#111 John Fugelsang: How Religion Was Hijacked

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The last she'll be first, humility. The Christians on the TV don't really match the teachings of Jesus, and that the religion appears to have been hijacked. Suddenly, it's about cathedrals and armies and hierarchies. There's an incredible history of Christian activism in this world, but it's almost always in resistance to Christian authoritarianism. Jesus is all about love and forgiveness and grace. It's easy to see why that's not a very sexy message. I want to know that God likes me better. That's much more seductive, and that's what religion does. Religion will tell you you're better than other people. Jesus' whole movement is about humility. Religion didn't invent hate, but hate found cover in religion. What do you think is happening with religion? Do you think it's like transforming into something else? If your church isn't telling you to love your enemies, but is telling you who your enemies are, you're not in a real church. The opposite of faith isn't doubt. Doubt's an important part of any faith journey. The opposite of faith is certainty. Are you open at all to sharing any personal experiences? I mean, I have so many experiences. I wouldn't know where to begin. Welcome to the Astrid for Squares podcast. I'm your host, Tonya Doll. And I'm Cody Blue, and if you like what we're doing, I want to support us in the type of content we make. Please hit that subscribe button. It helps us out online. And it's free. And it's free. And on today's episode, we have John Fuehl saying, "Brother, thank you for being on. Round of applause." Yeah, so happy to have you here. Thank you so much for having me. It's really a pleasure. You sound like a radio host. How do I? I feel like I'm listening to the radio right now. Traffic and weather on the ones. Yeah. Okay, brother, by the way, I have to shout out that we are from the same high school. Yeah. Back on the Isle of Long. Yeah. Long Island. But we went to the same high school. Well, I mean, that takes me to sort of like where I would like to start off, which is your story of how you got to this point in time where you're writing this book. I'm here because a couple of people once broke a solemn promise to God. My mother grew up in the south during the Depression. And right out of high school, she entered the convent. Her boyfriend at the prom proposed and she said, "No, I'm going to marry somebody else." And my mother became one of the daughter's wisdom order. She gave up her name. She gave up her freedom, her chastity, gave the her obedience and became sister Damian. And they put her through nursing school and eventually sent my mother off to Africa to work with lepers in Malawi. But before they shipped her to Africa, they briefly stationed her in Brooklyn. And my father grew up in Brooklyn. He was the son of a cab driver and a house painter who wound up becoming a Franciscan brother following the order of St. Francis, which kind of, I guess you could say, it radicalized him. But that wasn't a term they used back then. They didn't understand why Jack from from flatbush was suddenly all into Gandhi and the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King. He came from a very conservative family and suddenly my dad is wearing the clerical collar or wearing the Jedi robes. And he's the guy riding the conscientious objector letters for students that are protesting Gonavianam. My father, the brother met my mother the sister. Yes, right. No, not awkward at all. No, no. And PR did a piece once and that's how they let a brother marries a sister. And everyone thought it was a hot incest story. And instead, it was my humble Marvel villain origin. But my dad fell madly in love with this nurse at Holy Family Hospital in Brooklyn that had a southern accent that he knew he wasn't allowed to fall in love with. And it promised God he would never fall in love with. They became pen pals. She went off to Africa and he would write her about what was going on with the civil rights movement in Vietnam and Dr. King. And eventually after it's a long, long story. But after about 10 years, he convinced her to leave and go on a date. He told her he was in love with her before she left the convent and she threw him out of the hospital saying you have no right. She had come back briefly to the States and he borrowed a car, drove eight hours to Virginia Beach to find my mother and find the hospital she was working in and talked to her to sunrise, told her he loved her and always had. And she threw him out saying you have no right. You have no right to speak to me like that. Don't you see how I'm dressed? And the next day she invited him to meet her family anyway. And he shows up all Brooklyn charm in his clerical collar in his accent. And my grandmother down south was horrified. She was like a Yankee from Brooklyn. I'll never understand a word he says. But he charming them all. And when he was done, he kissed my grandmother on the cheek. And he kissed my mother's sisters on the cheek. And then he turned to my mother and politely shook her hand. And that's how the Southern ladies knew the Yankee was in love. Eventually she left. They got married two months later on a tiny army base in Virginia. And they settled on the Isle of Long and tried to raise my brothers and my brothers and me to be progressive, free thinking Catholics. Is that a thing? Yeah, it's why I do stand up because I can't afford the therapy. I actually require, you know, all the social justice, but keeping all the sex hang-ups, okay? Keep those balls in the air at the same time. But, you know, I grew up believing that Christianity was about the stuff that Christ talks about in that book we've all agreed on. Servant leadership. The last she'll be first. Humility. Going to the margins. How you treat the lowest is how you treat Jesus. He's against the death penalty. He overturns that and sermon on the Mount. He says to pay your damn taxes. He's the biggest feminist in the entire Bible. I mean, women were property and they were icky. Women's biologies were weaponized against the menstrual blood, which gives us life for thousands of years was used as a sign of ritual impurity in the eyes of God. The Jews have come a long way. Their way ahead to the Christians now, but 2000 years ago it was the gospel according to like Turner. Jesus shows up and he treats women as equals. Includes them in his ministry. There was 15 apostles. The men who wrote it said there's 12 apostles and three groupies. The women are the only one who didn't abandon Jesus and they're the first ones he shows up to when he comes back. He broke the laws of his religion to teach women, which was illegal to talk to women who he wasn't allowed to talk to, to let women touch him, including virtually impure women. I mean, the way this guy was a feminist is crazy. He just broke all the taboos. And if you go by Matthew 25, the parable of the goats in the sheep, also known as the judgment of nations, it's where Jesus gives his marching orders. You've heard this many times. I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was naked and you clothed me, but he essentially says when the end of the world is coming, I'm going to gather all the individuals and nations. It's very important. And he's going to judge the individuals and the nations based on four criteria. How you took care of the poor, individuals and nations, how you cared for the poor, how you cared for the sick, how you woe, woe, woe, welcome the stranger, and how kind you were to people in prison. And that's Jesus's marching orders. If you want a Christian nation, not how much money you gave to the church, not how much you screamed at women outside clinics, not how mean you were to gardeners from Ecuador or transgender kids, not how hard you prayed, not how much you hate Muslims, not how much money you gave to whatever political cause. Those are Jesus' criteria. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say? But if I think what happens, a lot of people who are raised in a Christianity that's centered around the teachings of Jesus, you grow up in this country, and you realize that the Christians on the TV don't really match the teachings of Jesus, and that the religion appears to have been hijacked by a white supremacist click that's all about their own tax exemption, and that preaches domination over service, superiority, over going to the margins and helping for other people. And so it's an awkward way to be, but you see it all the time. We call it Christian nationalism. We call it fundamentalism, authoritarian Christianity. It's what's always been there. And when you realize, oh my God, Christianity has been hijacked. Jesus never talked about abortion. Jesus never said, "Be mean to gay people," quite the opposite. You can't be mean to gay people and follow the sermon on the mount. Again, I don't ask anyone to believe in you. This is literal fact. And in my book, I don't ask anyone to believe it. I'm saying this is the book that they wave around so domestically to justify all all these policies and the reality. is, that's always been the history of Christianity since the Roman Empire took over 1700 years ago. When Rome took over, it stopped being this movement of love and care for the less fortunate, run by this brown skined Jewish carpenter hanging out in the poor neighborhoods in Galilee, suddenly it's about cathedrals and armies and hierarchies. And then the crusades come and they start doing the opposite of Jesus for Jesus, slaughtering Jews, slaughtering Muslims, slaughtering pagans, but with the cross, we're doing it for Jesus, doctrine of discovery, go and rape the lands, convert the natives to Christianity, but steal their resources and kill as many of you have for Jesus. And it can seem like, oh my God, slavery was propped up by Christianity's segregation. The Nazis were Christian nationalists. And when our atheist friends say, oh, religions responsible for all the horrors, I mean, it's hard to disagree, but there's another side to it. Because throughout the whole history of Christianity, it's always been the Christ followers who stand up to these rad bastards. So you got the crusades and they're slaughtering people in St. Francis of Assisi, quits the war, renounces his family fortune, lives among the poor, hugs lepers, and walks unarmed through a battle zone to negotiate and talk with a Muslim sultan. You got Columbus is slaughtering the indigenous people, and it's the Catholic priest on his third ship, Bartolomeo De Las Casas, first act of protest by a white person in this hemisphere who writes to the queen to protest the way they were abusing and enslaving these people. Slavery propped up by the Bible, but it was the Jesus followers, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, the Quakers who called that shit out, Hitler, all of this, they had God is with us on the Nazi belt buckles. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a martyr for Jews he didn't even know, standing up in the name of Jesus. And segregation propped up by Christianity, Martin Luther King comes out of Atlanta with just the teachings of Jesus and nonviolence and breaks that system helps break that system of the American apart. And think about how many how many people have talked their parents and grandparents that are so much homophobia in the last 30 years. So I get it when people slam the religion, but it's the Jesus followers that have always along with non Christians and atheists and agnostics had to beat back the Batchit crazy Christians. Wow. No. So, okay. So you're talking about the Jesus followers versus the faith Christian Christians, okay. So because the Old Testament is pretty gnarly parts of it are parts of it are beautiful, parts of it are really, really intense. Yeah. So what is the difference? When was there like a shift from like what you're talking about where the Jesus followers and people that are considered themselves Christian, but they're like Christian fundamentalists? Yeah. Like how do we get here? I don't want to make it too boring, but you know, there's in what's called the Old Testament or the Torah, God has a covenant with the Jewish people. It's a pact. They make it. It's a peace treaty. I will be your God and you will be my people. And I'm going to tell you how to be groovy and how to take care of each other and worship me. And this is the whole thing. And 10 commandments, all that. You get to book of Leviticus and it gets pretty gnarly. You can kill people for any reason, working on a Saturday, dead. You can trade your child for a goat. Okay. It's primitive. It's 2,000 years ago. Again, they've come a long way. Right? No. No, no. They've come what they have. I mean, the Jews are head of the Christians in so many areas. And no one follows Leviticus, right? No one believes in it. But it does say you shall not lie with a man is with a man. That's an abomination. And they love that. But that's not for Jesus followers. So Jesus comes along and he's this guy who brings a new covenant. As we said in the Catholic Mass, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant, Jesus' whole deal is, yeah, forget what you heard. There's a new deal now. And I'm going to reinterpret the holy law that you look at the sermon on the mount. The whole thing is him fulfilling the law. I'm bringing the law to its conclusion. And now there's a new law. We are moving from law 1.0 to love 1.0. Jesus has his catchphrase in the sermon on the mount. You've heard it said this, but I tell you this. You've heard it said I for an eye, but I tell you turn the other cheek. You've heard it said, don't hate your brother. I tell you to love your enemy. He's totally turning the religion on its head, which really upset some of the ultra-conservative religious bosses. And it really upset some of the Roman Empire that we're occupying the Holy Land. So Jesus brings a new covenant. And this means you get to eat bacon. You get to drop the homophobia bullshit. You follow the teachings of Jesus. But as you guys know, a lot of homophobes can't let go of the Leviticus. They really want to beat up on gay people. They can't stand the gay people who are having sex and enjoying their life somewhere. So they'll cling to this part of Leviticus. And as a comedian, like this was always hilarious for me, because I'm like, all right. So you're going to pick this one part of the Bible. It says being gay is a sin to justify being cruel. Then you got to believe everything in Leviticus, which means you got to stone gay people to death. At homophobes, the gay guys have been working out. They're ready for you. And you've also got to stone to death. If you want to believe that part of the Bible that says being gay is an abomination, you have to believe that you have to stone to death, children who are gluttonous or drunks. Anybody who works on Saturday. Drunk children? Yeah. Just obedient children, too. Well, how else am I going to learn? If you mouth off to your parents, the law says you bring them out and all the towns will all the men gather together, pick up rocks and throw the rocks at the kid to least ed. But this is the law. Now, we don't know how often they did it. They may have just been in the law, existing there to make kids behave, but even Jesus through that law in some of the Pharisees faces at one point because nobody, they don't do it, but that's the law. And adultery, death, including divorce and remarriage. That counts as adultery. So if you really believe that being gay is a sin because you believe in Leviticus, well, Leviticus 2010 says you have to kill Donald Trump. So I'll call the secret service and let him know you're bringing your rocks to Mar-a-Lago. And it's easy to see why that's not a very sexy message, caring about the dregs, caring about the poor. I don't want to welcome the immigrants. That's much more seductive and that's what religion does. We're better than other people. It's all about that. If you actually believe that you're better than a whole other group of people because you believe in Jesus, dude, you don't believe in Jesus. You haven't read the damn book and that's the deal. People haven't read the book, which is why they can use it to say slavery is okay. Jesus is all about liberation. I came to free the oppressed like you, and again, what's evolved over the years is these anything but Jesus' Christians, right? So, well, Jesus is way too woke for me. So let me go around him. Now Paul's homophobic, St. Paul's over there and Leviticus is homophobic and Jesus is a feminist, but St. Paul says women should be submissive. I'm going to go with that and the biggest one they use, and you'll hear this a lot. You're hearing it a lot right now as they chase brown kids around church picnics, is Paul's letter to the Romans, Chapter 13. Romans 13. You're going to hear this all the time on the news, and that's where Paul, who was not Jesus, but certain folks like Paul better, he was writing to the Roman church. He was setting up and said, listen, he didn't want him to get killed by the Romans like Jesus had. He said, you got to respect the governing authorities. Paul was a Roman citizen and a Pharisee, but after he had his whole big conversion and became Paul, he used to be Saul, and he started the church, and he says in his letter to the Romans, Chapter 13, you guys have to respect the governing authorities. God put them here, don't screw up, don't get in trouble. So St. Paul eventually is killed by the Romans, and 300 years later Rome takes over the religion, and that's cultural appropriation, right? You can over the fan club of a guy you fucking killed, holy shit. Roman takes over, and they decide that Paul's letter is about scripture, or holy scripture. So St. Paul talking about God is like Paul speaking for God. St. Paul talking about Jesus, just as good as Jesus is in the Bible somewhere, and when Paul said, respect the governing authorities, you'll hear this a lot, justifying the actions of ice. So they'll use Romans all the time to justify anything anti-Jesus that power does, that government does. Why, who said, respect the governing authorities, got thrown in a cell by those same governing authorities and got his damn head chopped off by them? That's how that worked out for Paul. Paul resisted empire, and Jesus completely resisted empire. You can't sit, there's nowhere in the Bible that Jesus says, obey Rome, and that's the whole deal. You're either standing up to authoritarian power, that's the Jesus way, or you're groveling to it for your pieces of silver, and that's the authoritarian Christian way. And that's the struggle in the whole religion. Christianity's enemy is not atheism or Islam. Christianity's enemy is this right-wing authoritarian Christian nationalism that has nothing to do with Jesus and everything to do with I'm better than you and I want power. That's the whole history of it. People who hate religion, they hate Christianity. They don't hate it because of Martin Luther King. They don't hate it because of Jesus. They don't hate it because of Dorothy Day or the nice Christians. They hate it because of the douchebags who use the scripture to hurt people. And that's been a 2,000 year struggle with Christianity, and I wrote this book. It's a very long answer to a real simple question, but I wrote this book because I wanted to make a guide of everything the haters got wrong and how to use the Bible when you're debating your extreme right-wing loved one or coworker or classmate or local government official. And it's for conservative Christians too because nice conservative Christians are going to have to deal with these haters as well. Wow. Wow. So much to say I just got actually communicated by the Pope for that speech by the No, it's there's so there's so much to say. I mean, okay, first thing is you gave me coffee before this started So I blame your host for me No, it was amazing. That's why you're here and it look this is so fascinating to us because I mean technically we were Born into a Christian household, but we were not that like we didn't go to church or anything Yeah, but I feel like everyone just thought they were Christians Yeah, I would be right I put up a tree in my house once a year, and I don't like Muslims that gets me in right? But that's sort of the that's sort of the thing. So we obviously believe in a Spiritual movement outside of the four walls of the church. Yeah, you know, I was listening to you off air You know, we often say acid for squares. It's dissolving the four walls of the church You know anyone that's had a direct spiritual experience experiences Oneness a unification of the all a disillusionment of the self to become you know a we and not a me I don't find anything in experiences like what you're describing to be inconsistent with how Jesus tells us to treat each other exactly right exactly and I think that thematically what we're experiencing as a People are the things that separate and disconnect us from each other and keep us out of that state of union I believe the word religion itself means union the origin and the word yoga as well Translates the word union. So when we often meditate on Well, okay, well When we talk about the stuff we go well, we need everyone still needs to come together We can't make enemies with the religions we need to find ways to find harmony with them Yeah, and we have these constant conversation about what's going on and I guess the problems we have when it comes to religion is Religious extremism or fundamentalism. Yes, but there's something else that you're talking about which is a little different Which is sort of this editorialization every religion does it. Yeah, everyone picks and chooses the parts of their holy books They follow but is it a fundamentalist to it to justify being mean to people? It's so weird. It's like it's like there's the the shadow part of humanity They want righteous anger. They want to be able to give in to that Aspect of themselves and feel justified in doing religion can give a permission structure religion didn't invent hate But hate found cover in religion and I think you're exactly right when when atheists and agnostic brothers and sisters say Oh religions responsible for the oppression of women and the homophobia and the violence and it's hard to disagree But I always say this and I've I've had this argument many many times It's not religion that does that the overwhelming majority of liberal and moderate Christians Jews and Muslims are getting along being totally groovy right now Making families building communities forming businesses together not fucking with anybody. It is the extreme right wing I'm not talking nice conservatives again the extreme right wing Mentalists of all the world's religions of Hinduism of Judaism of Islam. There are the ones that turn young people off to faith They're the ones that cause the violence the further to the right your religion is Pick any religion as Scientology, I don't know, but they are all the rest of them The further to the right your religion is I find the same five traits apply women are always second class Doesn't matter their religion. I mean if God loves men and women equally God's a feminist But the more conservative any religion is no. No God made 51% of humankind just a little bit inferior a little bit inferior Right and Hindus pull the shit Jews pull the shit Muslims but Christians crazy secondly the sex hang-ups If a woman's enjoying sex or gay people are enjoying sex. Whoa. That's only for procreation right the liberal Jews and Christians and Muslims There's nothing that Jesus is only sexual hang-ups are about adultery and dumping your wife That's it and churches that stay the hell out of people's private life are very much in sync with how Jesus was Not about judging people right so the sexual hang-ups is number two number three violence is okay if my side doesn't The more to the right your religion is Islam due to the more God likes me better. I get a pass for violence I'm on God's side and you're opposing me you're against God you're on the side of Satan. I'm allowed to kill you They believe it number four in all right wing right wings of all religions. There's always a Focus on punishment over healing That's consistent that's authoritarian punishment over healing over healing what do you mean by that when someone has sinned When someone has fucked up It's all about how much can we punish them how punitive can we be whereas Jesus's whole thing is about I don't care what you did. I forgive you Consistently he doesn't stay mad at people he he heals you know the Roman Centurion's servant which is one of my favorite stories Um, whenever some woman's been slut-shamed and comes to Jesus. He's not interested In in shaming them with whatever shit they went through he's like you're good you're forgiven I don't care. You're done It's always about healing But the fundamentalists among us it's always about punishment and and finally um It's this all all fundamentalist religions have in common this um This this like Victim mentality this persecution complex this notion that oh bad stuff was done to my tribe So I get to do bad things to your tribe Consistently like like it's okay if we're that doing this and I find that these five traits exist in right wing Judaism Christianity Islam In the case of Christianity they have nothing to do with Jesus as teachings It's how authoritarian religion always works and my mother used to say That when she was in the convent they never never let her read the Bible And my dad never believed her, but she was like no they would tell us you go to Mass every day father reads the Bible for you What yeah, and think about it for Catholics It was in it wasn't the mass was in Latin for 1500 years so you don't read the Bible The priest will explain it right and they kept people away from the actual words of Jesus Filled him with Paul filled him with dogma filled him with man been addressing him. Oh holy sacred was spooky talk Because Jesus's teachings are as threatening to authoritarian power today as they were 2000 years ago. Whoa That's crazy. I look popped in my head when you said that where there are certain you know Countries that work with ayahuasca in South America and god bless them and god bless them Well, they will I think it's per if I'm mistaken. Yes, I used to use They actually would not give the medicine to the people the shaman would do it and do the healings itself And it's the it's the modern the modern times of purge tourism gatekeepers as exactly. Yeah Yeah, and that's that's how religion does it. It's the opposite of Jesus The opposite of faith. It's one of the things you're saying though is is the common denominator is Humans yeah about men men flawed fucking men, but right right. It's wounded men distorting something That's you know supposed to be a good thing control control and you can find it in anything you find it in any industry You can find people messing it up So we could like work on penis enlargement surgery and this will go away in a generation I mean like we we probably have the technology already to make guys calm the fuck down and be nicer to people. Yeah, for sure. I have a question. So What do you think that with like religion? Do you think that organized religion is dying? Do you or do you think it's like transforming into something else because you've talked about before about spirituality becoming such a A large piece of you know our society now, but what do you think's happening with religion? It's a great question. I mean I I say in the book They say the largest growing religious group in this country are are Mormons really? Yeah, or some say it's Islam and some say it's None of the above right this pulls it say that but I think the largest growing religious population in America are people who were raised religious But now consider themselves spiritual Majority of our audience. Yeah. Well, they're fed up with you know They're fed up with the I mean people don't like leave the church because they hate God or Jesus or Noah's Ark or Santa Clause. They're fed up with the hypocrisy and the meanness of men and these organized systems um Back in the 90s. What will we like like we were like 90% Christian Now we're what down a 60% Christian is that true? Yeah, why would 66% about two thirds of us About 40% of us are still white Christian the numbers don't lie And young people are leaving the church and young people are you know turning away from religion all over the place But I don't know if that means religion is dying or transforming. I'm not smart enough to to to qualitatively say that but um They're leaving be not again. They're not leaving for spiritual reasons They're leaving because of these control systems that just aren't about helping your neighbor if your church It isn't telling you to love your enemies But is telling you who your enemies are? You're not in a real church at least not as far as Jesus is concerned He's all about love and acceptance and breaking down walls and not having enemies Jesus is about transformation not being superior to others But being superior to who you were yesterday. He is not about domination at all And men are what men are and they crave power and they crave order and This is why so many people focus on the Ten Commandments more than the Jesus teachings You'll you'll never see our right-wing Christian politician friends fighting to put us Jesus teaching On a classroom wall or a courthouse wall if you notice that they'll they'll fight for the Ten Commandments They don't fight for anything Jesus said they they came to worship Jesus, but not listen to him And because Ten Commandments is great, but that's order, right? That's control. They'll shout not they'll shout not The sermon on the mountain to be attitudes is chaos. It's all conscience. It's all love for everybody It's messy. It's all over the place. No, no better have you shall not shall not shall not shall not And so it's a hard question to say. I don't think people are ever going to lose a spiritual yearning Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. I'm going to show you guys, too I think that we're always going to be in love with the great mystery Always fascinated by the great question mark religion Like science is one way to try to understand this creation we're all living in, science does it with facts and religion does it with faith, science is like how we're here, religions like why we're here, whatever you want for the reason, but if religion isn't serving people, they're going to get bored and leave it, and it's not necessarily sad because the same kind of church that propped up a white supremacy for so many years, I don't think deserve to live. I don't think they deserve to survive. I think that community is important and people need community and that's going to evolve and change in many ways, but I don't think regardless of what happens to organized religion, I don't think spirituality is ever going to leave our species. Yeah. Yeah. Because we work, you know, with end theogenic plant medicines and stuff like that, we talk about it on the phone a lot, and if we talk about the phone a lot, you talk about it on the show a lot. Wow. I'm tired. Nice when the gummies kick in. Okay, so, but something that happens a lot inside of these plant ceremonies is people get like Jesus coming to them. Even if they're not religious, they get this Christ consciousness, it's like a awakening sort of situation. Yeah. And the thing is, is that like we both, we have both had Jesus come to us and I've never like, I've never been Christian or like, I said to, not just plant-based, yeah. And so, but it's interesting because it does feel like that consciousness is kind of like what we're trying to do with this show, where it's like, remove the gatekeepers. And it's like, no, no, no, everyone's welcome. And there's like, here's how you, you're able to communicate with the divine without, without having to go to a preacher or something like that. Bill Hicks said, there is a living God who will talk directly fucking to you. Yes. Yeah. And it's so true. Yeah. Whatever God is. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, you, I think, I think psychedelics are one of the reasons why a lot of hippies aren't atheists. Yeah. And again, when, when I talk about God, I don't mean a big Caucasian man with a giant fuck off beard and the sky throwing down lighting bolts. You mean skydiving? That sounds like Zeus. So many. Well, yes, it is because, and totally because our, our image of God, I think, has been filtered really through two sources, well, three sources first through the Greeks, because when, you know, they were translating, they had their own monotheistic image. And God was the angry alcoholic step God of Zeus throwing lighting bolts down on people who deserve it. And you can see that influence on the scriptures over the years. Look, we'll never know how much our idea of what God looks like has been molded by Leonardo Da Vinci's ideal of a really strong, dominant power, daddy top, because the painting of God and the creation, it's like, oh, I see, okay, they weren't all David to, I mean, Da Vinci was gifted at creating images of a well-developed man. And, you know, you look at David, it's like, okay, I get it, I get it. You saw God in this man, all right? And, you know, how much of our consciousness and awareness of what the creative energy is has been focused and some would say, diabolically molded by one painting, by a dead gay Renaissance painter, would say nothing of what the 18th century, 19th century Bible, so how to white Jesus, illustrated Bibles with a white blonde Jesus and the 1800s are the worst thing that ever happened to America. And it's not Da Vinci. It's not Da Vinci's, like, wasn't that his lover that he was, like, portraying, but it's actually, like, as poor Jesus or whatever it is, and that's how we got this sort of white Jesus look. I mean, that's really to do with just Europeans making, making Bibles, and when they became illustrated, you know, I mean, and when the first Europeans came over here, they didn't think they were white, they thought they were Christian, they didn't have anything to compare them. They were like, oh, we're white people. There's, there's, there's natives, no, we're Christian people. They didn't have whiteness. Whiteness was really invented here for Christianity, and we're the only country in the entire world where our history of Christianity is completely entwined with a history of white supremacy. And that is still playing out right now today. It's terrible. Me and Tanya are super food junkies. That's why we're excited that today's episode is sponsored by Voron. 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Now go check out Midwestgroquets.com and use the promo code AcidForSquares for 15% off your purchase. And any orders over $99, free shipping. And I love free shipping. I think it's interesting, like, if you're trying to communicate an advanced concept to a child, you use sort of these like a metaphor, right? We always talk about like the mouse and the whale or something like that. Yeah. Like how Jesus did it. Right. And Frog of the World. Like, "Kai's going to kick your butt." But what I'm trying to communicate here is that it's like as if to communicate the all that is or this creative consciousness they were using essentially this like patriarchal archetype, the sky daddy, Santa Claus archetype, to communicate this thing. And it just was taken so literally, I'm really curious, you know, where we kind of go from here, because I do think the spiritual communities are, we're missing the community part of it. The thing that religion did great was the community part of it. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. It was to some degree. Well, those communities also meet people go bat shit and have the Spanish inquisition. Totally. Totally. That's where the KKK came from. Yeah. It's like I'm all for religious community unless they become toxic, murderous dick faces. I'm not saying that their communities were good. I'm saying that the, I know you're saying. There's like a individuation that comes with personal spiritual development and finding the God within yourself to absolutely. And at a certain point, we have to find a way to come together while simultaneously transcending sort of the dogma and the four walls of the church. Because the thing with the four walls of the church is it's inherently separatist. And if you've ever merged with a consciousness or that you call divine, it is the absence of separation. Exactly. We're literally talking about how do we remove the separation from each other from ourselves? How do we come together and separation from God as well? All this talk about hell, you know, the original Jewish concept of show is like separation from God. It wasn't a place where fire hurts ghosts. I was like 15. I'm like, wait a second, fire can't hurt a fucking ghost and poof my hell, all my health program went away. I was like, how can fire hurt a spirit? Oh my God. And it's a boom. Wait, where does hell come from? Where were you just saying? Well, the original Hebrew concept was something called show less H-E-O-L, which was more like an underworld where everyone goes and it was separated from God. But to your excellent point, you know, Jesus did this. He talked in parable and metaphor for a number of reasons, right? On the one hand, by talking and storytelling instead of just preaching, he was able to reach a bigger audience. He was able to reach less educated people. By talking about things like don't keep your light under a bushel, talking about the good shepherd, talking about the prodigal son, by having these allegories, these parables, he could get his message across to people. And they wouldn't have to remember a bunch of words and commands and a sermon because there's a story attached to it, which worked really well when you're going for illiterate people that are under Roman occupied Judea 2,000 years ago. And I always say, my God, Jesus talked in parable and metaphor. Why is it so hard to read the Bible as parable and metaphor? You know, there's not, there's a lot of truth in the Bible. There's an incredible amount of truth in the Bible. There's not a lot of facts, there's a lot of truth. And so when you can separate that, you know, when you realize, oh, Jesus is Christianity, he's really about the teachings of Jesus, about how we're supposed to treat each other, not literal belief in a talking snake. And literal belief in a talking snake has nothing to do with the actual teachings of Jesus. So I mean, again, Bible stories are a great way to hook kids in. and when that's how they get us, right? The miracles are the best part in all those Jesus movies make us watch. And so we learned about the miracles in Noah's Ark, but they never teach us the three years Jesus spent teaching. Most Christians in America are raised on three things of Jesus, the manger, the miracles, the cross. Not those three years he spent talking and explaining what people would have to do to earn the label of a Christian nation. And so when it's all into worshiping Jesus as a God for my personal salvation, so I can go to heaven, well, aren't you precious? It's one of the things I liked about the Catholic Church. They were like, "Fuck you, Ringo, that's step one. Go to the back of the line. It's about service to others." Not "I accept Jesus so I'm going behind God's velvet rope." Growing up in the South, I'd see these billboards all the time. Christians aren't better, just saved. That means you think you're better. That's Christian supremacy. This is the thing of all fundamentalists, all religions. They don't think they're better than you. They know that God thinks they're better than you. And that's dangerous, especially in a country that has 110 guns for every hundred people. This is the thing that like a lot bothers me about fundamentalists, extremist religious groups or these religions. But the thing that bothers me the most is that the miracles are for Jesus alone. The healing and all of these fascinating things being able to communicate with God directly, that's something for these people and these books from thousands of years ago. And they're saying that it's not something that people can do today. And that bothers me. It bothers me that it's disempowering people from having direct experience and a direct relationship with God. It has to be through the priest or through the book or through the church or through that bothers me more than you need. Yes, religion. And why do you think that-- That's not Jesus. I mean, Jesus, the kingdom of God is here and the kingdom of God is within you. It's religious hierarchy that needs to say there's someone in between you and God, right? I call it church usher disease or a cudd. When I was a kid, y'all didn't get direct to church all the time like I did. But if you spent your childhood being direct to church, you might have noticed the kind of curious male energy of the church usher. Certain kind of usher is like, okay, who's going to get seated? You want to be near God? You talk to me. You come down here. You sit here. You sit right over here. The power, I would notice as a kid, this poor guy probably works his ass off all week and he gets one little bit of power on Sunday when he gets to tell people where they get to sit in proximity to God's altar. And it's a little bit of power and it makes people act like they're fucking eyes on how we're planning D day. You go here, you go here, and it's harmless, but that's the control mechanism. It's a little bit of power is going to warp men's minds when they think that God has given them that power and that God likes them better. That's the essence of fundamentalism. The rules don't apply to me because God's chosen me. I'm allowed to kill. That's the just war theory. Oh, Jesus said here because of this, you know, they're always looking for a loophole because service to the least of us is a drag. Unfortunately, it's the whole essence of Jesus' teachings. So if you're not interested in helping the less fortunate, you should find a new name for your shitty group. You know, like like Saint Paul, Saint Paul, he was Saul of Tarsus and he was murdering Christians and he was present for the martyrdom of Saint Stephen. And he was a Pharisee, he was a Roman citizen, and he hated these Jews because the first Christians were all Jews. Jesus died of Jew. His first accounts of his life were all written by Jews. And some of the Orthodox Pharisees, not all, some of the Pharisees were friends of Jesus, but some of them couldn't stand this guy. It's why they sold him out to Rome and it's why they were martyring the early Christians. And Paul, Saul then goes and has his road to Damascus moment where Jesus comes to him and says, Saul, why do you persecute me? He at least he thought it was Jesus's voice. They never met in real life, but he became the Apostle Paul. And then he began preaching his Christian identity all over the Roman Empire. And unlike the Apostles, because Paul was a Roman citizen, he could travel freely through the Roman Empire and he was a great marketer. And he sold Christianity by saying it's just like Judaism, except there's eternal forgiveness. And you can keep your foreskin and you can have bacon now. And it was really popular. And it's why Christianity got so big while the actual guys who worked with Jesus were getting murdered by Paul's old buddies back home. So Paul's version is the version the Roman Empire adopted that lasted. And I say it's like if Ronnie would join the Rolling Stones in 1975. And then the other guys all went down in a plane crash, but Ronnie would kept the name of the band for his solo career. It's kind of like what Paul got away with everything that we talk about as Christianity. Good or bad comes from Paul's version of it. Paul's version of Christianity led directly to the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition and the Holocaust. I mean, all that stuff came because we took Paul's version. And it's middlemen getting in between the love of God and telling you in the case of modern times, how well you've got to pray to this guy with this crown on his head, because he's God's emissary. No, no. I mean, Jesus is like it's between you and God. And Jesus tells us, don't trust these people who pray in public. Matthew 6.5, he says these people who are praying on the three quarters to be seen, don't trust them. You want to talk to God? You go and private. And then he gives the teachers you had to say, the our father prayer, but he says you pray to your father in secret as your father's in secret. Jesus tells us not to trust these people right away because it's between you and the commander in chief, whatever he or she or it is because it's like a show that they're putting on or something. They want to be seen. And so think about how you see people demonstrate their Christianity so bombastically, waving this prop above their head. I don't see them helping the less fortunate. I go to Turning Point, USA's website. I don't see anything about helping the poor. I don't see anything about helping the sick. I don't see anything about welcoming the stranger God forbid. I see a lot of we're better because we're Christian. And that's a very seductive fan club message. And it's got nothing to do with Jesus who says you got to pick up your cross and follow me. It's not going to be easy. It doesn't make you better than other people. Yeah, I think that's something we even see even outside of Christian communities, even in just the spiritual communities, the where, you know, there is a, the ego has a compulsion to wear one spirituality. No matter where you are, you're talking about yoga pimps. I think I call them yoga pimps. I call them yoga pimps. And you guys know those new age dudes with a man bonnet yoga class. You know the ones I mean, a whole different kind of player. I think ego is a very tricky thing. And I think it wants to survive. And I think when you're teaching essentially a paradoxical, you know, world view that says, no, you're supposed to dissolve the self. You're not a self. Your self is an illusion. It's causing all of your suffering. And when you get out of yourself and you stop living like a self and start living like a wee, you join the cosmic family and we start serving everything around you. I love that. Then you'll be free from your suffering. It's tricky because. Well, it's a goal, right? It's what we're supposed to work towards. But whoever gets there, who achieves that level of nirvana in this realm? Like you're supposed to, it's in the trying to be more than human that we become better. Yeah. And that's the thing is I don't know. I think it's like, it's a journey. You know, it's constantly. It's a path. It's a path, right? And you then no one ever gets there. You know what I mean? Like you never arrive and say, oh, I'm a Brahmin like that. No, no, you're trying your whole life to get better. Right. You wake up and you start again. And you start the animal. Here's the spiritual. We're stuck in between trying to get to this place, but always being dragged back to this place. Yeah. It's truly, truly wild. The cosmic dance. I, uh, I'm so curious. Have you had any personal experience that has led you to this place or is it just from your own life experience and studying the Bible and seeing the hypocrisy reflected back at you in the culture? Or if you had an experience like with something you would call the divine or the sacred, that's sort of clarified and verified this perspective. I mean, I have so many experiences I wouldn't know where to begin. You know, it's just start from the first one. I mean, nothing, nothing remarkable. You know, like I can tell you this time, I saw UFOs in Peru, but please did you? Yeah, but that's, and that was spiritual, but it was, it was not what you're asking about. No, that is what we're asking. Do you see our logo? Okay. No, because most of my great spiritual moments were nothing miraculous. It was just me learning and me being, you know, having a moment of grace and awareness and realizing that I had a chance to be better and, and we can all have a holy moment anytime. You know, you, you, you get someone to maintain eye contact with you. You can experience a holy moment. It's terrifying for men it is, you know, and my, my UFO story is just kind of goofy, but, but a few years back, my brother was doing a two-year program with the Jesuits in one of the poorest parts of Peru, Takina, out in the desert, not where the Machu Picchu tourist go. My brother was working at the center for working children who, who are shining shoes all day, or, you know, and they don't go to school or working all day. And I went to spend some time with him. And my brother had written me saying that he had seen the lights in the sky. And he had talked with a professor in Lima who was writing a book about the visitors. And I was like, wow, I'm okay, groovy, you know, like what kind of ayahuasca we, what grade of ayahuasca we talked about? No, totally serious. And my, my girlfriend and I went, spent 10 days with him. This is a while ago. And, and he kept saying, I want to take you up in the mountains to see the lights, see if we could, we can see him. And I'm like, oh, you know, I don't need to see lights. This lets a drive up the side of a dangerous mountain in the dark in your rickety truck. Sure, let's do it. And we go up to the top of this mountain in the Andes. And, and below, you can see the city. And, you know, I witnessed lights in the sky that changed speed, color, and direction in ways I cannot explain. I said, for the first half hour, those are helicopters. They're just helicopters over the military base out there. And after a while, I was like helicopters can't do what I'm seeing. And I've seen videos on YouTube that show the exact same thing. And what made it spiritual for me was I eventually leaned back and stopped watching them and just started looking at the sky. I had never seen the sky from South America before. We were high above the city, so it was very dark and you could see galaxies upon galaxies. And I eventually found the night sky to be more majestic than, "Oh my God, there's God damn proof that there's something that I can't explain." Now, I'm not saying they're aliens, I'm not saying they're interdimensional beings or they came from the future or I can talk all day about theories about this. I'm fascinated by it. But for me, it was an incredible comfort. You know, a camel that says there are more things in heaven and earth or ratio than are dreamt of in your philosophy. And I realized I'm never going to know what's going on. But that's okay. I know this. There is more going on than I realize. God, if he or she exists, is in charge. And I felt an incredible sense of peace. And after a while, I'm like, I don't need to look at the amazing UFO lights anymore. I just lay back and looked at the night sky because it was so comforting to realize that I'm not going to realize what this is. The world's bigger. And it was an incredibly spiritual experience. My manager at the time made me promise never to tell you one because you thought it made me sound like a cuck. But I'm not saying I saw aliens or anything like that. I saw lights in the sky change color speed and direction in ways I still can't explain. And I have over the years seen videos on YouTube that show exactly what I saw. And so I believe, but I like with religion, I believe, but I don't pretend I have answers. So Cody and I, because of our, because of our personal experiences, we believe in ancient astronaut theory. Right on. Do you think that maybe any of these ancient stories, biblical, anything like this, any of these spiritual texts could actually be speaking about extraterrestrials? Sure. I mean, you got a whole channel that used to be about history that devoted to primetime documentaries. Yeah, I mean, sure. I saw 65 million years ago that I'm driver. I saw, oh, what's the alien movie? Romulus? Not Romulus from Etheus. Yeah, where it's like, oh, we came from those creepy guys. Okay. Like I'm fascinated by that. I love it. It's fun. You can go down a real rabbit hole with it. But again, like with the UFOs, like with the Bible, I'm never going to know. So all I can do is see what has been the greatest spiritual truth to me. And the greatest spiritual truths in my life have come from, you know, moments. I mean, being in the room when someone dies, being in the room when someone's born. I mean, moments that might just be emotional. And I tell myself it's sacred. But I think most of us have experienced moments of incredible growth where we have been forgiven or where we have forgiven. And we realize that our heart is changed. And I think that's what spiritual growth is all about. And getting closer to being the person you're meant to be, I don't think we ever achieved the final finished product. I think we're always works in product and working works in product. Yeah, works in progress. Now, sorry, the gummies are kicking in. And yeah. So I mean, I take, I take tremendous, like I used to frustrate me because I wanted to know. And you know, I say in the book, the opposite of the opposite of faith is a doubt. These smug motherfuckers who know, that's fundamentalism. The fundamentalist Muslims kill and people they know. Fundamentalist Jews, the fundamentalist, I mean, fundamentalist Christians, anyone who's turning the violent, they know. And I don't, I don't have that luxury of certainty. And so I have to try to treat people justly and keep my sensors open for any wisdom I can pick up. John, I think that's so important what you just said because I think as we move into sort of this new operating system, this new way of being as we evolve. This age of Aquarius. Yeah, he's a crazy, whatever, whatever we're, we're changing into. I think it's understanding how like the tools for taking in new information, the tools for navigating the unknown and navigating spirituality. I think one of the things that is a huge red flag is when someone speaks with absolute certainty. Yeah. That should be a red flag for any religion, any spirituality. I think if anybody's telling me who God hates, I don't need to listen to. Yeah. And that's the other thing. So it's fear based teachings, hate based teachings, certainty. And once we can start to say, okay, these are, these are, these are tools to help navigate this messy terrain that is, you know, learning the cosmos. You know, as soon as we can start to apply something, so, okay, is it separating me or is it connecting me? Is it bringing me closer to my family? Is it bringing me further from my family? Is it, if you can start to apply those, then at least I feel like that's more important than taking on one whole, than taking on anything. It's first understanding how to navigate these waters before we start trying to learn everything and read everything. Yeah. And before you wait for some kind of eminence or power to give you a sense of dignity, a lot of people need to feel like they're above somebody else before they can feel good about themselves. And I kind of like the fact that no, it's about humility. I mean, Saint Francis hugged lepers. Yeah. You know, like, you've got to, you've got to be willing to lower yourself and then be okay with who you are. And then you can grow and become stronger and become better. But when you start thinking that again, like you're better than other people, I mean, it's game over. Like, like, because then, then you start justifying deeply on Christ like things. And my whole thing is if you're going to say your Christian, then you need to show me that you actually follow Christ. And that's what abortion did in this country, you know, since since the early 80s, when right wing Christianity, which again, had always been using white supremacy to prop itself up. And after the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act, I mean, Jerry Falwell, Reverend Jerry Falwell, who I debated when I was very young on a Bill Marshall, he was a segregationist, built whites only schools. And after, after civil rights, they were out of a gig. And then after Nixon, they were lost in the wilderness. For the 1970s, the Christian right, their big issue was that Jimmy Carter's IRS wanted to take away tax exempt status from universities that still practice segregation in the 70s. Like, they were still fighting for racial segregation when Star Wars is out. And they realized it wasn't popular. It wasn't kicking. So in Roe v. Wade was decided in 73, not controversial, not controversial. No one cared. Catlicks did. That was it. But by 78, five years later, Jerry Falwell mentions abortion for the first time. And that became their cash machine. And you have to remember, the Bible is not against abortion. The Bible is not against abortion. It without Hebrew scriptures, life begins with first breath. God asserts an Exodus chapter 21 that a fetus is property and that a woman's life has more value in his eye than a man's. That is why abortions are legal and free in Israel right now. Jesus never mentions abortions. He's very against the death penalty. Never mentions abortions. And God never saw fit to have Moses or Elijah or the prophets or Saint Paul or anybody. Ever, ever give any kind of penalty for terminating a pregnancy. Now, I'm not saying the Bible's pro abortion, not saying Jesus is like a clinic escort on the weekend. But what they did was these racist and white supremacists who'd lost their mojo, they found the issue in the late 70s, early 80s. And abortion came to redefine American Christianity. By the time I got to college, if you told someone you were Christian, they assumed you hate gay people and you thought government should force citizens to be pregnant against their will. Nowhere does Jesus say force rape victims pregnant by their stepdad to remain pregnant. Nowhere does Jesus say governments of men should force citizens to be pregnant when they don't want to be. Nowhere does the Bible say punish poor people with greater poverty. If anything, poverty is Jesus's number one issue. I mean, that's why you can't really be against birth control. Let families plan Catholic church so they will be less poverty and then you're fulfilling Jesus's promise, right? Jesus didn't say anything about people having sex unless it was adultery. But abortion did it. Abortion consolidated a movement and it made these televangelists incredibly famous, incredibly wealthy and it redefined American Christianity for the last 45 years. What they did was they got the followers of Jesus to vote against everything Jesus talked about by talking about abortion, which Jesus never talked about. People don't know they don't read the Bible. They're told oppose abortion and that's Christian. Be against the gays and that's Christian. None of those things are. Homophobia is a big middle finger to Jesus. You can't be homophobic and lived by the sermon on the mound. Get the fuck out of here. None of these people follow the vidicus. They're not they're not stoning people to death for working on Saturday. They pick and choose the parts of their holy books, which we all do. But fundamentally, pick and choose to justify being mean to people. And that's how you know, spiritually, they're full of crap. Wow. God, you gave me this coffee and I've just been a preachy, preachy. That bastard. That's why you're here. I'm like, why would it? What? Wow. No, it's been. Try the ayahuasca roast, friends. Well, I mean, I know we're coming to the end of our time. I think the most important thing is to, you know, if there's one thing you'd like to leave everyone with, I know you've made it pretty clear. Subscribe to my substack, bro. Yeah, I mean, like, I'm I'm curious. Yeah, just really is there is there any one message you have for everyone before we go? Anything you think they should know to, to, I didn't know you've made it down. Everything. You threw down the gauntlet. Christians are supposed to follow the shit Christ talked about, I guess. Nice of Christians to follow Jesus. Yeah, you know, again, if you're if you're in a Rolling Stones cover band and you call yourself a Rolling Stones cover bound, but you don't know any Rolling Stone songs. Find a new name for your shitty group. So, you know, I thank you for having me to talk about this. For many years, my mother wouldn't give me permission to talk about my parents past. And as a comedian, I was trying to write about religion, but I couldn't say where I came from. And it was when I finally debated Jerry Fallwell on Bill Marr that my mom gave me permission to tell her story. I host a radio show every evening on Sirius XM channel 127. If you don't have Sirius, we're also a free podcast called the John Fiegel saying podcast. I do have a sub-stech. And I'm on all the socials. And my book is called Separation of Church and Hate, a sane person's guide to taking back the Bible from fundamentalist, fascist, and flock fleecing frauds. And can I do that? Yeah, sure. I want to thank you guys for having me here because Mike Kaplan sent me. And I trust Mike Kaplan on most things, pharmaceutical and comedic. And thank you. It looks much nicer with you holding it up. Wow. Very wow. It looks very Christmassy. I want to get a picture of this at the end. I need it. Now I want to buy it. Well, you can. So thank you for having me. Thank you. Thank you also for doing this show, too, because you guys know what it is. I grew up in this country where we have this binary, right? Atheist or Embassil. That's all the TV ever showed me. You're either a non-believer or you're screaming shit at women outside clinics. And I'm like, what about everybody in the middle of that? What about all the people of all the faiths and all the spiritual people who are seeking God in their own way without an unofficial God fan club guiding them? I mean, there's a lot of us there. And I think that that we are the majority. And the ones who are convinced they have absolute certainty, come on. I mean, you're there's no such thing. God throughout throughout the Hebrew scriptures, God commands us to welcome the stranger, right? God commands us to treat the alien as one of our own. And then Jesus comes along and he says in Matthew 25 that individuals and nations will be judged by how they welcome the stranger. They're not ambiguous, ambiguous about it. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have standards on who enters the country, but it's the criminalization of migrants calling them illegals. That's always a tell. I mean, they're illegals, like like what a racist or you've never heard a white criminal referred to by that noun before illegal. No, that's just for brown skin people who cross the border, the majority of illegals are people who overstay their visas. Undocumented immigrants pay between four and five billion in taxes in this country every year. And our economy would collapse. We're all part of the same hypocrisy, right? Like you want them to stop crossing the border, take down the help wanted sign. But you can always tell when it's revoltingly fake Christianity because they shit on people on the bottom. Jesus' whole movement is about to marginalize whoever is hated, whoever is being shit on by the mainstream. That's who Jesus goes to. The lepers, the prostitutes, the poorest of the poor, the women who are being slutshamed by religion, time and again, even the Roman Empire. Even the Roman Empire, he tells you to bless those who persecute you in a story of the Centurion is my favorite story in the Bible, one of my favorites. Jesus was all about whoever's the lowest of the Samaritans, the foreign minority. You're allowed to hate. Jesus like fuck that. He makes the Samaritans the good guys in his most famous story. The Samaritan woman at the well, it's the longest private conversation he has with anyone in the whole book and it's a woman he was by religion refused to even talk to. He's all about breaking down barriers and going not for the rich people, but going for the struggling people. Look at modern right-wing Christian fundamentalism in this country today. It's about shitting on the marginalized. The undocumented, I'm sorry, the Christian refugees at our border that we call illegals, the transgender kids who are already misunderstood and let's let's make their lives harder every day. War refugees, I mean, foreign refugees, the poor, it's like if you're not going to the margins to help the least less fortune, it's stop pretending it's Christian. If you're just trying to say my click is the best, find a new name, man, because it's just that's what's always harm spirituality and that's what turns people off to organize religion. It ain't spirituality or Jesus or God. Preche. Preche, I'm going to have preche. No, I'm anti fundamentalist. I'm not here all of a sudden talking to me. Now you're amazing. I'm literally fighting back asking you about your meeting with David Duke because I know it's our time. Let's do it. Yeah, I can talk about it. We got time. We got time. For real? David Duke's story is crazy. Yeah, I know you've interviewed David Duke. I didn't interview him. I debated him on Bill Maher. Oh, you debated him. Oh, yeah. Can you tell us the story before we go? Oh, I got in trouble for that one. I was living in Hollywood and my series had just gone off the air and I was trying to live in Hollywood to be a political comedian, which will tell you how well intentioned but naive I was at the time. And they called me one day from Bill Maher's show and said, hey, we want you to come on because they couldn't get any real celebrities to debate politics and religion with David Duke. For those that don't remember, David Duke is a former Ku Klux Klanz member and a former member of the American Nazi party. And I'm not saying that all Nazis are Klanzmen. Okay, I'm not saying all Klanzmen are Nazis. Don't get them angry. They admire each other's work. They're different groups. And I was like, yeah, I'll tear this guy apart. This guy had almost been elected governor of Louisiana in 1990. He was a vile. He ran for governor of Louisiana and President Bush, senior, the incumbent president, was forced to endorse the Democrat because he was so embarrassed that a literal Klanzman in 1990 got the nomination of the Republican Party for a governor of Louisiana. Not that long ago. And so I was like, I'll tear this guy apart. And I called my father because I would always talk to him before I did anything on TV about politics because it was a father-son bonding thing and I suck at sports. And my dad's like, why do you want to put that jerk on the year four? And I'm like, well, he campaigns now for European Americans, Dad. That's what they call honkeys. And he goes around raising money from white guys to fight the mongrel hordes, destroying a once great democracy. And my father was like, all right, don't give me a whole skit. My father's whole thing was, if you let yourself hate this man, you're going to sink right down to his level. I'm like, Dad, he's a Klanzman and a Nazi. He wore a swastika. My dad's like, I know that. And if you deny his humanity and let yourself hate him on TV, you will sink down to his level. My dad was like the Johnny Cash Slunk. Don't take your guns to sound. Downs on leave your guns at home, Bill. Don't take your guns to town. But I knew he was right. So I got to the studio the next day. And backstage they were already tense. David Duke had said he got a lot of death threats, so he'd only fly to Hollywood. If they'd fly him in his bodyguard out first class both ways. And when he walks in the green room, the bodyguard is like his five foot two Russian girlfriend. Right? So now the staff was furious at this guy because I mean, yeah, he's a Holocaust denier, but he's also a dick. And on the air, like it was crazy in the room. The audience could feel it. It was toxic. And David Duke began lamenting the plight of European Americans, the people he said who had built this country all on their own with no help from anyone else. And it went on like that. He was, you know, carrying charts that say the black men rape white women more than white men rape black women. And this is why white people are superior. Like just non stop with this stuff. And I I joke with him. I made fun of it all. I, you know, I he's like, well, I'm he was like part of the modern reformed clan. I'm like, what does that mean? You you you you soft rope? What is that? And and as time went by, the producers kept saying, go ahead and get in this face. And I kept trying to be like my dad said and I kept trying to like, oh, don't see the humanity in this guy. But I kept going on and on about it. It's just all white supremacy laundered over and over. So by the end, I was like, all right, I got to do something. And realizing that my parents had told all their friends to watch this, I said to him, um, I'm really sorry if I've been rude to you. I haven't meant to be hurtful. I said, I know anybody as far to the right as you is clearly in a lot of pain. And anybody who hates gay men as much as you do is clearly crying out for help. And I've become convinced today that there's nothing wrong with you that hot sex with a man couldn't fix. And I stood up and I began taking off my jacket. And I was like, and I'm prepared to make that sacrifice on national TV. And I started undoing my belt. And the audience is going crazy and Bill Marcer to get embarrassed. And I'm like, so I'm like, come on, you and me. I said, I think I said, I'll cross over to the dark side for you, will be one. And then I said to him, I'll make you bite the pillow, bitch. And the next day, legendary. The next day, I felt great. Everywhere I went in LA, people had seen it and high-fived me. Like, I couldn't believe so many people had seen Bill Marthe night before. And I finally, by the end of the day, felt good about calling my parents. And my mother was so upset she couldn't speak to me. And my father's like, you know, and essentially, I had talked about S E X on TV and embarrassed my parents. Oh, that's what it was. And I was vulgar to him. Yeah. I was vulgar and hateful. And I embarrassed my parents. Friends all called up. And I said, mom, don't you understand? The only way to handle that. That was the only way to handle that. I was like, I'm sorry, but humiliating that man was the moral option. And she said, I understand that. But based on how we tried to raise you, I failed to see how saying, I will make you bite the pillow, bitch, is the moral option. And it was it was then I realized that I had I had actually done something I'd never done before. I had finally given my parents something I never thought I could give the gift of a story. No one brings up ever again. You know, every you got to have everyone's got to have a few anecdotes that don't get mentioned at Thanksgiving. Never give no one would ever say it to reunion. Pass the cranberry sauce. And remember the time your first born tried to satamize the Nazi on the TV. That should be brought up at every Christmas, let's be real. We moved beyond it, and not long after this David Duke was indicted and convicted on felony tax fraud and felony mail fraud. He'd been ripping off the money. His conservative white supporters sent him to finance his gambling addiction. So he really was a complete fraud all along. - A dick. - And a complete dick. Yeah, and people who want to believe that Jesus likes them better will turn to that message because it's very seductive. And that's white supremacy. It is stupid, it is mediocre. It is embarrassing. Young people are turned off, and it's against everything Jesus stood for. - Wow. Oh my God, perfect way to end this episode. And I wanna say, like, you know, and we've talked a little bit about this off the air, that, you know, we're a very apolitical show. We focus a lot on-- - Yes, thank you for letting me rent. And to why everyone, please don't unsubscribe because of me, please don't make a really good operation here. I'm not a Democrat, okay? I can talk all day about those guys too, if you want. - Well, here's the thing, and this has been an interesting thing for us to navigate. We've seen so many of our families torn apart over political reasons, so many. And we constantly are like, how do we come back together? It's so partisan, it comes so divided. Everything has become politicized, and it kind of sucks to see moral, ethical, and spiritual issues and movements. - Public safety during a plague is politicized now. - Yeah, dude, there's a lot, everything's politicized. So it's always, but at the same time, it's, you know, these are important conversations to have, because if politics is going to co-opt anything, ethical or spiritual, and use it as a pawn-- - Always will. - You know, it's still, we have to find ways to have the conversations. - That's why I wrote this book, because I find with your right-wing loved ones. Look, we can't write these people off as nationalist or crazed lunatics. These are our families, these are our friends. This is that guy from high school who's still friends with on Facebook for some reason, like we can't hate them back, right? And for atheists, I mean, you can't just say you're superstitious, and you believe in myths, because in many cases, these are the family that atheists still love, and calling them myth addicts is not gonna get anywhere. They'll just think you're on the side of Satan. But I do find if you engage them positively on what's actually in the scripture, something else can happen. They won't agree with you. You'll never convert someone who's a fundamentalist. They have to grow on their own, but you'll reach their wives, you'll reach their kids, you'll reach all the other nice people at the cookout or at the Thanksgiving dinner. If you can model patiently, how did debate without hate? Keep asking questions. Bring it back to the actual teachings of Jesus, who we're supposed to follow, right? I find something else can happen. Again, you probably won't sway them, but they'll appreciate you try to engage them on the scripture itself, these right-wing Christians, 'cause I will always believe. You get a lot farther showing your right-wing uncle how Jesus was not an immigrant-hating homophob that if you just haul off and call your uncle an immigrant-hating homophob. I mean, it's about love, it's about compassion, it's about empathy, it's what the religion's based on. And if we can, with our Christian relatives, and you don't, even if you're not Christian, but you want to get along with them, find the bedrock areas of agreement in the teachings of Christ. Otherwise, they're just using Jesus as a mascot, and you're never gonna get anywhere. So you can actually be the better Christian, even if you're an atheist. And some of the best Christians I've ever met have been atheists. And some of the most unholy heathens I've ever met have been very loud believers. John. - Wow. - John, thank you so much for coming on the show today. - Thank you for whatever you put in my call. - My love, I love brother. - Yeah, right. - All right, gang, if you're still with us, please subscribe, like, comment, send this to your mother, she misses you, and yeah, and just follow our brother and support him as the best you can. And until next time, we love you all, bye-bye, man. - Bye. 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