have to respond to it.

If you're a Christian and you believe it's a sin to be gay, but you oppose slavery, then I want to tell you that you already have all the tools you need to fully affirm the queer people in your life.

Let me explain.

A few hundred years ago, when slaveholders defended their right to own human beings, they used the Bible.

This wasn't difficult.

They had about a hundred proof texts to defend their position.

There's not a single biblical condemnation against slavery but there are a lot of passages that either permit slavery or give regulations on how to do it properly.

So what he said there isn't even true because the Bible does have different classes of people and they're treated differently.

described.

But the reality is that fear-based, high-control religion has always been a powerful tool in the hands of authoritarians.

They love it.

They love that they can not only say, you know, straight people are above queer people, men are above women, but they can also say that that's God's way that things are.

They can say not only that I have uncontested power, but that God wants me to have that power.

Not just that this is a will that I want to enforce on the country and on the world, but that this is God's will that's going to be enforced on the country and the world.

And so it is a useful tool.

But how do you explain this kind of Christian nationalism?

Uh, why do we need some government bureaucrat to go out, especially when he's, when he's gonna go dox people and impose a lot of radical social policy?

Well, I'll simply say that when Jesus...

The, the Kingdom of God, again, that's the Basilia of God or the Empire of God.

This is a political notion that Jesus was talking about.

And in Matthew 25, this commonly cited passage where Jesus gives uh, uh, uh, the most explicit description of how God judges, uh, uh, something that many people miss is that it's not just individuals that are gathered, it's actually nations that are gathered for judgment.

And the criteria by which the nations, in other words, the communities that we create, the criteria by which they're judged is how well they treated the hungry, the, the sick, the poor, the, the stranger, and the imprisoned.

Nations are judged, in other words, by how well they care for the most vulnerable.

"... or my kingdom is not of this world?"

You know what I'm saying? So those are some of the things on my mind today as I come into the proverbial office.

Yes, so we do have some topics on deck.

The reality is this is being pre-recorded.

So by the time this conversation airs, Lindsey Graham will have been dead for some weeks.

But right now, there's a lot of chatter about the reaction to his death and what is the right way that we're supposed to respond.

And even though this might feel like old news, this is perennial because this happens a lot.

People be dying just regular, with regularity.

Isn't that part? Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, so I'm often asked, well, what about Donald Trump? What happens when he dies? Because what if he gets away with it? Will he ever have that sense of justice, you know? And I don't know if this answer will be satisfying, but this is how I like to think about it.

I think it is very important to remember that he is not actually winning.

he is not actually living the good life by any definition.

It might even look like it to some people, but when you remember what life is for, what is life about? From my perspective, and I think Jesus's, life is about love and connection.

Trump is not experiencing that.

Life is not about being at the top of a supremacist hierarchy.

But because it threatens the entire foundation of evangelical theology, Rob Bell had to be cast out immediately because if the kids take that— seriously, it might lead them to conclude that hell isn't what they were taught, which would then have us lose our power and authority in their lives.

But God had other plans.

So in the picture, he's holding a pillow that looks like poop smeared on it.

So he's having a bad time as a dad in the middle of the night.

And you know what? He's so real for that.

I resonate with that.

I have three kids.

I have twins that had a phase where they had poop parties.

Where could someone start their journey of rethinking family and marriage and relationships if they're in the middle of deconstructing religion and maybe see this as harmful?

Well, Jesus was like human, right? And he touched tables and he was not what people sometimes put him as a pedestal to be.

Yeah, I do think recovering a human Jesus is important.

You know, Jesus, his favorite way of describing himself was not son of God, but son of man.

And that expression in the Hebrew literally means the human one or the human being.

And so over 80 times, Jesus called himself the human one.

And I think that one of the reasons I still follow Jesus and love Jesus is that it's a beautiful picture of humanity, not necessarily divinity.

Or maybe that's actually what divinity means.

So what's your take on building your own relationship?

Funny that, it's almost like a one big conspiracy weiracy.

So Russell Brand got a book deal, right? Through Tucker Carlson's new publishing house.

In fact, Tucker Carlson, this is the very first book that Tucker is publishing.

But this mix of Jesus and celebrity and like sort of anti-cancel culture, like, oh, this persecution complex, oh, they're just trying to take down Russell Brand because he's a Christian and that sort of thing plays well.

to not everybody, but there's, you know, maybe a 25%-ish of the population that is in that sort of Christian nationalist category that will latch on to that.

They have a whole alternate media ecosystem that can kind of keep them going.

And it's...

I asked Brian, what's it like to be a lifelong Christian and to see it co-opted by abusive men?

Mm.

So I grew up in a world where we were not even shy about the fact that we were fundamentalists.

We were, like, fully that is who we are.

Um, and so it's very fire and brimstone, um, sort of Christian message that, that I grew up with.

Um, which, you know, life is a crazy thing.

I, I think I can see ways that that har- caused a lot of harm in my life and, and the way that I view myself and other people, and I talk about that in the book.

But also, I think it gave me insight into the way that many people, even outside of fundamentalism, still have a Christianity that is rooted in fear and punishment, even though it maybe has a more, like, positive presentation.

[laughs]

... tweeting Bible scriptures like Marco Rubio?

It is really tragic.

And you know what's really hard for me is I w- I was raised in fundamentalism and spent time in evangelicalism, and in those movements, people were not against US aid to foreign nations.

That was not something...

We were proud of being the kind of country that did those things.

Christians don't tend to be against doing those sorts of things.

Watching, um, rather than the white American evangelicals that were the primary voting bloc that, that got Trump in office, 87% of white, uh, evangelicals voted for Donald Trump, and they really did buoy his entire campaign.

Mm-hmm.

So even excluding all the big left-wing violence, nevertheless, even the liberals admit, terrorism today in America is a left-wing problem.

But what you're actually lying about from that study, the study actually says that this year is the first time in 30 years that left-wing violence has outpaced right-wing violence because historically, it has always been white nationalists' right-wing militant violence that has by far been the greater historic problem.

Only right now, in a moment where authoritarian fascism is creating police states throughout the country, and Trump's secret police is going around brutalizing and kidnapping people, are we seeing people respond with violence which is understandable because Trump is creating a violent society.

When you create a violent society, no wonder there are resistance.

Absolutely.

(laughs)

When you create a system where sex is a duty and it's obligation, um, you're actually doing a lot of things.

First of all, you're not creating a culture of consent.