Protect Your Noggin

Though we’ve been talking a lot lately about things we are glad to shed about our conservative Christian background, we reflect on some of the healthy and helpful things we experienced in non-denominational youth programming. This discussion is not meant to suggest that parents should uncritically send their kids to church programs, but rather to reflect on ways that folks who are leaving organized religion can ensure that their children find opportunities for friendship, fun, learning, and service. 

We draw from the radical life and thought of anarchist Emma Goldman to frame contemporary conversations about abortion and reproductive rights. We discuss the ways in which women’s bodily autonomy is intimately connected to full spectrum emancipation. Topics include Christian nationalism, the weaponization of anti-abortion for the sake of supporting unchecked capitalism, the history of contraception, and the differences between Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman on the nature of sexual and gender liberation.

CW: sexual assault, abortion, explicit language

A discussion of books to to read this summer, especially for those who have left or are thinking of leaving fundamentalist or toxic forms of religion. We offer suggestions related to spirituality, but they do not involve joining a religion or accepting some claim to special revelation. We offer suggestions for folks who want to get up to speed on science, find balance in their lives, unpack their thinking on sexuality, and rethink the history of America. [Note: we seem to have misnumbered somewhere along the way]

This is a great episode for you if you are an ex-evangelical, ex-fundamentalist, newly progressive Christian, or post-evangelical.

CW: Sexual abuse, racism, explicit language

Our go-to psychology prof Dr. Betsi Little helps us unpack the ways in which attribution theory can help us understand why people tend to defend creepers in religious circles. It also leads to a discussion of the ways in which we can survive and heal the social sicknesses of our time. A key takeaway: it just takes one person to subvert conformity.

CW: Sexual abuse, domestic violence, racist and homophobic violence

Jeff and Stacie respond to listener emails and voice messages, largely unpacking our perspectives on the Bible, inerrancy, LGBT inclusion, and traditional social values within conservative Christianity. We also weigh in on the leaked letter from LCMS president Matthew Harrison to the board of regents at Concordia University Wisconsin. If you have known us in our old lives within the orbit of American evangelicalism and conservative Lutheranism, this may infuriate you, but we mean only to share with you honestly what we’re thinking and experiencing these days. Stick through hour and ten minutes of banter to hear a discussion of whether sex-positive BDSM dungeons are safer than Christian summer camp.

An examination of atheistic strands of anarchism, focusing on Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876), author of God and the State. This episode is content packed, with just Jeff this time. If you don’t want so much academic content, feel free to skip to another episode. 

Fretting about longevity is unfortunate. It taxes the mind and heart, needlessly wasting vital energy. When folks think that it’s important to be rigid in order to be a responsible adult, they go against the Tao.

Whatever goes against the Tao will end in ruin.

What happens when you reject the state’s official paperwork and driver’s licenses? When did you begin, and why does that matter politically and spiritually? Who owns you and your biological material? We explore these questions with our old pal Jon David Johnson, with whom Jeff played music back in the day as The Bloodhound Shuffle. He has a unique interpretation of the Bible and political history that you may not agree with, but we found interesting and helpful as a sort of thought experiment, through which we can reframe our origins as biological beings and the relationship between our understanding of that question and the question of who owns us. By going back to before conception, Jon David ties the human being back to oneness with the creative source of existence, something that predates the claims states and churches and parents make over us.

CW: police violence, racism, explicit language.

Note: Neither we or our guest offer medical or legal advice on this episode.

Jeff lays out his take on Jesus and freedom, and lays out a summary of the biblical narrative from a Christian Anarchist perspective. One need not commit to a particular perspective on how to apply these ideas to contemporary life. There is value in first examining the moral ideal of Jesus, which invalidates the way of domination, injustice and inequality, and then taking a while to ponder how we might work toward the mission of the radical sage from Galilee. We discuss the ways in which the concept of inerrancy presents problems for intellectual life within church-related higher education. This should be an interesting exploration for anyone interested in libertarian themes in the Hebrew Bible and Christian New Testament.