Recovering Evangelicals

The first in a series of episodes on this question, this one being a scientific perspective from an ex-Mormon social psychologist This is the first in a multi-part series of episodes that focuses on that very question. It will NOT get into sexual ethics, morality or normativity. Instead, we’re exploring why it is that religions pay widely varying attention to this or that aspect of human existence (diet; money; dead bodies; government; medicine; technology; war), but ALL religions across the board have much to say about sex and gender. This is especially true of Christianity. As always, we’ll get a number of scholars to weigh in on this from their diverse perspectives. This week, we start with an ex-Mormon social psychologist — Dr. Jordan Moon (Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse) — who will look at this from the scientific perspective. He recently published a paper in a scientific journal with the title: “Why are world religions so concerned with sexual behavior?” We thought this was a perfect place to start. Some of the points/questions we talked about include: sex and gender precede the fossil record of single cell life there’s no clear evolutionary advantage, because some life forms still reproduce non-sexually even though they have the ability to do so sexually although each religion might have certain laws about fundamental aspects of life (like diet; what to do with dead bodies; the use of mind-altering chemicals; technology; money; how to wage war), they ALL say something about sex and gender; this has been true across the globe and all through recorded history Christianity in general, and Evangelicalism in particular, have MUCH to say about sex, gender, and sexuality attributing sex to any form of Intelligent Design calls into question the “intelligence” of the Designer: ” …. “why run a sewer system through the middle of the playground?” religion is so obsessed with this because “the stakes are very high”; however religions are not so uniformly or universally concerned about other matters for which the stakes are high (dietary laws; money; technology; war) can human preoccupation with sex/gender be a product of evolution if we don’t see seeds of this preoccupation in our closest genetic relatives (apes) animals don’t seem to have taboos about masturbation, nudity, public displays of affection, homosexual acts … this is all a uniquely human thing if religion’s preoccupation is related to population control or reproductive success, then why is it against polygamy Christian values vs Puritanism correlation studies show one’s degree of religiosity (a psychological term) is better predicted by attitudes about sex than by moral values such as compassion do religions give us our values, or do we gravitate toward religion based on values we already hold do we choose religion because it aligns with our subconscious reproductive goals if religion’s “interest” in sex is primarily related to controlling/encouraging reproductive success, then why do they reserve so much condemnation and shame for people who want to simply enjoy sex for the sake of intimacy and personal pleasure … and why would religion want to stomp out promiscuity the evolutionary cost/benefit ratio for monogamy vs polygamy why did ancient Israelite culture tolerate polygamy, but gradually transition to a monogamous society history has shown that the majority of human cultures have been polygamous does monogamy make human culture more stable and harmonious by keeping the unmated male youths “off the street and out of trouble” the celibacy paradox: why do so many religions require their professional holy men to be celibate why do religions attach so much condemnation, guilt and shame to all aspects of human sexuality, and why is this applied so much more heavily against females/daughters than against males/sons Needless to say, it was a candid and stimulating conversation!? As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic … Find more information about Dr. Jordan Moon at his faculty web-page and his personal web-site. If you enjoyed this episode, you might like our previous episode that focused on Intelligent Design. To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

Words without spaces or vowels and multiple manuscript versions with different words are only the beginning of the problem! Have you ever wondered why there are so many different versions of the Bible: the King James, the Revised Standard Version, the New Revised Standard Version, the English Standard Version, the New English Bible, the New International Version, and dozens of others? Ever wondered why scholars can still be haggling over how to translate a given verse? The problem doesn’t only begin with needing a trustworthy lexicon that lists the various English meanings for any given Hebrew or Greek word, nor trying to figure out from the context of the words around that ancient word to decide which English meaning to choose. Sometimes you have to guess at the word itself …. because the ancient Hebrews didn’t use spaces or vowels!? So translators had to first decide which strings of letters formed which words, then insert different vowels to see what made the most sense: for example, did “CRT” mean “create”, “crate” or “court”? Our expert — Dr. Mark Elliott — also tells us that the problem isn’t only needing to choose between different possible words, but sometimes you had to choose between different versions of ancient manuscripts which used entirely different words and phrases. Usually, it would seem, you go for the oldest manuscripts because they’re closer in time to the original, rather than the newer manuscripts which might have undergone editorial changes since the original was written. But the older manuscripts tend to be in worse condition: more moth-eaten, mouldy, fragmented, and therefore missing key portions of the text message. And sometimes the decision to choose between different manuscripts came down to the one that aligned more closely with the theology and politics of the translators themselves! We then go through three examples of contentious Bible translation to highlight how these decisions are made, and how they can radically alter the theology that is conveyed in the passage: was Jesus angry when he healed a leper who stopped him on his missionary journey (as an older reliable manuscript indicates), or was Jesus compassionate (as per the newer manuscripts)? did Abraham refer to God in the plural form because he was just confused and misspoke, or because he was condescending to his polytheistic audience, or because he was himself a polytheist at the time? did Matthew “get out of his lane” when he took an ancient Hebrew prophecy about a young woman conceiving and birthing a son as a sign that would be fulfilled just a few years later, and turned that into a centuries-old prophecy of the Virgin Birth of Jesus? As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic … Find more information about our guest, Dr. Mark Elliott, at his faculty web-page. If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episode #57 (Dr. Peter Enns; origin of the Old Testament) or Episode #81 (David Carr: origin of the New Testament). Episode image from Pixabay. To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

A Baptist pastor and Yale theologian tells how he finds additional depth for his Christian faith by learning from other world religions. Our previous two guests — Philip Yancey and Frank Schaeffer — told us how they recovered from the toxic Evangelicalism that they grew up with. The former found it possible to recover an entirely different Evangelicalism, while the other felt the best solution was to cut his losses and leave Christian faith behind. Our guest today takes a third approach: Dr. Greg Mobley found it possible to take the Evangelical faith that was handed to him by his parents and his community, and bring that to a whole new level through music, poetry, philosophy …… and other world religions. Not just other strands of Christian faith, but deepening his theology by marinating in Judaism, Islam … even Eastern religions. It was fascinating that he began as a Southern Baptist, had to go to Yale to become deeply familiar with Judaism, and later had to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to fall in love with Roman Catholicism. One of the lessons he learned was how “everyone sees their own religion as full of grace and compassion, and all other religions as harsh and demanding.” Another important insight: “Judaism and Christianity are siblings, separated at birth. ….. That the two movements eventually separated made possible the preservation of each. …. Jews and Christians can find lost fragments of themes of their respective faiths …. by talking to each other.” And it was great how he liberally sprinkled musical references all through his commentary … his personal love for Blue Grass, but also references to the Band, the Monkeys, Jesse Winchester, Marc Cohn, Jimmie Dale Gilmor, Ray Charles, Mumford and Sons, and even Stompin’ Tom Connors. And he wasn’t just referring to their musicality: he finds important philosophical and theological nuggets in their lyrics. “I think the three greatest Christian theologians of my lifetime are Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and Leonard Cohen … three Jewish guys, but they could see us and the beauty of Christianity.” We learned so much from Greg; tell us what you think ….. To find more about Dr. Gregory Mobley, see his faculty web-page. If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like our previous conversation with Dr. Justin Barrett , who shared a Christian perspective on humans evolving a mind which was naturally tuned to search for and find the divine and to create religions. Episode image from Pixabay. To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

An informal but deeply personal conversation with renowned Evangelical and ExVangelical author Frank Schaeffer. Last week, we looked at a high-profile Evangelical author who grew up in the Evangelical world and fully embraced that worldview until reaching an age where he could assert some independent thinking and autonomy. By then, he had encountered a few too many questions that eroded the foundation of his Evangelical faith, and came to the point that he completely and utterly rejected that Evangelical faith that was handed to him. The exact same things could also be said about another high-profile Evangelical author: our guest this week, Frank Schaeffer. But where Philip Yancey was able to find a new form of Evangelical faith that worked for him, Frank found he had to become an atheist. Well, a form of atheist: Frank calls himself an atheist who believes in God and prays every day. Interestingly, both Philip and Frank told us how they could see God better through nature, art, beauty and romantic love, than they could through their Evangelical communities! Frank Schaeffer had an insider’s look at the Evangelical world unlike most other people. As the son of Francis Schaeffer — a Presbyterian pastor, theologian, philosopher, and art lover — he grew up in a small Evangelical community that ministered selflessly to broken and rejected people. His father’s writings soon caught the attention of Evangelical publishers and leaders, and they quickly found themselves writing best-selling Evangelical books, speaking before crowds of thousands, producing Evangelical films, flying across America on Jerry Falwell’s private jet, appearing frequently on national Evangelical TV networks like 700 Club, and meeting personally with American presidents and other Evangelical world leaders. Frank started walking in Francis’s shoes, on a trajectory which would have had him continuing a nepotistic climb up the Evangelical leadership ladder. But the hypocrisy and corruption that Frank witnessed firsthand, behind closed doors and out of sight from the Evangelical sheep, was a caustic soul-destroying acid. He saw how the sausage was made ….. and he couldn’t stomach what he saw. Out of self-preservation, he rejected that Evangelical world. But not carte blanche. When we asked whether “Evangelicalism” is still recoverable or needs to be forsaken, he was very careful to distinguish between the world of Falwell, prosperity gospel, and Christian nationalism of modern American Evangelicalism, from the grass-roots, selfless, humanity-serving Evangelicalism of his childhood. And so Frank still retains certain core elements of his spiritual formation. He wrote a book with the title: “Why I am an atheist who believes in GOD“; look at the cover and notice his choice of font on that last word. He told us that he “was conditioned to pray and feels like his day hasn’t started without it.” And that “We are spiritual beings looking at a physical world that is purely mechanical and we cannot put these things together. It does not make sense. And so, it isn’t like we’ll find some big answer to the big question that makes sense. We don’t have the capacity to make sense of our most basic situation: that we are biological beings looking at the world through spiritual eyes.” And he continues to devote his time and energies to social justice and the prophetic ministry of speaking truth to power. As always, tell us your thoughts on this story … If you enjoyed this episode, you really should listen to its counterpart from last week with Philip Yancey, and you may also enjoy an interview with one of our listeners who grew up in the Evangelical world, but found he had to leave that and yet misses certain aspects of that life. Find more information about Frank Schaeffer at his website and his podcast. He also recommended his books Crazy for God, Portofino, and Why I’m an atheist who believes in God. To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

One of the most recognizable Evangelical authors today; and yet you won’t recognize the self-portrait that he gave us in this conversation! Philip Yancey is one of the most recognizable Christian authors in Evangelicalism today. He has written dozens of books over the past five decades. 15 million English copies have been sold, and they’ve been translated into 40 languages. Two of those books (The Jesus I Never Knew ….  and What’s So Amazing About Grace) have won the Book of the Year Award from the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association. I’ve long had a mental image about Philip that he had always been a Christian, solidly convinced of his theology … that he grew up in a very typical, middle-of-the-road, white, middle-class to upper-class, Evangelical world, and in a stable, middle-of-the-road strand of Christianity … had a relatively typical and uneventful life … and was otherwise straight-laced, soft-spoken, and not overly emotional. You probably have/had the same preconceptions. We would be wrong. Now you’ll have to add to that list the fact that he was a born-and-bred racist … that he held KKK leaders up in high esteem, and fully accepted racial segregation … that he spent years totally rejecting Christianity, even spitting in the face of it … and that his family life included a lot of physical, verbal, and emotional abuse, substance addiction, and mental illness. And in the middle of all that, Philip tells a story of a profound conversion experience … a powerful, life-changing spiritual encounter. Philip has a unique perspective on Evangelicalism, which is the focus of this podcast. We originally wanted to talk to him about his love/hate-relationship with that world, even juxtaposing his perspective against Frank Schaeffer’s, with whom we’ll be talking next week. But irrespective of his insights re. Evangelicalism, even just hearing Philip’s life story alone is worth the price of admission, folks. And when we asked Philip to sum up at the end of our session with him, he put this pearl of wisdom on the table: “pain redeemed impresses me more than pain removed.” As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic … Find more information about Philip Yancey, his blog, his books and upcoming appearances at his website. If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episodes #38 and #39, where we give a 101 on Evangelicals and Evangelicalism. To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

Comments/questions from our listeners and members prompt this deep-dive into this most important of Christian holidays It’s always tempting to do a blog or episode every year on Christmas and on Easter. They’re both such easy, ready-made topics, with many obvious angles and discussion points. Bloggers and podcasters find them hard to resist. In almost 10 years of blogging and podcasting, I’ve only given in once. But this Easter season, several comments/questions from our listeners and our private Discussion group prompted us to weigh in on certain points: Bonnie, Ruth, and Joe: is Easter “just” a Christian appropriation of a Jewish holiday (Passover; Shabbatt) and/or of a secular/pagan spring celebration? Ruth: why hasn’t the traditional bread and wine in this “supper” been upgraded to chicken and fries? Merv: once one lets go of the ideas of “original sin” and penal substitution, what meaning is left in Christ’s death? Mi K.: I would be curious about how in his death he destroyed his enemy. Merv: how have others reformed the meaning of Easter? Scott: Christ became the perfect Jew, fulfilling the covenant with Abraham/Israel Luke: Christ needed to show humans the way to overcome reptilian thinking and achieve humanity 2.0 Luke: God owed a debt to the devil? Edward: since Christ knew he was going to be resurrected, it wasn’t the same kind of sacrifice as a human with literally only one life to lose. As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic … If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like episodes #18 (Original Sin), #82 (Jesus: Jewish Messiah) and #79 (humans evolving toward humanity 2.0). Episode image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay. To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

A potpourri of our own ideas and perspectives on a variety of comments/questions sent in by our listeners. It’s been months since we looked through the boxes full of comments and questions that our listeners have sent to us through our web-sites, Facebook, emails, and podcast providers. Last week, we abstracted from our short list of favorite picks all the comments/questions that pertained to our 4-part Left Behind mini-series. Today, we look at the ones that were “left behind” after that abstracting!? So, which comments/questions did we cover? the idea of a so-called “Biblical lens” … or “Jesus lens” any lens can actually distort the thing you’re looking at are religions other than Judaism and Christianity also divinely-inspired? the Incan god Viracocca sounds an awful like like Ezekiel’s and Isaiah’s YHWH, as well as like John’s Ancient of Days in Revelation does the Bible talk about YHWH/God talking to non-Jews? the Babylonian Emperor Cyrus was God’s Messiah? how small the world of Western Evangelical thought is what we can learn from Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians inter-faith learning and ecumenism Christianity gets some things right, and other things wrong? if you (Luke or Scott) decided to leave your faith, how would your life change? As always, tell us your thoughts on these points … If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episode #101 (divine inspiration), #57 (origin of the Old Testament), #12 (Evangelicalism and the Gospel), as well as #82 and #83 (the humanity/divinity of Christ). To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

Piecing together what the previous four episodes showed us about the End Times and Christ’s second coming. After four weeks of talking to experts on various aspects of “End Times” theology, this episode is our chance to put together many pieces of the puzzle into a coherent picture. In part, this means we have to pull apart some pieces that had been put into the wrong place, or even didn’t belong to this puzzle, and add in some new pieces that we got from those previous four episodes. This debriefing was guided in part by feedback we received from our listeners as the mini-series unfolded (so it’s a little bit of a mailbag episode too). We talked a bit about a new theological worldview that emerged in the 20th century — “Dispensationalism” — which is responsible for the wild distortion of End Times theology within Evangelical circles today. And we contrasted that against another theological worldview — “Preterism” — which sees the highly symbolic images and events described in the Book of Revelation as having been fulfilled in the 1st century. We also felt we had to delineate one more time the negative impact of this traumatizing and damaging form of End Times theology, to impress on the listeners why this topic was worth devoting four episodes to exploring it, and why it needs to be pushed back on. Another question we debated: why the Book of Revelation is even in the Bible in the first place, if it’s so problematic and easily misunderstood. My point of view is that in the same way that Genesis is not a science book, Revelation is not a history book. Instead, it’s there in our Bible because the human authors thought that way, and human editors compiled the book into the canon we call Scripture. At the same time, divine inspiration could also come into play here in the same way that we suggested divine inspiration was behind the sordid story in Judges 19, 20 and 21 (Episode #98): the passage doesn’t so much give readers an accurate perspective on the Divine, but exposes the flaws of the human heart. Both Scott and I also compared our respective personal positions on whether the world will end in a violent, divinely-orchestrated destruction, or whether we eventually meet up with some kind of cosmic higher power (alien race? God?) that helps us get our act together; and what to do with the many passages predicting Christ’s Second Coming … “riding on the clouds”. As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic … If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episode #82, where we talk specifically about Jesus being the Jewish Messiah. To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

A close look at apocalyptic literature written before Jesus (and with which he interacted), and long after him (including John’s book of Revelation). In this fourth and final episode of our miniseries on “the End Times”, we talk to Dr. John J. Collins (Prof. Old Testament; Yale Divinity School) about ancient Apocalyptic literature … a large genre/category of literature which deals specifically with End Times thinking in various groups of people at various times in history. We learned that there were two waves of Apocalyptic writings in and around the Jewish and Christian communities two millennia ago. One wave occurred two or three centuries before Christ, in response to the rise of the Greek Hellenic Empire which massively shifted world thinking, politics, science, philosophy, and religion at that time. This is also the period in which Daniel writes his book, and it is this wave of literature with which Jesus and other religious leaders of his era interacted (Jesus referring to the Son of Man and the coming of the Kingdom of God, being two great examples). But that literature had no mention of the rising of a personified Antichrist, or any “mark of the Beast”, or any “Rapturing” of believers. Nor did Jesus talk about these things. A second wave of this kind of literature came out in response to the destruction of the Jewish Temple by the Roman Empire a few decades after the death of Christ. A whole new geopolitical situation … a whole new national enemy … and a whole new set of questions for Jews and Christians alike. This would be the wave in which we find John’s book of Revelation, and his VERY different view of “the End Times”. And Dr. Collins also told us a bit about why John’s writing is so full of violence and symbolism and metaphorical imagery. And then, two thousand years later, Evangelical Christians with a very “high view” of scripture take this book of Revelation, read it very literally, and apply it all directly to their own geopolitical situation: the church struggling against a fully modern, Westernized, American, narcissistic and consumeristic worldview. As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic … Find more information about Dr. John J. Collins at his faculty web-page at Yale. If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episode #33, in which we talked quite a bit about predictions of the End of the World, including several made by Harold Camping. You may also enjoy a previous one in which Kerry Noble gave his dramatic personal story of being completely immersed into an Apocalyptic Evangelical paramilitary group who thought they needed to prepare for the Second Coming through guns and bombs (Episode #92). Episode image by Enrique Meseguer from Pixabay. To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

The “Left Behind” series of books and movies have sown seeds of fear, doubt and anxiety, with life-changing and life-long psychological impact. We’ve already heard in the previous two episodes that many people who grew up in the era of the “Left Behind” series of books and movies were negatively impacted by those forms of entertainment/indoctrination. Some would say they were traumatized, the most frequent complaint being the fear of having missed the Rapture or of somehow being made to take the mark of the Beast. But many also experience life-long and generalized anxiety, fear, and depression which they trace back to those formative years. Those books and movies also shaped the minds of that generation: they are always suspicious of every multi-government initiative being the leading edge of “the one world government” … of rising politicians and celebrities being the soon-to-be-revealed Antichrist … of every innovation in banking being “the mark of the Beast”. And polling agencies tell us that they’re less likely to care about pollution, climate-change, rising sea levels, and habitat destruction … and the respondents will explain it’s because they think “Jesus is coming back any day, and then it’s all gonna’ burn anyway.” That’s quite a legacy that “Left Behind” has …. left behind. Which is why we’ve decided to produce four episodes in response to the recent release of another “Left Behind” movie back in January. Sure, this movie probably won’t be a blockbuster by Hollywood standards. It will probably only last a few weeks in big chain theatres, and maybe a bit longer in the smaller independent ones. But you can be certain that it will continue to be played in Evangelical churches, youth groups, rallies and colleges … and individual homes … across North America all year, maybe longer that. And it will be subtitled for release in other countries. We heard last week of the burgeoning wave of Pentecostals in the Southern hemisphere  — one estimate says a billion by 2050 — who fully embrace this very toxic form of Apocalypticism (and many share a border with Muslim countries). So this recently-released movie will certainly be seen by many more people than the Hollywood box office numbers might indicate, and will shape the minds of yet another generation of Evangelicals!? In this episode, we’re going to talk to two clinical psychological experts who specialize in a new and growing form of mental trauma: spiritual abuse. They come from two opposite ends of the faith spectrum: one an atheist Exvangelical, and the other a firmly-committed believer. But they share the common perception that this “End Times” thinking is dangerous and destructive. We’ll hear their stories and insights regarding the damage experienced by their clients. We’ll also ask both of them whether it’s possible that Apocalyptic-thinking is an inherently human trait. Both of them agreed that it looks like it is: our evolutionary heritage engrained into us a constant fear of mortal threats all around us waiting to pounce. As Marlene put it: “our nervous system is wired to be afraid … that’s what we’re starting with”. And Evangelical producers of these “Left Behind” books and movies are exploiting that, and “dialing it up to eleven”! As always, tell us what your thoughts are about this topic … If you enjoyed this episode, you may also enjoy a previous one in which Kerry Noble gave his dramatic personal story of being completely immersed into an Apocalyptic Evangelical paramilitary group who thought they needed to prepare for the Second Coming through guns and bombs (Episode #92). You may also want to listen to our previous episode with Dan Koch talking about clergy abuse (Episode #89), or two other interviews with Janice Selbie (Episode #46) and Marlene Winell (Episode #47) dealing with religious abuse. Find more information about Dan Koch at his web-site, his podcast, his music page, and this link to a free clinical tool that he developed for assessing spiritual abuse. Find more about Dr. Marlene Winell at her web-site and that of her counselling service called Journey Free, which offers help for individuals seeking one-on-one recovery coaching; a group support (online forum and virtual support meetings 3 times a month); a professional development program; and upcoming retreats (the next one being June 8-11 in Cape Cod). To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive