Do you know if you have ever been a part of a cultish or high-demand community? Do you know what qualities to look for in a high-demand community?

High-demand communities may bring images of cults with extreme behaviors, demands, and rituals to your mind. But when you examine the communities you love, some fall on the spectrum of cultish or high-demand communities. 

Cultish and high-demand communities fall on a spectrum, and not everyone associated with a group or organization with those tendencies necessarily falls into the trance of these spaces–but many of us do–often without noticing. 

Today’s guest got me thinking more about the high-demand or cultish communities we choose. His most recent book was inspired by his experience watching the January 6th insurrection on TV and wondering if he had not left his high-demand faith community, would he have been at the US Capitol with many who showed up that day, including some from his former community.

Bradley Onishi is a social commentator, scholar, writer, teacher, coach, and co-host of the Straight White American Jesus (SWAJ) podcast. In everything he does, Bradley seeks to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange by providing insight into life’s most fundamental questions. He often speaks about topics related to the radical conservatism and extremist religions that shape our world, some of it right in our own neighborhoods. He is the author of Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism – And What Comes Next.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Defining white Christian nationalism and why it’s key to understand the role of whiteness in its ideology
• How nostalgia is manufactured and co-opted to sell a mythology of what America was and could be again
• How Christian nationalism is more mainstream than we want to believe
• Why we need to keep talking about January 6
• How authoritarianism makes itself appealing in times of anxiety and fear
• The rise of purity culture and how it is fundamentally tied to white Christian nationalism

Learn more about Bradley Onishi:

• Website
• Straight White American Jesus Podcast
• Instagram: @straightwhitejc
• Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism--And What Comes Next

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email

Resources:

• Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism, Amanda Montell
• Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free, Linda Kay Klein
• Evangelical Christian Women: War Stories in the Gender Battles, Julie Ingersoll
• Sara Moslener
• Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
• Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law, James Q Whitman
• Inspector Maigret Omnibus: Volume 1: Pietr the Latvian; The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien; The Carter of 'la Providence', Georges Simenon
• Ted Lasso
• Succession
• Back to the Future
• The Karate Kid