.

Matthew Taylor 10:37
Although having said that, I do try to treat my Christian guests as well as I possibly can. And some of the authors that we featured are Christian guests. And I don't know when this episode is going to go live, David, but and I spoil it for you. And in case this comes out before January next year, I have gotten the ken an episode that which I'm partway through recording where Andrew and I have interviewed the pastor in the US who's written a book on help. And the book is called Holy hell a case against eternal damnation. And the pastor who's written this book is a Universalist. And he gives a very strong case for universalism, and for a loving God, not being a god of eternal damnation, a loving God not being a god of eternal torment, loving God's being a god where everybody is brought to himself. And he produces a very what I think is a very powerful case for that, and we have a delightful conversation. For the first time in my life, I've uttered the words, I enjoyed reading a book about how, and I never thought I would ever, ever say that. But that is how I feel about this book. And I do know from what I've read in some of the various forums, hell is a problem. Hell is a problem for people in our position, how creates significant issues for people who are deconstructing, and I genuinely recommend this book, I don't care where you are on the deconversion spectrum, whether you intend to D convert or not. Whether you just want to deconstruct something and retain a faith, faith, or whether you are completely anti Christianity completely. If you're at all interested in the subject of how like genuinely recommend this book is called Holy hell a case against eternal damnation. It will be coming out in February next year 2024 hour episode with the author will come out at some point in January, the tail end of January next year, highly recommend it. It's going to be a beautiful episode, we enjoyed the conversation. And there are Christians out there who are fighting for us. No fighting for a loving experience of that kind of conversation.

David Ames 12:56
I actually want to ask you about your experience going on to Justin Brierley, these podcasts so and all of those work that you've done, that was a bit of a response to his work. And then you were on his podcast, which for anybody who might not know, for the three people who don't, you know, this is probably the one of the biggest, definitely focused on apologetics Christian podcasts in the world. And and so this was kind of a big deal. Absolutely.

Matthew Taylor 13:24
If somebody like me is going to be on any Christian podcast, unbelievable is one again going to be although, I should point out that within a few weeks of Justin then being on my show, because he was on my show immediately after me being on his. He then announced that he was leaving unbelievable. I mean, maybe it's a coincidence, but I'm definitely gonna milk that as much as I possibly can. And so, but yes, so Justin been doing that over 17 years, he'd be doing that. So I've now got a target for still unbelievable. They that's, that's the target that I'm aiming for. For still unbelievable. Actually, I am not going anywhere. So hang around. So I genuinely didn't think I would ever get on to unbelievable. I had been a regular listener for a very long time. And I had written just in on numerous times. And then out of the blue, I got an email with a book, LinkedIn into it. And I was copied in with a couple of other people. And Justin said to these people, I've got an author here. Here's a book. We need the layperson to have a conversation with him. Is anybody up for it? Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. So, so I had to chat with Mike De Virgilio and his book. What was it called an invented his hypothesis is the stories in the Bible read in such a way that they couldn't possibly be invented. I don't know how to describe that premise without breaking any kind of swear filters.

David Ames 14:54
You're fine. You can express yourself. It's bullshit.

Matthew Taylor 14:57
Frankly, it really is. It's It's utter utter bullshit. And to, to quote David from skeptics and seekers who is an ex pastor, and he is a philosopher as reader, he said to me offline, afterwards, he says, is read a lot of Christian books. And that one was, by a long way, the worst one that he'd ever read. So that was quite something coming from David. So I read this book on. And I think chapter two, he talks about something in the Dead Sea Scrolls, he makes a very specific claim about the quality of the texts in the decks, Dead Sea Scrolls. Great. Something I can fact check, because that's one thing I like to do a fact check. And anybody who listens to steal unbelievable, you should know that my show notes are always full of links from anything that it's fact checkable. In any episode that goes out, there'll be a link to it, if I can find it in the show notes. So always check the show notes if you're listening to still unbelievable, because they will be jam packed full of notes, and links and references to things to mentioned in the episode. So anyway, so I went along, and I tried to fact check this claim that he made about the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the accuracy is, and it was rubbish, is claim was falsified. The first thing I found out about Dead Sea Scrolls is the book, I think he mentioned specifically the book of Isaiah, if it wasn't Isaiah, it was one of the Prophet books, and the information that I found out about this book and Dead Sea Scrolls, that most people think it actually has two authors, two different people who've written it, and there's evidence of copying between the two. And in the various copies that were found in those caves, there are differences. So this entire claim that he'd made was completely falsified by literally 10 minutes of Google search, I didn't need to go deep. It was there really quickly. And I brought brought this up on that episode, and it was just roundly ignored. And he didn't even try to defend it and moved on. And that was deeply frustrating. But and the book was like that all the way through there was any everything that I could fact check was difficult. They basically failed. And most of it was based on what he called verisimilitude, which was, it sounds like it's too good to be true. Therefore, it must be too good to be true. It's it's such a, it really is such a weak thing on which to base base, any kind of case on that. And so my concern going on to unbelievable was once I got to be able to keep my call. I was genuinely concerned that I would just lose it and go off on a rant. And if I'm going to go on to anything high profile, that is the last thing that I need to do. Yeah. But I managed it, I managed to get through and Justin did say to me afterwards, he thought I did fairly well. And I got some really positive feedback from people still unbelievable. Got to notice for jumping the listeners, following that, that going out. So thank you to anybody who's listening to this and listened to that and join. So unbelievable. I really did appreciate the positive comments. But yeah, I'd have liked to have had a better quality conversation if I'm really honest. But it was quite an experience doing that on Justin show. I'm doing something so big.

David Ames 18:27
This is actually a topic that I want to explore just for a minute. I think in the early days of this podcast, you know, I thought, oh, I want to talk to more Christians. And in my mind, I thought of apologists. And for those of my listeners who don't pay attention to apologetics, my apologies. But that's what we are going to look at here. And I found the same thing. It didn't matter really who it was, I've interviewed probably, I don't know, three or four apologists like professional apologists. And my experience was that you, you know, you bring up a point that, you know, is kind of a fact. And they just walk around it. Right? Yeah, that was never the direct addressing of the point that you were making. And the better the apologist, the less they actually address the point that you're making. So I'm wondering, you know, after so many years of doing the podcast and talking to various different Christian authors, apologists, that kind of thing. How has that changed for you at all? Like how you approach a conversation like that? Possibly,

Matthew Taylor 19:30
I'm less forgiving of bad arguments. And I've noticed that over the years, I've definitely, and because I've seen so many bad ones. And when I first started interacting, I definitely took the attitude of I don't want to sell the typical stereotype of the angry atheist. I want to be thoughtful and I want to be considerate and because I understand Christianity, I want to at least to show to the Christian, a Christian attitude. But I've had so many bad responses in that kind of space, that I lose patience for that. And I'm, I'm not so keen and not so quick to go for the softly approach now, because I've tried it so many times where I've tried to gently feed and say, No, that's not quite that you didn't answer my question. And just try and rephrase it, rephrase it in a nice way, etc. And like you've just said, there's just no appetite to actually address it directly. So I've given up playing nice around that, and just go straight forward and call it out. I I'm wasting everybody's time. If I if I do that, let's go back to Justin. Because after that, I was on unbelievable. And then Justin came on to us. And we talked a little bit around because one of Justin's narratives and he comes, I think it comes out in the new book that's been I've not read it yet. I will, it was on my project list for 2024 is the book. He tries to push the thing about Christianity, being a global good being the source of all the great things that we have in society. And Andrew and I pushed him back on that, and we pushed him back quite firmly, and he just wouldn't budge. It was really, that conversation was really frustrating for Andrew, myself. And we ended up just moving on. And I had feedback after the episode from several people saying that they really didn't appreciate how hard Justin pushed on the Christianity has been a global good in these areas. And that particular subject is probably the biggest single subject that Andrew and I have had direct feedback on to an episode, people really did not appreciate the way that he was pushing that narrative. Too many people saw straight through it didn't like it. And so because Justin was a big name, and he and I both wanted to be polite, we didn't push it as hard as we could have. And I think if I was to repeat it, I probably be rude or pure, purely because I think this point needs to be made very strongly. And I think there's a danger. It's a balance, David, it genuinely is a balance in how we respond to prominent Christians, because there's this Christian narrative of, oh, they're an atheist, they're going to be rude, and they're going to be rude and angry is because they're a bitter atheist. Now I can write off everything they say. So we're under pressure to be on good behavior. Because the second we let that slip, oh, it's just atheists are going through, you know, they now you see their true colors, whereas a Christian is actually granted space to lose it. They're actually given grace, if they lose it. And there's this disparity there in expectation and judgment, of behavior. And I'm getting a little bit tired of that. So some of the episodes I've done also unbelievable. They've been solo episodes, where I've reviewed a Christian podcast, and I just go for it on those episodes, I ramp up the sarcasm, I'll put in appropriate sound effects for things now now raise my voice. And I'll really hit it because I think people need to hear an emotional response. Sometimes these I don't think it works all the time, to have this kind of thing. So I think if I was to have thing, have that again, and if I ever managed to tempt Justin, don't listen to this. If I ever tend to just him back onto still unbelievable. Again, I think I'll be less calm. And I think I'll push back a lot harder, because I think I think these narratives need to be pushed back more. Maybe we're going to get a new dawn of the new atheist and that kind of polemic. That's me, does that give you the answer you're expecting?

David Ames 23:50
No, I think that's a good answer. I think where I landed was about consistency. Oh, I'm

Matthew Taylor 23:56
not consistent. You're you're consistently graceful. I couldn't hold it up. Other episodes too little.

David Ames 24:05
Ya know, what I mean is when I'm when I'm interacting with particularly an apologist, right, for example, your author makes the argument about verisimilitude. It sounds too good to be true. So it must be true that I would respond. So the, you know, the Muslim says that it's a miracle that the Quran exists, right. So that is the exact same arguments, and so you have to be consistent, both of those things would have to be true. So are they both true or using a bad argument? And, and I don't think that that changes their mind at all. I still think they just go around it but but for me, the way that I've communicated these days is to say, I need to be consistent. And so if you are going to lower the bar of evidence required for something that lowers it everywhere, not just for your particular religious claim. Yes.

So part of what we wanted to talk about here is why we podcast. Yeah. And so I'd like to hear first, we've talked about a little bit but what why you started why you and Andrew began this process. And then maybe a little bit about why you continue to do that. Yes,

Matthew Taylor 25:17
there's some some good points were made there. So as I mentioned, when I was first on, it wasn't on my radar to podcast. And then Andrew and David off the back of still unbelief for the book thought well, that this brand, this momentum needs to continue. And they were right. So and podcasting is taking off? No, there's a deconstruction space that needs voices. Let's do it. So we started a small number of podcasts asking atheists anything we've talked about which has gone by the wayside although the episodes I believe are still available, if you there are some interesting episodes. If people want to look that up and listen to them. I will be gradually going through the back catalogue of that and picking off some of the best ones and rebroadcasting them on to still unbelievable, because we've got new listeners who might appreciate them. Yeah, so but it was never on my my radar to do it. And then probably David bless him everything is David's fault over at skeptic. It seems like everybody I know called David is responsible for something happening in my life. So David said, David F. Skeptics and seekers, yes. David Johnson Oh, from skeptics and seekers. And his guy I respect immensely. He helped me find my writing voice is complimented me immensely on my own writing. And he said, Matthew, I think you'll have a good voice for podcasting. Plus English accent, you know, what's what, what's to lose? And I genuinely I've loved it. And when I started was a little bit of a shaky start. I don't listen to some of our first couple of episodes I'm sure I would shivering, embarrassment. But we got it going, we managed to capture a couple of interesting guests. So we pick Greczyn momentum carried on and then we start getting some really interesting guests, people I really enjoyed speaking to I think my first high profile on was John Stein guard, I, I stalked him after he was on unbelievable. It took me a couple of months to find him. I eventually managed to find him on Instagram, I think and sent her a message. And he responded very positively. We had a joyful conversation with John Stein guard, which who I believe you had a conversation with John, as well. Fabulous, fabulous individual. And now suddenly, you say I'm a podcast, suddenly starts to open doors. And I've managed to reach out and I reached out to Joshua sama Das, who's a Christian apologist has written a book on the called the genealogical Adam and Eve. Interesting scientifically, I'm not entirely sure some of the things he says are safe, in terms of the conclusions he's come to. But definitely, if you're that way inclined, it's potentially an interesting book. There's lots of references, very technical, enjoyed the conversation there. And I've really enjoyed those kinds of conversations. And conversations are where it sets really have having good quality conversations, because you can show to each other when you're doing it across the table, having a conversation which is productive, and friendly, which I've managed to have, despite what I've said about spikey, and all that helps to see the other person as a human. And that helps conversation, I think, humanizing the opponent having an actual conversation with them. Lotter not a text based conversation, but actual conversation, has done wonders for my attitude towards Christian individuals. And I hope has done the same the other direction, because those kinds of things I've enjoyed the most. And like say Earthman said, the publisher have contacted me twice now with a Christian author. And we've had that conversation. The second one is one I just told you about. About the Hell yeah, if people don't see value in some of those conversations, they're not going to reach out and say, here's a book I think you should read. Here's an author, I think you'd enjoy a conversation with no, that must surely be a risk for somebody to push a Christian author on to a podcast like still unbelievable and say, I think this is the conversation you're you're like, because the gamble that they're taking is engineers, atheists will a pan the book, and then be continued to pan the book, and they've seen the panic with extra venom, you know, and then D continue to talk about it for the rest of the year about how awful that bloody book was. That's the risk that they take. And both times that I've had that contact, I've had a fabulous experience reading the book and and the fabulous conversation so I think it pays dividends to actually reach out and So I've reached out I said, I reached out to Joshua sama Das, I've reached out to Steve Chalke, who's the big name in the UK people outside the UK might not be familiar with the name. But certainly Christian people who from the Christian tradition in the UK will know the name, Steve Chalke fabulous conversation, it's sometimes it's worth making that reach out to somebody you never know, who you'll catch. And I think humanizing other people and having those lovely, pleasant conversations, actually is better than being spiky. Really, honestly, when it gets down to the bottom of it. It's worth it. And also, I think the reason why it's worth having those conversations across the aisle like that is look as on regardless of where they are, whether they're transitioning from one side to the other, or whether they're just hovering in the murky ground in the middle, will probably appreciate those conversations as well. And it probably just helps them to focus some of the thinking that they have some spiky people as well, let's Let's aim for the pleasant conversations because I get so much more out of those pleasant conversations I mentioned earlier about, sometimes I do those really snarky episodes, I actually get more pleasure. I got a lot more pleasure out of that conversation that I've just told you about. With Derek about his holy hell book I got so much more pleasure out of that. I do out of three episodes where I rip apart a Christian podcast talking about stuff I don't like.

David Ames 31:32
What do you get out of it? So you basically have been saying that you know, that these conversations I think are meaningful for you? Is that part of why you continue to podcast?

Matthew Taylor 31:40
Yes, definitely. Definitely. It is. And one of the big question marks over the whole deconversion deconstruction experiences, purpose and meaning you I grew up in a Christian condition where I was taught from a very young age and went into adulthood, God has a purpose for you, God has a plan for you, you know, part of what you need to do is find out what God wants you to do in your life. And one of the things that I experienced as a young 20 year old was, you're going to chuckle at this, I promise you. I was at a big evangelical meeting. And there was also it was it was a weekend and there was teaching and seminars and stuff like that. And at one of these big meetings, somebody came in, says, I've got a prophet here with us. And he's going to look around the room. And then at one point, he's going to walk around the room, and he's going to see if God's telling him about any of the people that so he did this, and this guy did this, walk this round the room, and then they came back in the couple of words, etc, etc. And then next thing I know, me, I was literally I was in the back row of this meeting. Literally, I got singled out from the front. And he pointed me out. And I said what mean, I pointed the person next to me said no, no, no, no, no. You said that guy there. He's going to have an apostolic ministry. And of course, my knees buckled under me, I sat down, you know, this was an emotional thing that I simply struggled to cope with. And yeah, I that weighed on my mind for quite some time. You know, and I was given some words of wisdom and advice about that. Because being singled out to be an apostle is quite a big thing. This wasn't just somebody who had a good teaching ministry, or was somebody who was going to bless the people, you know, this is somebody who's going to have an apostolic ministry, you know, it was, it was a big, big thing. So that weighed on me for years. And so how do I fulfill this prophecy? You know, when you come from a Christian tradition, where, you know, part of what you're supposed to be doing is looking for what God wants for you literally looking for God's purpose in your life, that creates an awful lot of stress. And I've seen people struggle with that very idea. How do I know if this thing that I'm doing is part of God's purpose in life? How do I know if buying this house is part of God's purpose for my life? How do I know if marrying this person is part of God's purpose? For my life? I don't feel like I've got a purpose in my life. And here I am just merrily having a family and going to church, you know, shouldn't I be doing something really great. And the I've seen so many people hurts by this very idea. And then you of course, when you deconstruct and you leave Christianity, this question doesn't go away you go, okay. Now what do I do about purpose because it's now embedded into life after decades of teaching, that you need to find a purpose for your life, your life has a purpose. You just need to find it. You know, it's this this whole thing you know, for sit on a mat and look to the dawn and why not just do what you love. If some thing gives you pleasure, do it and enjoy it. And if you enjoy it, it will be purposeful. Yeah, it's and make it as simple as that. And that took someone learning for me. And podcasting, this conversation that having you is actually energizing me, David, I'm loving, I'm really enjoying. And when I have conversations like this on still unbelievable, it energizes me. And sometimes I can come away from the microphone, it can be half past 10 At night, there'll be buzzing. And I have to go grab a hot chocolate, do my old man thing sits in bed, what's on what's on the crime genre and watch something because I need an hour to wind down. And then I get up at six o'clock the next morning to go and do a day's work.

David Ames 35:48
I would definitely say that it's very similar for me. And I was more explicit about this in the early days that I was doing it selfishly, I needed to be able to talk to people about what I was going through, as well. And then this podcast fell into, you know, more of the deconversion stories as the main theme. And that in those early days was just still very important for me to be able to talk about what I was going through as well. And I felt like I got more out of it than the people I was interviewing.

Matthew Taylor 36:21
Yes, I like it when we have an episode. Like that. And I like getting feedback, you know, underneath No, sometimes we have a little ego there that needs a little scratch. So guys, send feedback, do reviews on Amazon, and Spotify and iTunes, do all that kind of thing, because it genuinely scratches us. And it helps us produce content content that you guys like listening to. So please, reviews, reviews, reviews that let's do. That's really great. I love having feedback. It's really good to have had feed feedback from people in various scenarios. And it's even more strange to occasionally get feedback from a Christian saying, Can I have a conversation with you guys? Having an email like that just kind of, does he listen to my back catalogue? Does he?

David Ames 37:12
Yes, yeah.

Matthew Taylor 37:14
So that's why I continue to do it because I find that it motivates me and yeah, I am a busy guy. I do work more than my contracted hours because I'm in a very busy job. And on top of doing this, I do community theater as well. And for anybody who knows what it's like to do amateur dramatics, you know, when it comes up to, to doing a show, you get end up with a very, very busy couple of weeks with rehearsals and technical recur called rehearsals into dress rehearsals and then show it comes along and you literally don't sleep the entire week. Yeah, it's, it's hard, and it wipes me out. Yeah, and I do two shows a year, sometimes three or four shows a year. And that can completely wipe me out. This year I was in wasn't quite in two shows, I was doing front of house for one show, which is a busy job in itself, you know, talking to the community, making sure everybody's got their seats, making sure everybody's got their tickets and all this kind of thing, sorting out any issues that that come up. And that kind of thing is a very different role. Very busy role, very stressful role. And then two weeks after that was in the show. So as you know, it's it can get very, very busy doing that kind of thing. And I'm doing that on while also trying to schedule guests for a podcast, while also doing a full time job. And then, as you've heard a couple of times, I'm still trying to recover from a code that I had when I was on playing when you get over that magical 50 sore throats hang around for a ridiculously long period of time. And it's really, really frustrating.

David Ames 38:57
We've talked a bit about how it affects us. I'm curious how you think our podcasting podcasting in general in the secular world affects the community. And just as a bit of context, when I started I was I was responding to there were lots of angry atheists. There were lots of mostly debates, mostly hostile interactions, and I was interested in having human conversations more more person to person, you know, again, as to use your words, respecting the other person's humanity. And that felt new at that moment. Yeah. And in between then and now. The whole deconstruction movement took place, right? We were kind of at the tail end of the atheist kind of movement and then became this deconstruction movement as it were. And so I'm just curious how you think your podcasts what you and Andrew were doing and are doing has had an impact on that that community?

Matthew Taylor 39:55
Well, let's start with you. I guess we've touched base twins. The 19 must was it was it was it was it 2018 We first exchanged emails, it was around about that period anyway.

David Ames 40:05
Yeah. 2019 Yeah.

Matthew Taylor 40:06
And I've loved listening to your podcast growing in popularity, and I wished if your podcast had existed, when I was deconstructing it would have been an enormous help for me. So I think what your podcast does what the rest of atheist podcast does, is immensely valuable. And I hope it never goes away. Yes, I've heard you say it as well. And yes, not everybody wants to listen to a new deconversion story every week, for some people is a period of time in which it's really helpful. And then then they move on. And I've seen this in the community, some people come, and then they go, No, they've now they've shed their burden. They don't want to dwell in it anymore. And they need to move on.

David Ames 40:56
Yeah, I describe it as either aging out or maturing out. Yeah, it's no longer necessary for that person.

Matthew Taylor 41:01
Let me make it personal for a bit. I'm the eldest of three brothers. We all grew up in the same environment. We all suffered the same traumatic divorce of our parents in Zambia, we're all very familiar with the Zambian missionary environment. Listeners, you're going to have to listen to my original episode where I give more context this, but my two brothers do not talk daily about their past Christian faith. It's not relevant to them. It's not important to them. Yeah, I even talked with my youngest brother, I'm actually going up to see him tomorrow morning to have spent a couple of days with and helping out with this house. I'm really looking forward to a long weekend weekend with him. Yeah. Brothers, we bond. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to that time with him. But I did say to him one day, I said, you know, maybe you and I could do a good episode on some belief or talk about our experiences, I'm sure we appreciate it. And he said, you know, they're not interested do not do nothing. And for some people, that's fine. You know, I'm not going to raise the subject, again, is we know, we've had that conversation. Fine. You know, it's, it's pointless me pushing it. Yeah. And because all I do is force him to rethink things that he doesn't care to think about. We've got better brotherly things to talk about which we'll both appreciate. And that's perfectly fine. You know, let's just lay that out there. No, wait, once you come in, and you join this community, you're not bound to it, you know, there, there are no pointy fingers. If you decide that it's not for you anymore, you know, we're not going to continue on condemn you to atheist hell for your turn or torture. Because you, you feel that this isn't serving you anymore. So for some people, the service that our content provides is, is temporary. But for other people, they want to hang around. And for those that hang around, you know, there can be a new role. And the role is holding hands with the newcomers, because there's always people coming in. And that's the one thing I've noticed, is being part of these deconversion deconstruction groups, and watching your podcasts specifically, grow. I'm not going to hint about any kind of jealousy about your podcast becoming really, really popular. I'm not gonna say through any kind of gritted teeth, whatsoever, but I'm really glad that your stories and there are others as well. I can't remember the tales of deconversion. Is that what it's called, or something like

David Ames 43:39
voices of deconversion? Like, which Steve hilliker Like I give him a lot of credit for you know, I'm basically ripping him off and doing what he did.

Matthew Taylor 43:48
But yeah, and it's a necessary thing. And it's nice to see people getting something new out of every episode. And it's nice to see people hang around to help those. But yeah, can you imagine how busy the space would be if every single D converter hung around town to welcoming all the new ones, it will become crowded and it will become untenable. It's perfectly appropriate for those. They've sorted out their deconstruction, grief, they've got to a comfortable place with any trauma they carry. It's time for them to move on because it's no longer good for them. Move on, is there are plenty of people around I think that's why I hang around. Because I've seen a lot of pain. I've experienced a lot of pain. And even now I still learn about things which shocked me and surprised me. So I still want to be around to be a voice for others. And every now and then they'll see somebody will ask a question in one of the deconstruction posts and I'll see some of the replies here and now. Add on saying yes I wouldn't say it was right. That's really good advice or so. Like, you guys have just had the most religious holiday in the United States, your Thanksgiving, weekend. And

David Ames 45:13
tongue in cheek? Yeah.

Matthew Taylor 45:16
What what happens when I noticed it when Thanksgiving comes up, is the deconstruction groups always say, there will be somebody will say help. I've got a parent coming round for the weekend, there's going to be this, there's going to be that, how do I handle this I need, I need something, etc, that's going to happen every single year. And there'll be somebody new every single year with that trauma with that panic. And it needs people to hang around to go, Yeah, I've been there, or your home your rules, you know, you're perfectly entitled to say to the parent, this is my house, you're an adult now. Because some people have a complex relationship with their parents, I've, I've still got I mentioned in that discussion, I still got a complex relationship with my father, I came out to my dad fulcrums, eight years ago now, I think it was atheists in a conversation. I didn't intend to, but the conversation went went into a particular direction. I just went low. We're not going there. I'm atheist. Now that's not happening. And he's not spoken to me about that particular subject again. But I've heard from my brother that he wants to, that he wants to talk me out of my atheism. Right. My brother just said, don't just just don't do it, you know, that will not end well do not have that conversation with Matthew. And my brother was a barrier. But you see, he had that conversation with my brother because he couldn't have it with me. And so even me, and I'm a very confident atheist, I can stand my ground and I will stand my ground if I need to, even to the overbearing parent, I just won't hold back and I will do it. Not everybody has got that confidence. Not everybody is secure to be able to do that. And so they need these forums, they need these groups to say, Help. Has anyone been in this situation? And half a dozen people go? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And they'll give their experiences. So we need those people to hang around, and to pass on the advice. And for those who feel comfortable hanging around, post deconversion. To be to be as part of the hands holding crowd. God bless you people, you are wonderful. You are here to say God bless. unicon bless you wonderful people. You are an asset to this community. Yeah, I did do that on purpose, obviously, David.

David Ames 47:58
So another thing that we share, that's definitely not unique. But it is interesting is that we have believing wives.

Matthew Taylor 48:06
Yes. How did that happen? David, we couldn't invent that. It's, um, it was quite peculiar to find out that we had that in common. And I'm wondering what it is about the spouse of a believer the form that they end up in doing this, what we're doing, isn't that scenario motivation to not do this?

David Ames 48:30
Yeah, it's definitely interesting. Let me address that question in just a second. I want you to talk about your wife and whatever generics or specifics that you want to get into. But my wife is a deep believer, right? If she never put foot in a church again, for the rest of her life, she's probably still going to be a believer. Right. It's internal for her on a super deep level. And I respect her faith, even though I think she's mistaken. All right. Yeah. So like I want to convey like it is about as opposite as you could be. The one thing that we do have going for us is I think politically, we're more aligned. And the two of us really care about people. Yeah. And we both do and in our various different ways. Try to help people and I think it's that shared values that is enabled us to get through what was a pretty rocky period of time going through this transition. When I said I had no longer believed in regards to what makes somebody motivated for this. You know, I think it's, it's in spite of that, like, my biggest concern, when I started was, I didn't want to hurt my wife. I didn't want her to feel attacked or abused. And yet, I had to talk about this stuff I had to because it was killing me. And so, you know, we've come to an uneasy detente, right. I can't say that she's happy about it, but she accepts that this is something that I do, right. Yeah. So I'm curious what your experience has been like. My

Matthew Taylor 50:00
wife would probably echo exactly the same things that you've said about your own. So we are very much aligned. And yes, it would kill me not shut up, I am very much a dog with a bone kind of personality. I wouldn't say that I was necessarily intellectual, but I like intellectual challenge. I like I like consuming scientific content. And I like discourse. And I like challenge. And doing still unbelievable and doing it with Andrew fulfills so much of that. And I love it. And I love listening to the other various atheist and some Christian podcast as well. I really enjoy consuming that content as well as creative. But all the things here, yes, it's uncomfortable as well. And my deconstruction was marred with fear. I genuinely believed that my deconversion at the point where I got to the point where I was fairly sure it was inevitable. I genuinely believed that would spell the end to marriage that I didn't want to end. And that, despite everything else, ignoring everything else, that little snip it in on itself is traumatizing, and fear inducing, and even paralyzing. Yeah. And when you go and read blog, after blog after blog of somebody in the same situation, and every single one of them is the marriages have failed. The attrition rate of marriages in this space is frighteningly high. You and I have gone against the odds, let's be open and honest about that. And yes, part of it is my wife and I are politically aligned. Politics has shifted over the last 20 years, and it's shifted in the same direction. We are very much aligned on an awful lot of things. And my wife's job is for a charity here in this part of the UK, which coordinates mentoring. So adults mentoring, usually teenagers who are in a problematic scenario and helping those teenagers to develop and foster a mature relationship with an adult, somebody they can confide in, who they can trust, who can give them adult advice, who has got the backing of professionals, if there should be anything problematic. And she finds that immensely fulfilling. And we talk about that actually tells me about a job an awful lot. And I'm interested in the job. And I'm interested in the technicalities and the things that are achieved in that job and off the back of doing that job she's doing. She's done one degree in child psychology, she's just started a second. And, you know, that is massively for funding for end, we are both on the same page with regards to the need for that. And I'm quite happy with whatever way I can to support her in doing that, so there is much for us to celebrate together. We don't she might. She might disagree, but we don't inverted commas need Christianity to in order to create a successful marriage. And I think that's why we've managed, it's not been easy. It's not been smooth sailing. And in the past 10 years. I'm obviously not going to go detail on these specifics. I'm not going to say anything about my wife that might later regret. But the conversation of separation did come up at some point during there. And we did talk it through and discern it didn't go didn't progress very far. We decided it was really nothing that either of us particularly wanted to stomach. Neither of us was in a mindset where it was something we wanted to seriously progress. And so it just really didn't go anywhere. It was a very short conversation, not to be brought up again. So don't read so this this please don't read too much into I've probably talked more about this than we actually talked about it. Don't Don't read too much into that. But I would like to say that for the Christian spouse of somebody who leaves. Life can be hard life can be difficult. I remember as a 20 something or going to church and knowing women at church whose husbands weren't believers, and they would come to church and they will come to church events and the husband was never there. Now remember, pitying those women and there is no better description of the patronizing attitude we took to those women then to at them, you know, why couldn't we treat them as individuals are their own rights? You know, they they don't they don't exist for their husband to be there with them. They are a person, they're an individual in their own right. Why couldn't we have treated them as persons and individuals in their own right? Why did we look at them as if they were incomplete? Because her husband wasn't coming to church? Now? What a shocking way to look at it. But my experience my decision for lack of a better word, although,

you know, we could talk about that I, it wasn't a decision, but let's just call it a decision. For the time being,

my decision has forced my wife into that scenario. Right. And she doesn't enjoy it. Let's be honest about that. She has responsibilities and church, she occasionally preaches a church, but she is that woman at church without a spouse? Yeah. And if people in the church pair up in couples to go out and socialize, she suddenly finds that she's intentionally or otherwise excluded, possibly because she's overlooked. Or if there'll be a conversation with somebody, and it's happened on more than one occasion, she will be talking with somebody at church who's relatively new. And they'll have seen Sarah up at the front of the church, either preaching or doing some other parts of the service. And they'll say to her, they said Mr. Taylor, yeah. And then chesco Now what what answer do I give now, you know, how much detail is safe to give to this individual? Yeah. And it creates a hell in church, for for those spouses. It's not pleasant for them. And, but I can't set foot in a church on a weekly basis, it's, it's not something that's pleasant for me. I've got other things I'd rather be doing. I'm usually editing a podcast when she's at church on on Sunday morning. And, and so it creates this, this, this inner conflict within each of us, I know that I've condemned her to this. And she knows that sometimes she'll have a less than pleasant experience at church purely because there isn't a man by her side. And for many, many spouses of the converted person, this is the hell of going to church. And I don't have an answer to that particular, maybe it's not mine to solve, maybe it's churches need to find a way to solve that. So, you know, sometimes in the deconstruction space, we can talk about us, and our trauma of deconversion. And our fear of leaving. But there are casualties that we cause as part of that journey as well. It's not our fault, I want to be very quick on that. It isn't our fault, that there are casualties now, and those people are wrong to blame us for what's happened. But that is sometimes how they feel. And that is the side effect of that. And we need to have compassion for those Christians in our lives. And Sarah and I are still navigating that. Incidentally, I need to say this, I went on to the grateful atheist YouTube channel. And because I was on it in 2019, and then my wife in beginning of 2020, she's got more than three times the number of views of her YouTube is something this is not a good place to be. If you've got an ego, that's just putting

David Ames 58:38
you know, we are quite entangled. So I did interview your wife, I thought that was really good conversation. I thought that she was really courageous to come on to the podcast, that was a brave thing to do. And then my wife listened to your wife's episode is maybe the only episode she's listened to. And then I had my wife on in I think it was late 2020. I don't think she'll ever do it again. Yeah, but it was interesting, like that interact, interaction, her hearing, Sarah story was part of that.

Matthew Taylor 59:08
I would love to have a conversation with a spouse of a D converted, unbelieving spouse of a D converted person. It doesn't have to be your wife. But if you if you or any listener has any context to a believing partner, who would love to, I would love to flesh out the things that I've just been talking about, about the experience of the Christian. I think Sarah is very much have the same mindset as your wife. Yeah, it's, I'm too close. I'm, I'm too personal. It would be inappropriate for me to even ask Sarah, to have that conversation with me live on air. This is something that's personal between us. I would never ask and I wouldn't I probably wouldn't even want it if I'm honest. But if somebody does have believing spouse, gender is unimportant, to talk through this kind of experience to see where how They judge what I've just said, and how we navigate this kind of thing. But it's it's a difficult situation. And so many people come into these deconversion groups with a believing partner. And some of the stories have genuinely moved me to tears, you know, marriages disintegrating in deeply unpleasant tones. And it's horrific to read and watch. That pain that must happen. It just touches the fears that I had 10 years ago, 10 plus years ago. And yes, those those experiences are still very real for people and those people. We need to work out a way to love people through that particular trauma. Because it's got to be the worst part of this kind of experience.

David Ames 1:00:46
Yeah, I would be interested in talking to more spouses, as well, or partners of any kind. But to hear their perspective also.

Matthew Taylor 1:00:55
Maybe we could probably do it as a duo. Actually, David, I think that would probably work really well. You could be my Andrew for a day, and I'm sure. Very pleasant. So Jay, this is a genuine request to people listening to this. If you know somebody who could be there, please get in touch with David via all the contact details that he gives. On your show, I think it'd be a genuinely worthwhile conversation.

David Ames 1:01:18
Matthew, I think we could keep talking for a long time, but actually want to end on this note, because I think what we've just talked about was just really important. But I do want to give you a moment to again, plug your podcasts and how can people get in touch with you? Wow,

Matthew Taylor 1:01:31
okay. Yeah, so still unbelievable is where to find me any other podcasts associated with my name is, is probably unsafe to search for because they might not exist anymore. So search, still unbelievable or recent press dot there. Matthew Taylor is a depressingly common name. So try not to search Matthew Taylor on the internet, you'll find all sorts of other people. I had a very strange experience listening to to one podcast and it was a new evangelicals podcast, and introduced a guest Dr. Matthew Taylor talking about something to do with deconversion. I'm gonna say, Okay, it's not me from when I certainly don't have a doctorate. So that's the best place or recent press@gmail.com is the email address to use, or friendly mail or hate mail if necessary. You can contact me using that way. I love being in this space. I love having feedback. I love having the conversations with people. So but yeah, so I listened to a ridiculous number of various podcasts of all stripes and things to to create the content that I do for still unbelievable. Thank

David Ames 1:02:45
you, Matthew for being back on the podcast. It was amazing to get back in touch. Really appreciate it.

Matthew Taylor 1:02:50
Thank you, David always

David Ames 1:02:58
final thoughts on the episode. As Matthew points out, still unbelievable. And the work that he has done has really been an anti apologetics perspective. He calls himself spiky. But one of the things I loved about re listening to our conversation from 2018. And this conversation is just how much Matthew cares about people and that just comes out in in particular people who are in the middle of the deconstruction process, and the empathy that he has for that process having gone through it himself. One of the most important topics that we discussed is being married to believers, and how much we respect our spouses. I know that many of you are in unequally yoked relationships in one form or another. And that is a very, very difficult topic. A shout out again to Matthew's wife, Sarah, who did come on the podcast that was amazing. My wife who came on the podcast as well, even though I know that was incredibly difficult. I want to thank Matthew for being on the podcast on this 200th Podcast. I really appreciate Matthew's perspective. And he has been a fantastic friend. Thank you so much, Matthew. For the secular grace, thoughts of the podcast, it is about humanism. This podcast has been from day one about humanism, being human, embracing our own humanity, embracing the humanity of others. And part of that is recognizing my personal humanity. As I mentioned a few months back between work and family life, all of these are good things. I've had less and less time for the podcast. So it is time for a break. That break will be for an indeterminate amount of time, and not sure how long but I know that I'll come back For this, I know that this is not the end, this is not goodbye. This is until we hear each other next time. I have loved doing this podcast, we've done it for almost five years. Now, as we mentioned earlier, the 200th episode, could not have done it without Mike T, doing all the editing without Arline, doing interviews, managing the community, and 1000 other things. And most of all, has been amazing talking to you. As I said, in my conversation with Matthew, I started this for selfish reasons, I needed to talk about it myself. And I just hope that somebody else might be interested. And I cannot believe to this day, how many of you have listened over the years. And also, as we mentioned in the conversation, how many of you have grown out of it? That's fantastic. That's a best case scenario. And I'm really, really grateful for all of that. So I have some ideas about when I come back, I want to reset just a bit back to a focus on humanism. I'll talk about this more in the next episode, which again, indeterminate amount of time when that will be. I also believe that the podcast will go into seasons, rather than being year long, doing maybe three months sessions, spring and fall, something like that something that's maintainable and not quite as exhausting. But I have a number of ideas for future episodes already kind of planning those in my head. And when I feel invigorated again, to do them, you will hear them here. For those of you who are Patreon supporters, again, I 100% give you the freedom to cancel that support. I cannot promise how often episodes will come out going forward. And those were not the original terms in which you began supporting the podcast. If you do stick around if you do decide that you'd like to continue to support the podcast, that's fantastic. I will use that will continue to do the zoom for the community, as well as future production value for the podcast itself. As a year end to 2023 and the hiatus and break for the podcast I just want to say thank you to you the listeners for being here participating being a part of the community. That is why I podcast. Until next time, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful human. The beat is called waves by MCI beats. If you want to get in touch with me to be a guest on the show. Email me at graceful atheist@gmail.com for blog posts, quotes, recommendations and full episode transcripts head over to graceful atheists.com This graceful atheist podcast part of the atheists United studios Podcast Network

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Darrel Ray: Recovering From Religion

Adverse Religious Experiences, Atheism, Authors, Deconversion, LGBTQ+, Podcast, Podcasters, Purity Culture, Religious Trauma, Secular Therapy

Dr. Darrel Ray is the founder and President of the Board of Directors of Recovering from Religion and the founder and project leader of the Secular Therapy Project. See his full bio here.

Dr. Ray grew up in a Christian home but was already skeptical of certain claims at the age of twelve. He stayed in church—singing and teaching—but was relieved to finally leave the church as an adult.

He has decades of experience in psychology and has helped countless people who’ve been harmed by religion.

“I’m guessing there are more people throughout history that have been traumatized by religion than any other single thing. Religion has built-in abuse.”

Links

Recovering From Religion
https://www.recoveringfromreligion.org/

Secular Therapy Project
https://www.seculartherapy.org/

Books

#AmazonPaidLinks

Quotes

“Religion is a sexually transmitted desease.”

“Twelve years old, you couldn’t slow me down! I get to the top and I find sharks’ teeth on top of the damn mesa. I think, ‘Wow! That’s really crazy…how’d they get up there?’ And my aunt says, ‘Well, God put them there in the flood,’ and I thought…I know better than that.”

“I was very curious. You couldn’t give me enough to read!”

“I wasn’t even a member of the damn church, and they’d let me teach Sunday school! That’s kinda dangerous, you know?”

“It wasn’t that I was an atheist; it was that I came out as an atheist…The society will accept you as an atheist. Just keep your mouth shut; don’t tell anybody.”

“It was an explosion of emotion in that room, and it hit me hard: This is no gimmick; this is important…That was the first meeting of Recovering from Religion.”

“Families: That’s the way you infect people with religion. You do it through children…”

“I’m guessing there are more people throughout history that have been traumatized by religion than any other single thing. Religion has built-in abuse.”

“When you separate from religion, you’re losing, losing, losing, losing. You’re losing a lot of things…Every one of those losses produces grief.”

“All ideologies have within them the elements of a religion.”

“The leader [of a cult] is never restricted by the rules like everybody else is.”

Interact

Join the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group!

Graceful Atheist Podcast Merch!
https://www.teepublic.com/user/gracefulatheistpodcast

Deconversion
https://gracefulatheist.com/2017/12/03/deconversion-how-to/

Secular Grace
https://gracefulatheist.com/2016/10/21/secular-grace/

Support the podcast
Patreon https://www.patreon.com/gracefulatheist
Paypal: paypal.me/gracefulatheist

Attribution

“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats

Transcript

NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) and likely has many mistakes. It is provided as rough guide to the audio conversation.

David Ames 0:11
This is the graceful atheist podcast United studios podcast. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Thank you to all the supporters of the podcast if you too would like an ad free experience of the podcast you can become a supporter at patreon.com/graceful atheist. If you're in the middle of doubt, deconstruction and the dark night of the soul, you do not have to do it alone. Join our private Facebook community deconversion anonymous and become a part of the community you can find us at facebook.com/groups/deconversion There is a merch shop at T public that Arline has set up you can get your graceful atheist and secular Grace themed products links will be in the show notes. We are off next week. We will be back on August 20. Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. My guest today is Dr. Darrel Ray. Dr. Ray is the founder of both the recovering from religion and the secular therapy project. He has been a psychologist, the brunt of his career was in Organizational Psychology. He started recovering from religion by using meetup.com By asking the simple question, how has religion hurt you? People poured out their souls and made a connection. Since then he's written two best sellers, the god virus and sex and God. As you're about to hear Dr. Ray is a fascinating person and has done an amazing amount to impact the deconstruction deconversion community. Here is Dr. Darrel Ray to tell his story. Dr. Darrel Ray, welcome to the graceful atheists podcast.

Darrel Ray 2:06
Thanks. Good. Good to be here. David. excited to talk to you.

David Ames 2:11
Yeah, glad that we could finally make this work. I have been a fan of recovering from religion. And we recommend the secular therapy project about every other week. So glad to have that from the horse's mouth. So let's start just briefly with a bit of your bone a few days, maybe a bit about your resume you've written obviously a number of books and you've been a psychologist for many years could just tell us a bit about that.

Darrel Ray 2:36
Yeah, I've been a psychologist, I guess and for 40 years, kind of dates dates me there, doesn't it? Or Or I don't know, you know, depends on how you start counting. But somewhere around that amount I started out in counseling and then clinical psychology and then moved into organizational psychology so I've kind of had two two and a half careers in areas psychology and then and then I got into what I'm doing now and that is Yeah, and retire I'm supposedly retired but I look at all the work I do and think damn and nobody's paying me now.

David Ames 3:12
Yeah, but yeah,

Darrel Ray 3:13
I read a written a couple books, the god virus, which was continues to sell really well and sex sex and God on on how religion distorts sexuality. And those all come out of my clinical work that I've practiced off and on six therapy and coaching and and you know, basic clinical psychology testing and all that and I just saw patterns of behavior that seemed to be related to religion throughout my career and right and, you know, retirement or coming close to retirement gave me the opportunity to start thinking about new things because I wasn't running my own business, my own practice. Anyway, I got started in, in a secular community in the mid mid 2006 2007, I guess you could say it when I was ramping down my my practice and that during that time, I saw Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris Dennett, all those folks writing books, and I had I had read quite a bit before that. And it just dawned on me nobody's written anything on the psychology religion. I mean, Dawkins is a biologist Harris is kind of a neuro scientist, but he's not a psychologist. So that gave me the notion that I loved all those books. I mean, The God Delusion was groundbreaking as far as I'm concerned. Yeah. But I thought there needed to be something more accessible to the layperson on how the brain works, how religion

influences us, and and gets us to do things we wouldn't normally do. I mean,

for example, being a celibate priest or celibate nun in the Catholic Church, that's pretty. That's pretty strange behavior. If you think about it, yeah. So that all those things kind of came together. And, and I just feel it's time to do a brain dump. And, and I did starting in 2009. I just started writing and working. And then that led to what else we'll talk about a little bit later. And that's recovering from religion. Now.

David Ames 5:29
Before we get into your personal story, I just want to acknowledge that we had Rachel hunts on the podcast.

Darrel Ray 5:36
She has she is an amazing, she's on the board of directors. She's our director of support groups. She's amazing. Yeah, just

David Ames 5:43
really appreciated her. And then I think that's how you and I got in touch with each other. So thank you to Rachel for doing what she does as well. Yeah.

Darryl, I know you probably tell the story often but I'd very much like to hear we'd like to ask our guests what religious tradition or or or not Did you grew up with? And then kind of what is the story of the trajectory of your loss of faith?

Darrel Ray 6:12
Well, I was I was born into a Christian family, pretty conservative, not fundamentalist. At least at the time. It got worse later. But going back before it was born, my my relatives, my my grandfather, my uncle, lots of lots of religious people, lots of elders in the family, my great grandfather on my dad's side, my answer, my grandfather on my dad's side was country church preacher for 45 years. Other grandfather was an elder in the church, Sunday school teacher, my parents actually founded, they were church planters at one point time and founded two different churches. When I was young, I was in my early teens when they were founding those churches. So as you can tell, I was surrounded by by religion, but I was raised in an independent Christian tradition, which is kind of a it's camera light. If anybody knows the history of religion in America, it was is a mutation of Christianity that happened in the 1830s or so. You know, it was one of those, you know, we got to go back to the basics, go back to the Bible that all that bullshit. So yeah, I was raised in the camera light. They weren't real strong. Kimberlite theology wasn't very, very good. I didn't think and it went, okay. Yeah. And so I, I went through adolescence, early on, like when I was like, 12 years old, I was visiting my aunt and uncle in New Mexico with my family. And they were they were teachers and the principal of Bureau of Indian Affairs school in Gallup, close to Gallup, New Mexico. So I love going down there because it was wide open. You're right in the middle of the Navajo Indian Reservation, and I'm 12 years old, you know, that's just that's just a kid's dream. And behind him is this Mesa that's 500 feet above the valley floor. And I love mountain climbing to this day. I mean, I've climbed 50 the highest mountains in the continental US. So I still I'm gonna go out and climb another one here. Probably this summer. But I you know, if it's there, I want to climb

David Ames 8:26
it. Yeah.

Darrel Ray 8:28
12 years old, you know, you couldn't slow me down. I got the top and I'm looking around and and I find shark's teeth on the top of the dam mesa. And think wow, that's really crazy. Yeah, I come down. I show it to my aunt Margie, and my my mother. And I say, hey, look, shark's teeth on the top of the mesa. How'd they get up there? And he says, Well, God put them there in the flood. And I thought to myself, you know, unkind words in my head. I know. I'm pretty sure so from time I was 12 years old, I thought evolution was cool. I never bought the creation story. My, my grandfather's weren't too happy that they had a grandkid that didn't believe that God created the earth in six days and in 6000 years ago, so but but they didn't, didn't disown me or anything. And I grew up to be who I wanted to be. But I always wanted to help. I was very socially active. As I went through adolescence, very active in high school and various groups and I sang I sang in the choir. I was in the United Nations Model United Nations. I just did lots of very curious and I couldn't give me enough to read I can read read constantly, which is kind of unusual for adolescent boy, although I was chasing girls too. I'm not saying I was distracted. Sometimes

went to college at Friends University fu for short. Some people say it's Friends University of central Kansas, you'll I'll let you figure that. Anyway, it was a good school then it's since become an evangelical nightmare as far as I'm concerned. There's a good school I got some good education. I majored in sociology and anthropology, I would have actually kind of minored in anthropology. I had enough to be a major, but they didn't offer major. So I basically got a double major, but I couldn't claim it because they didn't offer it. But anthropology was a real big love of mine. I thought just it just captured my attention. I liked sociology. But that wasn't my first love, even though that's what my maths major was. But the end of my college degree, the I had a college deferment for the draft. So I was, I was, it was right in the middle of Vietnam War. And if you didn't get a deferment, you were going to be cannon fodder in Vietnam. And I had been from from my freshman year, I did something. I look back and say, Man, I, my 18 year old self was braver than I am now. I'll tell you, I basically stood up and said, I ain't gonna fight that war mom, I was not gonna go they're dead. They can put me in jail if they want to, they can sit and go to Canada. But I am not fighting. I am not fighting the Vietnam War. And I'm gonna file as a conscientious objector. So I did. I was discouraged. Of course, everybody thought I was horrible, you're not patriotic and a true American for one to go kill people in another country that didn't do anything to us. And I I, they said I won't get it that I'll probably end up in jail. I mean, they did everything you know, to stop me but I was successful. I got I got a I got a for what they call a conscious objector status or whatever. And I was out there protesting the Vietnam War of protest and Richard Nixon of protest, and Linda Johnson and I was protesting, Bureau Agnew. All the people I was out there protesting. And, and even working a little bit at that time in civil rights, but main thing I got was a little part time job. I don't know where the money came from. But it was pitiful money, I got a part time job to get in my car and drive around to all the Kansas, all the little Kansas colleges and handout anti war information and material and organize, you know, try to get people to come to our I wouldn't organizing come to our organized meetings and protests. So it was pretty politically active. And then when I, when I got out of college, the war was starting to wind down but there's draft was still there. And I had this incredible desire, I've always had a desire to help people. It's just, it's just part of my nature i I've since learned to just accept it, you know, I'm going to help you with it. I'm not going to help you against their will. But I the only avenue I could see that to help somebody or help be a helping professional was to go in the ministry, I really didn't understand. I took one psychology class in college, they didn't even have a psychology department and Friends University. That's how that's how small university was. So it wasn't like I thought, oh, psychology would be a good way. I didn't even think of that. I went to seminary, and I looked around for a seminary, that would was so had a social justice component to it. Because I wanted to I wanted to, I didn't want to preach in the traditional sense. I wanted to get out and get my hands dirty and work with people and, you know, engage in civil rights work or political work within the church. And so I got it to I went to skaret college for Christian workers. It's not a it's not existence anymore. At the campuses, it's right across the street from Vanderbilt University and in Nashville. But I went to scared I got a two years degree in religion, with the goal of getting out and going and working and some kind of social justice or civil rights thing within the confines of the church. Which, after two years, I realized the whole religion things kind of bullshit. I didn't think much of it. I was still a liberal Christian, very liberal, Christian. Yeah. But I started realizing this isn't what I want to do. So what am I going to do? So I went to I went across the street to Vanderbilt University where they had the Counseling Center and I, I took some, some tests, you know, occupational tests and career tests. And they said I should be the test showed I should be the lawyer or a psychologist. So I said, I'm too honest to be a lawyer. You must be a psychologist, at least in my mind up to honest. Yeah. So I went to psychology route I accidentally. I didn't even intend to but I got a job through a mutual friend of mine at an institution for juvenile juvenile rehabilitation for juvenile delinquents. And I, I went there and I realized who I really really liked this and I'm pretty good at it to at least what at that level I was pretty good at it, I guess

so after about six months of that, I just said, Well, I'm gonna apply back at Vanderbilt Peabody College, people in the College of Vanderbilt University and for for doctoral doctoral program. And, and I did, and I got in, and, well, I had a lot of fun. I was working full time, my wife and I were about ready to have a baby and I was going to school full time in a doctoral program. I look back now and say, I couldn't do one of those three levels. But it was it was it it just, it just felt right. You know, I, the classes I was taking the professor's I was encountering the research that I was able to get involved with, it was just really cool. And that that gave me a nice boost into a career of lifelong career of psychology. But what I learned, one of the things I learned in my doctoral level studies is I get bored with one thing I've always got to be, you know, I like lots of variety. And Counseling Psychology wasn't really that interesting to me. So I didn't stay on that route long. I moved on into clinical psych, where I was doing a lot of testing and other things, getting some good training, and also getting the opportunity to train other people and and I learned at that time that I'm, I'm a good trainer, I can teach people. Yeah, and I really enjoyed teaching people. But I was a terrible psychologist. On Monday, I was the best psychologist on the planet. On Tuesday, I was a damn good one. But by Wednesday, I was average and you didn't want to get me on Thursday and Friday. So after a while I realized this is not for me, you know, it takes a special person to see patients five days a week I I just I never had the energy, not that kind of energy. And my mind was always going somewhere else. Well, if you're in an office with me, you don't want my mind somewhere else to be listened to. Yeah, so that led me into organizational psych because I'm good at organising, organizing, I'm good at helping structure organization. So they function well I understand the human human factor. And that's ultimately I ended up in or design org site. After about 10 years and clinical and I I loved org psych It was so fun. And I was interacting with VPs of fortune 500 companies I was flying all over the world I had a really good career. Very rewarding. But in the back of my mind the whole time I'm I'm looking at you know, I'm reading stuff I'm looking at religion. I'm watched what the Freedom From Religion Foundation is doing. And I'm looking at the abortion issue. I'm looking at the read the religious right, what they're doing with Jerry Falwell in their early 80s. And it's not sitting well with me. And I think you know, I'd really like it someday I need to do I want to do something like that, or about that. So that's kind of, I guess you could say the big picture into into where I ended up and why I ended up here.

David Ames 19:00
You mentioned that you were a liberal Christian for some time. Was there a moment when you decided that it was you weren't that either that you were done anytime you well?

Darrel Ray 19:07
Yeah, I'm starting. I graduated in 1974 from seminary and my I was married. My wife and I were living in Nashville and we kind of had an agreement she was raised in a fundamentalist her parents were even more fundamentalist, and they were in the same denomination but even more fundamentalist, and she and I had an agreement that we would just find the most liberal church we she wanted to always be in church always want to be going to church somewhere. So okay, I can deal with that. Although I'd rather sleep in on Sunday. But she I did that I was compromising. But I also liked teaching, you know this so this comes back to right make sense. I would go to church and no matter what church we went to, I would end up teaching Sunday school. Yeah, I wouldn't even remember the damn church.

But you know what they're desperate to find somebody to teach. And I taught. Well, when I was in, in college, I was teaching the senior high kids Sunday school. Can you imagine me teaching kids about evolution? I was, I was teaching evolution. When I was a sophomore, junior suborn junior in college. I was teaching evolution in Sunday School at my home church. Wow, okay, yeah. And I got away with it. I will tell you that, Oh, God could have created the world in 6 million years or 6000 years, you know, you take a mad angle, you know, and get away with it. So I experimented with that. And I really enjoyed it. And then when I've gotten married, and we moved to Nashville, I had the opportunity to teach Sunday school again there. And then when I moved back to Kansas, where I live now, my wife and I moved back here. We found the most liberal church we could find in Leavenworth, Kansas, which is hard to do, because it's pretty, it's a military, kinda. Okay. You know, the commander, General Staff College is here with the US Army. So it's pretty conservative area. We went to the Presbyterian church and they were desperate for somebody to teach the adult Sunday school class. So I volunteered to teach it i I'm, I'm not even not a Presbyterian. Right, exactly. I call myself a Quaker atheist. That's what I call myself today. Yeah, yeah. So I was, I started teaching the the adult class, they might get four or five people to show up for Sunday school. On any given Sunday, it was it was a dead class, basically. So I take over and within a month, I'm getting 30 and 40 people come to my class. Well, the room was too small to move me into a room that would hold 100 people. I never I never drew 100. But I was drawn 50 to 60. Because I was I was bringing interesting things in like mostly things like comparative religion. So let's compare Christianity Hinduism. Let's find out about Sikhism. Let's find out what the Baja behind religion is. And they were just eating this shit up. These are these are inquisitive adults, there had never learned a thing when they went to church. That's why they weren't coming. But when I started teaching, I was and I was having a blast because then I'd leave the Sunday school class and I'd go sing as a tenor soloist and the choir just let you know. And I was a, I was a good singer. I was even gonna major and in voice in college, but I was terrible at music theory. So I had to give up a career. I saying for years, so that the answer the question was, I was married, my wife wanted to go to church, I'm surrounded by religious family. We're going to a liberal church that I really only reason I was enjoying us because I'm teaching and then marital problems happen. And after almost 18 years of marriage, we get divorced. Well, to me, that was like a Declaration of Independence. I no longer have to compromise. I don't have to get up and Sunday morning. I can I can go and do things that my ex in laws would be terrified at. Go look campaign for, for Jimmy Carter, you know, or something like that.

David Ames 23:29
Yeah.

Darrel Ray 23:30
Which, which wouldn't have been Jimmy Carter at that time, it was Michael Dukakis. Anyway, yeah. I got to remember my president's here. That was the issue. It was it was that break from, from family break from her family specifically. Because my family always knew I was the weirdo. I'm the black sheep in the family. I'm the oldest child. And, you know, I know a lot of privilege comes with being the oldest kid, you know, there's other things, you know, like she had to do babysitting that I didn't like doing but beyond that, you know, the first kid got to get some privileged position. And I was able to leverage that to my advantage. And I really, I really enjoyed my childhood and I and what's back to back to why I got up. I really started reading more deeply once I got away from the marriage. And don't get me wrong. It was it was a miracle marriage. We we actually use the mediator we didn't we didn't go through divorce lawyers or anything. And we're still friends today. We've got two great kids and you know, there's no animosity or anything. They're just, you know, separating from her family. Was, was a really good step step for me. And it gave me the opportunity to read and interact and not go to church and, boy, I'll tell you It was like decompression it was fresh air i, I can interact with people I wouldn't have normally interacted with I could travel. My wife didn't like traveling. And I love traveling. And I've been I have literally been all over most of the world since then. Yeah, I'd never I'd never hardly been I'd never been on the I'd stage before I got divorced. So now I'm traveling, took my first trip to Europe in 1989. And then now the country almost every, every year at least once, except during COVID. Of course.

David Ames 25:34
Yeah, yeah.

Darrel Ray 25:44
Don't know that there was a single break. But I was. I was agnostic, I would call myself for a long time, until I started dating, my travel companion. And 2001 And we're on a plane to Ireland. We're going to go visit Ireland. And she says, I'm sorry, we're on a plane to to England. And she's reading my manuscript. The God bears. Yeah. And I have everything but I'm an atheist. Yeah, everything but name. But remember, I'm still a psychologist. I still have a practice, right? 2001 or 2000? And no, no, I'm sorry. She's reading an article. No, not this book is but Caitlin. And she recently, she's on the plane, she looks up at him and said, Darryl, you're an atheist. You need to sit or get off the pot. She had been an atheist her whole life, you know, so I said, you're absolutely right, Judy. So I'm gonna stop pretending I'm definitely an atheist. This is 2000 2001, somewhere in around that timeframe. And the fact was that I still couldn't say out loud, I'm an atheist, because I'm in a work environment. I'm a I'm a consultant. I'm interacting with religious people. And I just didn't couldn't take the risk. You know, I'm a, I'm an independent businessman. My whole business depends on and nobody asked me my religion. It wasn't a part of, of what I did. Until Until the god virus came out. In 2009, when when I was writing that I gave, I told my staff, I'm writing this book, I had five staff members. And my office manager turned white and said, Darryl, we're going to lose clients over this. Yeah. And I said, Well, you know, I need to do it. It's just, it's just in my blood, I can't, can't avoid it. And she was right. I lost all but two clients within six months. Wow, clients that I've worked with for 20 years, clients that have known me, trusted me, took my advice worked on me closely paid me lots of money. I mean, but just, it wasn't that I was an atheist, it was that I came out as an atheist.

David Ames 27:59
Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Darrel Ray 28:02
So it was it was crazy. I learned a big lesson then, that this society will tolerate you as an atheist, just keep your mouth shut, you know, don't don't tell anybody. And that's kind of the way I've heard from many people and talking about it's being it is one thing talking about another thing.

David Ames 28:21
I think there's a bunch of things there that people will relate to. And that's one of them is like, you know, the the fear of social ostracization in one form or another and particularly if your business is dependent upon it

so I want to hear about the the beginnings of recovering from religion, I understand that you basically did a meetup.com K come hang out. And that that kind of exploded into what we what we now have as recovering from religion.

Darrel Ray 28:55
Yeah, I announced this, I was just after the god virus came out, I was getting constantly inundated with people saying I love your book, but I need help. I couldn't possibly help all these people. And, and I wanted to obviously, that's why wouldn't written the book if I didn't. So I just decided, let me try something. My I will confess, though, that it was a bit selfish, the beginning of this. I had a publicist, he was pretty much worthless to cost a lot of money didn't do anything, except one thing. In the process of trying to publicize the god virus he, he says, why don't you start an organization called recovering from religion and use that to sell your book? I thought, well, that's an interesting idea. So I decided to do that I announced it on meetup.com was fairly new at that time, announced calm, had a had the meeting at Lowell back back room of an IHOP restaurant here in town and and 11 people showed up and I only knew one of those 11 people and after Two or three hours, the restaurant owner is kicking us out. He's closing the room. Yeah. During that time I had people weeping and crying and telling their stories and hugging each other. It was it was. I'm a good group facilitator, I know how to do group therapy. I mean, I got that training and way back in graduate school. And this was like group therapy. But I wasn't being a psychologist. I was just facilitating a meeting. And I only asked two questions. I said, How did religion hurt you? And how did how have you benefited from leaving? It's all I said. And the rest of it was just making sure everybody gets to tell their story. And I'll tell you, David, it was an explosion of emotion in that room. And it hit me hard. As I was walking out, this is no gimmick. This is this is important. It's something people need. And I had no idea that need was so great. And that was the first meeting of recovering from religion. We then had another meeting a couple of weeks later, same thing happened. And we're getting ex Moonies ex Scientologists, ex Mormons, ex Baptists, will get all sorts of people showing up. Ex Catholics was a second meeting. We had these two older gentlemen show up there. They're both in there. They're both in their 70s. Late one of them I know was almost 80 years old. And both of them are musicians. They're they're played the organ. And church. One plays in the Catholic for the Catholic Church, the other plays for some Protestant church. And they're both gay. Yeah, and they're sitting in the meeting. And I'm just assuming, because they sat, they sat next to each other to, I'm just assuming they know each other. Yeah. They didn't know each other. They had no clue. And they show up and they just accidentally sat next to each other probably because they're, you know, both older white guys. And it turns out, they're both gay. They're both musicians in church, and their church would throw them out in a heartbeat if they found out that Yeah, okay. And they're now atheists.

David Ames 32:13
It's all it's all your fault, Darrell.

Darrel Ray 32:16
That was, that was a crazy meeting. Really crazy. But so that was the beginning. And it took off took three or four years for us to get our nonprofit status and really get the organizational structure the way it needed to be not like I said, I'm, I know how to organize I know how to create businesses. So I just took my skills in that area and applied them to this, this organization. And I got bylaws and incorporation and all that sort of stuff. And it started growing and ideas were starting to come in. And before you know it, the idea comes in, we should have a phone line. Not just have not just have meetings or meet up but have a phone line. So we gathered some money together and got got some GoFundMe to do that. And we got a phone line started. And then not long after that. Somebody said, why don't we start taking chances? Good. Not everybody can call in plus, we were getting inquiries from overseas from outside the continental United States. Yeah. So we, we started doing the chat thing. And these things just organically started growing. I cannot possibly do all this stuff. And I don't have the technical expertise, but I know how to facilitate it. And as we got volunteers with various skills, they would say, Yeah, I can do that. Or, you know, I know somebody can do that. And then the next thing was to really develop our training program and and start start trying to understand what, what what's possible for us to do and what, you know what, out of our reach that point in time. And in 2012 the issue of sex, I mean, the first printing of sex and God came out and that caused another tidal wave of need. People are calling me and you know, I need help. I appreciate your book. I'm gay. You know, I'm, quote, sex addict, which there's no such thing by the way, I just don't want to rant about that. And I'm trying to help all these people and I, they say I need a therapist, you know, every therapist to go to called me a sex addict. Every therapist I go to says that I need to go back to church or I need to pray about it or, you know, I violated God's law or some bullshit. I'm thinking therapists shouldn't be doing that. That's unethical as hell until I started trying to find a therapist for people. And I couldn't. I mean, I'm a damn psychologist. I should be able to know the signs but you can get on a therapist website, look at everything they've got, and still not know if they're going to send you back to Jesus or they'll have a cross around their neck or they have a Bible They're on their table. So that led me to start the secular therapy project and not any 2012. We started with 24. Therapists I personally vetted, I knew they were secular, I knew their evidence base, I knew they were licensed. And in 12 years since we started 11 years, since we started, I'm sorry, we've now got 734 registered therapists, and every therapist has been vetted, to make sure they meet those three criteria. And we turned down about 30 to 40% of all applicants, because they don't qualify. I mean, we take this shit seriously. The worst thing that could happen is one of their art therapists would practice woowoo on you or say, you know, you need more spiritual guidance, or, you know, some bullshit that comes out of their own religious worldview. So we pretty much that all of our therapists to make sure there's none of that going to happen. And we're very strict about it. So anyway, so that's the story of both recovering for religion and secular therapy project.

David Ames 36:11
Yeah, very cool. And again, we, you know, at the podcasts were recommended all the time, we're very pro therapy to begin with. And then we referenced people to psychotherapy project, as many, many people tell their stories, and they'll say just what you've described, they went to a therapist, maybe even their website was unclear, but then they get, you know, you have to read your Bible more. And that just isn't an answer to the real world problems they're experiencing.

Darrel Ray 36:35
Well, and that After that happened, I started getting more information about how these are various institutions. Universities, if you will, or training therapists. And I realized that there's been an explosion of universities that are training marriage and family counselors. And most of those institutions are religious institutions. And they're given people master's degrees in marriage and family counseling from Regents University, or George Fox University, or Liberty University, those are all fucking fundamentalist as hell. So what do you what do you really learning in those institutions? What you're really learning is a few techniques that might be psychologically sound, but mostly, how do you bring people back to Jesus? Or how do you Eddie, because families, that's the way you infect people with religion, you do it through children. So that's why the emphasis in so many institutions, religious institutions of higher learning, has been on marriage and family counseling. It's a lot easier set that up. And you know, a lot of people are wanting to come they want to help children and help families and they also believe in Jesus. So, I have been so shocked sometimes at for example, pH, you can get a PhD at you get a PhD at Regents University, which is Pat Robertson's University. Okay. And you will go, one of the requirements is you have to go through a year of pat robertson theology that says God sends hurricanes to Orlando because Okay, so you got a PhD from the University that teaches that shit. And what I mean, that's just, that's just so unethical. And yet, they got a PhD. They are licensed in the state of their residence maybe. So we're challenging that we're starting to try and challenge that and our, our current director, Dr. Travis force. McKee, bourse is actually making speeches around the show. He's done it once. He had to cancel yesterday, this weekend, but he's making talks about religious privilege in therapy. And that's crazy. Why would religion be privileged in therapy? And I did a you can go look this up. I did a talk at the last year at the conference on religious trauma on whiteness, professional psychology ignore religion, religious trauma, religious abuse, and there's a there's a lot of implied training within many adversities that you don't touch people's religion, even though that religion may have caused the abuse or the trauma that you're trying to treat. How the hell do you do that? How do you treat religious trauma without talking about religion? Anyway? So that's, that's where I'm at right now in my career. I'm really push on religious trauma

David Ames 39:58
that's a great segue. That's what I got. I want to talk about next just the a bit about the psychology of religion and, and, or the deconstruction process, the conversion process. But as a jumping off point, you're describing the god viruses, it's almost like a transmission vector. Religion is going through families, as you just mentioned, generally indoctrination and childhood. My experience, you know, I became a Christian, my late teens already had very much a sense of identity already. And what I've been shocked at as I've interviewed people is, how devastating it is for those of those people who grew up with it. Right? Like, yeah, right, five years old, you're, you know, you're right and center, you're going to hell if you don't do X, Y, and Z. And that stays with a person. Right? Maybe if you could talk about a little bit about your understanding from that perspective.

Darrel Ray 40:50
Yes, and I think this is, it's a lot of new information has just come out in, let's say, the last five or 10 years, about things like trauma. And I'm not talking to religious Trump, just Trump trauma in general, and how to treat it, how trauma affects the brain, that sort of stuff. And there's other information. I just, I think, what we're doing what I'm doing, and what my colleagues within regard for religion and the psychotherapy project are doing is we're, we're taking this research that's being applied to, you know, people who were abused by their childhood, or somebody who's, you know, think of a refugee coming from Syria right now, a 10 year old kid from Syria is probably experiencing trauma, or a soldier, or a family member in Ukraine, they're experiencing trauma. So those are all traumas that we can, we can put our finger on we understand much more lately, what that means and how to treat it and why it why it's so hard to treat in some cases. But nobody said, Okay, let's look at this. How many people have been traumatized by war? How many people have been traumatized by non religious child abuse? I mean, there's been a lot for sure. But I'm guessing there's more people throughout history been abused by religion than any other single thing. I mean, religion has built in abuse, look at the Catholic Church, pedophile problem, are the Jehovah's Witness, sexual abuse problem, there, there's just so much of it out there that's been covered up never been examined. until relatively recently. And that is, that's where we're at. We're saying, let's look at all this. And then there's, we see in recovering religion, we see this just just difficult emotional journey that people have. And their, their tendency to be drawn back into religion, or they leave religion and they still can't get over the fear of hell. Or they leave religion and they lose their whole family. So they lose the connection there. So there's a lot going on there. It's not a simple psychological formula. It's, it's a massive amount of emotional complexity. And it's, if you think about it, when you separate from religion, you're losing, losing, losing, losing, you're losing a lot of things you're losing, you might lose parents, you might lose your own kids, you might lose your marriage, you might lose your job. I mean, there's a lot of possibilities there. Every one of those losses evokes grief. So you've got a complex pattern of grief to have to deal with. It's hard enough to get over one thing that you're grieving over, let alone something as massive and big as this incredibly big worldview change you're going through. And then there's another piece that I think is interesting that we've been talking about lately. And that's attachment theory. You know, as we know, people, people, we have attachment systems in our brain. And they're, they're very important for our survival as a species. Because our infants are so immature. It takes years for human infant to become self sufficient. And I'm not talking now I'm talking about 10,000 years ago, we were still hunter gatherers. You still You can't let a five year old just go you'll get eaten by lions. Yeah. Yeah. So you have to be careful how you raise children. And those children better be bonded to you better better have a close attachment. Because the best guarantee of survival is attachment to the parent that can protect you and teach you how to survive in this dangerous world. Whether the dangerous world is Van is of Africa, or the jungles of New York City. I mean, it doesn't matter. There's danger out there. And that attachment is important. So we have very strong attachments as humans, to other humans. And we know this from a very, very old and unethical experiments, for example, the Harry Harlow experiments on monkeys back in the back in the 60s, which today are totally unethical, but, but they were done. And we know that that attachment is so important to the baby monkey, the baby monkeys will fail to thrive, they will literally die from lack of attention. And then there's other experiments like the Romanian orphanage crisis that happened after or late in the Ceausescu's dictatorship back in the 70s. And we have the same thing happening to human infants, they're getting plenty of food, they're getting nutrition, nutrients, they're not getting attention, they're not getting human contact, and they're dying, or growing up with incredibly bad, difficult mental health issues. Well, what we're seeing in religious deconversion, is they're having to deal with that detachment. Yeah, there's, that attachment is strong. And most of us stay attached to our family are appearance the rest of our lives. Most of us, not all of us by longshot but but then what if I have to tear that attachment off? My brain is going to go through some cycles, a lot of cycles, about how do I reconnect with appearance? How do I tell my parents, I'm an atheist? How do I do this or that, and all these things have consequences for the attachment. And what we understand better now is that this incredibly difficult time people have leaving religion is tied up with the grief and loss of all these things, but also tied up in attachment. And how to I mean, it's a big step to, to step totally away from your parents, because that's where the original attachment was, yeah, or to be rejected by your parents. And so it takes a huge amount of effort, psychological energy, emotional energy, to make that step. And it requires help, most people have a hard time doing it by themselves. Yeah. Especially they're raised in an environment where they were gaslighted say, are really abused as children. Because as we know, an abused child still has a very strong attachment. It may be an unhealthy attachment. But there's still attachments still there. So a lot of what we do at recovering from religion and secular therapy project is simply helping people deal with their, I call it detachment.

David Ames 48:05
Yeah, exactly. So I love that framing actually, and I again, I know that listeners are going to respond to that or see themselves in that.

Darrel Ray 48:15
Yep, yep. So let's just call it detachment syndrome. Yeah. And it's a part of religious trauma syndrome, of course, but it's deed. Yeah. Yeah.

David Ames 48:34
So it's interesting you say that, because I've heard you say in the past, that you agree that religious trauma exists, but you at one point in time, said you didn't think that religious trauma syndrome. Oh,

Darrel Ray 48:46
yeah. My my mistake. I don't usually word you add the word syndrome. Yeah. Yeah, I still don't it. Could

David Ames 48:54
you explain this? Yeah, for

Darrel Ray 48:58
a technicality. I don't think the layperson really cares. Okay. But it's, if you have a disease, there's there's a, there's a pattern of symptoms. I'm talking about physical disease, right? There's a pattern of symptoms that tell you what that disease is, you know, if you got measles, there's probably four or five things that are observable and testable. That will tell you it's measles. The same thing is true of psychological conditions as well mental mental conditions. So you need to you need to be able to determine what those symptoms are with some degree of accuracy and independent, objective observation in order to say okay, we have a cluster of symptoms here, and the cluster adds up to religious trauma syndrome. A syndrome is a cluster of symptoms, it's all okay, so, I don't think we're scientifically at the place where we can say we have a cluster a syndrome with We don't have a cluster of symptoms. Now, I do think and Dr. Merlin Waddell, and I kind of disagree a little bit on this, although I'm a great admirer of of her work back and she coined the term religious trauma. I think someday we may be there. But you know, it doesn't really matter. Doesn't really matter if we ever call it syndrome or not. Okay, because we have a, we have a set of criteria within the DSM that helps us understand and identify trauma, just trauma, without respect to religion. Right? Right. And if you have those symptoms, you have trauma, you have a trauma syndrome, you have a cluster of symptoms that fit the diagnosis of trauma. Now, where that trauma comes from, it could come from childhood abuse, gum from a bomb going off in a war, it could be being a refugee that, you know, has, has had periods of starvation. And all those things could cause trauma, or it could come from, from the terror that happens, you know, having people shooting guns around you in a war, or it could be the terror of being told you're going to hell every day. And that Satan is Satan is speaking to you when you touch your genitals and masturbate or whatever, you know. Yeah, yeah. So I don't care which one of those you choose, they all lead to trauma. So we don't need religious trauma syndrome, we just need to understand what trauma is. And then we might, if we really want to get help the person, we're going to have to understand where that trauma came from. And if it came from religion, then we need to label that as religious trauma. Whether it's, you know, you don't need to go any farther than that.

David Ames 51:57
Yeah. Okay. I appreciate that clarity there. So.

I've been kind of waiting to get here. So you know, your second book is sex and God. And you also did the sex and sexuality podcast, a massive theme. The people that get interviewed is the effect of purity culture, on their sexuality as adults, even as D converts, maybe talk a little bit about what effect that has on a person and the repression of normal human sexuality.

Darrel Ray 52:36
Yeah. Well, we can almost go right back to the attachment piece. Because if you think about it, the first human being you're attached to is probably your mother, the second one, maybe your father or another close caregiver. When you become an adult, those that attachment approach, you take into adulthood, because I mean, what is what is marriage, but some kind of attachment. But if you if you're going into if you're going into adulthood, with a messed up attachment system in your mind in your brain, then you don't know how to attach to other people? Well, what religion does is religion comes along in your early teens, and tells you your body is your enemy. normal sexual behavior, is the devil talking to you that you shouldn't have thoughts that, you know, you shouldn't have sexual thoughts. So we've got the religious thought police involved. Yeah. And all these things are, are oppressing you and confusing your mind about how to view your own body, and how to view other people's bodies. How to have a relationship with another human being with a body that and then what if you're gay? You know, what if you are LGBTQ? What if you're trans, you're getting incredibly mixed messages here. They're just incredibly confusing. So is it any wonder that that people have a hard time creating healthy attachments, sexual attachments, because they had such a terrible model in their teens? And if they're raised religious, their own parents also were infected with this purity idea. I mean, I my own family is a perfect example of this. My grandmother got married to Amanda main Thompson, and somewhere around 9029 She got pregnant. She had my father 1928 My father was then born in 1929. She was a flapper. She was a wild girl. She was out there dancing every every night. Yeah. Now, of course she never she would admit to it only only marginally. You couldn't get her to say too much there. Are she has My dad. And by by the time my dad was 10 months old, and the timeframe is as unclear because there was no documentation. Yeah, by the time that my dad is 10 months old, the census, the US Census 9030 shows my grandmother living with a guy named Ray.

David Ames 55:20
Okay, so she was

Darrel Ray 55:23
married to Thompson, there's no divorce records. And now and and oh, by the way, the US census in 1930 says, my grandmother Pearl Ray is living with a guy named Thompson. So the record shows she's living with Thompson and she's living with Ray It's okay if she wants to be polyamorous, I don't get the way she looked at it. And she was so ashamed of that little fact that we didn't find out. We didn't find out about this till much, much later after she was dead. She basically lied to us her whole life about about the fact that she may have had a baby quote out of wedlock. We're not sure. We're not sure about the timeline here. And then and then she is there's a divorce paper. The divorce papers show up in 1941. Now this is 11 years after she had moved out. Yeah, so she's been living with my grandfather and sin for 11. Okay, that's, that's purity culture. At at its best or worst. I don't know what you call it. Yeah. And then she she gets religion around 1941 or two Big time, big time. Religion. I don't know what caused it. But she be she goes, dives, takes a deep dive into Jesus. My grandfather becomes Ray, my grandfather raised the old grandfather knew him but he's not my genetic grandfather, he, he becomes a preacher and a Sunday school teacher and all this may really get into religion and my grandmother decides that my dad needs to get circumcised because it's okay. Because that's the Christian thing to do. Circumcision was never practiced in the United States until about 1890. It started. It had never been practice. I did not have that. Okay. Yeah, it's a it's a fundamentalist Kellogg, Kellogg cereal. Ah, Dr. Kellogg started the notion that boys shouldn't masturbate that masturbation leads to mental illness. And one way to reduce or eliminate masturbation is to circumcise boys. So in the 1890s 19, early 1900s, he started this campaign, forcing boys to get circumcised and shaming parents into it and saying, Look, Jesus, Jesus intended us all to be circumcised. And was it was a religious notion. He was a he was he may have never had sex his whole life. We're not sure he was married, but he never had kids. And he was too busy shaming everybody else. And he belonged to a sect of Christianity. That was pretty weird. I think Seventh Day Adventists are some derivative of that I forget. But anyway, remember Dr. Kellogg of Kellogg's cereals? The one that fucked a lot of men up? Yeah. A lot of us.

David Ames 58:23
Yeah. I have some words for him as well. Yeah. And so

Darrel Ray 58:29
my grandmother forces my dad at 12 year olds 12 year old to get circumcised without anesthesia. Oh my Wow, that that is purity culture. Yeah, as extreme if you think about it. Muslims do that now to boys and girls. Many many all Muslim culture, do it to boys that many several do it to girls with no anesthesia at 12 years old. You just read all these. Her book about Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book. You'll you'll hear the worst of it. But so my dad experienced this. And then I watch. You know, as his son, my parents son, I get access to information about them or know things and my mom always wanted to confide shipped to me, she probably shouldn't have. Like, I was like a psychologist in the family when I'm a good listener. And I find out I find this all out and my mom says this really messed up your dad. He has a hard time with sex. He loves sex. I know that but they did not have a good sex life for years. But, but partly because of this. And in fact, it took my grandmother dying. They their sex life did not really get good until after my grandmother died. I think something like that had a cathartic effect on him and he was able to move on. So I just look at my own family and look at what did purity culture do to my family and it And I've only got I've only gotten up to my father's generation. Yeah, the rest. I mean, I got so many more examples in my generation and then sub two more generations, I mean, old enough to have two generations now. And I'm watching the religious trauma still work its way out. I'll give you an example. A relative of mine had had a baby, quote, baby out of wedlock. I hate I hate that term. But that's the term they use back then. Sure. So she was shamed for having this baby before she got married. She did get married. But when the baby was born, it had a birth defect, a serious birth defect, okay. And it's she believed this purity culture at work, that God was punishing her and her baby for her having sex outside of marriage, man. Now, that was that would have been the next generation beyond me. Yeah. And that person has now grown up. Oh, and throughout this poor, poor person's early life, they were abused, because God was punishing him. Oh, man, you know, there's a lot of child abuse going on here. So much so that other relatives had to take the child because the mother was not capable or was abusive. Now that child has grown up, that child has had other children, and the same thing is being perpetuated by them. So this is you got Greta 1929 through to today. And you can see a pattern of religious sexual abuse and purity culture. Through what what how much is that? 8090? Yeah, well, that's that's a long time. It's 90 years of, of trauma in one in one family. And I'm sure my family is not unusual at all.

David Ames 1:01:55
Wow, I really appreciate giving us the personal perspective on that. That was that was really, really valuable.

Last topic, you hinted at it and talking about Catholic priests who are nuns who are celibate. But I've heard you talk about the connection too hard, right? Like the proud boys, for some reason, there's this purity element within what are not obviously religious ideologies. And maybe we could talk about how that happened and why maybe,

Darrel Ray 1:02:33
wow, okay, that's okay, wow, that's a whole nother two we got three more hours. I will just say that, to begin with all ideologies, have within them the elements of a religion. It doesn't matter. If you read my book, The God virus, I talked about communism as a religion. I mean, you look at Russia, Lenin is in a tomb, as if he's immortal. You know, the pharaohs were immortalized as gods. Well, same thing. They immortalized Lenin as a god you look at North Korea. Kim Jong Hoon, or Kim Jong Il Kim was one of those camps, yes. Now is now he's president for eternity. I mean, that's their word. Right? He'd been dead for, what 3040 years, and he's still president, there will never be another president as far as they're concerned. So those are religious ideas from what appears to be a secular ideology. And how many ideologies I mean, Nazism was an ideology, but it had incredible amounts of religious overtones to it. And wasn't Hitler really godlike in in the minds of the of those people. And if you look at things like the ideology that Putin is trying to espouse in Russia to justify the imperialistic Tsar czarist kind of expansion, it looks like the religion of nationalism, just like the religious right is looking at etiology of Christian nationalism. It these, these ideologies are remarkably similar because because the brain works the same whether you're a Russian, you're an Egyptian pharaoh, or you're, you know, you're a, Jerry Falwell, the human brain has these has these tendencies and there's openings in the brain for what it needs to absorb to survive, right? And in religions just come along, says, Oh, we could take advantage of that. Religion. To use the metaphor is a virus just like I said in the book. So etiologies are simply a virus, just like Any other any other biological virus the virus of Christianity wants to get from, from my brain to your brain. Now the most effective way to do that is to go through children is to brainwash indoctrinate children, that's the most effective. But you know, you got to Jehovah's Witnesses that knock on your door, when they're knocking on your door, they're trying to sneeze on you. Right? And the same thing for Mormons, they're trying to sneeze on you. They're trying to give you their god virus. Yeah, well, you so no matter whether you call it the proud boys, you know, or you call it, the Nazi you Hitler's youth, it doesn't matter. It's an etiology that's infected the brain. That gives a sense of longing, comfort and attachment. And I don't think I don't want to overemphasize it. But I also want to emphasize enough that we should, we should start acknowledging that attachment is a component of what what etiologies bring. They give me a sense of security. That's what that's what you're seeking as a child is what you're attaching to your caregiver is you want that security, so you can survive? Well, at all just come along, says we have the answer to surviving in this environment. And once you get infected with it, your rational brain is much weaker than this. I mean, it's so weak. Yeah, it takes a lot of effort to rationally work yourself out of these. So there's a lot of purity culture in, in things like the in cells or the proud boys. There's a lot of purity culture going on there because they've discovered the same thing that religions discovered. I don't quote Richard Nixon often, but this is one of the times I think he's, he's correct here. If you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow. It's if you've got them by their genitals, if they've got if you've got them by their sexuality, they will follow and that's what all these ideologies are doing. If you look at Russian communism, it was incredibly sexually repressive. If you look at Chinese communism, from the very beginning, it has been incredibly sexually repressive, even though Nazi dung had many, many girlfriends concubines, wives, whatever he had. Of course, it never belongs to the leader of the cult. The cult is not restricted by these rules, but everybody else is Communist China. Etiology is sexually sexually negative Russian, communist ideologists, actually negative proud boys a sexually negative it's, it's because sexuality is so important to us. If you can control a person's sexuality, you got him, they cannot get away. And then if you if you create fear around that sexuality, and terror of my own body, or terror that I might, for example, if if whatever the ideology is says, gays are the enemy, and I'm gay, I'm gonna have to look extra macho, I'm probably gonna have to do things to show that I'm worthy of the cult leader. And so you get gay Republicans in Congress, you know, they're outright or gay fundamentalist ministers doing crazy shit, but it's just a psychological pattern. I've seen it time after time or time whether you call it religion or ideology, they use the same techniques.

David Ames 1:08:46
I think that's actually a profound insight that if you have their sexuality that you basically have their minds and hearts as well. So yeah,

Darrel Ray 1:08:54
yeah. And Richard Nixon of all people. If you look at there's a documentary things called Wild Wild West it's about a guru from India that comes to Portland, Oregon or Oregon, I think it was and I've watched the documentary yet. It's like a classic study and all this shit. Yeah, it was it was incredibly sexually there. His cult was sexually restrictive. Yeah, he's grown. A whole bunch of women. And it's a look or look at the Waco Texas, you know, the brand's videos. He he had 20 or 30 Look at the Mormons Joseph Smith. 38 wise Brigham Young 54 wives or 52 wives who knows they lost count. So the cult leader is not restricted by the rules. But they know that formula for for getting people infected is through through religion. Religion is a sexually transmitted disease. Interesting. Yeah. If you think about it, without sex religion could would not be transmitted, it would be very hard. And you've got to have purity culture or some mean that's Hinduism, Hinduism, an incredibly purity, culture oriented religion. And so it's Islam. I mean, they're incredibly sexually restrictive. So I rest my case there find, find me an example that that contradicts. And I'll be very interested in that example. But I haven't seen one yet.

David Ames 1:10:30
I think that is the Mic drop. I also appreciate that you bring out that this is not limited to Christianity in any way, it's not even limited to religion, that that right ideologies in general. I think that that's profound insight. Dr. Darrel Ray, thank you so much, I want to give you a moment just to talk about anything you want to promote the secular therapy project, well, if

Darrel Ray 1:10:53
people need help, if they're dealing with some of the issues you and I've talked about, go to recovering from religion.org, hit the chat button, or call our number 8184. I doubt it. And you can call us from anywhere. And we've got five phone numbers directly from English speaking countries, like South Africa, like Australia, you know, and so forth. But you can literally call us from anywhere on the planet, if you've just got an internet connection, because we have web call as well. And we can help you and we can help you in many ways we can get you resources that you probably can't find yourself, you just tell us your story. Tell us what you're struggling with. We will find resources, we have a very huge, vetted, very curated library, that that we can find stuff and help get get help for you. We can also connect you with local groups, if you want to face to face meet with people. We don't have groups in every city. But even if you don't have one in your city, we have virtual groups that meet by zoom just like you and I are doing right now. They're meeting all the time, and you can you can meet with other people are going through the same thing you are. Or if you want to get in and talk to other people, maybe you're an ex Mormon, you're an ex Joe's witness, maybe you're LGBTQ plus, and you want to talk to other people in your same say having same issues, you can talk to us and we can let you into our private Slack channel, you have to come through us you cannot find on the internet, come to us say I'd like to join the ex Mormon group or whatever we can connect you with with that as well. And then of course, if you need professional, we're just peer support. If you need psychological professional support, you go to the secular therapy project and register at the STP. And then you can just search close to your zip code. It's kind of like online dating, you can search for anybody close to you, and you email them through our system. So you maintain confidentiality, and privacy. And then once you've found a therapist that fits your needs, you make an appointment, then it's you step outside of our system. And you know, go go get the therapy you need. Excellent. Other than that, I'd say read my book, sex and God or read the god virus. I think almost any human on the planet would probably benefit from either of both of those books. If I do say so myself.

David Ames 1:13:22
I concur. I and we will have links in the show notes to all of those things. So Dr. Darrel Ray, you've been incredibly generous with your time. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Darrel Ray 1:13:31
Thank you, David.

David Ames 1:13:37
Final thoughts on the episode. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. What's important to me is that the deconstruction process and the move away from religious thought has scientific underpinnings and we get to hear that from someone like Dr. Darrel Ray. The quote of the episode has to be religion is a sexually transmitted disease. I think what Dr. Ray meant there is that religion propagates from parents to children. And it's in that indoctrination that allows religion to continue, I also thought was very insightful to make the connection to attachment theory. And that part of the grief process of deconstruction and deconversion is the loss of that attachment both to community and to a sense of God's presence. I think that's absolutely true and why it can be so traumatic and painful when we come out of religion. At the podcast here, we are trying to be as open as possible to as many people as possible, but it's also good to reflect at times that religion can be criticized the analogy that Dr. Ray uses a virus is valid and As Dr. Ray said, to quote, I'm guessing there are more people throughout history that have been traumatized by religion than any other single thing. Religion has built in abuse. It's okay to say that that is an abusive system, it is okay to want to leave and to get out. If you need to talk to somebody, the recovering from religion is a great place to start. They have, as Dr. Ray pointed out both telephone numbers and online, you can reach out to somebody and have a conversation. They also have a bunch of resources, including more liberal churches. So if you aren't ready to leave, they have those kinds of resources as well. No one there is trying to D convert anyone they are there to listen to you will also mention the secular therapy project. If you're looking for a therapist who is not going to ask you to read your Bible more and pray more. It's free to you to find the therapists you do need to pay the therapist once you engage with them. But the secular therapy project is a great database to find people who have gone through that rigorous vetting that Dr. Ray spoke of in the interview, we will obviously have links in the show notes. I want to thank Dr. Darrel Ray for being on the podcast for sharing with us his wisdom, His education, his expertise. And his personal story, I think it was really valuable to hear the personal side of the scientific aspect that Dr. Darrell brings to the table. Thank you so much, Dr. Ray for being on the podcast. The circular Grace Thought of the Week is about independence, I originally had the experience that many of you have had as well of being the atheist at church. While there I tried to think of it from an anthropological point of view. I was watching my former faith tradition with fresh eyes and how I might experience it had I been at a religious ceremony that was unfamiliar to me. And it was striking, like what would lead people to raise their hands and sing and be demonstrative about their faith. And it struck me that it was absolutely about culture, it's about being a part of the in group and conforming to be accepted by that group. And I want to encourage you that if you were one of the people who couldn't conform, you couldn't make it work. And you needed to be independent, that that's actually a good thing. beyond religion, we are products of our culture. If you're listening to this in the United States, you're an American, you have a set of cultural ideas that are built in. And some of those are great, and some of them may not be. So independence and the ability to be an independent thinker is critical. Maybe especially in the moment in time in which we are in politically and technologically that we have to be able to question what we are given question the expectations to conform. I don't mean here rejection of norms just for rejection sake, but rather critically taking a look at what we accept to be true and good and moral, really working through that individually to the best of our abilities. We are going to take another week break. So we were are back on August 20. Arline interviews our guests and Jay, that's going to be a great conversation. Until then, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful. The beat is called waves by MCI beads. If you want to get in touch with me to be a guest on the show. Email me at graceful atheist@gmail.com for blog posts, quotes, recommendations and full episode transcripts head over to graceful atheists.com This graceful atheist podcast, a part of the atheist United studios Podcast Network

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Joanna Johnson: Silenced In Eden

Agnosticism, Authors, Autonomy, Book Review, Deconstruction, Podcast, Purity Culture

This week’s guest is author Jo Lloyd Johnson. Jo grew up in a “non-denominational charismatic commune”. She spent her adolescence in various churches, but they weren’t as “Spirit-filled” as she was taught they could be.

She married young and the first years of marriage were difficult–alcohol abuse, church-shopping, and the difficulties that come with having young children.

She and her husband needed the church to be a place of deep and meaningful relationships.

“When we started seeing church as a social club [with no depth], we were like, ‘No. This is not what we thought it was…’”

By 2018, Jo realized the Church was steeped in Patriarchy. She was fine with “a woman’s place” until she wasn’t.

Jo has used writing as a way to process the trauma and emotions she’s experienced and her book, Silenced in Eden, is helping others on their own journeys.

Links

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/jolloydjohnson/

Silenced In Eden
https://amzn.to/3nBRBYy

Louder Than Silence
https://louderthansilence.org/

#AmazonPaidLinks

Recommendations

Books

Girl at the End of the World by Elizabeth Esther

Undertow by Charlene Edge

Unfollow by Megan Phelps-Roper

#Churchtoo by Emily Joy Allison

Sex and God by Darrel Ray

Know My Name by Chanel Miller

Podcasts

Dirty Rotten Church Kids podcast
https://www.irreverent.fm/show/dirty-rotten-church-kids/

I was a Teenage Fundamentalist podcast
https://www.iwasateenagefundamentalist.com/

#AmazonPaidLinks

Quotes

“Those who came before can help those who are in it now.”

“I literally tried to be perfect.”

“We’re either Virgin Mary or a whore. That’s the Bible’s idea of women.”

“I [was] a people pleaser. I [was] a female in a Christian church; that’s what I’m trained to be. From birth.”

“I am not quiet, so that was the problem.”

“I didn’t fit the mold of what the Church told me I was supposed to be.”

“I’m super blessed that when my thread pulled, a different thread for [my husband] pulled.”

“All Churches are people playing happy, people playing [at]…a facade…”

“When we started seeing church as a social club [with no depth], we were like, ‘No. This is not what we thought it was…’”

“I love the idea of ‘Human helping Human.’”

“Writing, for me, is processing my feelings.”

“Memoirs were my lifeline at the beginning of leaving [Christianity].”

“Through trauma and through being female and a child, I wasn’t given a voice…I was silenced.”

Interact

Join the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group!

Deconversion
https://gracefulatheist.com/2017/12/03/deconversion-how-to/

Secular Grace
https://gracefulatheist.com/2016/10/21/secular-grace/

Support the podcast
Patreon https://www.patreon.com/gracefulatheist
Paypal: paypal.me/gracefulatheist

Attribution

“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats

Transcript

NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) and likely has many mistakes. It is provided as rough guide to the audio conversation.

David Ames 0:11
This is the graceful atheist podcast United studios podcast. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David and I are trying to be the graceful atheist. Thank you to all my patrons who support the podcast. You too can have an ad free experience of the podcast by becoming a patron at patreon.com/graceful atheist. If you are doubting deconstructing, or de converting, you do not have to do it alone. Our private Facebook group deconversion Anonymous is trying to be a safe place to land. Join us at facebook.com/groups/deconversion Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. onto today's show. My guest today is Joanna Johnson. Joanna has written the book Silenced in Eden. That is a memoir of her experience growing up as a dedicated Christian. experiencing sexual trauma is a young child growing up within a family and extended family of Christians trying to fulfill the expectations of being a Christian trying to go into ministry. The purity culture she experienced the sexism and repression were common throughout her life. Jo is an obvious leader and that showed throughout her Christian journey as she was a leader in various places but always was held back. You can find her book Silenced and Eaden on Amazon. Of course, there'll be links in the show notes. But before we begin, I want to read a statement from Jo Silenced and Eaden is meant to be a voice for all who have been silenced and encourage others to speak their painful truth. Because of this $1 from each book sale will go to the nonprofit Louder Than Silence. Louder Than Silence exists to provide survivors of sexual violence with the community and resources needed to gain hope and healing. They focus on paying for EMDR trauma therapy, hosting workshops and retreats providing self care kits and much more. Their biggest dream is that survivors know that they are not alone and have a foundation of support among other survivors as they navigate their journeys together. If you are a survivor of sexual trauma, I would very highly recommend that you reach out to Louder than Silence. And thank you to Jo for making that a part of her book sales. Here is Joanna Johnson telling her story.

Jo Johnson, welcome to the graceful atheist podcast.

Joanna Johnson 2:44
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

David Ames 2:46
Jo, you have written a really powerful book called Silenced in Eden, it is a memoir. It's really raw and honest. And we're gonna get to hear a bit of that story as you tell us here today. Thank you for reaching out, first of all for wanting to be on the podcast and I'm excited. You're here.

Joanna Johnson 3:04
Thank you. Yeah, I love what you do. I love the the thing I love most about this podcast is it's people who have D converted or deconstructing reaching out and like helping other people who are in it. And like that was the whole motivation of writing for me was this idea that like we those who came before can help those who are in it now.

David Ames 3:29
Yes, yeah, exactly. Jo, since your memoir is your story, we're basically going to go over the book in telling your story. But as we always talk about what was your faith tradition, when you were growing up?

Joanna Johnson 3:41
Yes. So I did prepare for that one. So I was I am a grand pastor's grandkid. Okay, so my grandpa was a pastor. He started a non denominational charismatic commune. So it was a church but then people also started living together. And just like with both charismatic we had spent praying in tongues, we had my grandma would often see angels worship time would never have like a end to it. It would just go as long as it went. But my grandpa passed away. I was only four. So the church ended when, when his shortly after him. And then we were in the world of Calvary Chapel. And first Baptists and my parents it was kind of like the desert to them, because here they are these very Spirit moving, and then they're in dry.

David Ames 4:52
Yeah. That's quite a change. Yeah, yes.

Joanna Johnson 4:56
Very, very big change for them. So when I was 16, I actually stumbled on to a nondenominational charismatic church. Okay. And so I, of course, when I went there, I was like, hey, this feels really familiar, right? This seems like what my parents have been telling me, You're just supposed to be like, because you have very little memory before five. So I didn't really know, I just saw their Christianity and then the Christianity that was in front of me, and it didn't, like, line up the same. So I knew that there was a spiritual NISS or a charismatic pneus to their faith, but I didn't see it in in the church practice that I was growing up in. Right. Got it. Okay. Okay. So when I see that at 16, I like, this is what they've been telling me about and call it like, clamored onto it. And that became my entire life. Yeah. So at 16 and, you know, 16 years trying to find yourself, you're in high school. I had my like, six months of rebellion. And then I was like, Okay, I'm going to be perfect. Yeah, I literally tried to be perfect. And so, charismatic church became my life. I actually did two years of an unpaid internship, where I actually paid to go, like to work for them right or free. paying them also. And that was where I met my husband. Okay. Yeah, so, Christian, Christian. Everything was church. We were doing leadership together. He ends up on staff at church. Okay, we're we're courting or dating. Purity culture, right? Well, we're also Hardy kind of human in love for the first time ever. So we fumble the ball, right? We don't make it to the altar before we make it under the sheets, if you want to say

David Ames 7:17
yes, yeah.

Joanna Johnson 7:27
It's funny now, just the last like two years, somebody told me to read the great sex rescue. I don't know if you've read it. So it's a Christian book about like, from a Christian author, but it's talking about how purity culture, Christian idea of sex actually leads at it statistically showed leads to bad sex. Yeah. And like, I think, especially for women, because we're not allowed to have a sex drive in Christian, whatever. And I do try to talk about that a little bit in the book, like, we're either Virgin Mary or a whore. Like, that's the Bible's idea of women. So, now, so my husband and I, you know, we have sex before marriage. And now looking back, I'm like, I'm really happy we did. Yeah. Yes. Because I am a victim of childhood sexual assault, which disconnects you from your body? Christianity, which tells you your feelings are bad and your you are bad. disconnects you from your body. And so as we as me and my husband, at the time fiance, are trying to ignore our body but not doing it well. Right. Right. I it was the first time in my life, I realized now where I was able to connect with my body. Okay, and I realized, like, if I would have done the Christian way of being perfect, ignoring your body's urges, then you say a little promise. You end up half it like you're supposed to then that night, right? It's like, okay, yeah, on, turn everything on. All of a sudden it goes from zero to 100. And so knowing my own personal like trauma, that probably would have destroyed me, it would have destroyed our marriage. I don't know if if having sex and knowing my bodies, whatever, like I'm not ready yet. I don't know how I would have been able to heal. Like I know that would have been more damaging is what I'm saying. Right, right. So now I can look back at our first time with happiness. But sadly, I didn't have that this realization while we were in it, right? Yeah, yes. So while we're in it, we would have you know, it was pleasurable and then it was shameful. Immediately after, right, right. So, so it was. So Anyways, long story short. He, the church has this pre marriage counseling, counseling.

David Ames 10:43
Yeah. Yeah,

Joanna Johnson 10:45
exactly. Counseling by people who are not trained to be counselors. Well, the last one is on our last meeting was on our purity. And my husband spills the beans. Right? We are no longer pure.

So two weeks before our wedding, he gets fired. Oh, wow.

David Ames 11:17
Yeah, you're Yeah, you're so you're already engaged. The church knows that you're getting married? We both are honest. Yeah. And in in marriage counseling, or in premarital counseling, you admit that or your husband admits that you've had sacks? And they fire? Unbelievable?

Joanna Johnson 11:33
Yes, absolutely. Which, yeah, again, just like, Let's load the shame on us. And, yeah, so we ended up having to, like, move in with his parents, because that was his income. And so it started out our marriage really rough. And at that time, the pastor meets with us and she's like, okay, you can do X, Y, and Z for nine months. And then we'll talk about coming back on staff. And I'm like, Okay, let's do that. I'm like, Okay, I know how to try to be perfect. I will go back to trying to be perfect. Where, where my husband's like, no, like he's mad. He feels like a failure. Also, they took away like, we were in ministry, we were he was on staff, we already had multiple outreach things going on. And they just dropped all of them or took them away and handed them to someone else. So he's really hurt by that. And does it at the time is just like, forget everything, right? So we're on two very different ends of the like, reactionary spectrum. He starts drinking heavily. And I'm begging him to go to church. Right. That's how we start our marriage. Yeah. I feel like I end up pregnant pretty quickly mothering my daughter, well, my husband's still in this angry but not really dealing with it. That's the problem with alcohol. Right, is that you're not feeling the feelings. You're not. He's not deconstructing, he's not deciding what stays and goes. He's just mad. And numbing the mad, right. Sure. All the pain, the pain under it? Yeah, yes. Right. Because anger, I've learned is a second emotion. Right. So there's the hurt that he's hiding from. Um, so we're in that for a while. We start we actually find a it's funny, we call it the church, the church to point out because it was a church, that was birthed out of leaders that left the first church I found at 16. So in the end, it ends up being the same problems, right. But at the time, it's a lot easier to blame the one pastor, right. And even we hear this a lot with deconstructing and de converting. It's like, Oh, you got hurt by one person. But then you're for those of us who have left like, I guarantee it wasn't one person, right? Yeah, it was. It was multiple people it was you start to realize it's a system that is harmful. So at the time, we didn't know that it was the one pastor.

David Ames 14:55
Sure. Yeah. It's easy to identify that way and I think you've expressed it really well. So far, just to say that purity culture, which is a major theme throughout your whole book separates us from our our bodies and our desires in very natural, normal things, and we're suppressing that. And as I've just been coming to learn that many, many people are affected by that. And even what you were describing that having to go from zero to 100, right off on the wedding night, so to speak. It does not work for many people. No, it

Joanna Johnson 15:28
doesn't. Yeah, and the heartbreaking is I've heard stories of people who ignore that, like, I've heard both right. I've heard men who are gentle enough to be like, Oh, you're not ready. Okay, well, tonight we won't, and we're going to enjoy whatever level of intimacy we can have. Right. I've also heard the horror stories, where it is traumatizing. And the man is promised I get to have sex on this night. So I will with or without your

David Ames 16:03
participation. Yeah. It tends to be better with the participation.

Joanna Johnson 16:11
Yeah, on all blends, right. Yeah, for all people involved. And that's where, like, I know, with my background, that that would have destroyed. And it's funny because my husband is the most overly aware of my arousal and feelings. And I would joke with him that he was more connected to me than I was.

Speaker 3 16:35
Oh, interesting. Okay, yeah. And not just physically like,

Joanna Johnson 16:39
he will tell me when something's about when something emotionally is bothering me. Because I'll start to get I am so disconnected from my feelings that it usually takes a week, something will happen and I'll like ignore it or not realize, like that, that bothered me. But I'll start to get short with people. I'll start to get irritable, I'll start whatever. And he'll be like, Jo, something's something's going on. Take a moment figure out what's under neath here. Something hurt your feelings or something's wrong. But so yeah, I would just joke that he is more connected to my feelings than I am working on that though. Yeah.

David Ames 17:24
Day to day by day, okay.

Joanna Johnson 17:34
So anyways, we ended up back at a church. And he spent five years stone sober, starts preaching at church, okay. We're at a Calvary Chapel at the time. starts, he'll, he'd preached like, you know, pastor wants a day off or whatever. And then there was a church close by, that had a pastor situation where they needed a pastor. So we go there a couple of times to oh, I'll share this Sunday. Well, they ended up offering him a pastor ship. Okay. As well, yeah, I mean, fairly, it was like, you know, we interviewed for it type of thing. went to dinner with the elders, blah, blah, blah. But it's the Calvary Chapel. And we I grew up nondenominational, right? Where women are, at least pretending to be equals. Right. Okay. Are not head pastors, but they can be pastors, right. They can share at the pulpit, they can help lead a ministry. So like, at 16, I was leading a small group, and I'm trying to think if I ever I mean, I pray on the mic. I don't know if I ever liked it a sermon on the mic. I actually, that's I did I did do a sermon on the mic to a smaller group anyways.

David Ames 19:17
But you were you were a leader in the church, though. You were a leader.

Joanna Johnson 19:21
And, and a leader in the church and and acknowledged, I guess, yes. And so he's offered this pastor ship at a Calvary Chapel. And I remember this conversation with him. I'm like, Would I be able to like, even share my testimony? Like, from the pulpit? And he's like, I don't, I don't know. Maybe not. And so the book is Silenced and Eaden, right. So the whole theme is that I had a hard time voicing my feelings voicing for myself. So he's literally saying If I take this job, you will have no voice. Right? And he so he says, I don't think so. Can you? Like are you okay with that? And I'm a people pleaser, right? I'm a female in a Christian church. So that's what I trade.

David Ames 20:18
Yes. People from Chinese. Yes. Yes.

Joanna Johnson 20:21
From birth I come out. Yeah. So I couldn't answer him. Because I knew the answer. I'm supposed to say right. The people pleasing answer of Yes, of course, babe. I'm totally fine with that. But in me, I was like, screaming No, no, I'm not okay with that. No, you can't lead and lead without me. You can't tell me to stay silent. And it, it took me a moment to be like, okay. Okay, what do I say here? And for me, that was the little string that just unraveled everything. Okay. Yeah. That was the moment where I was I No, no, you can't I cannot okay with that. No, I'm not okay, that this is normal in any church. No, I'm not okay, that women are expected to watch the children and help you right sermons because I had written most like, helped him work on most of them. And then, okay, I have no voice like, yeah, I was like, No. And so yeah, it was interesting. It was like, an eye opening of the patriarchy of my whole life. Okay. I had been at until that point, I was fine with a woman's place, right? I was, I mean, for me, I am really nurturing. So the idea of like, oh, you get to be a mom, like, okay, that's fine. I love people. I love taking care of people, I can gladly be a mom. I am not quiet. So that was the problem, right? In the what the church I went to when we were like 16 women were a lot of, I would say they were arm candy. Like they would be able to pray and lead and whatever. But they were was it was Southern California. They were gorgeous. They wore high heels. Then there was me where I was like a punk rocker, I had a studded belt. And I would jump in the I would jump in a mosh pit. Like, I didn't fit the mold of what the church told me I was supposed to be. But I could definitely be a nurturing mom, like, I could do that. And so I do feel like for me, when I got married, it was like this. I got mold. I was like, okay, I can try to fit in this right? I can be a mom, I can be supportive. I can be a people pleaser, like I can fit in this mold. And that was the moment where like, the mold broke. I can't do this anymore. Yeah, we're done. And I'm super blessed that we, when my thread pulled a different thread for him pulled.

David Ames 23:28
Oh, okay. I want to pause just for a second, because one of the things I want to mention is how common this message is that strong personality women who have natural born leadership qualities, and they find themselves trapped in you know, you can do church, you can do children's ministry, or you can, you know, do director of education, but you can't preach in front of the congregation. And it amazes me, especially outside of the bubble, right on this side of deconversion that so many denominations are losing half of their talent pool. Right off the bat, like I just think tactically, it's stupid. And then obviously the devastating consequences. If you are in fact a woman and you have these leadership qualities and you feel just completely contained and unable to use those gifts to use the Christianese. Right. It's absurd. It's a complete absurdity. So

Joanna Johnson 24:28
it is and it's also crazy, because you said half but statistically, women are there's more women in church than there are men. Right. Good point. Yeah. So it's funny. It's like you have more women, but those are the ones you want to say they have no place so they have no you know, yeah. So that's a funny reality.

David Ames 24:58
I digress there so you both are Pulling on different strings, but the sweaters are unraveling.

Joanna Johnson 25:04
We're unraveling. So for him, he did a sermon on I'm not sure exactly what it was. Maybe it was the Holy Spirit. I just remember he got really into the word spirit, and, and hell. And he had an I do put this in the book, he had an experience where he goes in, and he was at work. He was doing insurance claims to get to go into someone's house who had a flood. And the person was clearly a drug addict. The house was in decay. Like, there was trash all over the house. It was. And the guy was looked nearly skeletal like he's just wasting away. And my husband was like, This guy is in hell. Yeah, like that. That's hell, I don't know how else to explain it. But that's hell. And so he did a deep dive into the word hell. And literally everything that love wins from Rob Bell, like II without reading the book came to all of the same like, this is how the Bible explains how the hell isn't even really in the Bible.

David Ames 26:26
It really isn't a thing. Yeah.

Joanna Johnson 26:30
So that was one of the things for him. That was like, Wait a second. And it was funny, because during that, that time, it was like 2018. We would have like, I would share this, you know, this doesn't fit in my Christianity anymore. It'd be like, Well, what about this? This doesn't make sense. And then I'd be like, Wait, well, you can't question Oh. And then I'd be like, Wait, that actually makes sense. And then the Spirit, okay. There's actually no diff difference of the word holy spirit or spirit, our spirit. And so it was just one of those things where it was interesting, he would have one thing that had bothered him, right, that didn't sit in his gut. And it would come up, and then I would be like, Wait, you can't question that. And then I listen. I'm like, Oh, that makes sense, actually. Right. Vice versa.

David Ames 27:24
You both were sliding down that slippery slope together.

Joanna Johnson 27:27
Well, it was funny, because there was definitely times where I'd be like, I'd grab him and be like, catch up. Now, yeah. But yeah, so clearly, he decided not to become a pastor. And for him, at that time for him, the we were at a church. The pastor who was was there had had some inappropriateness with a younger secretary or something. Okay. Something where the powerplay would be unethical as well than just an affair, right. And I don't think it was an actual affair. But the point was that something was icky. And the pastor left. And the congregation was really sad and lost. And my husband went to the elders is like, you know, I don't see why you guys are still having like a Sunday service. Like, why don't we go back to like a house church, try to build this community back where we heal, whatever hurt has been done. And, and then we'll start church, like, once we feel like, that process is over. And they were all like, no, we want to have our Sunday service. We want to print our pamphlets we want to, and for both me and him were like, This is playing church. Yeah, this is a show. There's no real depth. There's no community here. Is this what church really is? And so it was that realization of like, okay, for them churches, this is a band that shows up, and people fill in a room, sing a song, here's something we like, right? Well, we want a younger pastor, because we want you to bring some life. Okay, we want you know, and it's just this. There was just not the depth anymore.

David Ames 29:31
You passed over very quickly that, you know, he didn't become a pastor. But but in the book, I think you really described that both of you are pretty dedicated to ministry, you that's like your vision for your life is ministry. So my question is, when you made that decision, did you think you would have already started deconstruct enough that it wasn't traumatic, or was it or was that a loss of a sense of like your purpose in life at that point?

Joanna Johnson 29:58
Yeah. So when we started, do deconstructing it was a? Yeah, I think we had already gotten to the point where this doesn't feel right like this, this, this church is not just that this church is broken, maybe all churches broken. There we go. Okay, got it. So once we had that, yeah, once we had that piece of like, wait, I think that this church is showing us what all churches, all churches are people playing happy people playing a hole. And it's actually maybe it's really just a facade, and there's not the depth that we want it to have. Right? Because yeah, the reality was for us. Church was the deeper, like, we both came to church and like, got dedicated when we were in high school. And it was our whole life. And it was where we had friends, it was where we had these emotional experiences. So it was, for us always was relational. Like, we wanted to do ministry, because I mean, all these young people that we care about are dying and going to hell in our minds. So we need to save them all. And there was I'm not sure if it was on your guys's group deconversion anonymous, it probably was, but there was one about it was the social media post about if people, people really thought if Christians really believed in hell, then they would constantly like it would break their hearts. Yeah, something like that. And I remember being like, that was me. Okay, I was, I was the Christian who literally like I remember, staying certain nights, staying up until two in the morning crying over people that I thought were gonna go to hell. I was the person who was like, I can't let these people I care about or anyone go to hell. Because I hate people in pain. Like, I would rather be the one in pain. Let me have the pain, don't let them have the pain.

So I think that for my husband, Josh and I, we, what what we liked about Christianity that we had was the depth, the interconnectedness. So when when church became this plastic shell of a I don't know what you'd call it, like a social club. Right? When we started seeing church as a social club, we're like, No, this isn't what we thought it was. So I don't want to lead something. That's that. Right. Okay. So it was a lot easier to leave the idea of ministry at that point? Oh, yeah, I do think that there's been, for me specifically, that is something that I still feel the loss of. But it's been like, sometimes there's things where you're like, oh, I don't want that. But then you don't realize like, what you're missing now? Sure. I don't know if that makes sense. But it's, I guess I didn't feel the loss while deconstructing, but I feel it now.

David Ames 33:34
Yeah. Yeah, we talk a lot about that, you know, there are good aspects of church, right. It's the built in community, you know, people that are there who care about you when you're sick. Hopefully, they come and bring you food and you know, ask about your children and maybe babysit for you. And all those things like having that interconnectedness is really important as a human being. And there are not great solutions for that in the secular world. So like, there's definite aspects of that. And then that does just what you're describing, again, your natural talent as a leader to want to be a part of that to foster more community to bring people together. And maybe not having the venue to do that in a secular world is a loss. And we can we can acknowledge that and recognize that that's, it's, it's sad.

Joanna Johnson 34:21
Yeah, looking at. It's interesting once the cards fall, and you look back, and you can find certain points of your life where you're like, oh, that never sat well with me, or that's why I did that. And so now I look back and I'm like, Oh, well, that's why. When my husband and I went to the church, 2.0 they were doing, we started, we were in a small group. And the small group wanted to go over Sunday's notes. So we'd hear a sermon on Sunday. And then we talk about it on Tuesday, whatever. Sure. And I remember going to the, the leader and I was like No. This strong dominant woman was like, No, we shouldn't do that. And I asked him, I was like, why don't we all take turns and share our testimony? Why don't we all take turns and share part of our life and why we're Christians. Because I want that connectedness I want to learn about these people sitting in a room that I'm trying to have, quote, fellowship with, right? I want to get to know them. I don't want to talk about the pastor's five point message, I want to get to know my person next to me. And, and he let me do that or let us do that. And the people who are in that group have said, like, that was the best small group we ever have been a part of. And so it's interesting. Now I'm like, Oh, I wanted that I saw the surface, and knew that there was surface SNESs already and was trying to find depth. So it was like, I already knew that something was off. Right? I already knew that there was something wrong in the church, I was just trying to tweak it to still make it work for me.

David Ames 36:09
Right. This also reminds me of what I call church shopping, that you start, there's some nagging thing that's missing, and you start to look around like, Well, maybe it's over here, or this denomination or this tradition. And you're just you're looking to fulfill the thing that, you know, ought to be there but isn't add it that is the beginning of the end, right. It's, it's going to end in tears.

Joanna Johnson 36:32
It can be it's interesting when my so you know, I said my grandfather's church ended. I was really young. And then we would we went to Calvary Chapel. We went to first Baptist, like, during that entire time, my dad was desperately church shopping. Okay. Okay. He would like we would have the church would go to and then on a random Sunday, he would just show us up at some other church because he was not happy. And, and I don't know if he's been happy in a church since my grandpa's church. Right. But he's still at church.

David Ames 37:10
I understand. Yeah. But I imagine that nagging feeling is still there. It might be if he were aware of that unable to articulate it.

Joanna Johnson 37:19
Right. It might be. Yeah, that's an interesting idea. Maybe, maybe you're right. Maybe it's still there. And he's just a little more resilient in his faith than I was some.

David Ames 37:32
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Joanna Johnson 37:41
So yeah, we left that behind. And I, it's interesting. I'm trying to think when like, it was really done. Like, deconstruction is such an interesting thing. And it wasn't until really recently that I would even say deconversion. Okay. Yeah. Because yeah, it was. It was. And there's also the level of like, coming out of the closet. Right. It's deconstructing is like, Okay, well, you're just asking questions. You're still a Christian. You're still with us. You're still in our tribe, you're still a part. And hopefully, you'll come back to the truth. Right. deconversion is like I, you're out?

David Ames 38:37
Yes. Exactly.

Joanna Johnson 38:39
Yeah. Yeah. And I even recently, I had that like, Well, Ted, what are you a person? I'm a first time well said. Yeah. Yeah. So it Yeah. And recently, so there was a time where I was like, Okay, I'm done with the term Christianity. I feel like it's done harm to me. I feel like it's done harm to many cultures. And my husband was kind of like, yeah, I understand that. But wouldn't tell me where he was at. And that was, that was hard. I was like, okay, am I alone in that? Are we are we good? And then, very recently, he was like, yeah, no, I don't think I would call myself a Christian either. And I was like, Oh, cool. Okay, we're on the same page. I thought I had just gone all the way down the hill, and you were still up, right? They're not gonna move. Yeah, so for me, I'm really glad that we rode that ride together. It wasn't super easy. Because there like I said, like there were times where he'd question something and I wouldn't, or he would want to go to church on you know, Easter and Christmas or at one point he was talking about like going once a month just because this is These stories that we grew up with, it's part of our culture, right? It's, my parents are still Christian culture, our culture is Christian, basically. And so he was like, I don't know if I'm okay with like, my kids not knowing Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark and. And I was like, Well, can I tell you why each one of those I don't want my kids to know? I'm okay with my daughter's not hearing that Eve was the reason sin came into the world. Yeah, I'm fine with that one. I'm okay with my kids not hearing that. God flooded the whole earth and only saved this handful of people. Like I'm, I'm actually totally fine. Not having any of that. And, yes, that was a funny time where he was like, and it was, it's so ironic to me to because for those four years of him, self numbing and me, pulling him into church, like I was the one being like, Come on, baby. This is our raft. This is our safety net, like God is everything. And and so it was ironic when the shoe was on the other foot, and he was like, Jo,

David Ames 41:24
just once in a while. Right.

Joanna Johnson 41:28
But yeah, as of now we're both I guess we'd call I'd call. I think we'd say agnostic. I I do think that the secular humanist is probably more where I would land. I love the idea again, like with this podcast, I love the idea of human helping human.

David Ames 41:51
Yes, yeah. Yeah, the labels are not important. Like, you know, it's, it's sometimes helpful as a shorthand to talk to one another, but but really, we're just talking about caring about people. And it really is that simple. And like, we make it too complex. And I think that the side of the podcast that is important is embracing your own humanity. So we've talked about in this conversation, you know, one's own sexuality, your own desires, your connection to your body, all of those things that have been denied you through your life. I think that part's important. And then whatever label you put on, it just isn't so

Joanna Johnson 42:28
great. I definitely agree. And it's funny, on this side of deconversion, because, like, in my childhood, upbringing, an atheist was like, Oh, yeah. Like, I remember my dad talking. At one point when I was I think I was in like, fourth, fifth grade, they started doing evolution at school. And, surprisingly, at the time, I was at a public school, my parents had shifted gears a little because at first, we were homeschooled. And so because I was at a public school, and they tried to get me out of this, the science of evolution, they asked the teacher even if I could do something else, right, because evolution is evil. So when the school said No, his work, my dad's work around was putting on young earth movies when I got home. Okay. I would literally go to school, right? And then at home, be given school of just young earth school. And so I think it was in that time when I first heard what an atheist was, of course, it's from a Christian idea of an atheist, where's your, they don't believe in anything? They hate to God. And so it is a funny because now I'm like, like, especially with this podcast, like, like, Well, this looks a whole lot more loving and kind, but this is an atheist.

David Ames 44:06
Yeah. That's what we're playing with. I mean, that's why, you know, I've said many times, you know, I could have called this the graceful humanist, you know, like, but it was kind of intentional to say, you know, to break down that stereotype a bit. And, you know, like I I've said to what, I meet somebody, I don't go Hi, I'm an atheist.

Joanna Johnson 44:28
Turn around. Yes, it turned around because when you're a Christian, it says, Hi, I'm a Christian.

David Ames 44:33
Exactly, exactly. Yeah. If someone does ask I will talk about secular humanism and you know, if we get deep then I'll start talking about secular grace and you know, my conception of that that can

Joanna Johnson 44:43
I love it I love that you did choose atheist I because I think there is like, taking what Christianity for for those who are de converting has like tainted and turned it into something evil, right. And being like Hear this is it not? It's not evil. It's not scary. It's not bad just is yes

David Ames 45:15
Well, you said very kind things about the podcast what other resources, podcasts or books or people? Have you found really helpful throughout this process?

Joanna Johnson 45:24
So when I first started looking into my specific upbringing, I started obsessing about like, books on people leaving and cults more specifically. So I read girl at the edge of the world and sorry, girl at the end of the world under tow, unfollow, so once that come to mind, some some books on people who left, which was why I was like I should I writing for me is processing my feelings I am so I'm so disconnected from my feelings that it's easier to type it or write it and, like see it on paper homos? Because I have a hard time seeing it in myself. But so when I started writing for my own therapy, if you want to call it, I was like, I should put this out because memoirs were what literally, like, were my lifeline at the beginning of leaving. Yeah. So those with some books. And then for podcasts. I'm like, I guess I'm picky. Yeah. I really like dirty rotten church kids. They're like my age group. Sadly, this is their last season, so I'm going to have to find something else. Yeah, this this is a podcast. I do listen to. I'm trying to think of as any other Oh, the fundamental. I grew up of Christian fundamentalists. Yeah, yeah. Oh, sorry. I was a teenage fundamentalist. Yeah, so some, but a lot of times, I'll just do books. Hashtag church to was when I read recently. Yeah, that one was really good. Gets into purity culture gets into how women are treated. And then if for specifically, like my book talks about the sexual abuse side, so Chanel, Miller's No, my name was it is an amazing book that I would strongly recommend for anybody who either wants to understand what sexual trauma does to the brain and a person or who have lived that. That book was amazing. But yeah, a lot of times I'll do books, like Audible books on audible or my like, go to Yeah, and I am on deconversion anonymous. Excellent. Recently, I read God and sex by the same guy who did the god virus. Okay. That book was like, blow my mind. Okay, okay. In the book, I, at the very end, I talked about how like, I felt like I hit a point where I stopped deconstructing everything. Like before, it was like I had a sledge hammer, and I was just pulling down everything, right? And I was like, hmm, maybe I'm at a point where I can like, get a broom. Start cleaning this up. Yeah. Okay. All right. And then and then I read that book, and I was like, okay, maybe I need another sledgehammer.

David Ames 49:04
There's a bit more.

Joanna Johnson 49:07
A little more cultural, you know, stuff that there's stuff that was like, clearly church, right? And then you can deconstruct that and then it's like, oh, okay, maybe there is some validated this gender stuff or this. Yeah, just the culture. And then I'm like, Oh, maybe I want to maybe I want to pull down some of this stuff, too. Exactly. That's where I'm at.

David Ames 49:32
Okay, yeah, yeah, it is definitely a process and it can go on for a while.

I definitely want to give you a minute to talk about anything about the book how people will find the book. Let's just Let's just promote it.

Joanna Johnson 49:51
Okay. Yeah, so the book is silenced and eaten. The books somebody people have asked me like why silence didn't even know So I was born in a Christian commune where they separate themselves. They tried to build their perfect Eden, perfect idea of God again, right? And through trauma, and through being female and a child, I wasn't given a voice. So as that's why it's silenced in Eden, I was silenced. And they thought it was perfect. They thought it was a garden. I explain Christianity or Christianity as like a perfectly kept garden, where everything has its specific place. And then realizing at one point, like, I'm not a garden, I'm kind of wild. Maybe I'm the forest.

David Ames 50:48
I love that analogy.

Joanna Johnson 50:52
So yeah, so yeah, the book talks about purity culture, it talks about patriarchy. For me, I spent my first 35 years being told what to do being preached at. So the book is not that, right? I'm not, I'm not saying this is what you should believe I'm saying, This is my, like, what I went through, this is my path of life. These are the things that when I was in Christianity didn't fit didn't seem to work didn't feel right. And then these are the things that I'm starting to be like, hey, this feels better. Hit this sits better. And so I try very much to be like, this is where I'm at. And hopefully, the reader can find things that resonates with them. But I'm not going to tell you what to think I can tell you, if there's a heaven or hell, that's that's you, like that's on you. But I'll tell you my experience with deconstructing hell, right? Yes, the book is on Amazon. So I partnered with louder than silence. Louder Than silence is an organization that fund raises to help women who have been sexually abused, get get EMDR therapy, so they pay for therapy. And they also do workshops. So I'm a I'm a part of one that starts actually just started. And the whole idea of the workshop is for victims to help other victims. So it's all ran by victims. And they have, you know, we talked about feeling your feelings, okay. Today, we're going to work on what emotions are coming up and how you know, so it's all but it's all human helping human? Yes. Yeah. And so for me, like when I that was when I was like, Okay, this is the organization I knew when I put the book out, like, I'm talking about a crazy subject, I want this to help that subject, I want to do something good with my messed up story, right? More than just promote myself or whatever, I want it to do something good. So $1 for every book goes to that organization. If you are a woman out there who has been victimized and you want to heal louder than silence has workshops, we meet for 12 weeks, you will meet other victims completely anonymous. And then they also will help with the cost of EMDR therapy.

David Ames 53:47
That's awesome. Jo Johnson, you are the author of silenced in Eden, I can tell the listeners that you know the story is is very raw and, and real. And I appreciate that. I think just like what we're doing here on the podcast telling your story is so powerful people are going to read that and especially those who've been through sexual trauma will recognize themselves and hopefully gain some healing from that. So thank you, Jo, for being on the podcast.

Joanna Johnson 54:14
No problem. Thank you so much for having me.

David Ames 54:22
Final thoughts on the episode. As you could hear, Jo is an obvious leader and an outspoken voice to help people. I'm always amazed at that women who are held back who have a real sense of ministry in their lives and because of the sexism and patriarchy within the church are limited to the roles that they can take. Even her describing writing her husband's sermons is just amazing to me, and then not being allowed to speak in the pulpit. One of the core values of the pod Cast is rigorous self honesty. And my belief is that when we are deeply honest about ourselves and vulnerable, that that helps others. Jo exemplifies that in telling her story of the sexual trauma she experienced as a child, and the impact that that had throughout her life, as well as the impact of purity culture on her and the people that she has talked to that have been affected by purity culture, as well. I know many of the listeners might be in that category, if not in the sexual trauma category, as well. So I want to thank Jo for being vulnerable and telling her story, I think it's going to help many, many people. Again, I want to point out that Jo says that $1 From every book sale goes to louder than silence that helps survivors of sexual trauma and gives them a community to build from, there will be links in the show notes that you can find that if you yourself, have experienced sexual trauma, please reach out. The book is Silenced and Eaden. It is fantastic. I couldn't put it down. I read a lot of stories. I don't say this about every guests book. This was great. It was compelling. Jo really has a way of letting you feel the experience that she had. I want to thank Jo for being on the podcast and for being so vulnerable and telling her story. Thank you, Jo, so much. The secular Grace Thought of the Week is about that rigorous self honesty. If you've ever been in a 12 step program, you're going to recognize that phrasing. This is a core value for me. And I want to differentiate it from the way that truth is often used as a cudgel within Christianity, or even in the atheist community. There's a way of using the truth to beat people over the head as opposed to helping them to thrive. And so juxtapose that with what I'm trying to describe here about a rigorous self honesty, truthfulness with oneself. I often quote Alice Greczyn, who said that she stopped being good at fooling herself. And I love that I want us all to stop being good at fooling ourselves. And it begins with rigorous self honesty. And this applies very deeply for those people who are in the middle of their doubts, the middle of deconstruction, who are counting the cost of what deconversion might cost and terrified. All I can say is that within the sanctity of your own mind, be honest with yourself. The truth, in that sense, will set you free. Next week's guest is Josh, who goes by after God's end on Instagram, or lien interviews, Josh, definitely check that out next week. Until then, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful human beings. The beat is called waves by MCI beads. If you want to get in touch with me to be a guest on the show, email me at graceful atheist@gmail.com for blog posts, quotes, recommendations and full episode transcripts head over to graceful atheists.com. This graceful atheist podcast, a part of the atheists United studios Podcast Network

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Poetic Humanism

Authors, Humanism, poetry, Secular Grace

Poetry is one way we homo sapiens, can get a glimpse into another’s life, into the lives of people whose experiences may be wholly different than our own. Poetry has the power to meet us where we are and possibly begin to change us.

Humanism is about human lives–the story of our lives–both our individual and collective experiences but without any divine intervention.

Poetic Recommendations

At the beginning of April, in honor of National Poetry Month, members of our Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group shared some of their most treasured poems. Enjoy!

Amen by James Baldwin
Do Not Ask Your Children to Strive by William Martin
The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy
Dreams by Langston Hughes
The Journey by Mary Oliver
Otherwise by Jane Kenyon
The Patience of Ordinary Things by Pat Schneider
The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
Song of Durin by JRR Tolkien
Stupid, Conceited Men by Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz
Tender by Sophie Klahr
There are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves by James Kavanaugh
This Be the Verse by Philip Larkin
Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden
Warning by Jenny Joseph
You Came Too by Nikki Giovanni

–Arline

For more poetic humanism, check out these Graceful Atheist interviews!

Visit the link above the learn more about or join our private Facebook group.

Bart D. Ehrman: Armageddon

Authors, Bloggers, Book Review, Deconstruction, End Times, Hell Anxiety, Podcast, Podcasters, Rapture Anxiety, Scholarship

This week’s guest is Bart D. Ehrman, the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His new book is Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End.

Is the book of Revelation a prophecy of future catastrophe? Is it a book of hope? Or is it a book of violence and wrath?

In Armageddon, Bart delves into the most misunderstood—and possibly the most dangerous—book of the Bible, exploring the horrifying social and political consequences of expecting an imminent apocalypse and offering a fascinating tour through three millennia of Judeo-Christian thinking about how our world will end.

Bart’s work has been a part of many of our deconstructions. In my interview with Bart, we get to hear his faith transition. We learn from his New Testament expertise. But most surprising of all, we learn what a nice guy he is.

Quotes

Even if you think the Bible is inspired. Even if you think this is a book written by God in some way…it means God inspired a book; he didn’t inspire a jigsaw puzzle—which means, you read it like a book, and if you read a book, you don’t cherry-pick it.

The argument may seem far-fetched, but it is the kind of reasoning meant to appeal to people who are ready to be persuaded,
not to skeptics.

Apocalypses are first-person narratives of highly symbolic visionary experiences that reveal heavenly secrets to ex-
plain earthly realities.

Far more people revere the Bible than read it

Parts of our Western cultural heritage that are driven by traditional apocalyptic thinking have encouraged
fatalism and inaction in the face of our crises.

The overwhelming emphasis of Revelation is not about hope but about the wrath and vengeance of God against those who
have incurred his displeasure.

I just got to a point … it wasn’t a big thing like John had a different christology from mark
it wasn’t that kind of major thing.
it was more like, “this little detail, if I am just being honest with myself and surely god wants me to be honest with myself
and if it turns out that I am right about this if it is true then god wants me to know the truth, this little detail is wrong.
I don’t want it to be but it is a contradiction.

Once I came to that little chink in my armor then I started realizing that the bible might not be inerrant.
It opened my eyes. It took a long time. It was a very painful process for me to move away from that.
Because I was afraid of going to hell, I was afraid of losing my community, I was having arguments with my mother,
This is not good.

Within Evangelical tradition truth is really important.
There is also a sense within the evangelical tradition that there are ways to find the truth.
It is not just believing something.
When you have students studying it at a serious Evangelical school they are taught you have to look for the evidence
but once you open up the door to evidence you also open up the door to people disagreeing.

This is not a book of hope it is a book of violence

“The thing about fundamentalism is that nobody calls themself a fundamentalist. The fundamentalist is always the guy to the right of you.”

“I started thinking [in college] that the world’s a bigger place than I had imagined as a fundamentalist Christian.”

“If you want to understand the Gospels, you have to understand how ‘ancient biographies’ work. They don’t work like our biographies…”

“The deal is: Jesus died and his disciples started convincing people that he was raised from the dead, and the people they convinced, convinced other people who convinced other people who convinced other people and this goes on for forty or fifty years.”

“Most people don’t read the Book of Revelation; it’s just too bizarre and weird. They can’t make heads or tails of it, so they give up. The only people who really delve into it, tend to be fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals who are using it to show what’s going to happen in our near future.”

“When you get to the Book of Revelation, there’s nothing about ‘giving and service.’ It’s about destroying the enemy. Forget ‘Turn the other cheek.’ Forget ‘Love your enemies.’ You hate your enemies and you hate what they do and you punish them.”

“God tortures people in the Book of Revelation and everyone gets thrown into a lake of burning sulfur, [and then] brought back to life so that they can be destroyed in a lake of fire.”

“[Apocalyptic literature] is its own genre…When you’re reading a science fiction novel, you know you’re not reading a front-page article in the New York Times. It’s a different genre…An apocalypse is an apocalypse, which means you have to know how apocalypses work if you’re going to understand any one of them, including the Book of Revelation.”

Links

Website
https://www.bartehrman.com/

Blog
https://ehrmanblog.org/

Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman Podcast
https://www.bartehrman.com/podcast/

#AmazonPaidLinks

Interact

Join the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group!

Deconversion
https://gracefulatheist.com/2017/12/03/deconversion-how-to/

Secular Grace
https://gracefulatheist.com/2016/10/21/secular-grace/

Support the podcast
Patreon https://www.patreon.com/gracefulatheist
Paypal: paypal.me/gracefulatheist

Attribution

“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats

Transcript

NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) and likely has many mistakes. It is provided as rough guide to the audio conversation.

David Ames 0:11
This is the graceful atheist podcast United studios podcast. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David, and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. I want to thank my latest Patron on patreon.com. Susan, thank you so much for supporting the podcast. I also want to thank our ongoing supporters, Joseph John Ruby, Sharon Joel, Lars Ray, Rob, Peter Tracy, Jimmy and Jason, thank you so much for your support. We're doing interesting things with the support money. We're using the Zoom account for the Tuesday night Hangouts. We had to change to a new recording software as a number of the COVID era are locked down era tools that were free are no longer free. We're putting that support money to good use. If you find yourself in the middle of doubt and deconstruction, you do not need to do it alone. Please join our private Facebook group deconversion anonymous. You can find us at facebook.com/groups/deconversion. On today's show, my guest today is Bart D. Ehrman, the UNC Chapel Hill New Testament scholar who has written a number of popular books. Many of my guests have talked about how books by Bart Ehrman started their deconstruction process. Bart's new book is Armageddon. What the Bible really says about the end. This was a fantastic conversation I really enjoyed having Bart on, he turns out to be just a very nice person, as well as being a challenge to the evangelical perspective of Christianity. Even as a non believer, what Bart pulls out of the New Testament is an interesting perspective on the Jesus of the Gospels versus, in this specific case, the Jesus of Revelation, which is a God of wrath and violence. Either way, it is a challenge to modern evangelicalism. Here is my conversation with Bart D. Ehrman.

Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast.

Bart D. Ehrman 2:31
Well, thanks for having me.

David Ames 2:33
Bart. I know I'm not going to do you service here on your CV, but you are the best selling author of a number of books, including Misquoting Jesus, Jesus before the Gospels, the triumph of Christianity. Your new book is Armageddon, what the Bible really says about the end. I'd like you to maybe just mention your work at the University of North Carolina and what your academic credentials are.

Bart D. Ehrman 2:55
Yeah, sure. So after high school, I went straight to Moody Bible Institute and had a three year degree there. And then I went to Wheaton College, where I majored in English, actually. But I took Greek there and decided to go to Princeton Theological Seminary, where the expert in Greek manuscripts taught Bruce Metzger. He was a world expert in this and I wanted to do that as an evangelical to study Greek manuscripts. Yeah, I did my master's degree there with him. I wrote a master's thesis under him. And then I stayed and did my PhD there and wrote my PhD dissertation with him. And so my credentials are I have a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary, in New Testament studies, with a dissertation in the field of analyzing Greek manuscripts. So while I was finishing my PhD, I got a position teaching position at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and I taught there for four years. Then in 1988, I came to Chapel Hill, North Carolina. So now I teach at UNC Chapel Hill. I've been here since 1988. And I teach both undergraduate students usually introductory stuff dealing with the New Testament or the historical Jesus or the Gospels, and I teach PhD students, usually, some New Testament stuff, but a lot more on Christianity after the New Testament period, with mainly the second and third centuries of Christianity with the PhD students.

David Ames 4:19
Is that all Bard? Is that all? That's that's quite quite the quite the bone a few days. Very, very well done. I was saying to you off, Mike, that a number of listeners, I think have been impacted by your work. Many of the listeners are evangelicals or former evangelicals, and in particular, the doctrine of inerrancy of Scripture is a rough one to get over and reading your work has helped a lot of people to just seek the truth in a different way, in many ways has led to various degrees of deconstruction. I think what they would be interested in and what I'm interested in hearing is a bit about your own personal story of faith. What was it like for you as a young person in Faith and then what that trajectory that leads you to now?

Bart D. Ehrman 5:03
Yeah, well, so I was raised in a Christian home, we were not Evan Jellicle, we went to the Episcopal Church, and I was an altar boy and the Episcopal Church. Soon as I could be up till through high school, when I was in high school, when I was 15, I started attending a Youth for Christ group. And after a period I ended up becoming a born again, Christian. I asked Jesus into my heart and committed my life to Christ as his as my Lord and Savior. And I became very serious of angelical. And that's why I went off to Moody Bible Institute, you know, as an Evangelical, I mean, basically, I was a fundamentalist. I mean, the thing about fundamentalism is that nobody calls themself a fundamentalist. Fundamentalist is always the guy to the right of you. When I was a moody, we actually didn't mind calling ourselves fundamentalists, we thought we subscribe to the fundamentals, you know, literal virgin birth, little resurrection for the dead six day creation. I mean, these are the fundamentals of the faith. And so we subscribe to them. We were kind of proud of it. At moody, of course, they taught that the Bible is completely inerrant. There is no one set view of why it's inerrant. It wasn't, most did not think that God had dictated to the authors, because, you know, there were some there are smart people, there were smart people out there, they, they knew that when you read this stuff in Greek, there are different writing styles and different. And, you know, they knew that math was different from John, they certainly knew all that. But the words were from God, ultimately, in some way. And they were inerrant. There were no mistakes of any kind in the Bible, not just in what it taught about theology, or belief, or salvation or Christ. But what it taught about science, you know, or what to talk about history. I mean, it's just historic, this is all really happened, the way it's described. So that was my view. And I maintain that, through Wheaton, although I started, started moving a bit away from that my two years of Wheaton, just because I was taking all sorts of classes in other things. I was majoring in English literature and reading a lot of literature, reading philosophy, studying intellectual history, how thought developed over the years. And, and so I, you know, I started thinking that the world's a bigger place than I had imagined, as a fundamentalist Christian. I went to Princeton seminary, as I said, to study Greek manuscripts. And I had no plan at all of changing my beliefs. I was not going to be a non become a non of angelical. These are all bunch of liberals, what did they take? I would take a Bible class, you know, I'm talking about a contradiction between Luke and Mark. And I say, this case, you see, I don't know why so blind. He seems like he's obviously blind, what does he know? And so went on for that like that for a while. But I ended up, you know, I was reading the gospels in the New Testament in Greek. And I was reading the Old Testament in Hebrew. I learned Hebrew too, and, and I was studying it intensively. And at one point, I just got to a point where it wasn't a big thing. It wasn't like, you know, John has a different Christology. For mark, it wasn't that kind of major thing. It was more like, this little detail, you know, if I'm just being honest with myself, and surely God wants me to be honest with myself, and, and if it turns out that I'm right about this, then you know, if it's true, then God wants me to know the truth. This little details wrong. This is just a contract into that I just, I don't want it to be but you know, I it is a contradiction. Once I came to that little like little chink in my armor, that I started realizing that the Bible might not be inerrant. And it opened my eyes. And it took a long time. And it was a very painful process for me to move away from that. Because I was afraid of going to hell, I was afraid of, you know, losing my community, I was afraid I was having arguments with with my mother. I mean, it's like this is not good. It's painful.

David Ames 8:56
It's really interesting to hear you say the same words that I hear from many of the people that we interview of just that it's difficult, even when you have admitted to yourself to then begin to take steps to remove yourself because you're losing so much and that there's so much cost at hand.

And for you, you're slightly more public figure. I think you've also had the added burden of the vitriol of Evangelicals over time. What has that been like for you like as you write these popular books that are on some level or another textual criticism?

Bart D. Ehrman 9:50
So what really gets my of angelical opponents upset, especially among the scholars, evangelical scholars, is that the scholars know that the kinds of things I'm writing about our things that are just widely known in the academy. They just they take a different view of it, but the material I teach you know about how there are so you know, 1000s and 1000s of mistakes among the copies of the New Testament, or that Matthew and Mark really do contradict each other in places where the John really does have a different understanding of Jesus, just act as not historically reliable, Paul did not write some of the letters described to him. These things sound radical to people who are of angelical, who just have never heard of any such thing. And they think this crazy guy, Chapel Hills making stuff up. And I gotta tell you, this is stuff that anybody who goes to a major seminary or divinity school in the country, that's not an Evan Jellicle school, but if they go to Princeton, or Duke, or Harvard, or Yale, or Chicago or Vanderbilt, they'll hear this is what they learn. And they may go off to take a church and their congregation, they don't tell anybody this, but they know it. Yeah. And so when I get the vitriol, I just say, Well, okay, I mean, you know, you're not, you're not really just attacking me, you're attacking the whole establishment of biblical scholarship in the modern world.

David Ames 11:09
Right, exactly. reading your book reminds me of my time at Bible college, I was actually at a Evangelical, very small, actually, Assemblies of God, a school that no longer exists Bethany college at the time, which was Bethany college. So very, very conservative. But I always say that my professors did too good a job, I actually, I really do feel like I learned good critical thinking I learned about good exegesis, I learned about good hermeneutics. Something that you repeat multiple times is that we have to understand what the original author intended to say to the original readers. And that always informed the way that I handled the Bible. But I think it's something that's important that you've just described. And it's true, in my case, too, is that you talked about God would want you to be honest. And I always say that the seeds of leaving Christianity are within Christianity, the need for truth, trying to be humble, trying to be honest, all of those things tend to lead away as as truth is found outside.

Bart D. Ehrman 12:12
Yeah, it's an interesting point. Because the of course, within, within the evangelical tradition, truth is really important. And there's also a sense within the evangelical tradition, that there there are ways to find the truth. And that they are, it's not just, it's not just believing something within in Scotland, when you have students, you know, her studying at a serious of angelical school, you know, they're taught, you've got to look for the evidence. But once you open up the door to evidence, you also open up the door to people disagreeing. I always took comfort in the idea that the St. Augustine was, was a strong advocate of the idea that all truth comes from God. You know, all truth is God's truth. And so that if you, if you change your mind, and you realize, you know, just what I believed was not true, then you're not opposed to God, you're on God's side. That for me, that was very comforting when I was moving away from my Evan Jellicle faith.

David Ames 13:29
I wanted to mention that about two years ago, probably I interviewed a student of yours, or you were on his dissertation board, at least in mills. Yes, that if you remember in

Bart D. Ehrman 13:40
norm, well, I've been corresponding with him. Oh, very good. Yeah.

David Ames 13:44
great person to talk to. I loved my conversation with him very, very smart. And one of the conversations we talked about was the Gospels and whether or not it's kind of fair to say that they are hagiographies. He made the argument that as a genre is somewhat equivalent to biographies or biopics that we think of today. And I wonder if you think that that's, is that fair, or unfair to say? And what are kind of the implications of that?

Bart D. Ehrman 14:11
For a long time, scholars thought that the gospels were a genre unto themselves, scholars wouldn't put it like that, they'd say they were souI generous, and that they were their own thing. And probably about 40 years ago, some scholars started looking around and thinking, you know, it's really rare for a genre just to kind of sprang up out of nowhere. And, and they started looking at broader themes. And there was their debates about what what kind of genre were the Gospels like, and the majority of you now is pretty much what you just said that the Gospels are a kind of ancient biography. But the but the important point is and Ian would completely agree with this is that we're saying ancient biographies. And if you want to understand the Gospels, you have to understand and how ancient biographies work because they don't work like our biographies. And so but they was a it was a common genre. There were biographies of religious people. We had biographies of people who were their biography, their allegedly accounts of their lives, where they have incredible supernatural births. And they're fantastic teachers, and they can do all sorts of amazing deeds, and they're taken up to heaven when they die. And so you know, that that kind of biography is not prevalent, but that kind of biography does exist, as do biographies of, you know, normal people in the ancient world.

David Ames 15:38
sounds very familiar. Yeah. I guess where I'm driving out, and I didn't mean necessarily to put you on the spot. But when you have a New Testament scholar, it's you got to ask these questions. Is it fair to say that the Gospels are anonymous? And if they are, is it unfair to say that they are effectively hearsay?

Bart D. Ehrman 15:56
In my mind, there is no, it's not a debate whether they're anonymous, they are anonymous. The authors do not tell us what their names are. We have titles on our gospels, but the authors didn't put the titles on their gospels, the Gospels, the oldest manuscripts we have they have titles on them. Matthew's Gospel is called, according to Matthew. That's the title. That's a title, an author gives a book. According to me, the book, I mean, when I wrote my book, Armageddon, that's that just came out. I didn't call it according to BART. It's called Armageddon, you give it a title. Yeah. So if you say, according to somebody, what you're saying is, this is the version according to this person they went, they would think about this. Yeah. And so the deal with our Gospels is that they are all written in Greek, by Greek speaking Christians. They're almost always dated to after 70, of the Common Era. So 7080 90, and they're by Greek speaking Christians who did not live in Israel. And so the question two questions are well, could they have been Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? And I doubt it? I don't think so. But also, then, if they weren't disciples of Jesus, where'd they get their information? Right. And so I don't think I usually call it hearsay. But it's, it's that the deal is Jesus died and his disciples started convincing people that he was raised from the dead. And the people that convinced convinced other people who convinced other people convinced other people, and this goes on for 40 or 50 years. And that entire time, the only way to convince somebody to believe in Jesus is to tell stories about him. Right. And so by the time somebody in Ephesus has heard a story about Jesus, it's probably gone through, you know, even if it's like in the year 50, probably gone through 10 or 20, or 100. People before he gets it. Right. Historians would would agree, most historians agree, look, the Gospels do have historically reliable information in them. And they have material that's been exaggerated, and some material that is not historical at all. And the trick is finding which is which.

David Ames 17:56
And by the way, I 100% agree with that. I know that the other side of the spectrum that you deal with is the mythicism side that would want to suggest that there was no historical Jesus and that I think, is equally invalid if you if you want

Bart D. Ehrman 18:11
to Oh, you think you think you have angelical tax can be vitriolic Christ what?

David Ames 18:40
Well, let's let's talk about the book, then the new book is Armageddon, what the Bible really says about the end, I've got a quibble with you. I feel like the heart of the book, from my reading is, you're really doing this compare and contrast of the Jesus that John of Patmos is describing in Revelation versus the Jesus of the Gospels in many ways, and you're really asking the reader to come to a conclusion on that, to do these things line up. And it really isn't about the end at all. And in fact, you start with that futuristic interpretations of revelation or not really what it's about.

Bart D. Ehrman 19:18
Okay, so yeah, it's absolutely true that that's where I end the book I end the book with comparing Jesus and and the author of the apocalypse genre Patmos, the idea of the book is that I want to show how revelation has been interpreted. And what I point out is that most people don't read the book Revelation is just too bizarre and weird. And they, they might start but they just can't make heads or tails of it. And so they give up. The only people who really delve into it tend to be fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals, who are using it to show what's going to happen in our near future, that the signs are now being fulfilled. So liberal, historic Local scholars like it, you know, where I went Princeton Theological Seminary scholars there or any of the major divinity, any major Christian, biblical scholar who's not an very conservative Evangelical, doesn't accept that interpretation. Instead, the traditional liberal interpretation that's been around for a long time. It's not a liberal interpretation. It's a historical interpretation. But liberal Christian scholars look at it and say, Look, this is a historical account. It's not a futuristic account. But the theological take of these people is that the book Revelation is a message of hope. And that it's not literally predicting what's going to happen in 10 years from now. It's, it's, it's a metaphorical description of God being in control of this world, and ultimately, God's going to prevail, so that those who suffer now will will be rewarded for their suffering. And so if they just hold on, there'll be fine. And so it's a message of hope. So for years, of course, you know, when I was a fundamentalist, and even when after, you know, when I was an Evan Jellicle, I thought it was predicting the end of the world. And I realized I was wrong. And for many, many years, I held this other view, that it's a book of hope, that it's God's showing that he's going to help those who are suffering. Now, I taught it that way. I started, I came to Chapel Hill in 1988. I taught at that way until about four years ago, I always thought that and and so in my book, the first part of the book takes apart the idea that a futuristic interpretation, and I tried to show why that's not just a bad interpretation, or a wrong interpretation. But it's, it's caused huge damage in our world, right and affected things you wouldn't expect. But I did, it had does. But then the second half of the book is taking on this idea that it's a book of hope. Because that's where the Jesus, John John of Patmos comes in, because I tried to show this is not a book of hope. This is a book of violence. It is revenge, and vengeance and blood and violence. And Jesus is getting Jesus died as an innocent victim, but now he's coming back for blood. And so the reason for doing that is because if it's not a futuristic interpretation, then the other the default is, well, it's a message vote. I tried to that's not right, either. That's why I tried to show

David Ames 22:21
you also talk about the book, The Late Great Planet Earth. And the reason I want to talk about this is that I actually became a Christian in around roughly around 1988, in that in that neighborhood. And I had no idea how much influence that book had I never read it. I've never happened to read it. But now reading your book, I realized, oh, that's what people were. That's what people referring to, and no one ever mentioned it. Maybe we'll get to it specifically, but like the the idea of helicopters and nuclear weapons being represented in Revelation, I heard those kinds of rumors, and then I would read it and not see that. And I wondered who thought of that? Can you talk about how much influence that book had on fundamentalism?

Bart D. Ehrman 23:08
It's hard to calculate how much influence it had in the 1970s. As I pointed out, in my book, the entire decade of the 1970s, the best selling work of nonfiction, apart from the Bible, in the English speaking world, was the Late Great Planet Earth for the entire decade. The best sun, we're have not I'm talking about talked, not talking about Christian fiction. I'm not talking a religious book, I mean, the best selling. And so this thing was massively important. And everybody in my time, I was at Moody in the mid 70s. And we all you know, we just bought it, we literally bought it, but we actually we agreed. This is what's going to happen. And the Bible says so. And so. Yeah, so it was hugely influential. And it paved the way for other things, including, for example, in the 1990s, the Left Behind series, which, when the author Timothy Delahaye, died. So a few years ago, there had been 80 million copies of that thing. So and again, people just read and say, Oh, that's what the Bible says.

David Ames 24:11
Right? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. What a very common theme of people's deconstruction stories is not only hella anxiety, but also rapture anxiety. You know, they'll talk about being a little kid and coming home to an empty house for a moment and panicking, like Yep, pretty cool thing to do to children. But yeah, it sounds like you'd like those books. That way of interpreting revelation had a really deep impact on people particularly, again, children who were raised.

Bart D. Ehrman 24:42
Well, it also crept into popular Christian culture outside of that book when I think it was 1972 This movie came out. This is a very low budget movie night to it's called thief in the night. Everybody my generate everybody who was a teenager Evan Jellicle saw it about 20 times. And it was about, you know, the rapture having happened, and the people who were left behind, and it just scared the daylights out of all of us. And all of my friends who saw that just about every one of them tells the story of thinking that it had happened, you know, they come home after school in the mom's not there's Oh my god. And yeah, it's really damaging for some of you.

David Ames 25:24
The one of the things that leapt out at me, in your book, you point out that the idea of, of the rapture kind of has things backwards, that in the gospels, when Jesus is talking about one will be taken and one will be left, that it's more in reference to something like the last plague, where the ones who are left are the ones who are saved, the ones who are taken or the ones who are destroyed. And that really kind of blew my mind.

Bart D. Ehrman 25:49
Yeah, ya know, the play the COVID thing is a good example of it. I wish I had thought of that. But But it's, you know, people we have, you know, when I was in heaven, Jellicle we have all of these passages, right, that we refer to as clearly talking about, about the Rapture. And there's a passage in First Thessalonians four that everybody leaps on, but also this one in Matthew that you're mentioning where it says there'll be, you know, two people in the field will be taken, one will be left to women grinding grain, one will be taken one will be left there, yeah, okay. That's the rapture, the Son of Man comes, and they can take some out of the world. You know, after I gave up on a view, I actually started reading these passages carefully. And all you have to do is just read a few verses before this. Because right before this, he says that it's gonna be like, in the days of Noah, everybody in the world was taken, except for Noah died in the flood. So being taken is not good. You want to be left behind?

David Ames 26:51
Yeah, I love I love that. Because I think you know, particularly any evangelicalism, you know, that has always interpreted the opposite direction. I think that's what I still appreciate about actual scholarship and actual good exegesis of biblical text is, there's actually more there than we even give credit to it at times, just as a piece of literature.

Bart D. Ehrman 27:14
My book got published last week, and I, I've been getting emails from people saying, but you know, what about, you know, Matthew 24? You know, what about, you know, have you thought about these? Actually, if you've read my book, you will have seen that.

David Ames 27:31
Yeah, you may have spent a little time thinking about this.

You also talk about the consequences. So we we often say beliefs have consequences. And sometimes we say that eschatological beliefs have long range, deep consequences. And you go into a bit of that of, of the political, and just world health implications of people having this futuristic interpretation of Revelation.

Bart D. Ehrman 28:14
Yeah, I talk about several things because I want I want people to realize that this isn't just an issue for evangelicalism who get massively disappointed when it doesn't come when they think it will. That is, that is a problem. But there are there are issues that affect everybody in the world, actually. Because because of this view that that revelation is predicting the imminent future that the rapture is coming soon. A couple a couple of things, I will want to mention one thing, in particular, that isn't necessarily a problem, but it's something you wouldn't expect. This belief that the rapture is coming soon, is what has guided us foreign policy toward Israel. Right. And it's, you wouldn't you wouldn't imagine that. But the reality is that the Evan Jellicle support and for for Israel in America has always been very, very strong as it was in England when the Evan Jellicle movement was strong there in the 19th and early 20th centuries. And it's because of angelical. I've always interpreted interpreted biblical passages in Ezekiel and Jeremiah and other places, where the prophet talks about the people of Israel coming back to the land. They've always interpreted since the early 19th century, they've interpreted that as referring to Israel becoming a sovereign state again, Israel was destroyed as a nation in the second century. And it wasn't until 1948 that it became a sovereign state again, and in my book, I show that in fact, Christian Zionism, where Christians were supporting Israel, Jews going back to Israel, predated what we think of as Zionism for a long time. Before Jews were doing it, but the evangelicalism may not know this, but know the the leaders do and the historians do. One of the reasons for really supporting Israel now isn't just because of the issue of of oil or stability in the Middle East or needing a democracy there. It's those things are big, of course. But the real reason evangelicalism are ultimately in support of Israel is for eschatological reasons having to do with when Jesus can come back. This isn't a connected with a book of Revelation, it's connected with the book of Second Thessalonians. In Second Thessalonians, two, we're told that the end isn't coming right away. The author is saying Don't you know, don't don't panic, it's not going to can't happen yet. There's something that has to happen first, the man of lawlessness is being held back. And once once the restraint is lifted, he's going to take over and he's going to enter into the temple of God, and he's going to declare himself God. And so this is this is the antichrist figure. You're not called the Antichrist there, but that's who the Antichrist figure. Well, evangelicalism looked at that verse and said, Wait a second, the Antichrist can't go into the temple of God, there isn't a temple of God. That's the it's on the Temple Mount. And that's where the, the Islamic Dome of the Rock is, to rank for the temple for the temple for the Antichrist going to the temple, the temple has to be rebuilt. But that means that Israel has to control the Temple Mount, and for them to control the Temple Mount. And they've got to take out the Dome of the Rock. Whoa, well, they can't do that on their own. They need any support. We need to help them and so we have to support Israel. So I mean, it's a very, it's a very troubling idea that, that Israel has to destroy the dome on the rock. I mean, you talk about World War Three. Of course, that's what they want. World war three, but I mean, it's not good. And, and so that's, that is behind the idea of supporting Israel in the F angelical. Cap. And it's not an accident that Trump moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. I'm not taking a stand on this. I'm not taking a stand on that. Or on the Israeli Palestinian issue. I'm not saying anything political at all. I'm saying the reason evangelicalism wanted Trump to do that, is because Israel has to take over all of Jerusalem, and it has to take off all Israel, including the occupied territories.

David Ames 32:29
Right, so very deep implications. I was also struck by the beginning of this idea, you tell a little story, about 19th century English person where a woman had bequeath to these oak trees, and she says, These oaks shall remain standing, and the hand of a man shall not be raised against them until Israel returns and is restored to the land of promise. And that kind of escalates out from that small little thing to what you've just described.

Bart D. Ehrman 32:59
It's a I described this whole scenario in the early 19th century with a man named Louis Wei, W, a y that nobody's heard of, but oh, man, if it hadn't been for him, you wouldn't have had this strong support for the return of Israel. He converted, converted to this idea that the Bible's prophesying that Israel will return, you wouldn't have had Christian support for Zionism. And I show in my book that actually you wouldn't have fundamentalism, which, which arose in the 1890s, what we think of as fundamentalism rose in 1890s, as a direct offshoot of this early Christian Zionism that Lewis way started.

David Ames 33:47
I mean, I think that's what makes history fascinating is you can kind of trace things back to some seminal seed that has vast implications. Just

Bart D. Ehrman 33:55
you just have no idea just the smallest thing can lead to something else to something else. And then whammo, oh, my God, I mean, so it ended up affecting the world. It's quite astonishing.

David Ames 34:25
As you mentioned the second half of the book, you talk about why revelation really isn't the hopeful a book that some people take it as well. I can't tell you the times I've heard you know, I've read to the back of the book and we win, you know, talk a little bit about why that isn't the the the right interpretation as well.

Bart D. Ehrman 34:44
Well, it's certainly hopeful for a very slim group of Christians, not all Christians. In the book Revelation, a lot of the Christians end up in the lake of fire like everyone else. It's interesting. I hadn't really noticed this, but I started when I started really deeply studying revelation. You know, I've studied it since I was 17. I've studied it for 50 years, but I decided to really go all out about five years ago. And I never realized the word hope does not occur in the book Revelation. The term love of God never occurs in the book of Revelation. God is never said to love anyone. The followers of Jesus are not just the faithful, they're called the slaves. They're slaves. And so you start doing word studies of Revelation. And you don't get you know, mercy and, and forgiveness and hope and love, you don't get words like that. Vengeance and wrath and blood and, and the book itself says it's about the wrath of God and His lamb. When John writes his book, John of Patmos, whoever he is, he doesn't identify himself as John the son of Zebedee, he doesn't say he's One of Jesus disciples, he's, he's somebody named John is a common name. And he's on the island of Patmos off of the west coast of what's now Turkey. And he says that he's writing he tells us, he's writing to Christians in seven churches, in Western Asia Minor. So basically long, near the coast of western Turkey. He names the churches, and he threatens them, that Christ is going to take away their salvation because they're not acting well. And he details what it is that their problems are. And he issues some horrifying threats against Christian teachers. These aren't not not outsiders, who are, you know, teaching apostasy or teaching. But insiders, teachers in the church who God Christ is going to go in to destroy. And so anybody who agrees with John's understanding of Christianity, who has precisely his theology, and precisely his practices, they will be given the future kingdom of God. Everybody else, every pagan who's ever lived, every Jews ever lived, every non Christian has ever lived, everyone, every Christian, who doesn't believe like John, who's ever lived, is going to be sent into the lake of fire. So not very helpful, not helpful. And it's not, I have to say that on the liberal end of the spectrum, I mentioned that, you know, liberal Christian scholars tend to see this as a book of hope. And they, and there are entire scholarly books written claiming that the book of Revelation is not violent. And I think that's crazy. I don't know what version they're reading. At. But they say that Christ is introduced in the book, as they say, they say, which is, they say something wrong to begin with, which is, they say the first image of Christ is the Lamb that was slain. I say that's wrong, because it's not the first image of Christ in the book. But they say, since the guiding image of the book is Christ as the one who is the innocent victim, then, in fact, what the book is teaching is, is non violence, and that it's teaching that, that God isn't violent, and that people shouldn't be violent, because it's the innocent victim of Christ, that is the leading image. And oh, boy, is that wrong? This this lamb that was slain, shed his blood, innocently. And now he's out for revenge. And it explicitly talks about him coming out for revenge. And it says that he's the one who, who unleashes all of the catastrophes that hit the Earth, the lambdas. Right? It's not a pretty picture.

David Ames 38:31
Now, you also point out that many Christians will say, they're uncomfortable with the Old Testament, because God appears to be a God of wrath and the Old Testament, but he is the God of love in the New Testament, and you challenge that a bit, in particular with Revelation.

Bart D. Ehrman 38:45
Well, you know, the thing is, the God of love is in the Old Testament, too. So I kind of cut it both ways, because it's true. There are I detail some rather wrathful stories in the Old Testament that most people don't know. Most people would know about the battle of Jericho and how they read it, they'll see how horrible it is because the troops of Israel go in and are told to kill every man, woman and child in the city of Jericho. The children, yep, slaughter them. But that's not even the most violent one. And so the story in that part of the Old Testament, but I do talk about the God of wrath and the Old Testament, but it's also important to recognize that the God of love is in the old testament to the idea that you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and strength. That's Deuteronomy, the idea you should love your neighbors yourself. That's Leviticus. God is both a God of wrath and a God of love and the Old Testament, when people say that the God of the New Testament is very different because he's the God of love. Whenever anybody asked me that, I just tells me that I just asked them whether they've read Revelation lately. Are you kidding me? There's no love of God here at all. It's all about his wrath, and it says it is. So yeah, it's a false dichotomy. And I think it's it's really common anti Jewish thing, it's a way of saying, well as Jews, I live by God, we have a God of love, you know, so we're superior to those Jews. And yeah, okay. Your last book isn't so loving.

David Ames 40:10
Yeah. When I tell my story I talked about a couple of years before my deconversion, I did another read through the Bible. My wife would comment that I seemed angry. And, and I realized with hindsight that I was reading it for the first time with, without their grace colored glasses on without the rose colored glasses and really reading the text for when it said, again, the whole thing from from from beginning to end. Yeah. And seeing that there is a fair amount of wrath throughout throughout the scriptures, and even, you know, analyze and Sapphira being destroyed, you know, on the spot feels a bit capricious. The line in your book that just I absolutely love, I'm going to steal this and use this all the time is, far more people revere the Bible than read it. Yeah. Why do you think that is? Why is it that that people say they're committed fundamentalist believers don't actually read the texts themselves?

Bart D. Ehrman 41:07
Well, you know, I used to so I teach, you know, I teach in the south UNC Chapel Hill. And Chapel Hill is not known as a bastion of conservative thought, it's my part of the world is but the faculty at UNC tend to be politically liberal. And, and my students come from a range of places, but mainly around North Carolina, and most of them have been raised in Christian households. And one of the reasons they're taking a New Testament class is because they're thinking, you know, how hard can it be? was a barrel. Right? So, so I begin the class, first day of class, I haven't done this for a while I used to do it. I did about 350 students in the class, I'd say, all right. So you know, this isn't a class on religion, I'm not going to be trying to convince you of theology, I'm not going to try and convert you to something or D convert you but I am interested in your background. How many of you would agree that the Bible is the inspired Word of God? VO everybody would everybody would just about everybody would raise their hand and say, Okay, great. So I said, Now, how many of you in here have read the Harry Potter books? Oh, my God, okay. How many of you read all of the Bible? Scattered hands? few hands. Okay, look. So, you know, JK Rowling's great. And, you know, I can see why you'd want to read a book fire. But if God wrote a book, we just want to see what he had to say. You're telling me that you think God wrote the Bible, and you're not interested in reading it, tell you if I thought the creator of the universe wrote a book, I'd want to read it.

David Ames 42:41
Exactly.

One other thing I want to pull out as well is near the end of your book, you talk about Jesus talking about how he would judge and he would judge based on those who have done to the least of these good things, and that the many people will come and say, Lord, Lord, I did miracles in your name, but they didn't. They weren't kind they didn't feed the poor that didn't visit the prisoner. And you are contrasting that to just the needs to believe a certain set of ideas. Another intellectual hero of mine is Jennifer Michael Hecht. She has written the book doubts, wonder paradox, a bunch of others. She talks a lot about how Christianity became about belief. And therefore the other side of the coin was always about doubt that those two things are inseparable, then I'm just interested in you know, as your interpretation of the New Testament, is it about belief, or is it about practice?

Bart D. Ehrman 43:51
My sense is that early Christians did not differentiate those two, the way we do, I think that it was understood that believing Jesus and worshipping Jesus went hand in hand. And it was understood that if you didn't believe correctly, then you weren't worshipping correctly. And if you didn't worship correctly, you weren't believing correctly. Okay? Also, it was understood that if you are a true follower of Jesus, you will live according to how God wants you to. And that if you if you if you have bad belief in Jesus, you're going to be behaving inappropriately. And so, but where the connection falls apart is the early Christians didn't think that necessarily that being good, was going to be good enough. Because they didn't think anybody was was good enough. What I argue in my book is that when Jesus talks about something like say, The Good Samaritan, you know, he doesn't praise the Samaritan for his religion or his beliefs. He praises him because he helps somebody in need. And when he separates the sheep In the goats in Matthew 25, the sheep are welcomed into the kingdom of the Father. Because they've fed the hungry and they gave, gave drink to those who are thirsty, and they visited those who are lonely and they, they took care of people in need. And the sheep are surprised they're going to be entering this kingdom, I said, Lord, because Jesus says, if you've done it, to me, you've done to the least of these others, and they said, Lord, we've been around seen you. That's it, people who don't even know who Jesus is, and they get into the kingdom. Whereas, you know, the goats don't help the poor, the needy or, and so they get cast out. And so it's not based on believing in Jesus. These people didn't know Jesus is how you live. But a lot of people think, you know, of course, I mean, Christianity became the thing about became a thing of belief, you had to believe the right things. And you had to acknowledge Jesus as your Lord and Savior, and you had to agree to X, Y, and Z. And then you get that parable that you mentioned, that story that Jesus says, he says, you know, at the end, Many will say to me, Lord, Lord, and which means, you know, they're gonna say, Look, Lord, we, you know, we've confessed you, we've worshipped you, and Jesus, you haven't done the will of my Father, out of here. Whoa, for Jesus has all being a person who cares for those in need, and does something to help those who are poor and hungry and homeless. That's what that's what matters to to Jesus himself. But in Revelation, it's not that at all. It's not, it's that has nothing to do with it. It has, it means being a member of the church, being a believer in Jesus, a follower of Jesus who worships Him in the way John dictates otherwise.

David Ames 46:46
You also talk about the theme of dominance in in Revelation, and that that has direct implications to our current times as well.

Bart D. Ehrman 46:55
Boy, does it. So, you know, it's one of the contrasts, I think, between Jesus and John of Patmos, Jesus, Jesus insisted that his followers not lorded over others, that they, that they serve others, Jesus said that He himself came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for others. He tells his followers that they should sell everything and give to the poor, he praises his disciples for leaving everything for the sake of the kingdom. So this is a this is a message of giving a message of service, you get to the book, Revelation, there's nothing about giving and service. It's about destroying the enemy. I mean, forget turn the other cheek, or forget Love your enemies. You know, I mean, you you hate your enemies, and you you hate what they do, and you punish them and God, God, of course, destroys all of them. After torturing them. I mean, there's torture, God tortures people in the book, Revelation. And everybody gets thrown into a lake of burning sulfur while they're they're brought back to life so that they can be destroyed in the lake of fire. This is so this this vision of what it means to be a true follower of God or even a true follower of Jesus is completely different. In one you're not supposed to dominate and the other is all about domination. I, I don't think it's consistent at all with what Jesus said. I mean, John, John, of course, John of Patmos understood himself to be a very, very committed Christian, a very avidly committed Christian, I'm not sure Jesus would have recognized him as a follower.

David Ames 48:56
I would be remiss if we didn't at least talk about what is a proper way to tackle revelation, whether you're a believer or you're a non believer, but you're interested in actually finding out what it actually says,

Bart D. Ehrman 49:09
well, a lot of people are afraid of the book because of the symbolism and how just strange it is. Most people who use revelation use it as a kind of a way to, to, to mine for gold nuggets. You know, you don't, you don't take the whole thing. You kind of find a piece here a piece therapy's there. And actually, it's more like a jigsaw puzzles, how I talk about it in my book, you know, you think that the Bible is filled with pieces of a puzzle that will describe what's going to happen at the end. So you take a verse from Zechariah, then a book from verse from Revelation, Then something from Daniel then so Informatica and some from Revelation, and you're taking this little saying, or this verse, And you stick them all together, and you end up with how Lindsey like great plan. And so what I what I argue in the book is that even if you think the Bible is inspired, you know, even if you think that this is a book written by God Odd in some way, whether God has inspired the authors, it means that God inspired a book. He didn't inspire a jigsaw puzzle he could have, but he didn't. And so it means you read it like a book. And if you read a book, for one thing, you don't cherry pick it, you don't you don't open a book and read, you know, a line on page 222. And then another Line and Page 13, and another line of 58. And you put them together to say, that's what the author meant. You start at the beginning, and you start reading, and you go to the end, and you try to understand what the themes are, what the motifs are, what the topics are with the arc of the narrative is, and you do that, if you do that, actually, Revelation is not complicated to understand in terms of the narrative, the basic narrative is fairly easy. And I laid out in my book so people can see, you know, actually, yeah, okay, this is happening here, then this than this, the difficulty comes with the symbolism. Because it's not a normal narrative, like a gospel where you can pretty much see what Jesus is saying and doing. It's, it's very, very symbolic. The deal with reading a book is, if you're reading a book that was written in the 1600s, you've got to understand what was happening in the 1600s. To understand the book. If you're reading a Jane Austen novel, you need to know need to know what was going on in the early 19th century. If you're reading Charles Dickens novel, you need to know what's going on in Victorian England, you need to understand their context, or you're just going to, you're going to misunderstand it. And what I what I show in the book is that historical scholars have long known that the book of Revelation is a kind of book that was being written at its time, it seems like a weird one off Ross, it's like the only thing like we've ever, oh, my God, this is so weird, this must have been inspired by God, because who could come up with this, you know, that kind of thing. And, in fact, we have lots of books like that, in Jewish and Christian circles from the time that are not in the Bible, that help us understand how this genre worked at the time. And one of the things in this genre is that they're always about some prophet who has a vision, either has a vision of heaven, or has a vision of the future. And the vision is weird and bizarre with these wild beasts, and these catastrophes, and this cosmic disasters, and all this stuff's going on, and your head spinning. And the prophets head is spinning, too. And what almost always happens is, there's a angel standing by to explain it to him. Yeah, gotta pay attention to this angel. So when you're interpreting the Book of Revelation, you read it like a book, you put it into historical context, and you look for the clues the author himself has left. And the clues, once they get explained to you, you'll see Oh, my God, that's what it is. And so it is not difficult to figure out who the beast from the sea is, the Antichrist figure in the book, Revelation is not hard, the angel gives it away. But people who just read a verse here or there, and they don't see the whole package. So in my book, I tried to explain how historians have understood the book, and and how they put it in its own context, to try and understand what John was trying to communicate it to his own readers. One big mistake is to think he was writing for 21st century America. He was not he was writing for Christians and seven churches of Asia Minor. And presumably, he wanted them to understand what he had to say.

David Ames 53:27
Last question, you mentioned in the book, how people have interpreted the beast since you mentioned it to be whoever their political foe is, at the moment. And it strikes me that the history of biblical interpretation kind of is that we each come to the text with our own context. And it's hard not to read our context into what we think the original author meant, if you were interested in trying to figure out what the original author meant, and what the original hearers heard, what is kind of a method? How would you go about that?

Bart D. Ehrman 53:57
Yeah. Well, you know, so the beast is an interesting thing, because, you know, it's not the beast number is 666. In chapter 13, it's interesting. We have some manuscripts, by the way that say that the beast number is 616. And we don't have the original copy of Revelation, we have these copies from hundreds of years later, and most say 666, but some of the early ones say 616. That's interesting. But then the B shows up again in chapter 17, that's the great whore of Babylon is sitting on this beast. And in both cases, he has seven heads and 10 horns and you think, what in the world how do I, how am I supposed to understand this? But when you get when you get to chapter 17, John says the same thing. He sees this horror of Babylon, so she's got she got a name written on her head Babylon, the Great Mother of horrors. She's bedecked in fancy clothes, very expensive, rich clothes. She's sitting on this beast with seven heads and 10 horns and, and she's got jewelry and gold and silver and she's filthy rich, and she's here. holding in her hand a golden cup that's filled with the abominations of her fornication. And she's drunk with the blood of martyrs. And, and John saying, What is this, and the and the angel explains it to him. And it's so easy to unpack it in the ancient world. They've done it like that. He says, The angel says that the the beasts that has seven heads, the seven heads represent the seven hills, that the woman is seated on to woman seated on seven hills. The woman's named after a city, it's a city in Babylon the Great when the Old Testament Babylon was the city that destroyed Jerusalem and burn the temple, in John's de Rome was the city that burned that destroyed Jerusalem and burned the temple. This woman is seated on seven hills. Rome was the city built on seven hills, that's what it was called in the ancient world. And people still call it today, the city built on seven hills. And in case you still don't get it at the end of the chapter, the angel says, The woman is the city that is dominating the entire Earth. That's wrong. This is like it's a no brainer, she's dropped for the blood of the martyrs because Rome had started persecuting Christians, especially under the Caesar Nero, who executed Christians and shed their blood. She's filthy rich, because Rome has taken all the money from the provinces. And it's enriched itself. And so you go back to chapter 13, where this beast first occurs, and he's called 666. And it's the number of a man and we're told that one of the heads had suffered a mortal wound, but recovered one of the heads of the beast. So what is his man and mortal wounds 666? Well, from 17, you know, this is Rome, it's the beast is Rome. The head 666, the head of Rome, that first persecuted Christians was Nero, the Emperor Nero in the year 64. When the angel says that the number of the beast is six, six exits the number of man what he's referring to, might seem, it's going people today, don't do it this way. Because people like to say, you know, in early 20th centuries, Kaiser Wilhelm, or later was Hitler or Mussolini. When I was in college. No, there was a book written saying there was the Pope, another book wrote, and then saying it was Henry Kissinger. Lately, it has been Saddam Hussein. Now it's Putin. You know, you pick your person, and you figure out how it's 666. But you read it in John's context, where the enemy is Rome, and the Beast is identified as Rome later. And Kaiser Nero, okay, what's going on the number of the beasts he says the number of man in the Greek and Hebrew languages like other ancient languages, they didn't have separate alphabetic and numerical systems. So we have we use roman letters ABCD, but we use Arabic numerals, they use their letters of their alphabet for the numbers. So in Hebrew, all F is the first letter, so that's one, beta is two gimel, three goes up till you get to 10, then the next one is 20, then 30 than 40, then you get up to 100. And that's 100 200 300. So every letter has a numerical value. And so when it says the number is the number of a man, it means that the letters in this man's name, add up to six, xx, okay? Just what are you saying? Well, if you spell Caesar Nero in Hebrew letters, it adds up to 6x, six. But there's an interesting variant on that. Because in Hebrew, you could say Kaiser named Ron with a noon at the end our n, or you could say Kaiser Nero, without the N, without the noon, the noon is worth 50. So that with it, it's 666. And without it, it's 616, as in some of the manuscripts. This is, so this is talking about Caesar Nero. So you say how do you interpret it, you look at the clues in the text, and you put them in their historical context. And if you have any trouble, then you read a historical scholar.

David Ames 58:55
Yeah. Yeah, I think the lesson from this is the it's so confusing to us, because we're out of context. But in context, it's not subtle at all.

Bart D. Ehrman 59:05
It's not subtle at all. And you know, a lot of people thought, well, you know, John's doing this, because he doesn't want to get arrested, the authorities will find out, he's written this book, and then there'll be in big trouble. And that's why it's all so secretive. And I don't think that's the reason at all, actually, because anybody in the Roman world who heard that this horror, Babylon was sitting on a beast with seven heads that has said, the seven hills of the city, so this is not hard to figure out, anybody would write it out. But the reason he's writing such secret of language is because it's an apocalypse. Apocalypse is a divine revelation of the secrets that makes sense of this world. And so it's got to be secretive. So it's got to be mystical and weird. And so all of these apocalypses are like that. They're mystical and weird.

David Ames 59:47
And that's its own genre.

Bart D. Ehrman 59:49
It's a genre. It's a genre. It's just like we have short stories and novels and limericks and epic poems, and it's, every genre has a way of doing it. And so when you Reading in a science fiction novel, you know, you're not reading a, you know, front page article in The New York Times. It's a different kind of genre. And a short story isn't a limerick. And so, an apocalypse is an apocalypse, which means you have to know how apocalypses work, if you're going to understand any one of them, including the book Revelation.

David Ames 1:00:20
Bart Ehrman, you've been incredibly generous with your time, the new book is Armageddon, what the Bible really says about the end. I want to give you a couple of minutes just to promote the other work that you do understand that your blog the proceeds is for that go to a nonprofit. You also have your podcast. tell people how they can find your work.

Bart D. Ehrman 1:00:38
Yeah, well, let me I'll enter the blog because it's the one that's really important to me. But so I do have a podcast, a weekly podcast that's called Misquoting Jesus, Bart Ehrman, and it's not meant to mean you can misquote Jesus along with Bart Ehrman. The podcast is misquoting it with Viagra. And so every week, we talk about half an hour 45 minute interview. Great, great interviewer, Megan Lewis, and we talk about important things related to the New Testament and early Christianity every week. It's part of a larger business that I've started called the part urban professional services. If people go to Bart ervin.com, I've done I do courses, I do lectures and courses for purchase. I've got one coming up on April 15, that even if people don't come to it, they can purchase it. This will be a lecture, a 50 minute lecture on will you be left behind a history of the rapture and with q&a and with additional reading if you if you purchase it, but then courses on you know everything from the book of Genesis to the Gospels and and some of these rate lecture courses that people can hear me talk about this stuff. So let me just say about the blog, though, because the blog is near and dear to my heart. I've done it for nearly 11 years now. I post five times a week, or six times five or six times a week, between 12 114 100 words a day. Wow, on everything having to do with the New Testament, Jesus gospels, Paul, early Christianity, persecution martyrdom, women are up to Constantine and beyond. And people can comment on my posts. And I answer every question I get. And I've done this for 11 years. There's a fee to join a small membership fee to join. But as you said, David, I, I don't keep any of this money myself. I give all of it to charities, mainly dealing with hunger and homelessness. And so last year, last year, the blog raised over $500,000 Wow. So for me, it's kind of a service to the community and to the world because we give money to international relief agencies. So people should check it out. Because you know, it's not a large fee, and it contributes to a really good cause. And you get to hear about biblical scholarship or New Testament early Christianity scholarship.

David Ames 1:02:55
It's a win win and you're heaping burning coals on the heads. Bart Ehrman, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Bart D. Ehrman 1:03:04
Thanks for having me.

David Ames 1:03:11
Final thoughts on the episode. The thing that strikes you upon meeting Bart Ehrman is how nice a person he is. He was incredibly gracious with his time, he was incredibly gracious with my naive questions. I'm incredibly jealous of the people who get to have him as a professor, he reminded me so much of the best parts of Bible College and actually digging into the text of the New Testament in a way that is respectful and also critical. And I think Bart handles that really, really well. I think Bart struck something very important when he talked about truth and evidence. I'll quote him here. He says, within the evangelical tradition, truth is really important. And there is also a sense within the evangelical tradition that there are ways to find the truth. It isn't just believing something. When you have students studying it at a serious evangelical school, they are taught you have to look for evidence. But once you open up the door to evidence, you also open up the door to people disagreeing. I think that's incredibly insightful. I think all of apologetics is the attempt to bring evidence to the table. But once you have evidence as your guiding light as your standard, it will inexorably inevitably lead you away from the claims of Christianity. This goes back to what we talked about last week in that the truth will set you free. I know that for many of you Bart's books were the beginning of the deconstruction process, the beginning of letting go of inerrancy of Scripture, the beginning of letting go of the authority of Scripture. And now having the opportunity to interview Bart, I understand why he's so respectful, that even while he is tearing down the dogma or the stringent fundamentalism. He's also doing it with care, compassion and love of the text that is deeply attractive, deeply, deeply attractive. Which brings us to his current book, Armageddon, what the Bible really says about the end. It's a striking difference in that he is pulling out the violence and the wrath of the New Testament, which we don't often think of the dominion theology comes out of Revelation. Bart is tying all of our modern issues with Christian nationalism and evangelicalism to the book of Revelation. And it's skewed view, relative to the Gospels of who Jesus is. I was also just absolutely amazed to discover my ignorance about how Lindsay's book The Late Great Planet Earth. Probably many of you have read that it just so happens that I didn't. But as I said, so much of the interpretation of revelation by evangelicals comes from that book. And it was enlightening and intriguing to read, Bart, show us what the book actually says, about the time of John of Patmos and early Christianity. And ultimately, he compares and contrasts that Jesus of John of Patmos writes about in Revelation versus the Jesus who is in the Gospels and that is a stark contrast. The book is out now it is amazing. Go check it out. Read it. Do check out Bart's podcast Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman Bart's blog, which is at Urban blog.org. The proceeds for that basically do what Jesus talked about in Matthew 24, to feed the hungry to house the poor. So please support Bart and become a member on his blog today. You can also find the courses that he mentioned at bought at BART ehrman.com. If you'd like to dig into the study of the New Testament, I want to thank Bart for being on the podcast for giving us his time for being so gracious with my naive questions. Thank you so much, Bart, for all the work that you do. It is incredibly appreciated by me and the community of these listeners. The secular Grace Thought of the Week is obviously inspired by Bart. Last week we talked about the truth will set you free. This week, I want to talk about doing good in the world. What I'm talking about with secular grace is often very practical, what we do for one another, how we connect with each other. I actually want to read a sliver of the Matthew 24 reference that we made a few times. Then the King will say to those on his right come you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me food. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was a stranger, and you welcomed me. I was naked, and you clothed me. I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison, and you came to me. Then the righteous will answer him saying, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick and in prison and visit you? And the King will answer them truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me. Interviewing Bart reading Bart's book, I was struck again about what attracted me to Jesus to begin with. And this is it, that it was ruthlessly practical that what Jesus had to say was about doing Christianity, not believing things, and historical Christianity. And evangelical Christianity specifically has warped that into a set of dogma and beliefs. And the point I want to make is that from a secular Grace point of view, we can do these things. If you want to say that you are a follower of Jesus, this is the way you would do it. By feeding the hungry, housing the house less and generally caring for people and their practical needs. The great irony that many of us who have deconstructed and D converted is that we find we can be better Christians as non believers than we were as believers. And I think this is another one of those opportunities to do good in the world without having the baggage that comes along with the dogma and historical tradition. So many good interviews coming up including A number of community members, Holly Laurent from the mega Podcast coming up. Until then, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful human being. The beat is called waves by MCI beats. Do you want to get in touch with me to be a guest on the show? Email me at graceful atheist@gmail.com for blog posts, quotes, recommendations and full episode transcripts head over to graceful atheists.com. This graceful atheist podcast part of the atheists United studios Podcast Network

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

David Hayward: Naked Pastor

Artists, Authors, Deconstruction, ExVangelical, Podcast

This week’s guest is David Hayward, also known as The Naked Pastor. David is “a pastor turned artist painting, drawing, and thinking about what it takes to be free to be you.”

For over a decade, David has been creating online spaces for anyone “interested in deconstruction, spiritual journeying, freedom of thought, or looking for your authentic self.” His personal story and the wisdom he’s gained over the years continue to speak to those of us who have completely left religion and those who still believe.

For more information, be sure to check out David’s website and follow him online!

Links

Website
https://nakedpastor.com/

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/nakedpastor/

David’s Books
https://amzn.to/3lm9oSr

Recommendations

#AmazonPaidLinks

More from David Hayward
More from Esther Perel
More from Gabor Maté
More from Cormac McCarthy
More from Carlo Rovelli

Quotes

“So one of the big things that we do when we deconstruct if we keep going in the deconstruction or the deconversion direction, is we demystify everything, everything has to be demystified. De-magical-ized I don’t know what the word is. De-supernatural-ize everything.
… So one of the things we do when we deconstruct, is that magical thinking has to go.”

“I wanted to pull back the curtain and let people see what the life of a real pastor is like. I wanted to be totally transparent and honest and vulnerable and open…That’s why I chose ‘Naked Pastor.’”

“I just had a moment where I saw the connectivity and the oneness, the unity of all things. It was a profound instant where I saw the unity of everything…From that moment on, I experienced a profound peace of mind that I’d been seeking for my whole life…”

“…the inner life of a person which includes, mental, emotional, psychological, everything…All that, to me, is ‘spiritual’.”

“For me, my deconstruction started way back in seminary when I started questioning the inspiration of Scripture.”

“[My wife and I] had to come to the realization that it wasn’t compatibility of belief that held us together. That wasn’t the glue…There was love and mutual respect, wonder and appreciation for this person who isn’t exactly like you. That is what made our marriage better.”

“[Marriage is] an agreement for each of us to grow, and to make space for one another and constantly adapt to that growth.”

“I don’t label myself. The can of food is very comfortable with its contents. It doesn’t need the label…The label is for other people, slapped on, so I can put you in the right place on the right shelf. And we do that with human beings. We put a label on people so we know where to put them.”

“My home is in Christianity, but I have cottages everywhere.”

“I appreciate my roots, but I’m not going to let them limit me.”

Interact

X-Shaped Hole In Your Heart
https://gracefulatheist.com/2023/02/08/the-x-shaped-hole-in-your-heart/

Join the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group!

Deconversion
https://gracefulatheist.com/2017/12/03/deconversion-how-to/

Secular Grace
https://gracefulatheist.com/2016/10/21/secular-grace/

Support the podcast
Patreon https://www.patreon.com/gracefulatheist
Paypal: paypal.me/gracefulatheist

Attribution

“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats

Transcript

NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) and likely has many mistakes. It is provided as rough guide to the audio conversation.

David Ames 0:11
This is the graceful atheist podcast United studios podcast. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David, and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Thank you to all my patrons on patreon.com. If you too would like an ad free experience of the podcast and receive the occasional bonus episode, please become a patron at any level on patreon.com/graceful atheist. Our Facebook group deconversion Anonymous is trying to be a safe place to land for those people who are doubting, questioning, deconstructing, and even D converting. Please join us at facebook.com/groups/deconversion Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. On today's show, our lien interviews Our guests today, David Hayward, the naked Pastor David deconstructed very early relative to the rest of us, suffered the pain of leaving ministry, and has since become an artist and an author. He is very well known for the cartoons he draws that are biting commentary on the church, as well as freeing and embracing the diversity of humanity. David has written a number of books, including a book for partnerships that have a disparity in faith or lack thereof called till doubt do us part. His most recent book is called flip it like this is a book of cartoons, some of his great work, one of his earlier works, I also really appreciate his called questions are the answer. You can find David at naked pasture.com. There'll be links in the show notes for his website and his books. Here is our Lean interviewing David Hayward.

Arline 2:08
Hi, David, welcome to the graceful atheist podcast.

David Hayward 2:12
Thank you. Thanks for having me on your show. Good to be here. Nice to meet you early.

Arline 2:16
Nice to meet you. I'm, I'm excited. I followed your work on Instagram over the past couple of years. And it's funny, it's clever. And it is extremely timely, often and I'm always impressed with the work that you do. I've learned a lot also.

David Hayward 2:34
I appreciate that. Thanks very much. It's good to hear positive things back from people that you know, I'm doing some work that people appreciate. I don't always hear it that way. But I'm really grateful when I do.

Arline 2:48
Yes, I can imagine the the pushback that you would receive for some of your work. But um, the way we always begin is just tell us about the spiritual environment of your childhood.

David Hayward 3:01
I grew up in a I would say a Christian home I when I was born, I was baptized Anglican when I was a baby. I'm in Canada. So that would be if you're in the States, I would be Episcopal. And I grew up in a home where my father worked for the Ontario Provincial Police where he was transferred quite a bit every couple of years. So we moved a lot in in Ontario, Canada. And so we never, we never graduate. We never gravitated towards the same church denomination we are whatever was convenient and closest or, you know, most fun or most fruitful, you know. So I grew up in a home that was Christian, but at the same time not devoted to any one denomination. And some people think that's a handicap but for me, I saw it as an advantage where I I didn't feel like I needed to stay in the Anglican Church or wherever I ended up. And I always found myself gravitating towards churches that I felt had the most space for me to grow. And to become my most authentic self and even as a pastor I found myself gravitating towards churches that were were a good environment for me and my family to become our truest self. So, you know, I, I was like I said it was we were Anglican. We went into the United Church. We were in the Catholic Church. We were in the Baptist Church, Pentecostal church. I went to a Pentecostal Bible college. I went to an evangelical seminary, got my master's, I got ordained as a Presbyterian minister, and then I switched to vineyard, which is where I ended my ministry and vineyard for people who don't know it's kind of a it's an evangelical move. then kind of a mixture of Baptists teaching and Pentecostal kind of experience. So that's where I ended up. And I, you know, I met my wife at Bible College. We served in the ministry together for many years, roughly 30 years. And then I left the ministry in 2010. And decided to see if I could make my blog naked pastor, full time gig. And it worked. So that's what I do now.

Arline 5:31
Wow. Very cool. So was there anything specific that led you out of ministry? Or was it just that seemed to be the next right choice for you?

David Hayward 5:39
Well, it didn't feel like the right choice. But it was because I no longer felt I had the freedom to grow, were in the direction I wanted to grow. So I was starting to get, you know, phone calls from head office and things, suggesting I toned down my cartoons or my posts, and maybe run things through them first for approval. And that's just not the way I live my life. My most fundamental drive, I think, is personal freedom to be who I am. And, you know, that was a huge infringement on that personal freedom of mine, even as a pastor. So that happened that started happening in around 2009. And then in 2010, was when I finally realized I had to go my own way.

Arline 6:32
So you were already writing you're already drawing? Were you already like, on Instagram? So I am, as of 2020, was when I was like, I don't think I was 2019. I don't think I believe all this stuff anymore in mind, my husband realized he couldn't believe in 2017. And that sent me on a journey and then 2019 And so that's when I first even got on the internet, want to on the internet, but on social media to be like, am I the only person who's gone through this? So it's only been a few years that I'm familiar with your work, but all the way back to 2010? Or before that you were already online and your church people didn't love your online presence?

David Hayward 7:11
Well, I I started blogging as as naked. pastor.com. And in 2000, sorry, 2005. I started a blog. Yeah, around 2004 2005. I started blogging as naked pasture. And at that point, I'd already been painting and stuff. But I would post written blog posts and I would share my paintings, landscapes mostly. And I it was in 2006, I think where I had been following a cartoonist online, and I thought it just suddenly dawned on me, hey, why don't I try drawing cartoons and see what happens? And they took off. And so I decided to make cartoons, my primary means of communication. And you know, a lot of fun. I thought it would last maybe a month, because I challenged myself to draw one every day until I ran it. But here I am. Many, many years later, still drawing cartoons. And pissing people off.

Arline 8:16
I love it. I love it, pissing people off and also making the rest of us go like, that is such a clever way to say that, like, that's exactly what I was thinking. And, and it's so concise. And it's, in my personal opinion, way more interesting than like a tweet, where it's just words, but like, the pictures are fantastic.

Going back, where did make it pasture? Where did where did the moniker come from?

David Hayward 8:47
I started out as David hayward.ca, which stands for Canada. And then I saw that's kind of boring, and I really wanted.com And so I, I called my blog, Church pundit.com. And after a while, I thought, Gee, that sounds kind of pretentious, and kind of boring. And so I for some reason, I searched for naked pasture.com Because at that time, like the naked chef, oh, geologist, and he could true thought that was kind of cool. And I had inadvertently entered into a auction for the, for the URL astra.com Because some months later, I got an email saying Congratulations, you won the auction and my stomach just dropped because I thought oh, how much you know? Like 70 bucks, like nobody wants it. Right. I got a good pastor.com Because I was a pastor at the time. And blogs are a lot of pastors blogging at the time. And you know, talking about theology and about their church services and their sermons and their premium coffee and doughnuts and Bible studies and home groups and leaders and worship, all that stuff. And I wanted to pull back the curtain and let people see what the life of a real pastor is like. And I wanted to be totally transparent and honest and vulnerable and open. And so that's why I chose naked pastor. It's just me being totally out there, unadorned and raw and real. And, you know, for the first while, I mean, I started in absolute Oblivion, like nobody heard about me or anything, and even my own congregation was like, why would we read your blog when we have to listen to you every week already? So I was under the radar for for many years, but it was when I started drawing the cartoons. And they started to, they started to get noticed. And, you know, I was a little bit you might call progressive in my thinking, and might have been, might have been associated with progressive Christianity at that time. But in 2009, I had a profound sort of epiphany moment where it was very mystical experience, no, no chemicals or mushrooms involved. It was just, I just was had a moment where I saw the connectivity, and the oneness, the unity of all things. It was just a profound instant, where I just saw the unity of everything. And that there's one reality that we all share. But we all have different perspectives and opinions and descriptions of of that one reality. And I just sort of naively started sharing that in my blog. That's when I started getting in trouble because it was being seen, it was being interpreted that I was deviating away from orthodoxy at that point. And, yeah, naturally, and I was a bit naive, because for me, it was a very profound, liberating experience, where from that moment on, I experienced profound peace of mind that I'd been seeking for my whole life, I finally experienced that peace of mind, Theologically speaking, ever everything was at rest. And I was excited to share this experience of peace of mind and freedom. And, but it, it made quite a few people unhappy. And it was in 2009, when I started getting in trouble. And people started concern and, and I knew my time was up. And sure enough, it was a year later when I left.

Arline 13:00
So what did leaving leaving the ministry look like? Was that like, leaving belief Bible god, like? Because I've heard Derrick Webb has said before, you know, we deconstruct different things, but that, you know, the God of the Bible, or the Bible or church, and there's so many different things, but none of it necessarily leads to any specific place. So I'm curious, like, what did that look like?

David Hayward 13:24
That's, I really agree with what you just said. deconstruction doesn't necessarily lead you to any certain place. And I emphasize that all the time, because there is quite a few movements out there trying to steer people to certain conclusions. And that, to me, undermines the whole purpose of deconstruction was which is basically questioning your beliefs and, and becoming spiritually independent. So, and by spiritual, I'm not necessarily invoking any divinity or supernatural what I when I, when I say spiritual, I'm talking about the inner life of a person, which includes mental, emotional, psychological, everything, all that combined, to me, is spiritual. It's kind of in the kind of a union kind of a field to it to me. Yeah. So I believe and I've said this for a long time, I think for Christians or believers, there's two different deconstructions one is theological and one is ecclesiological. So there's a theological deconstruction when you question your beliefs and, you know, it's kind of like the blue or the red pill to see how far down the rabbit hole go. And you can keep going. The other one is ecclesiological, where you deconstruct your relationship to the church. And my observations are that people who deconstruct Ecclesia logically don't necessarily deconstruct theologically. So I know a lot of people who left the church who are just as dogmatic and fundamentalist they were in In the church, deconstruct the illogical often their relationship with the church has to change. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. It's like any relationship really like your I, I'm assuming you're still married, I'm married when I my mind about very important issues that affects the relationship. So it's the same with people. When they change their minds theologically, it's going to affect the relationship to the church.

So for me, 2009 that moment, profound flash of insight moment for me, was the conclusion or the culmination of decades of theological anguish. It's for me, my deconstruction started way back in seminary when I started questioning the inspiration of Scripture. And it took that long for everything to kind of, it was kind of like the final piece of 1000 piece puzzle just sort of snapped into place, the picture came into view, and it was done. Then I had to leave the ministry, which meant leaving the church for me. And that was a whole other ball of wax that happened pretty quickly. But it took but my theological deconstruction took decades, whereas my ecclesiological deconstruction happened overnight, and, and it took Lisa and I, a couple of years to find your feet again, that was a really rough period of time. To the point now, where we're, we're doing great, we're better than we've ever been, ever. But it took a lot of negotiating to figure out how to navigate those really, really tumultuous times.

Arline 16:51
Yeah, I can empathize my husband. We met in college ministry like that. So like, we were, we were Calvinists. So it's like John Piper, my Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler, this, that's our world for a long time. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Neither of us grew up in the church. So we did, we at least had some sense of self when we became Christian. So we didn't have I've, you know, interviewing people and just getting to know people. The things people have to pull apart from what they were taught when they were little, tiny kids. I mean, it's just this whole other experience. But um, our everything was based off of Jesus and the Church and all that. And then 2017, you know, he would we become parents and just things start changing for him, to where he's like, I don't think I can believe in the God of the Bible anymore. And I'm like, so yeah, that tumultuous time where it's like, the, I was told, marry a godly man, find my bow, as you know, like, and then everything will just go wonderfully. And, and at least, you know, just so many promises that they make you. And they do say, you know, marriage isn't for making you happy. It's for making you holy, and all this stuff. But it was still like, I just had expectations that we were always going to be Christians.

David Hayward 18:07
And I gotta write that. Cartoon out of that. I'm sorry.

Arline 18:13
Yes, that some of the little one liners that pastors can come up with. But yeah, so I can empathize with just that time of being married and things are just so vastly different than you ever expected. And it was scary for us. It took it was about two years before I was like, and he never tried to D convert me like it was never, it was never like evangelizing for not believing it was just, I just had to figure out well, especially being Calvinists, he can't lose his salvation. So like what what has happened? So yeah, I can empathize with that experience.

David Hayward 18:49
No, it was it was such a profound experience for Lisa and I, that I wrote a book about a called till death do us part when changing beliefs change your marriage? Oh, wow. Yeah. Because it's happening a lot. There's not many resources out there for couples. Most books for marriage are you need to be compatible, and you need to believe the same things and hold the same value. Whereas Lisa and I suddenly we're on. We're not on the same page anymore. Are we even in the same chapter? Are we in the book? Are we in the same library? You know, so it was it was really difficult to figure out how to be married again.

Arline 19:31
Yes, we will make sure all of your resources are in the show notes. We have a Facebook group deconversion anonymous, is the name of it. It's based off the episodes that we do. And there are lots of, you know, for want of a better term term, unequally yoked marriages and we have people who one yet one has D converted, the other hasn't and it's hard for the believing spouse to understand we have a least one person in the group who is still a Christian, but their spouse has D converted. And he was just looking for like somebody else who no longer believes I'm not sure how he found the Facebook group, but who know who no longer believes to help him understand his wife. It's so hard on marriages, it's so hard on both both people. And we only usually have one or the other in the group. But um, yeah, yeah, there aren't a lot of resources. You're exactly right. There aren't.

David Hayward 20:28
Yeah, but I think it's a great opportunity for us to grow as individuals, when our spouses change on such a dramatic level, like Lisa and I, we've been married now we're going on through 43 years, holy, very nice.

Arline 20:42
And

David Hayward 20:45
we, like I said, are better now than we've ever been. Because, you know, we grew along side by side for so many years. And we were serving in the church together. And it was kind of like our lives were kind of mirroring each other. And then when that happened, though, she decided to go to university, she was 48 years old, she decided to go to university and get a nursing degree. And so she's a nurse. And I decided to, I went and taught at a university for a couple of years. And then it was in 2012, when I thought, I'm going to see if I can make make a pastor go. And it worked. But we, our lives now were so very, very different. And our beliefs were different and everything. So it was tricky. But we come to the realization that it wasn't compatibility, a belief that held us together. That wasn't the glue, we always kind of assumed it was. There was love and mutual respect, and wonder and appreciation for this person who isn't exactly like you. And that, for me is what made our marriage better.

Arline 22:06
David Ames, the main interviewer, the the actual graceful atheists, that's his, that's his moniker. He he and his wife, she is still a believer. And he has said the same thing. It's like, it's love. It's respect. It's honoring and loving her whole self. And she loving him. Not like because we were told in that well, that my husband and I were told in the church that yes, Jesus and you having the same beliefs, even very particular theological agreement, is what's going to hold you together. And so when you don't have that, you think, oh, no, there isn't anything left. And then you just slowly for me, I just watched Donnie be the same husband be the same person he'd always been. And I was like this, nothing. Our values haven't changed. Nothing has changed. I, I expected things to get crazy. But yeah, you're exactly right. It's respect and love.

David Hayward 23:01
Yeah, it goes back to that. That vision I had in 2009, or experience where I saw the oneness of all things. That there's one reality but a zillion thoughts. So when Lisa changes her thoughts, she's still Lisa, kind of like the river out front of my house. It's very deep and wide, and not a deep, deep level, it's still the kind of cases River, the surface does all the time. But that doesn't change the fact that it's still the same river. And so, you know, our beliefs are like that. I think they're constantly changing and moving or thoughts are changing and moving. And, but at a deep and fundamental level, I'm still me and Lisa still hurt. I remember the first time I saw the Solon Bible College walk into the cafeteria was like, it wasn't, Oh, my goodness, she believes in the substitutionary atonement. No, I it was totally different than the attraction that happened with theology or belief. That came later, but we got back to that primary wonder for each other. And which comes before belief, you know?

Arline 24:21
Yes. Because you don't know anything about her when you first meet someone, you know?

David Hayward 24:27
Yeah, I mean, isn't that marriage though, when when you marry someone, you're you're not saying I'm going to marry you never change. Basically, you're saying never grow up. Never become more self aware. Never peel back the layers of your own onion within to become a deeper person, because I wouldn't be able to handle it. It's the opposite. It's like you, you go deeper into yourself and become more self aware and more of an individual individuated person more Have an authentic individual. And I will love that. I will love you for that. And, and so that to me is what marriage is the agreement for each of us to grow and to make space for one another and constantly adapt to that growth.

Arline 25:18
Yes, I agree completely. 21 year old Arline should not be in 40 year old Arline's body doing life? Absolutely not I, Oh, heavens, poor little young.

Thinking back to that time, that hard time when y'all were married. And for people who are listening, what are some of the things that you guys found to be most helpful when, when you had different beliefs, differing beliefs?

David Hayward 25:55
Well, there's the obvious ones, and that is therapy finding a good counselor. Or, for us, also, I believe in the value of a good coach, if you can find one. They're more expensive. Yeah, find one. That's good as well. Hopefully, you've got a few friends around that love you both, and can provide a safe space for you guys. And then there's each other. And this, this is the hard part, this is where you sit down with one another, and you have the hard conversations. And, you know, the very uncomfortable squirming kind of conversations. And so that, to me, is is the most important thing. Like Lisa and I went into this transition, this traumatic transition, kind of with tools in our belt already. We'd already been to marriage retreats, and marriage weekends, and we'd already been for marriage counseling several times. And we've read a lot of books on marriage and relationships and love and had already had our government communication skills down. So that when we went into this situation, we weren't caught off guard completely. And we had tools at our disposal. I remember, a few years ago, this was before COVID, we were in a room with a bunch of couples, and we ended up talking about marriage for some reason, or whatever. And I said, well, has anybody here been to like a marriage weekend? Or a marriage retreat? No. Nobody's been to a marriage. Well, anybody here been for marriage counseling? Nobody? Well, has anybody here read a book on marriage? Nobody. So it when when a crisis comes to, to their relationships are totally unprepared. You you learn the skills of how to be married. Hopefully you you have them those skills before a crisis. It's hard to you know, as they say, drain the swamp when you up to your ass and alligators.

Arline 28:22
That's very true. So my first thought is the hubby and I had also been to marriage retreats. And we we had read but what I had read the books, he's not a book reader, I'd read the books and then give him that, you know, too long didn't read kind of stuff. But there are some problematic things in Christian marriage books. So are you saying like, just the the basic things that are this is universally probably helpful in interpersonal relationships, communication, listening, all those kinds of things. Like just having those.

David Hayward 28:59
Yeah, so when people ask now about marriage books, I recommend mine for one part, but then there's people like David snark, who wrote passionate marriage, which is, I think the best book on marriage out there. There's Esther Perel.

Arline 29:17
Yes, she's fantastic.

David Hayward 29:19
Yeah, there's Gabor Ma Tei. There's other people writing about relationships out there, who I recommend to people. It's, it's really, really it's just about being interested in human growth, and makeup and psychology and depth. Even reading Carl Jung and dream interpretation and, you know, understanding the Anima and the Animus and, you know, the female aspect for the male and the male aspect for the female and all that all those kinds of things are just little tools that we use to understand ourselves better. The shadow side of ourselves, for example, learning how to integrate that rather than reject that, like Christianity tends to want to do. So yeah, it's, there's there's a lot of books out there. And a lot of information to help people in their marriage, relationships or in other relationships. Yeah. And so like the David snark book, passionate marriage has been around for many years. But it's one that I recommend all the time. And even if you just read that one and study it intently, it's, it's your 90% there, you know, it's just a resource.

Arline 30:52
And I wasn't expecting to have a whole lot of this discussion. But how about for couples, I've seen different discussion in our Facebook group. One of them is like, Oh, well, you have D converted, or I have, I have d converted, and I don't want to do this anymore. Now whether there's more to it, you know, we don't know that just seems to be something that's been brought up where one spouse is like, this can't work because you're not a Christian, or I'm not a Christian anymore.

David Hayward 31:22
So one of the big things that we do, when we deconstruct if we keep going in the deconstruction or the deconversion direction, is we demystify everything, everything has to be demystified, the magical lies. I don't know what the word is. The supernatural is everything. You know, for many of us, Christians, we grew up in a Christian culture or became absorbed in a Christian culture that said, marriage is forever. And, and, you know, God's blessing and God and all this stuff. And it was all, you know, very scary, sacred, you couldn't even have sex with somebody, because they would take part of your soul with them. And, you know, save yourself for your spouse, because otherwise you're giving your soul parts of your soul away at all to do all this magical thinking, right? So one of the things we want we deconstructed is that magical thinking has to go. And there's another book too, John did her Joan did her on the Year of Magical Thinking, fantastic, but

Arline 32:33
it's on my TBR list, actually, oh, it's so good.

David Hayward 32:38
And where she, she spent a whole year she lost her husband, in a whole year, magical thinking. And that book meant so much to me, because it it described my deconstruction that I was, you know, I, I've never seen a miracle. And I grew up in a Christian culture that believed in miracles. So I could, I've never, nope, sorry, I have never seen a miracle. And, you know, I've seen people say, Oh, my head suddenly feels a little bit better. So suddenly, my right nostril, like, breathe through my right nostril. I see that all the time, or, I've never seen a real miracle. And, and so just that kind of thing. So it's the same with marriage, where I really do believe a lot of couples come to that place where they start deconstructing, or one does and the other doesn't, or whatever, and they're like, I don't want to do this anymore. And when you remove that magic, the sacredness, the holiness, you know, God, divinity, all this kind of scary punishment and eternal torment, when you remove all that, it might make absolute sense at that moment for them to go their separate ways. Some couples got married, because they were prophesied to that they should get married, some couples got married, because that was the only way they could have sex. So he just got married, because, you know, their parents made an agreement, you know, and they get to the point where they're saying, I I'm not invested in this, I don't really love you the way I think I should love you. You know, so some people are married, that shouldn't be and, and there's some people who are married that don't have to be and and then there's some people who are married who go through this struggle, where they want to remain married, but they don't know how I want to help those couples do that. In my book, I do have a few chapters in there about you know, maybe maybe it is time to go your separate ways and that's okay. That's totally okay. And, and, and that's fine. It could be heartbreaking for one or the other. But yeah, that happens a lot.

Arline 34:49
Yeah.

So If you are pastor turned artist, you're doing your drawings. Time is going by, even after you've left the church, like, are your beliefs still changing? Like, are you what, what? What do you believe? Now I was looking, I was thinking back to all the cartoons I've seen. I was like, I have no idea. I know he's calling out the church and calling in the church, and it's fabulous. I have no idea what this man believes. So it's curious, what, where are you now spiritually? Like, what? So? Or is there a label?

David Hayward 35:32
No, there's not a label. I don't label myself because Nice. Anna food is very comfortable with its contents. Uh huh. It doesn't need to label it, you know, it could be Irish Stew, let's say. And just totally comfortable with being whatever the label is for other people that they slammed on, they can buy who you are, and put you in the right place on the shelf. And we do that with human beings. We slap a label on people, so we know where to put them how to talk with them. Or not? No, I don't, I don't use a label. I say I My home is in Christianity, but I have cottages everywhere. I also have. Christianity is in my DNA. I mean, I was baptized. When I was a baby in the Anglican Church, I was circumcised by a Jewish rabbi when I was eight days old. You know, I was my parents were very, very religious. And all like I, I grew up in that whole whole culture. But so my, it's in my DNA. I also say I appreciate my roots, but I'm not going to let them limit me. So I I'm at that place. Like I said, when that when that happened to me in 2009, realizing that there is one reality with many experiences interpretation, so to say I'm a Christian is basically to cut myself off from all of those other interpretation, interpretations and expressions and articulations. One reality, I feel I'm more at one with everyone. And, you know, for me, Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, atheist. They're all just perspectives on the same reality. And one, some might feel one's more right than the other, but no one has a corner on the truth. No one has the whole pie. They're all different interpretations of this one reality. This one reality is the pie. And we all are somewhere in there, you know. And so when I, when somebody says, Are you a Christian, yes or no, I'm saying, well, let's unpack that. Like, what does that mean? And immediately most people are like, Okay, you're fudging you know, you're getting squirmy, you're like jello, trying to nail jello to the wall? Because most people who are believers need that yes or no? Yes. Whereas most people who aren't they're agnostic, or they're atheist, or, or whatever, they don't need that. Yes or no. As much. Oh, so for me, I'm, I'm also there's another reason to, I want to be very careful. So yeah, on the one hand, I do not have a statement of faith. I, I could not write a theology book. Because it isn't a true the true expression of my myself or what I think best reflects reality. But also, I don't want people to say, I believe what David Hayward believes, if I follow David Hayward, you know, it was a cluster. So I really avoid providing anything that caught could cause somebody to want to do that. So, you know, there's people out there writing, theology or spirituality, and people say, I'm going to follow them. I like the way you know, and for me, because what what is at the core of my I said this earlier, my fundamental drive is my, my, I want to be free to be my authentic self. And so how that interprets in the world is, I want you I want our lien to be have the freedom to be her authentic self. Wherever that ends up. You could end up a Calvinist again or a believer or a non believer or an atheist. I do want care. I honestly don't care. And I honestly don't think it matters. In the great scheme of things. What matters is that you eat that freedom to be who you are freely. That to me is what's the most important thing, work no matter where you end up. And so when I talk about deconstruction, I'm very very careful to a I'm emphasize that this is your journey, you're taking the steering wheel of your own life, and you get to drive wherever you want. That, to me is the most the most important thing. I love that. Yeah, a lot of people find that really encouraging. Or like, I feel I'm free I can, I can decide how to be spiritual or not. But for other people find it very, very frustrating because a lot of people want directions, they want a map with a destination. That to me is, is not life.

Arline 40:36
No, no, I can agree now used to I, I needed someone to like, lead me and tell me and tell me maybe what to believe maybe that really was part of it. Just what to believe, and give me the Bible study and other things. And, and I've heard this from from other people as well, leaving the church leaving Christianity. It's like, Oh, crap, I have to figure out like, what I believe what are my values? What does like I love the little like, devotional size kind of books. I was like, I didn't know the word day book. I was like, I don't what do I read in the morning? Do I have to read things in me was just so many little things and huge things. How are we going to parent the boys, we have two boys. You just have to you have to figure it out on your own. And it's, it's a lot, it's wonderful. And it's but it can be a lot, I can see people being like, you know what, I'm just gonna go back and be in my little square. And they tell me what to do and what to think, like,

David Hayward 41:36
happens all the time. It's like when we left home, I remember when I first left home, when I was 18, I went to college. It was it was very exciting. There was a it was a lot of fun, but I had to learn how to you know, pay bills, buy growth, make, you know, make a home, you know, meet women, get married, figure out how to, you know all that stuff and eating and scary. And it's the same spiritually, where we get to the point where we need to be, be able to take care of ourselves and decide that. And this, to me is where the church has really dropped the ball and insists it knows how you should be living. And the church not loves nothing better than to hear you say, I need you to tell me what to believe. And that, to me is the exact opposite of spiritual maturity, where we say I'm going to decide how to be spiritual. Thanks very much. It's like walking into a buffet. You get to decide what to eat, you know, by now what's healthy for you and what's not healthy, but maybe you want a night off you, you want to enjoy some pie and some, you know, barbecue ribs and mashed potatoes with gravy. And you know, you want to enjoy all that stuff sometimes. But you're allowed to, it's the buffet, you're an adult, you get to choose. I mean, when you take your little kids, you give them what you think they need. When they get a little bit older. They said Can I have some red JellO too, and you put a little bit of red yellow on there. But then as they get older, they start choosing what they want. Even sometimes you let them load the plate with junk. And eventually though, when they leave your home, they're on their own, and they're going to want and they have to figure out what's healthy for me and you know, what's not? What do I what do I not want? So I think that's just what it means to become spiritually independent.

Arline 43:53
I love Yes, the idea of people getting to choose what spirituality or religion or any of that looks for them. A lot of your cartoons are very much like calling out often. It's not explicitly white evangelicalism, but if it's talking about racism, white evangelicalism, homophobia that is pervasive in church world as a whole, but when people's religions and choices are causing harm, like how does what are your thoughts on that?

David Hayward 44:26
So this is kind of a biblical analogy for using it but it's a good one. My cartoons are kind of like a double edged sword. They, on the one hand, encourage people say people of color, First Nations LGBTQ women, children, heretics, you know all the marginalized people. They're encouraging to them. Uplifting, valid Dating affirming. The other edge of the sword though is where I, I go after any beliefs or system or, or policies or whatever that violate those freedoms that I think those marginalized people shouldn't be enjoying just like us. So that's, that's why my cartoons kind of have this sort of double edged. So some people love my cartoons, and other people hate my cartoons. But one is it's lifting up the those who are marginalized, persecuted. Rejected. And on the other hand, it goes after people and systems and beliefs that do persecute and marginalize and reject,

Arline 45:55
which, from like thinking back to when I was a Christian, and even now, like just singing about Jesus that was kind of religious people hated him, because he called them out. And everybody else loved him, like, you know, and so you're in good company.

David Hayward 46:12
Yeah, yeah, they say,

Arline 46:15
Do you have any current projects you're working on? Or future ideas project? Well,

David Hayward 46:20
I've got I just came out with this book here. Flip it like this? Oh,

Arline 46:23
that's right. I have some Yeah, I've seen that.

David Hayward 46:26
It's my new cartoon book. Believers and atheists alike. No, it's my best stuff cartoons. And I have literally 1000s of cartoons, but there's, it's full of my best stuffs. And there's like 15, never before seen, it just came out. So if you want to pick up, it's wherever books are sold, like Amazon, in the books, there's a noble, etc. You can get it at your local bookstore, but people are having fun, you know, accidentally leaving this in their guest room or mailing it to their ex pastor or, you know, I love it. That's hilarious. Yes. But I'm continuing to do my stuff online. Every day, I'm posting times a day, I have an online community like you do, but mine's called The Last Supper. is for people deconstructing and courses and there's interaction in our Facebook group as well. So yeah, I'm very busy every day doing this stuff. Yeah, that's awesome.

Arline 47:29
It makes my heart happy. Like we just had before we're recording this we just had, I was a teenage fundamentalist the guys, Brian and Troy from that podcast, and they have a Facebook group that's just like space for people recovering from religion, Rachel Hunt has been on here from the support groups. I mean, there's just so many more spaces online and in real life, for people who just, you know, you leave church or you're just asking questions, and you don't, you don't have anybody, and it can feel so, so isolating and so lonely. And so that's awesome that you guys are doing that. That's,

David Hayward 48:07
it's weird. I started talking about deconstruction, which is a French Derrida coined the word deconstruction, the philosopher, but I started using it in 2006, in reference to reliefs, I started talking more and more and more about it. And then, in 2012, when I launched the lasting supper, I targeted people who were deconstructing and needed a safe place to do that. And we felt very, very isolated and alone out there in the world. Now, it's everywhere. Like you say, there's tons of Facebook groups and other communities sprouting up all over the place. So it's pretty cool.

Arline 48:55
Yeah, I had, um, a church friend. And her mom was really bothered by like, knowing the work that I was doing, being part of the graceful atheist. And my friend, I mean, she's still a Christian. She was like, Mom, when people used to leave the church, where did they go? She's like, I don't know. She was like, Yeah, this is just like, creating space for people who before they didn't have anywhere to go, they were alone. And I was like, Yay, thank you for like, you know, speaking truth, but it is like before, people just left and I can't remember it was recently on the podcast. I can't remember who said it. But like, in the past, or like, when you become a Christian or become some spirituality, religion, it's usually done in a group. There's some kind of community become part of a college ministry or youth group or whatever. Not always, but most of the time. But when you start asking questions, often, it's just you, or it may be like you and one other person and so it can feel extremely isolating. So that's awesome. What you guys have been doing this for a long time. That's fabulous. I know a

David Hayward 49:57
very long time. Yeah, that's still going so great.

Arline 50:08
I have asked a few other people. Do you think there's hope for like American 21st century white evangelicalism like church myths? Do you think there's hope for it to like change and be redeemed? Or do you think it's like, no, just dismantle it, and we got to start back over? Like, I'm just or or, I mean, those are not the only two options, but what are your

David Hayward 50:28
thoughts? Well, I think the church is here to stay in some shape or form. The church has a resiliency to it, that survives all kinds of programs and programs and persecutions. And it has a, you know, some people like say, well, it's no better than a cockroach, you know, just keep surviving. It could also be people's, you know, ability resiliency to bounce back or to rebel or to meet if they want, you know, where we've seen in the past where the church has been made illegal, and there's underground movement start and so on. So I think the church is here to stay, whether whether they're good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, or there's people there's going to be some healthy expressions of it. And there will also be unhealthy expressions of it. I think American white, white male American evangelicalism is scary. I'm, I'm, but I'm of the opinion of the opinion that such right wing kind of conservative ism is always a reaction to progress. And so I think as long as we progress, and were open and inclusive and fair, and just will continue seeing the uprise zing of resistance to that. I think progress is like the gas pedal, and conservativism is the brake pedal, and the harder you press the gas, the harder they're going to put on the brakes. And I think that's human nature. I think we're going to continue seeing that, that the more progress we do see, the louder the resistance, and even more violent the resistance might might become, which is scary. So that's what I'm seeing happening. This evangelicalism right now in the West is a reaction to to progress. I

Arline 52:54
was with family this weekend, and I have a family member. Most of my family is very conservative, southern white people. And they, some of them fit the stereotype not all, but um, one of my family members, he and I were sitting and talking and he's just the kindness and gentlest man. But he's so scared of, you know, he knew the trigger words like woke ism, he's so scared of that He's so scared of immigrants so scared, just fill in the blank and it was like, it was my first time seeing someone who wasn't like angry and mean about it. He was just scared of everything. And it was just like bizarre revelation of like, everything I kind of already knew this but like everything that that I have seen with conservative especially like white males and women like I was in white lady Bible study world so like, women too, but um, it's just afraid of everything afraid of like you said progress anything changing anyone else getting rights that they haven't had, and, and there's such this overlap of church world and conservatism and it's

David Hayward 54:04
yeah, it's, it's icky. Very icky. Yeah, no, I I have friends or people in my family too, that are super super conservative in Canada. And they're otherwise lovely, lovely people, but they're, they're scared they're they have weird conspiracy theory ideas about what's happening. And but then I do know people who are conservative and hateful like they're just nasty would use violence or bullying to achieve their goals. And but that's that's like a fearful reaction as well.

Arline 54:51
They go into fight or flight. Yeah, we're seeing that for sure everywhere. Last thing, do you have any any recommendations? podcasts, books, YouTube channels, Instagram accounts, anything that you're like,

David Hayward 55:06
Oh, that's funny. I was telling you earlier. I'm not a podcast listener three times a week for podcasts. But I have this weird thing where I can only do one thing at a time. Yeah, so I'm a painter, for example. So when I'm painting, I can listen to music. But if I listen to a podcast, I'll be painting and all sudden stop, because I have to concentrate on what's being said. So I might as well just sit there and read the book, which of course, you can't do and peanuts. I tried, I tried audible at Christmas time. And I worked really hard to get through one book. But just sitting there, I just have to sit there like a lump on a log just staring into space listening. So it's really weird. Even when I'm running. I run naked, they say, without any gear, you know, just by putting clothes on and shoes. But no, you know, no headphones or music or anything. I just enjoy nature. So but for books, I'm a more of a nonfiction guy. But I do really love Cormac McCarthy. And he just came out with a new book called The passenger. So I'm reading that right now. He's the one who wrote No Country for Old Men and The Road and

Arline 56:30
road. I've read the road I haven't read it's other stuff. That was

David Hayward 56:33
horses. Yeah. The road and that changed my life, that book. But I read I read quantum physics. I just finished reading. Isaacson's biography of Einstein. I read Slavoj ejack Living philosopher, right now. I'm reading, you know, some mystical literature, you know, like, like Rumi, or Meister Eckhart or others find that when you're reading quantum physics, you're reading mystic CISM, you're reading philosophy, they all sort of start sounding the same. That's the, that's the, they're, they're sort of, they've sort of caught a glimpse of that one reality and they're, and they're using their language, either mystical, philosophical, or scientific or whatever to to describe this, this one reality so that that's where I'm reading right now.

Arline 57:42
Whenever I D converted, I did. I was like, what are the things I have not learned? So I was like, I'm gonna learn evolution. I want to learn anthropology, like all these different things that I had just been gently nudged. You probably don't need to take that class or whatever. I wanted to learn these things. And the more I learned about certain scientific things I listened to I like audiobooks, astrophysics for young people in a hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson, I couldn't read the grown up one, because it was like way over my head. But I listened to the young people's one. And I was like, this is fascinating. And it was narrated by LeVar Burton. So clearly, it was going to be wonderful. And I learned so much stuff. I was like, there's so much just mind blowing science. I love the mystical, like, I love Rumi and I've read a few other people I can't think off the top of my head, but like I love the feel of all that but and I love how science there's so much all inspiring science that it was like, I don't have to go beyond this anymore. Like there really is so much science that which I don't understand a lot of it. But yeah, it's just there's so much all in wonder in this world. And I love it. I love it so much.

David Hayward 58:58
One of my favorite books, it's in my top 10 books of all time, is Carlo Rovelli, who's an Italian physicist, seven brief, I've read that. I can read a lovely little book, beautiful, get the heart for that. You'll treasure it your whole life kind of thing. But you reminded me of something. When I left the church, I stopped reading theology. I am zero interest in reading theology. Because I was in the deep end, I read. I read all the theology. So what I discovered is I was so much in my head that I had to figure out how to get into my body. And so I'm really, I become a little bit of a health freak hedonist. What a Christian would call a hedonist because I enjoy pleasure and my body and and working out out and running and breathing exercises and cold plunges and stretching. And you know, like all these things just get out of my head just to get out of my head, because I lived in my head for my whole life and it got me nowhere. So, so I'm just enjoying, like and Lisa and I go for, you know, where we can forest bathing, where you go for long walks in the woods and like, it's just, it's wonderful and it's guilt free, shame free, beer free. It's wonderful. Just just being out of your head and into your body and enjoying life. It's it's great.

Arline 1:00:44
I love it. I love it so much. Well, thank you again, David, for being on the podcast. This was fantastic. I learned a ton and I really really enjoyed this conversation.

David Hayward 1:00:53
Thanks, Arline. Me too. I enjoyed it

Arline 1:01:02
my final thoughts on this episode. So I tried not to fan girl. But I was really excited about this interview because his little drawings and say little drawings that sounds condescending, but like his very cleverly put together concise stick people drawings are so fantastic. I've I mean, they just they call people out for the foolishness that harms people. They're uplifting, they're kind. And again, they're just so clever. And so I really enjoyed this episode. I loved getting to know, David more. I didn't realize how many he's written multiple books. He also does watercolor and his beautiful landscape paintings. And he's just an artist and a mystic at heart. That plus just the wisdom and intellect that he brings. Like, it's impacted so many people, myself included, and I'm thankful for his his presence online, and the work that he has been doing for decades now. I just I love it. It was so good. So much fun. I look forward to just seeing more things the naked pastor will be doing.

David Ames 1:02:23
The secular Grace Thought of the Week is it is our humanity that connects us. One of our bloggers Jimmy recently wrote a post talking about the X shaped hole in our hearts. I've talked about this a lot that the suppose it God shaped hole in our hearts is really our need for connection with one another. I truly believe that the connection that we seek is relationship is love for one another. And I mean that in the least mystical way possible to take the demystification the deconstruction one step further. I don't think there's anything terribly mysterious about this. I think it just is our need for each other. Our need to be known by one another, our need to be loved by one another. Our humanity is our connection. And I have done the interview with Holly law rock from the mega podcast that is going to be sometime in April or May. Also upcoming in April, I'll be interviewing Darrel Ray of the recovering from Religion Foundation. And we have a number of community members that will be on the show as well. Until then, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful human beings.

The beat is called waves by MCI beats. If you want to get in touch with me to be a guest on the show. Email me at graceful atheist@gmail.com for blog posts, quotes, recommendations and full episode transcripts head over to graceful atheists.com. This graceful atheist podcast part of the atheists United studios Podcast Network

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

To Make Out the Landscape of the Universe?

Authors, Naturalism, seasons

“What I aim to do is not so much learn the names of the shreds of creation that flourish in this valley, but to keep myself open to their meanings, which is to try to impress myself at all times with the fullest possible force of their very reality. I want to have things as multiply and intricately as possible present and visible in my mind. Then I might be able to sit on the hill by the burnt books where the starlings fly over, and see not only the starlings, the grass field, the quarried rock, the viney woods…and the mountains beyond, but also, and simultaneously, feathers’ barbs, springtails in the soil, crystal in rock, chloroplasts streaming, rotifers pulsing, and the shape of the air in the pines. And, if I try to keep my eye on quantum physics, if I try to keep up with astronomy and cosmology, and really believe it all, I might ultimately be able to make out the landscape of the universe. Why not?”

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, page 138

We need neither gods nor goddesses; this world is glorious enough on its own.

Happy Equinox, everyone!

–Arline

Jennifer Michael Hecht: The Wonder Paradox

Atheism, Authors, Humanism, Podcast, Secular Grace

This week’s guest is Jennifer Michael Hecht, bestselling author of Doubt: a History plus many other works. Her latest book, The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives comes out this week!

Jennifer is a poet and historian and in this interview, she makes a solid case for the important place that poetry—and other art forms—can have in our lives.

“It’s got to be a poet who says, ‘This virtue still matters,’ because we’re at a moment where we don’t even know what to do with things that are not fairy tales but also not physics.”

This is a great conversation that you won’t want to miss!

#AmazonPaidLinks

Links

The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives

Website
http://www.jennifermichaelhecht.com/

Previous appearance on the podcast
https://gracefulatheist.com/2019/05/16/jennifer-michael-hecht-doubt-a-history/

Quotes

“…a poetic way of looking at our lives can do a lot of the same jobs that religion can do, and we need to explore that.”

“We have these profoundly complicated feelings, and how do you express that? To some degree, it is inexpressible…but poets are going to try and capture that ambiguity.”

“The main poetic subject really is to look at things that are kinda too hard to look at…the inner experience of mortality, that inner experience of ambition despite mortality, which is the paradox that all of us have to face.”

“You don’t need to collect hundreds of poems. You need to seize on a few, return to them and let your life grow on them and their intricacies grow on you.”

“It’s got to be a poet who says, ‘This virtue still matters,’ because we’re at a moment where we don’t even know what to do with things that are not fairy tales but also not physics.”

“What is between the factual and the nonsense is the whole realm of humanity.”

“When you see the larger scope of how human beings manage the fear of dying, you don’t look around for a replacement for heaven anymore.”

“There are many rituals in any given faith that specifically welcome everybody, that welcome outsiders…You can do the ones you’re invited into.”

“Human beings aren’t robots. Rituals weren’t for God. The rituals were always for human beings, and it’s good for us to keep doing them.”

“The next generation is going to believe bad things if we don’t give them good things [to believe].”

“I call myself a ‘poetic realist,’ and I call myself a ‘poetic atheist.’”

“I feel very strongly that the way to the future is pluralism and rationality. I believe in those things so much that any indoctrination is not going to be what I want.”

“…you gotta go out and be with people…[and] you need some time alone to think.”

Interact

Join the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group!

Deconversion
https://gracefulatheist.com/2017/12/03/deconversion-how-to/

Secular Grace
https://gracefulatheist.com/2016/10/21/secular-grace/

Support the podcast
Patreon https://www.patreon.com/gracefulatheist
Paypal: paypal.me/gracefulatheist

Attribution

“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats

Transcript

NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) and likely has many mistakes. It is provided as rough guide to the audio conversation.

David Ames 0:11
This is the graceful atheist podcast United studios Podcast Network. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David, and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Please consider rating and reviewing the podcast on the Apple podcast store, rate the podcast on Spotify, and subscribe to the podcast wherever you are listening. Shout out to all my patrons. If you too would like an ad free experience of the podcast you can become a patron at any level at patreon.com/graceful atheist. If you are in the midst of doubt or questioning or deconstruction, you do not have to do it alone. Please join us at deconversion anonymous where we are trying to be a safe place to land for those people who are questioning doubting and deconstructing. You can find us at facebook.com/groups/deconversion. Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. On today's show. My guest today is Jennifer Michael Hecht. Jennifer is one of my intellectual heroes and she has written a new book called The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives. Jennifer was previously on the podcast four years ago and 2019 where we discussed her book doubt history. Jennifer is one of those people who is able to capture the joy and wonder of life from a secular perspective and put it down on paper. I describe her as one of the very few people on the vanguard of ritual and meaning for nonbelievers. She coined the phrase a graceful life philosophy. We discussed multiple phrases that she coins in this book, including interfaith lists, cultural liturgy, dropped by in lie ceremonies, and poetic atheism. Jennifer is a historian and an academic but she is first and foremost a poet. And that comes through in her writing. And in our discussion here today. The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives is out March 7, please go out and get this book. It is absolutely amazing. Here is my conversation with Jennifer Michael Hecht.

Jennifer Michael Hecht. Welcome to the Graceful Atheist Podcast.

Jennifer Michael Hecht 2:45
Thanks so much for having me,

David Ames 2:46
Jennifer. It amazes me. But it was four years ago that you and I chatted about your book doubt. That was all the way back in 2018. You were so kind to come on then the podcast was two months old, I think at the time. So it's like, what a transformation since then. And we were discussing the fact that you are currently at that time writing Wonder Paradox, which is your new book that is out on March 7. So I'm so glad to have you back.

Jennifer Michael Hecht 3:14
Thanks so much. I'm really delighted to be here. And Wow, you've grown and served so many people. And it's just amazing thing you've you've managed to do here.

David Ames 3:22
I appreciate it. Yeah. And I think the I think the listeners are probably sick of hearing me recommend your writing. Almost anytime anyone asks me about books at all, you are at the top of that list. So you remain my intellectual hero. Thank you so much for the work that you do as well. I won't go all in on your your bone a few days. But I think your bio is understated. It says that you're a poet and a historian. And that is there's a lot packed into those two words. I think you've been a professor or you've written a number of books, including academic books, you want to talk just a bit about the work that you've done over the years.

Jennifer Michael Hecht 4:03
Sure. You know, I started out as a poet, and I thought I would do really I was in high school sort of college college and I thought I'm gonna write poetry. But I wanted a day job. My father, until very recently was a history. I was a sorry, a professor of physics, at Delphi on Long Island. And so the idea of teaching the idea of going to graduate school so I think I thought about, about doing history of literature, history of poetry, but in graduate school, I fell in love with the history of science, and have very poetic it was how how very much in order to do science. You have to try as hard as you can to go from one rational idea to the next, but one does history of science. By unraveling that, and that is much more of a sort of, by your guts feeling to realize well, how how would certain ideas, perhaps stay in a certain line of thinking longer than they should have, and then sort of try to figure out, oh, it was stuck to this and that all of this kind of work is much more cultural and literary. But doing the history of science, of course, brought me into the history of atheism. And I was already an atheist, and I was just overjoyed to see such weird and interesting people. You know, I wouldn't say that all atheists through history have been as weird as the group that I happen to find when I was doing some history of science work for my PhD. And found some some early anthropologists, they'd really sort of invented anthropology in a sense, and they were atheists, and they were, they saw what they were doing as, as a way of promoting atheism, their science. So this is not in the history, the way we look at any of these subjects. So that was an immediate Oh, this is fun and weird, and I gotta track this down. And that experience made me realize, oh, every time I try to find a straight history of atheism, there isn't one out there. People were either making everybody atheists or nobody atheist. So that work was a delicious side slant that took me you know, that became my main branch of how I was operating in the world, to bring that kind of history of atheism, history of religious doubt, history of debt, religious doubt, that leads people to new religions, not always to agnosticism or atheism, a whole bunch of varieties of watching the ways that sometimes ritual disappears. But faith stays sometimes faith disappears. So all of that kind of work, for the longest time was somewhat separate from my poetry. And I read poetry as well as write poetry and I and I've taught on the graduate level. So yeah, eventually those things were going to come together and they finally have is our ex, I'm really looking at the ways that, that the, that a poetic way of looking at our lives, can do a lot of the same jobs that religion can do, and that we need to at least explore that at least all of us just up a click of observation about how these things operate in our lives, you gain, you gain some power, you gain some peace, just little adjustments, of naming some of the real things that are happening around us, you don't even have to seek to change them. Just naming does a tremendous amount. And that's where, where the book starts just talking about that phenomenon.

David Ames 8:06
You know, it's interesting that you say naming things, because I think you are amazing at kind of coining a phrase or a word, we're gonna go over some of them in our previous conversation. And he talked about graceful life philosophies, which I felt was such a beautiful term, and you know, evocative, and there's a number in this book, I do want to get the subtitle out. So the book is called The Wonder Paradox,: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives. And it is out in early March, march 7 of this year. I wanted to begin with you, Jennifer, by kind of confessing that, you know, I'm the cretin. I am the the troglodyte here, and that poetry isn't a significant part of my life or not something that I'm cognizant of. So I think reading, reading this book made me more aware of where poetry tends to be more with music for me personally, but it you know, where poetry was, in fact, a major part of my life. So So let's begin by just talking about why poetry What is it about poetry that you think has such meaning for human beings?

Jennifer Michael Hecht 9:16
Well, I do believe that, in a sense, when I say poetry, I'm speaking about art. And I'm even speaking about the poetic aspect in science. And some scientists are good at ethics explicating that but of course, who's going to be best at doing this kind of poetic work is people who have trained themselves to think in terms of very densely packed, rich ideas that because of the way they use language, are a little bit fluid in the places where, if you lock it down, you're only getting half The truth, right? Nobody totally loves their loves other human beings loves everybody in their lives and totally hates them. But we have these profoundly complicated ID feelings, right? And how to express that? Well, the answer is, to some degree, it is inexpressible the way that humans feel about their lives. But it's poets who are going to try to capture that ambiguity. But I think what you said at first is so important that I think that a lot of people experience, let's guess, 10 poems in the course of a year that just crossed their desk because of today, because of the inter webs, there's no question that's where it's happening. But in the past, it happened by many other ways that we used to have the advice columnist Ann Landers, and she was constantly being asked where a certain line of poetry came from, and then she would print the poem, and people would keep that piece of paper on their refrigerator. For decades, I mean, there have been many different ways where, and I walk into people's homes, and nowadays I look around, and I will often see some kind of poem on the world, on the wall, often a good poem. And they, and they, the people, somebody put that on the wall, because they had that kind of connection to it. Now we do it on the internet, and what is it that happens, you read it, and sometimes it doesn't work for you, you don't read it all the way through. But every once in a while, not infrequently, you read one of these poems, and you, you know, it makes you take in a moment of breath, you have a slight moment of a change in perspective about who you are in the world. In fact, that's the main poetic subject, the main poetic subject, really, is to look at things that are kind of too hard to look at most of the time. And that's where we get our gigs, right? What what nobody else is talking about. And what is that, that's that inner experience of mortality, the inner experience of ambition, despite mortality, which is just a paradox that each one of us has to negotiate and, and the idea that the culture rightly tells us that an adventurous life is one at home, building things or out there forging ahead, and you can't kind of do both, at least not at the same time. All these paradoxes that we live with, that poetry sees as its main business, so when these poems, you know, maybe 10 lines of have an idea across your desk, and it means something to you. I'm suggesting that that's a great place for us to grab that poem. Keep keep it safe, return to it. Don't you don't need to collect hundreds of poems you need to seize on a few and return to them and let your life grow on them and and their intricacies grow on you. And most cultures in society have had something like this, but in the non religious world right now, we are lacking in some of this conversation.

David Ames 13:23
Yeah, that's that's kind of a summary of that, of what you've just said, you say that poetry can help us make up for the loss of the supernatural can connect us to one another, and to meaning in our lives. And I think that's what I really connected with with this book. I feel like you and just a handful of other people in the world are on this vanguard of you know, how do we live a full meaningful life secular people with the wonder with the or with the the full range of human experience instead of what can sometimes be a hyper rationalist perspective that denies the emotion and human experience?

Again, how do you feel like poetry brings particular to lead to secular people, this sense of meaning?

Jennifer Michael Hecht 14:24
One of the things that I'm seizing on is the notion that a lot of us are already getting meaning from our lives and from art and literature, and science. But we haven't taken that one little step of saying that this, that the things that we do to nurture those feelings are a kind of I I'm very careful to not say replacement when I'm writing because these are the Religious doesn't come first, right? In the society, it's in the culture, it's in religion, and it goes back to society back to certain culture, all of these ideas are not. But for us, if we're speaking, especially in terms of sort of American, Christian or post Christian audience, we're looking at very specific things that were lost. And that we can look at and say, Well, what, what's missing there, and it really takes not being too furious or to a vengeful at religion, you have to understand I have listened to enough of your show to to get a sense that a lot of the people in your audience were raised in religion in a very toxic way. Now, I met many, many people and have stayed in touch with people from from the middle of America, but but who have that experience, and so I'm very, you know, I was very sort of traumatized myself and coming to understand it. Because, you know, because of what I do, people tell me a lot of stuff. Sure, I can imagine, but, but where I come from in terms of where I live, which I live in Brooklyn, and I write for other literary and educated people around the world, and I hear from them. So I'm writing to people who might be pretty much thinking that religion is neither their friend nor foe, right? They just feel that modern life is modern life. And that in what I call drop by and lie religion, though, I don't mean it in a mean a negative way. I really think sometimes it's the only way you get to get together with maybe your family. But it's worth thinking about, if the only times you do go to a house of worship is just drop by and say things you don't believe. And so, you know, I look in the book at ways of avoiding that, but but the specific notion that there are a lot of people who just feel atomized and alone. And if they were to realize how many people no matter what religion they started from, are really trying to guess try to make a better world try to try to stoke and fan compassion and empathy and just attempting to do the right thing. Even that notion of the right thing. It's got to be a poet, who says virtue still matters, because because we're at a moment where we don't even know what to do with things that are not fairytales, but also not physics. Right? What what is, is in between the factual and the nonsense is a whole is the whole realm of humanity. Right? In the book, I say, you know, with our white coats on we can I understand that love is about facial symmetry or something, you know, making a good partner but, but we live these questions and explaining it doesn't explain it away. We live here, and it's where I want to live. And where I live is full of emotion and meaning. I wouldn't say much justice, but that turns out we have to work on but, you know, love is real. And we know that it is something and we know sometimes we're not even experiencing it. Sometimes we're left out in the rain. But the notion that love is real, there's a bunch of things that we can put in that category. Right? And and we forget that and I think meaning is one of the things that's in that category. We don't it's not easy to take it apart and say where it comes from. But what in the human experience can stand up to such a question really were asking, you know, how much more can we know about it and in different kinds of ways, but certainly the idea of explaining it to the point where it doesn't exist when here we are all living in meaning and living with love and if all of its difficulties. Yeah, it becomes important to champion the poetic again to say we can't we don't always we're not always doing that kind of research experiment. Sometimes we're doing one that's more internal.

David Ames 19:46
Actually, yeah, the chapter on love poetry, you know, I felt myself just gets swept away and some of the stories you're telling like, you know, you kind of compare and contrast rom com versus kind of more a deeper that maybe more painful perspectives on love in poetry and story. That was just it was definitely captivating. And it's one of those things where I think what you said that really struck with me was like, you know, I've been coupled for a couple of decades now and then getting excited about other couples that you know, who are kind of in the middle of that that infatuation phase man that poetry is, is attempting to, to capture the chaos and the joy of all that.

Jennifer Michael Hecht 20:27
That's right, and, and also to sort of celebrate all sorts of versions of love, including the kinds that in our society, we, you know, except for that sort of single image of older people walking down the street holding hands, we tend to celebrate new love rather than the love that we say we believe in which wraps families and puts down roots.

Another thing that sweeps all around, this is something that for me, I made up kind of as a joke, at first, I was just writing and I came up with the term the interfaith lists. And it just made me laugh, the interfaith less, you know, because the interfaith was such a specific moment in in mid 20 century, and though it survives on in some ways, but the interfaith was made me laugh, because, oh, well, it's not clearly an exact term, it's just saying that there are so many of us all around the world, from all sorts of religious backgrounds who have these positive, warm feelings and base our progress and action in terms of both science and, you know, trusting in the other people who are who are really working in the direction that we want to see the world go in, including climate change, and all these kinds of issues to realize that, that the interface lists the people who perhaps are, you know, on a given holiday, or something are feeling a little left out from those public celebrations. But once we realize that there are a couple of us in any gathering around a Christmas tree, for instance, you start to be able to feel the people like you who are out there in the world, I don't want to talk too much about my last book, which was a stay a secular argument against suicide. It really did learn from that experience, kind of I learned to feel the people out there. Because when someone in your world, even pretty far out, does take their life, you realize what they meant to you? And what a soul not doing that meant to you because you suddenly feel a tear in the fabric way over there. Yeah. And that just made me learn to when can you feel the fabric? When do we feel that we're connected? And how can you know, how can we enhance that feeling so that we're not alone. And that definitely came into this book and saying, you know, we're already doing a lot of the things that I'm talking about. I'm just saying, if we can become a tiny bit more aware of them, right? naming a few of their parts, we can start to just build a song, just the tiniest bit better life makes a big difference.

David Ames 23:38
Yeah, absolutely. You actually, you know, you're answering questions I haven't asked yet. But like, I felt like Wonder paradox was an extension of stay. And how that's relevant to my audience is, they come from a very conservative theological background, typically, and and then when they lose that they have the believers in their lives telling them well, you have no justification for your morality, you might as well be a nihilist, that kind of thing. And kind of the entire purpose of this podcast and these discussions is to say no, you this is a human experience, all that wonder are human things and like you get to keep that with you. And I feel like that is the through line between those two books that all of this is is the human experience and it's wonderful in our interconnectedness with one another is a way that that builds that up to remind us that we are not on an island alone and that there is great meaning in us being together with one another.

Jennifer Michael Hecht 24:38
Yeah, and there's tremendous pain in being a human being but that's true pretty much no matter what you believe not what you believe you're gonna have to struggle with it when the pain is hard and you're gonna have to struggle against you know, egotism when when you're feeling super happy because you know, the The, the idea for me is it, you know that you want to lean on something that for you is pretty steady. Right? And so for me, you know, I so to lean on human beings is a great leap of faith, but at least I know they exist. And I know I am one and I, every once in a while have it in me to be able to lean out and help someone else. And, and yeah, the, the, the magic of that is, is what I mean by the poetry of our lives and, and also the, the beautiful repetitions that happen through life. Again, it's something that we can, we can coax ourselves to be able to notice and see. And it is it's just, it's just that little extra bit of joy and control that make life a little bit more more worth living. But I mean, especially outside of a religious framework. And I say that from kind of an American point of view, I will say the book because I've spent the last however many years I'll say decades now I got my PhD in 1995. So I have been studying the history of religions and the present day of religions all over the world since then, and that has made me into a person who finds even the word atheism. So Christian centered in a way. And so are Judeo Christian centered or the world is mostly filled with people who don't have a single god with a single morality and an afterlife where you go on having what tea and cookies with your relatives where you actually have things. So even if there are afterlives in these other religions, they are not like the Christian afterlife, where I do go on actually doing things. And, and that's a big deal for people who are coming out of Christianity to realize that, that it's not just a matter of loot, losing the supernatural, it's losing this particular very specific religion at a specific moment in history. And, and it creates, you know, a shadow version or a chasm in just the shape of where you thought you had this special, special characteristics of life of not dying of these things. And, but when, when you see the larger scope of how human beings manage fear of dying, you don't look around for a replacement for heaven anymore. What what what human beings mostly do is not looking in that direction, they place the the big contest of life, all in terms that are not about that, that idea that death is a chasm that you're gonna fall off and that chasm is the empty space of heaven that it's it's x Christians that are most worried about that. And that tells us that you can focus elsewhere. It's not a matter of, of just being up just having lost something. You walk into a larger world and see oh, people have been a mad seeing this life and a lot of different ways. And yeah, it's amazingly freeing. Absolutely. Right. It for for audiences who are very much in that world, it still feels you know, I can remember after doubt, doing a talk in Salt Lake City, they invited me I went, you know, yeah, it out, like, who invited me and how that happened. And there were a lot of people in that audience who who came because they knew who I was and wanted here they came from far and wide kind of thing. But there were also students at the, at the community college. And and some of the questions were, well, what about the miracles? You know, that's a very long swing between kinds of questions that I'm getting. But and yeah, sometimes I know that, that the message I'm giving right here is going to sound like it's, it's yeah, it's a step away from religious pain. It is because I'm saying to people, when you land all the way on this shore, and you're just going through the motions of these dead old rituals, and you feel a little hypocritical All and you feel a little letdown, you can put some of the meaning back in by thinking about that moment with a poem, bringing that poem back in and thinking about the other people in the world who are celebrating in a similar way, with their families with that ritual. You know, what I'm saying brings up the question of cultural appropriation, people have to think carefully before they do other people's rituals. But there are many rituals in any given faith that specifically welcome everybody, welcome outsiders, for all sorts of reasons. But most often, because everybody knows that feeding outsiders is a blessing, right? So that happens in all sorts of cultures. So you can do the ones you're invited into. These days, we intermarry in such a way someone in your families related to a holiday, you might want to try out in that kind of way.

But mostly what I'm trying to say to people is that human beings aren't robots and rituals weren't for God, the rituals were always for human beings. And it's good for us to keep doing them. You can invent new ones, if you want. And I think on some level, every family does just out of, you know, sure, you're close enough to where they have ducks. So you have to do the ritual with chicken, it's just how it is. But when people start to say, Okay, I'm gonna make up a whole bunch of rituals on my own. Well, then you're asking other people to do your wacky ideas, and sometimes it's just not going to fly. Whereas if you say to people, Look, I know this is bizarre, but what we're going to do is going to cut down this tree, we're going to make a circle of like, you have all these odd things, but everybody's been doing them forever, and look around and Miles is doing. So it's a lot easier to just insert some of your own ritual into that. But I think a lot of people still feel I know that a lot of people feel guilty and confused, let down and hypocritical, saying words, they don't believe in situations that they couldn't help be in. And they alternative for them as nothing. So what I'm saying is, I hadn't joined the party, here's how to make sure you have some meaning. Realize that the rest of us from all sorts of different things are doing the same kind of thing. And then the fun is okay, so then how can we make all of this more fun and delicious? One thing, the next generation is going to believe bad things if we don't give them good things. Yeah. See that?

David Ames 33:02
Everywhere? Right? Yeah. So you've been circling around the holidays and your term have dropped by and lie, for sure. That is a sentiment that, that we hear from people who have gone through this faith transition to say, you know, what do I do at Christmas? What do I what I do at Hanukkah are my My favorite tradition. And I think the message that that comes across in wonder paradox is that you get to own that you get to mix and match, you get to build new traditions that you don't have to be left, high and dry. And then ultimately, you can also just participate, knowing that this is a human ritual, and do it anyway.

Jennifer Michael Hecht 33:43
Right, and, and, you know, I'm basing these kinds of claims on a lot of History and Sociology. So that, and and all these years of just studying the varieties of ways that things have gone in history, and then going out and being invited to give these talks, and I didn't even realize there was an atheist movement until I wrote out, it didn't. They just started inviting me. That started that was just old white guys in the room. Right. And that changed while I was there, you know? Um, that came out in 2003.

David Ames 34:23
Yeah, that was right. Right. Before there's kind of the explosion of it. Yeah.

Jennifer Michael Hecht 34:29
And, yeah, enough, so that I was sort of able to look at at what was going on just in the beginning. So yeah, it's been having all these different experiences of learning about the stuff I'm talking about, but then going out into the world to give talks, where I'm invited, so I'm not going into sort of hostile crowds. I'm going to places thought they've liked the message, but very often religious places because they're interested in these questions. And hearing so much specific trouble around ritual ritual having to do with holidays, as we've discussed a little bit, but also rituals having to do with funerals, weddings, and baby welcoming ceremony. Were were other things that are heard a lot. And I've also heard some people's little solutions that made it into the book as just sort of templates for how people do negotiate these things, sometimes rather beautifully. But yeah, the I think that there's a way in which what I'm arguing for is almost the sort of poetic common sense of a lot of secular people living today, I was just able to spend these decades being able to show why indeed, we are doing things that make sense and have historical strength and muscle to them. Beautiful poetry already exists. And yeah, very much saying, I think we're doing smart things. And here's some of the reason why you should feel good about them instead of conflicted.

David Ames 36:16
I think one of the things that really helped me is, it's an idea that you expressed in wonder paradox that I've also heard from people like James Croft, and Anthony pin. And the concept is just that everything is secular, meaning, religion and ritual are our human inventions. And so everything is secular, and it flips it on its head a bit to say, I haven't lost anything. I, you know, everything is secular, I can you know, I can participate, how I want the specific quote, and in your book, you say, but surely religion is a human creation to organize human needs for celebration, gathering, meditation, inspiration, and comfort. And I also like the way that Anthony Penn put this, he basically said, religion is the human collective search for meaning. And I feel like that that's in the zeitgeist right now. And it has a lot of relevance for this audience as well that, you know, coming out of that, again, you haven't you haven't lost anything, you can just recognize the humanity in it and recognize your own humanity.

Jennifer Michael Hecht 37:19
Yeah, I think that's great. I think that's really good. Of course, once everything is religion, we're back into a kind of swampy language. We can put that aside and say, Okay, this is a beautiful formulation and not need to associate it with everything. Because we can step back and say, relive religion can be a template for hypnotizing and controlling and abusing people, by people who for some reason seem obsessed with sort of power and control and all sorts of things that we know, a religion does that make people want to break out of it. The in the book, I use the interfaith lists, and I associate myself with that, but I also call myself a poetic realist, I call myself a poetic atheist, and I still am a poetic atheist, I just want to make clear at all times, that there's a ton of things I don't believe in, God doesn't really have that special place in that category of being nonsense. For me. There's a whole range of human behaviors that I look at as saying, Well, you know, that kind of story doesn't do a thing for me, because of aspects of its nature that make it in into the wound category, right? But all of this is subjective. Like when, when does a moment you know, and so we define our terms, right. So, in the book, I say, you know, sacred is something that is a word that predates the religious and people use it to mean what people hold sacred. In the social sciences today, this is how I'm using, but I don't use the word spirituality in the book. But people use it to describe me and they're not really wrong, because, again, this is muddy language territory. Exactly. So I invented a term partially because yes, when you invent a new term, in order to try to be more specific, you also realize how inadequate the old terms are, and you find new associations. So you know, when anything you make up that doesn't work doesn't stick so you don't have to worry about that. Unless you're, you know, trying to be a historian. I'm really careful. You know, I only make up terms when I really feel they don't know how else to speak about the thing is matter of fact, I tend to make them up for myself as a shorthand, because I need a way to write about something and that I realize, oh, I should use this term more. But yeah, I like poetic realist because it doesn't really need a definition. realist I believe in, you have to be careful with the term realism. Of course, it's had some artistic moments where people used it more. The reason I've avoided it in the past was because people who believe in religion believe what they're doing is real. So what does it even mean to whereas rational at least has a, you know, they believe they're being rational too. But we do have a definition of rationality that it's a little bit more separate, right. But I felt that once I said, poetic realist, it was like saying poetic atheist, but with a little bit more reach. But you'll notice I almost never say poetic atheists without poetic realists without working poetic atheist in into the conversation because I want people to know, I am still an atheist and one full of fire and brimstone. You don't be right, you you do a grace, relate the ascent doing a poetic atheist? What are we trying to do? We're up against a wall of people who are rightfully very angry, and using anger as the way of communicating where they're at. But there's just too much you lose in that in that kind of fight. Right? Exactly. Yeah,

David Ames 41:21
I tried to make it clear that the anger is super valid. And you might sit in that for a while, but you don't want to remain there forever. Right? You want you want to get out eventually.

Jennifer Michael Hecht 41:31
Right. And it's good for people to know where to go in the culture to find different types. I mean, not that we have to be locked into what we are. And I think anybody listening for anger in anything I do can find it. You know, yeah, I feel very strongly that the way to the future is pluralism. Rationality. Yeah. I believe in those things so much that any indoctrination is not going to be what I want and any kind of retrograde ideas that are not based in rationality. Right, right. But within that spectrum, within that world, we do need people to know where they can come if they want to feel big, interesting. feelings and ideas that live in the world. We believe in you and I need Yeah, not find somebody who's furious at religion because that story is only one part of what we're what we're talking about.

Without doubt, I even was constantly at pains to make the distinction between people who were arguing against fables. And I include the resurrection of Jesus as a fable. It's a story that didn't happen, because it's too much not what happens, right? Yes, exactly. Then there's another kind of person who says they believe in God who really believes in something awfully like poetry, progress and love. And they tell me, I believe in God, and I tell them, they don't and we happily can break bread together. Exactly. There's really no difference in what we believe. Because there are many people who choose to say they believe in God and choose to relate to the world, believing in God, just you know, just like there are atheists who still believe the universe is going to bring them something that's often close. Right? So, so yeah, I think it's, it's super important that people know, yeah, there are atheists who are taking into account a very, very wise kind of belief and still saying, Well, for me, it the big reason not to do that is because it gets you you don't focus on how to make the human world stronger and better. You're still assigning a little something out there. So for me, that's not my direction, right? But, but it's really important to say, yeah, there are all these different distinctions. And sometimes you're you're in one where you say, you know, I I'm not in a place where I need to be arguing against the parables. You know, I know that there's something well, there's some there are different conversations everywhere. It's so important to be meeting people where you're meeting people, as I met them, when at when the doubt talks were, well, the pandemic gave us put a stop to a lot of uh, yeah, hearing that people are so abused by religion or abuse by powerful people who just happened to be hitting them with the Bible. Yeah, that they really need this conversation to take place on all these different levels in a slow burn to really see what's, you know, in some of this stuff with our parents. We never saw it out right. We just get stronger we learn how to deal.

David Ames 45:03
Man, there's so much there I want to respond to I'm gonna let me just do a quick lightning round and just say, I agree with you that I think I've generalized beyond just religion to say, you know, traditions that are rigid, that lock a person into a certain view of the world that may not be true. And so it you know, it is beyond just the religious context, but anything that is that proves itself to be untrue in one way or another. And I think the, what you were describing there about the, the closeness and you, you and I discussed this last time about the ardent believer and the ardent atheist have more in common than the kind of the middle masses. But I often say that the, you know, the most dangerous word in the English language is God in that, you know, you can be in a room of 1000 people, and you say the word God, and there are 1000 different interpretations of what that actually means. And I've liked that you kind of work with the messiness of the language, it's so hard to say anything about like, spirituality. You know, as when we get close to that some of these concepts and what we really mean is about the experience of being human, but all of the verbiage implies something else, not because that can be very difficult.

Jennifer Michael Hecht 46:12
Right? Well, you know, I mean, when you're working from the Abrahamic religions, you got Moses coming down with morality written in stone, are for what isn't, it isn't written in stone, constantly take into account the context and the situation and what's going on. So it's, it is kind of comic Yeah.

David Ames 46:50
Couple more things. One other term that I think you coin that we've been circling around is this idea of cultural liturgy. So some of the, you know, the rituals that we go through that are that are, in fact, secular already. And I thought that was a beautiful term that we need in the world.

Jennifer Michael Hecht 47:05
Thanks. So one of the reasons that cultural literacy liturgy seems so important to me at and again, just to give a sort of example of, for instance, we could talk about just the, you know, colored lights at, at holiday time that are, at this point, their cultural liturgy, rather than a religious artifact for many people. But, but also, you know, we go to weddings and see the same poem there. And we think, Oh, this is trite, or used or cliche. And who would say that about a biblical prayer, right? Oh, you know very well, that whatever was good enough to get in that book, whatever people keep saying that helps. And it helps partially, just because you've seen other people get married to it. So that consistency is not a bad thing, it's a good thing. And that's something that really needed to be said, so that there are poems and music that are already cultural liturgy, and that we should encourage each other to embrace them. If you see a great poem read in a movie, and you want to incorporate that you don't have to think of that as something on original. We don't want original at a funeral, or we, we want something to hold on to something to be able to revisit that stays strong for us, because it was already there. Yeah. So that that became a really important thing to be able to see that there already are some things like that, that while no individual person could plant the flag and say, Now, this is cultural liturgy, we can notice that the whole culture is gently moving towards, in a way certain things and we can situate ourselves in that world. Yeah, as you said, Before, you can know that why isn't your natural and real relationship with the religion you were born into just as valid as the people who encountered that religion a century, two centuries, three centuries ago. And, and I can show you that those people changed their religion because it match how they lived. They it happens every generation. And And there, there are generations that move towards and away from what we would call unbelief that we don't even realize was unbelief for them because we certainly grew over it. So yeah, that's that's part of the reason that this book that's really, you know, it's really my heart. But if he did, it needed constant, it needed the scaffolding up history who would have believed well, not only scaffolding that the historical example about how all This stuff changes makes you feel braver to reinterpret. And also just to not think that everything we're doing today must be bad, right? It is the invention of the future.

David Ames 50:13
A couple things on that one, I like to, like a thought experiment for people is to say, you know, if you had a time machine, and you can go back to any point in time in the history and be amongst the believers of that time, would you do that? And do you think that you would recognize it? And you know, I think my intuitive response to that is that, no, it would be radically different. Even if you drop the Christian into Jesus's time, right? It would be unimaginably different than what they think it is. Because of just the constant change.

Another thing that leapt out at me that you talked about is, in this idea of coming up with your own traditions that you talked about, somebody asked you and you said, Well, we made it up. And they asked you, can we do that? And then you said, well, Who's stopping you? stopping us? I love that, like, you know, we have the ability to make those new traditions for ourselves.

Jennifer Michael Hecht 51:17
That's right. And and what gives us that ability is some kind of authority, which if you can't find it outside yourself, it only takes out, it only takes flicking that switch on in your head to realize oh, okay, that means me. I think it's, it was especially interesting for Jews, because we have this notion of a kind of most orthodox down to a most reform, which is not reality really. It because they come in at different times come into America, I mean, and so these things are all just, it's really quite a mess. But the sense that there's a more orthodox version of your religion can make you feel like, oh, they wouldn't believe in the stuff I'm doing. So I should add a little bit more. And this was a realization Oh, they wouldn't believe in what I'm doing anyway. If I add a ton more, because the person I'm doing it with is the wrong faith three generations back or something. And I can't fix that. And I won't fix it. Nor do I believe in the distinction being made. And so now I'm angry and up against it. Right? If you think it through you, you feel like rejecting it. But yeah, if you if you start from there and say oh, they already don't, nothing I do is going to make the absolute orthodox feel like I'm doing it right? Yes, you can save yourself. Okay, well, then whose team Am I on? And I'm on the team of of other people who are trying to make a more beautiful world for our kids in the next generations. And, and that is a clarifying moment. Yeah.

David Ames 53:00
A very freeing Absolutely. For Hank, I believe you give this thought experiment to your students. You said you wake up tomorrow morning and can't find anyone, anywhere. By all indications you're alone on the planet. What do you do that you say to your students? Sorry to do that to you. But most of you were headed for an existential crisis anyway. So this way, I'm here to get you out. Again, I loved I think this I think in our previous conversation, we talked about how we each kind of have to go through and the culture itself and us individually have to go through these deep questions. Anyway, over and over again, that there is no kind of free ride that we have to ask these these hard questions and get through it. And this seems to me like a very personal one, you know, what is meaning for you if you were the only person on earth?

Jennifer Michael Hecht 53:47
Yeah, absolutely. Isn't it so interesting, and so much depends on how you interact with other people. So I think that I'm kind of a gregarious, but Ultra introvert. Okay, I really, whether nature nurture, I am going to be very engaged for a long, long time on my own before I even look up notice that Oh, right. Eventually it happens but I have so many projects in the house that I can forget to go out and without it being a sad thing on Yeah. I mean. So I think that I am always lecturing people ongoing you got to go out and be with people because that's the message I need. Okay, because naturally my I don't need the message. You need some time alone to think right? I know I forget that other people need need to practice that and to you know, so I have that's more something I have to remind myself and I do of course, but And that question about the world being empty for me I'm was something that, you know, interaction with students eventually kind of threw that back at me to sort of look at myself and see that this idea of the end of the world, I've been showing it to people partially because I want to show them how connected we are. Much everything would stop it for us individually, if everyone else went away. And when you're talking to college students, they it really is an original thought for a lot of them that even three meals a day with a fork is a thing. Why should we three meals a day and even these tiny little questions of, of how we live that I can show them through travel? Right, you can see that when you go to another country. And I think it's always important if somebody has been to England where you know the language, but you still don't know how they behave. It's still another country. Yeah. And, of course, you can get farther and farther away from anything, you know. And it is a classic, classic idea that the past is, is another country, I would ask people that question because it was a way for me to remind myself how much I need people. And I would imagine in the thought process that what would save me was again, some sort of project that I would put my life into, even if I was alone, I would find, and that project would be very human based, right, because I'm a human being. But whatever it would be, would be based on continuing the values that I was sort of started in. But so it's an isolated way to be very public. But I think that what was so important for so many people that they would always come back to it and want to talk about it is this notion that that whether you're alone or with people that were making the meaning together, and you can enhance or decrease that, that connection, and that when it comes down to it. It's really just us, it's just us and, and mortality is the problem that were handed, or each one of us is handed. And if you don't think much about that, you still may think about the idea of the choices that you make in a single lifetime. And you want to let you want to live the life that you want to live. And just that that is a burden that each of us comes into life with, if we're lucky, write the script for us. And there's tremendous processing that we have to do. And so that's why the book is divided up into sort of problems that people would have problems like shame, or, you know, problems, about how to talk about death, outside of heaven to young people, really specific kinds of problems. Then there's one chapter that's on holidays, that's a very broad look, that kind of invites you to think about the specific things in the holidays you like either the song or the drink that goes with that how to really sort of parse through what what you bring into the holidays, and what you might be able to tinker with in order to connect the holiday with a specific emotional experience that religions most religious holidays, they either they're commemorating a historical thing sometimes, but very often, it is about exploiting shame, getting over your shame, sometimes having to recognize it first face it, apologize to people. And those are very often about fasting or bathing going to where certain river is just even thinking about these things can help us realize, oh, human beings throughout history have suffered this weird thing of shame. Yeah, how we've coped with it, and then showing how it's coped within Shakespeare poem and that so they're short chapters that deal with very specific issues. Yeah,

David Ames 59:26
I have to tell you, let's see, I've got I've got this note here somewhere that I laughed out loud, and I'm probably going to murder the German name here. The HC HC minutes twist on Heraclitus seems to be playfully denying the religious idea of washing oneself internally in a river you can't get clean even once. I love that and the reason I do is like my first philosophy, one on one with Heraclitus said, you know, the idea of that changes the only constant in the world and the predecessor to him was saying, you know, you can't step in the same river twice. And he's the one who said you can't step in the same River wants anyway, I just that was a little personal present to me. So thank you. I love that

I want to hit my last two topics that you talked about marriage a fair amount and the the ceremony of it. But I also wanted to just draw out pertinent to my audiences when somebody has gone through this faith transition, and they are still married to a believer. So a couple things I think are really useful there. You talked about strong bonds can go along with fierce contrary forces. And you also say it also shows that love is a mess, a serious mess. And there's a lot of deconstruction, excuse me, destruction and remaking, total destruction, total remaking new substance remade form, married people are separate, yet united. And there's some hope in there. I think it parallels the st. Perell concept of a second marriage to the same person. But like that happens, just a little personal note that happens to be true in my life. I'm married to a believer. And I know lots of people kind of need to hear that message. We talked about change being constant, and also the individuals in a marriage and the marriage itself is constantly changing as well.

Jennifer Michael Hecht 1:01:17
Yeah, absolutely. And specifically, the issue of being married to someone who's still in religion. So interesting. My husband's from a Catholic background, but also, but I think, you know, we've definitely over the last 23 years come to a lot of, of understandings fresh together of the world so that, you know, you build a new world. Yeah, I think it's a really interesting problem. And I think that it's like, I feel like, yeah, I feel like people are operating from similar values in lots of different ways. Right? And so yeah, my husband coming from this Catholic world, and me coming from a secular intellectual, Jewish kind of world. And, you know, he was in Hoboken. I was on Long Island, we met in the middle and, you know, the Lower East Side. And, and we, so we have all this background that was different. But, you know, we grew up watching the same commercials on TV, like, there's so much, you know, not every place in the in the world can you just say, dibs and point to something and everybody knows that, that means dibs. There's all sorts of shorthand. And I think sometimes you you do end up taking on some huge challenge in your marriage. But you don't realize that two people who are both Christian or atheist, but one is from a different country, and there are a lot of these people. They have this endless need to explain really basic terms that you and your wife may have so much that you just know, bedrock, common language. So yeah, you're putting on top of it something, you know, there's no, there's no fully diminishing the challenge of that. Sure. No, having a different, you know, especially if, you know, you have different ideas for what you would want the kids to be and stuff like that. That's challenging stuff. But I do think, yeah, if you had if you also were from different countries, you know, you have something on your

David Ames 1:03:39
hands. Yeah, that'd be challenging. Yes.

Jennifer Michael Hecht 1:03:43
Remembering sometimes there's these tremendous commonalities that can support, you know, two trees going in opposite directions on the top of that.

David Ames 1:04:05
And then the last topic is the chapter on death. And I feel like this is an area that we need to talk about so much more, right, and that religion has tended to own but the thing that really leapt off for me was you were talking about travel for the purpose of spreading ashes can send mourners on a physical adventure to a loved place. And that actually, again, just happened to be my experience. I lost my mom in 2016. And about a year later, I went on a road trip to California took her ashes to the beach. And I found like, that was such that process. I went by myself, I didn't take family with me and like, you know, being alone and literally physically having her ashes lit, you know, grieving on the drive there. That whole process was really deeply meaningful for me and helped me to close out that chapter and feel like I didn't have to say, well, she's in a different place. I I knew she was gone. And I could I could let just absorb that during during that trip. And I think that, in particular for newly secular people, death is difficult. And, you know, how do we process that? How do we how do we build rituals around that that are non religious that still give one comfort?

Jennifer Michael Hecht 1:05:19
Yeah, absolutely. Your story so, so meaningful to me and, and it really is, once again, a case of like, how you did all the right things for your heart. And, and yet we're in we're not even a full century into Americans commonly cremating their loved ones, right. And so here, we have a sort of by accident, by default, because we came up with this idea of, well, you know, I don't have to bury the ashes. So where should they go. And because we do think of wonderful places, they are very often at a distance. And so without having planned it, we've created this new cultural liturgy. But but one that I would say is like, it's in a very early phase, it's not named. And people have, you know, they feel a bunch of different ways about it, especially, for instance, it takes most people quite a while to take those ashes and do something with them. Yeah, and your guilt all over the place about it, I hear it from you know, famous people just chatting, oh, I still have any, and they seem upset. Whereas when, once you notice, oh, this is part of the process for a lot of people, they need to sit with this for a second. And, and whatever that means, when you realize that everybody's trying to figure this out. And there are some beautiful things that are, that are coming into being. It's, again, it it collapses, the cultural and the sort of ex religious, but what it mostly does is it gives us a way to talk to each other and be together and to try to try to think of ways to comfort each other through this strange experience.

David Ames 1:07:10
I think the crux of Wonder paradox is in this sentence, much ritual seen as religious is a fundamentally poetic, artistic amplification of the natural sacred. I love every word in that sentence. That the ritual aspect, the coming together the funeral, however, whatever the thing is, right? It is important that we physically act out these things. And there's some there's something meaningful in that, and necessary as a human being.

Jennifer Michael Hecht 1:07:40
That's the I specifically, say over and over, because it's something that I can miss if I don't pay attention. I can intellectualize and think well, I'm thinking about washing my hands like that is I made that metaphor up to show myself thinking about washing your hands forever, will not get your hands clean, right? There are, you know, things if you want to put your heart through a difficult passage, you do have to sometimes do things. Yeah. And that's something that only by by compare and contrast between when I do and when I don't, that I know for sure for myself, that showing up matters for reasons I do not have to understand. For myself, and for the people around me,

David Ames 1:08:23
Jennifer, I could talk to you for hours someday, I want to be in the same physical place as you and just you know, buy you the beverage of your choice and just sit and listen to you forever. Need to wrap up, unfortunately, can you tell people how they can get the book. So your name Jennifer Michael Hecht, and the book is called wonder paradox and it is out March 7. How can they get the book

Jennifer Michael Hecht 1:08:44
and it will be? You can contact book shop.com or amazon.com. It's with FSG. For us, Drew Macmillan. And yeah, it'll be in all the bookshops. And also, there'll be audible and Kindle. And forward to hearing from people. It's pretty easy to find me from my website, and I'd love to hear from people.

David Ames 1:09:05
Yeah, and the website is Jennifer Miko, hex is it.com. That's right. That's correct. Okay, so we will have of course, links and things in the show notes. Jennifer, it was such a joy to speak to you again, thank you so much for the thinking that you put down on paper is more meaningful than you know. It's just very important. So thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Jennifer Michael Hecht 1:09:25
I really appreciate it.

David Ames 1:09:32
Final thoughts on the episode? This is one of those times where I just want to read quote, everything she said in the book and everything she said in the conversation. Please go back and listen to the episode again. Please go out and get Jennifer Michael hex book, The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives. It is out March 7. You can get it on Amazon and various other booksellers. So many things In this conversation that leap out at me, number one, as I said at the beginning of the conversation, poetry isn't something that I consciously think of on any kind of regular basis. Reading this book, I realized how much poetry is in my life and what an impact that it has. And so I appreciate Jennifer just revealing that to me in her writing. As I said in the intro, Jennifer is amazing at coining terms. Language is so difficult. The term atheist has so much baggage has so much unintended implications. It has been very difficult to find words to describe ourselves. Secular Humanist has a lot of meaning to me, but means almost nothing to the general population. She talks about inter faithless as a way of describing ourselves, and Jennifer calls herself a poetic realist or a poetic atheist as another way of trying to describe someone who doesn't have a belief in the supernatural but also experiences blunder and joy and love, and the all of the experience of being a human being. I loved her concept of drop by and lie, if you've ever been in a church service as an unbeliever. And in particular, if you've been at a wedding, or some very high ceremony example of that, you really can feel very false for being there really does feel insincere, and yet you are obligated to be there. I think the most important thing that Jennifer is saying that Anthony pin is saying that James Croft is saying that I am saying is that these are all human experiences. My favorite line of hers in this conversation is that human beings are not robots. Rituals weren't for God. The rituals were always for human beings. And it's good for us to keep doing them. I absolutely love that. I could keep re quoting everything but please go read listen to the conversation. Jennifer Michael hex book is The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Pur Lives. It is out on March 7, go get the book and you will find out why I still consider Jennifer Michael Hecht, my intellectual hero. Jennifer, I want to thank you for being on the podcast. As we said in the interview, the first time you came on was two months into the podcast. I'm so happy to be able to help promote your book here. And thank you again for putting into words, a graceful life philosophy that we can embrace and experience the fullness of being a human being. Thank you, Jennifer. The secular Grace Thought of the Week is just how worth it the human experience is. The theistic worldview will say that non believers, atheists agnostics, the interfaith plus whichever term you prefer to refer to yourself as that we have no reason for living, we have no reason for morality, we have no reason for being good to one another. And my experience, and I think Jennifer Michael hex experience is the exact opposite. On this side of deconversion, I realize how important our lives with one another are. For those of you who have ever had times of depression, or questioning whether life is worth it, my answer is emphatically Yes. Jennifer Michael Hecht's answer is emphatically Yes. The other book that Jennifer wrote is called stay and is all about the secular reasons for living and experiencing life and why it is worth it. And the Wonder paradox takes that the next step of not just, why live but how to thrive, how to have the fullness of the human experience. One of the main themes that keeps coming up in all of her books, in this podcast and in various other places is our connection to one another. For those of us who are in a healthy place, we have to take on our obligation to love other people to to reach out to people to know that they are loved, so that they know that they are cared for in a way that maybe our previous faith traditions provided and we no longer have those things. And for those of you who might be in a pretty lonely place right now, you need to know that there are people who care about you, there are people who love you, and there are people who are invested in your life, you can always reach out the deconversion anonymous Facebook group, we are trying to be a safe place to land for those people who are doubting, questioning and deconstructing, as well as those people who are just lonely. You are welcome. We want you to be there. If you need more immediate assistance you can reach out to recovering from religion their website has a way to connect with somebody immediately you can begin talking about your experience. If you're in crisis, and you're in the United States, you can call 988, the suicide prevention hotline. And you can also reach out to the secular therapy project to find an ongoing therapist. So there are resources for you if you need them, you are not alone. Next week is the four year anniversary of the podcast. I have our lien, Mike T. Jimmy, Colin, and Daniel on to talk about our favorite movies, television programs, books that talk about the themes of deconversion and secular grace, you would be surprised it shows up a lot. And we just generally have a good time and celebrate the four years. So join us next week for that. In a couple of weeks, our Lean interviews David Hayward and that is an amazing conversation. As I hinted out last week, I will be doing a promotional exchange with mega the podcast and I'll be having Holly the rat on the podcast in April. So be looking forward to that as well. Until then, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful. The beat is called waves by MCI beads. If you want to get in touch with me to be a guest on the show. Email me at graceful atheist@gmail.com for blog posts, quotes, recommendations and full episode transcripts head over to graceful atheists.com This graceful atheist podcast a part of the atheists United studios Podcast Network

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Black American Authors You (Perhaps) Didn’t Know Were Humanists

Authors, Blog Posts, Humanism, LGBTQ+, Politics, Race

As a Christian, I was limited in who I could read and learn from—a short list of dead white men and an even shorter list of living white women and men. Since leaving religion, I’ve opened my mind and heart up to writers from America’s past and present, and it’s been good for me.

Writing their own legacies in the face of injustice and hate—often at the hands of God-followers—these authors offer an abundance of humanist wisdom. After all, if no gods are coming to save us, humanity’s future is up to us. It’s up to all of us.

James Baldwin

Go Tell It On the Mountain

The First Next Time

Ta’Nehisi Coates

Between the World and Me

The Water Dancer

Frederick Douglass

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

My Bondage and My Freedom

Langston Hughes

The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes

The Ways of White Folks: Stories

Zora Neale Hurston

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Tell My Horse

Alice Walker

The Color Purple

In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose

–Arline

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Heather Wells: Trustworthy

Authors, Autonomy, Captive Organization, Deconversion, ExVangelical, LGBTQ+, Podcast, Purity Culture, Religious Abuse

This week’s guest is Heather Wells, author of Trustworthy: A Journey from American Christianity to Freedom. Heather grew up in a happy Christian home, attending a variety of churches—from “Women cannot wear pants,” to “There are drums!”

She married at eighteen and expected to have a similarly happy marriage as her parents, but no matter how hard she worked—both literally and metaphorically—that was not going to happen. Heather felt like a spectator, watching the men around her plan her life.

It took years of a one-sided marriage, churches refusing to help and zero answered prayers for Heather to realize she had to be her own savior. Once she had a well-paying job and more education, she no longer needed others to rescue her or her family.

Heather now enjoys a life that is her own and no one else’s. She is the trustworthy one. She can look to herself—her own intuition, her own knowledge and education—for what is best for her. That is a sweet gift that no one can take from her.

Contact

trustworthy.wells@gmail.com

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Quotes

I have the freedom and confidence to call myself, Trustworthy.

“…the men were deciding my fate. I was just a bystander.”

…I tried to trust God, and I prayed a lot.

It’s a little easier for women to be financially trapped, especially coming from the Christian background where training in other skills is not always encouraged for women. So what else are they going to do?

…I started to think, Is this a cult that I’m in? because if we can’t consult with anybody else or counsel with anybody else and they don’t want me to visit certain people…”

…the scales fell off of my eyes and I began to see things for what they were…I had been praying for so long and there had never been an answer.

If God has this plan for my life, and I’m just ‘with the wrong people,’ why should that get in the way of an all-powerful god. That doesn’t really make sense.

Once I had financial security, that’s when I could drop all of the weight: I’ll be okay…Now, I can support myself and my children.

The further I stepped away from region, my world got bigger and bigger and bigger.

…Christianity often teaches you not to trust yourself.

Even if it feels as though everything has been stripped away from me, and it looks like there’s nothing left, I can be something…I’m going to be something amazing and beautiful and imaginative. I just need to give myself the chance…