Weird Religion

We're back! With an episode per week through Christmas...

We talk about a very weird religious artifact: a flyer advertising a themed paintball contest, based on the idea of the rapture...

Behold: 44 minutes of Brian and Leah making each other cringe and laugh while assessing very weird religious artifacts: Christian bumper stickers.

A special extra shot of Weird Religion as an add-on to Season One: Brian & Leah take on the Rose City Comic Con, reflecting on the victory of geek culture, interviewing artists like Midnight Furies author Jessica Herron, Junior Braves of the Apocalypse authors Greg Smith and Michael Tanner, and more. We also seek out the dark underbelly of the comic-con circuit—WILL WE FIND IT?!

Behold: 43 minutes of meandering material that didn't quite rise to the level of a coherent episode! Classic Brian and Leah! LARPing! Why Leah doesn't LARP! Hidden Satanic symbols in your everyday life! "It's a relationship not a religion!"

Behold: 37 minutes of meandering material that didn't quite rise to the level of a coherent episode! Classic Brian and Leah! The joke of avocado toast! Brian and Leah disagree! Mormons and Bob Jones University and change and revelation! Ridiculing the state of Wisconsin and the IHOP>IHOB name change and Gwyneth Paltrow!

This episode considers the life and spiritual vision of the Rev. Carlton Pearson, subject of a popular This American Life episode as well as the recent Netflix bio-pic Come Sunday. When Rev. Pearson hears God reveal to him a potentially heretical view by way of a special revelation—universal salvation (everyone goes to heaven, and there is no hell)—he risks losing his congregation and jeopardizing his spot as a rising Christian star. How would people know whether God revealed new information by revelation? Along the way we talk about racial division in church, the pros and cons of revelation as a mode of spiritual discourse, and the reasonability of hell.

We’re climbing the mountain in this final episode for season one of the podcast! Why do people climb mountains? What do mountains mean, spiritually? We explore aspects of these questions through the film Meru, documenting three adventurers who attempt to climb a never-before-summited peak in the Himalayas. Brian reveals deep emotional problems, and Leah doubles down on her reluctance to ever climb a mountain while yet promising on tape to climb Mount St. Helens. We’ll glance at some research about why people risk their lives to stand on a snowy peak (see also some newer research here), the rise and fall of a small mountain town, and the legend of Wy’east (Mount Hood).

This episode introduces listeners to the little-known documentary Audience of One. We hear the story of Richard Gazowsky, Pentecostal pastor and amateur filmmaker, who, after watching his first movie at the age of 40, believes God has given him a vision to create the biggest and best film ever made (!?). Along the way we talk about aesthetics in American Pentecostal-Charismatic movements, Christian appropriations of the Shofar, finger streamers and tambourines, Charles Finney and the New Measures, Hamlet and the Lion King, the devil and Pentecostal rockers, Jesus Camp, Rocky IV, and Troll dolls (BURN THEM).

In this episode, we watch King of Kong: a Fistful of Quarters, a film documenting the surprisingly engrossing contest over who will be the reigning champion of the 80s classic video game, Donkey Kong. Will it be the self-aggrandizing favorite, restaurateur and hot sauce salesman Billy Mitchell? Or down-on-his luck, everyman challenger Steve Weibe? Come for the epic sports drama. Stay for discussions of David & Goliath and other ancient epics, cheating, virtuosity, masculinity and gender construction in the gaming world, misogyny and the alt-right, and whether or not video games count as religion in this “secular age.”