STRONGWILLED

Joshua Pease is a pastor, author, and journalist, and all-around smart guy. In this interview, we focus mainly on his work in regards to conspiracy theories and abuse within evangelical churches.

Note for those listening, there is some discussion of sensitive topics, including abuse. RAINN is a great resource for sexual abuse survivors, including live chat and phone options for support.

Here is his piece on conspiracy theories and why our brains love them for Popular Mechanics. 

5 min: Brief mention of Janette Oke. For those who aren’t familiar, she is the woman who brought us the whole Canadian Christian mountie romance trope. It’s a real thing! 

9:20: “Our brains want both suspicion and they want simplicity; and that’s problematic because life gives us a lot of reasons to be afraid and life is also super complex. And so what we do is grab hold of shortcuts that make us feel better.”

“We want a simple explanation for life, even if that explanation is kind of horrifying--it makes us feel better, because at least we know where the danger is.”

15: “Conspiratorial thinking is 100 percent about trying to find safety, control, and simplicity in a world that is not that way.”

33: Joshua’s article on narcissism is called Bill Gothard’s Fundementalist Trap for The New Republic.

Welcome to a special quarantine edition of the Prophetic Imagination Station season 4: Frank Peretti’s imagination. Today we break up all the This Present Darkness talk to do a little deep dive into Carman--and specifically, the song Revival in the Land. Watch, and then listen to us jabber about it!

Intro:

Hi, we are going stir-crazy so we did a lip sync to Carman’s song Satan Bite the Dust. And you know what? It’s pretty good! (Here’s a link to the actual Carman approved video for Satan bite the Dust)

12: jack chick Halloween tract

21: yo kids/RIOT/

25: Myth of the American Dream

26: Mid faith crisis exile (episode 79)

28: James Alison On Being Liked

30: T-bone Demon Executor (the electric chair song)

30: Krispin’s rap

32: Todd Bently 

44: sling bang boom (with Hanson!)

45: Addicted 2 Jesus (with DC Talk!)

Brad Jersak is the author of several books, including Her Gates Will Never Be Shut and Incarnation & Inclusion, two of Krispin’s favorites. He’s appeared on many podcasts, this one with Jonathan Martin on Hell, Judgment & Atonement.

Summing up what prayer is in This Present Darkness: “Our prayers were like the batteries that energized the angels”

The title of the book comes from Ephesians 6:12: “For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (NRSV)

9 min: Jersak mentions YWAM and Fuller Seminary teaching spiritual warfare/classes on signs and wonders. He also mentions Peter Wagner, John Wimber, and Chuck Kraft. Please click on the links for more information. 

On why horror movies and conspiracy theory books are popular: “We like to face our fears in the context of something we have control over.”

16: D.L. mentions Todd Bentley, a charismatic preacher recently in the news again. Do you really want to go down this rabbit hole? OK, here you go. 

35: Jersak mentions moralism in his book, A More Christlike Way.

40: “The weapons of the world are force, and that’s not how Jesus came and overcame everything. He came to surrender to the will of his father.”

50: Book recommendations on connecting to Jesus: Can You Hear me? Tuning in to the God who Speaks

Lisa Sharon Harper, author of The Very Good Gospel, founder of Freedom Road--a consulting group dedicated to helping people do justice more justly (Check out her excellent podcast here).

“I wasn’t taught to interpret Scripture. I was just given Scripture and told to do it.”

19 min: Peretti’s books were a spiritualization of the culture wars which launched in the 1980s through the moral majority. 

26 min: Viv Grigg says that the “powers” move us away from the ethics of God. What does it mean to be ruled by God? It means to come under the constitution of God. Belief for the Hebrews was not a mind thing, it was in the body, and it has to be lived out in the world. And that’s what ethics are. 

31 min: In the book Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America the authors state that the one way for white evangelicals to change their worldview is to be immersed in communities that are unlike themselves

32 min: “The good news is that Jesus, the king of the kingdom of God, has come to earth to confront the powers of the earth who are hell bent on crushing the image of God.”

40 min: Recommendations for people who are deconstructing but still want to be aware of power and principalities: immerse yourself in the teachings of communities of color. 

The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can be Made Right by Lisa Sharon Harper

The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James Cone

Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman 

Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God by Kelly Brown Douglas

In many ways it is a uniquely European and western project to separate the spirit and the body and to secularize the world. 

48 min: “I think that the unspoken project of western civilization has been to usurp God, to become God, to control everything.”

49:30 Race: A Theological Account by J. Kameron Carter. 

“The only way to live without connection to the spirit world is to think that you are God, and to live at a level where you don’t experience oppression, where you ARE the powers.” 

“I really believe that it was used to forward a political movement, and it was one that was consciously galvanizing white evangelicals to rally around a political ideology that they knew . . . would ultimately result in the winning of the original culture war, which began with Brown V. the Board of Education.” The culture war is not just about sexual politics, but it is also about race. It is about the desired rule and control of white men over space. 

49 min: “The Spirit of God comes against oppression.”

D.L. recommends William Stringfellow’s book An Ethic for Christians and other Aliens in a Strange Land. A white theologian in the 70s, his understanding of principalities in the Bible shifts from the personal to the institutional. 

Hi Friends! Episode 2 of Frank Peretti's America is out now wherever you listen to your podcasts. Listen, then come back here and let us know what you think!

We would also love to share any and all stories you might want to share about your own experiences growing up and learning about spiritual warfare. Drop a story in the comments or email us at [email protected].

If you are interested in the Faith in an Age of Fear conference DL mentions, check out the eventbrite here. We would love to see you there! 

Interview with Daniel Silliman, (on twitter @danielsilliman) whose PHD dissertation was on the history of best-selling evangelical novels. He specifically looked at the five novels which changed evangelical publishing in a significant way and sold over a million copies. Those books were:

Love Comes Softly (1979) by Janette Oke

This Present Darkness (1986) by Frank Peretti

Left Behind by Tim Lahaye and (1996) Jerry B. Jenkins

The Shunning (1997) by Beverly Lewis

The Shack by (2007) by William Paul Young

Silliman recounts how the evangelical fiction market primarily courted female book buyers with Christian romance novels, and how Peretti and his “Christian horror” was a new risky genre.

21 min: Silliman mentions Francis Schaeffer and his beliefs on worldviews influencing Crossway publishing to branch out into books like This Present Darkness.

28 min: Silliman gets into the background of Amy Grant and her personal and professional troubles, and why this led to her being so drawn to a little book called This Present Darkness. 

Here’s a link to an LA times piece about Amy Grant being credited for the sales bump, with this particular jewel of a quote from Lane Dennis, CEO of Crossway (Peretti’s publisher): “He has written a book for the so-called Moral Majority. They can hold this up and say, ‘This is how I see the world.”

37: min Jack Chick Tracts and demons.

Trigger Warnings: talking about demons, demon possession, sexual abuse, sexual abuse allegations being dismissed

24 min: TW Sexual Abuse in TPD. Here is a link to R. L. Stollar’s original tweet thread. 

Intro: music by Krispin Mayfield (indebted to the song “Ashton” by Michael W. Smith. Voice clips from pastor Steve Waldon and his youtube channel, where he reviewed This Present Darkness in 2018. 

This Present Darkness Wikipedia page. 

This Present Darkness sparknotes (short summary for those who are curious).  

This Lying Survivor: Frank E. Peretti and Evangelical Fears about False Abuse Allegations by R.L. Stollar for Fathom Magazine. 

39 min: Frank Peretti book on bullying called The Wounded Spirit.