I'm not hearing invitation here.

No, evangelical theology is so boundary-centric, right? And I say this all the time on my channel.

It's we have the truth.

We have the corner on who God is, on what the Bible means, on God's moral law.

Assimilate or die is essentially the vibe, right? I do want to make one quick point brief.

Everything that even Tim Scott said after his claim that James Tallarico is such radical, James Tallarico would have no problem affirming what he just said about God being the Alpha, the Omega.

There's nothing controversial or exclusive about that.

Okay.

On a Sunday, feeling like we're gone And we're nothing short of Invincible

And then I'm thinking, are these guys even Christian? Well, luckily for them, the very last song on that album is called Some Will Seek Forgiveness, Others Escape.

And that's where they mentioned Jesus.

So that's kind of like the stamp you need.

Okay, they're Christian.

They mentioned Jesus in one song.

I mean, it's safe.

For Tim, some of his favorite Christian music contained within it a critique of the politically conservative evangelical world that raised him.

Yeah.

So how do you flip that switch, you know, magically once you say the words, "I do"? So yeah, so I, I, I've been a part of the entire thing, the entire apparatus my whole life.

And, um, you know, in 2016, like for many of us, Trump was a, a major moment for me where I said, "I think something is really wrong with my faith tradition.

Like, how do these Sunday school teachers that I grew up with who taught me about sexual purity- All of a sudden they're, like, telling me if I don't vote for the guy on the cover of Playboy magazine and the guy who's bragging about grabbing women, I mean, this is way beyond infidelity.

This is assault.

If I don't vote for him, I, I'm not, I'm not a good Christian.

Like, the, the math wasn't mathing for me, right? But at this point, I was still deeply involved in, in, in, in a conservative evangelical church.

And, um, maybe there's a way to actually meet the need and start to heal some of these wounds, you know?

So Tim, from you and your generation there, did you have that kind of experience, either things taken away? What were you not allowed to see? What was the big controversies of your time?

Honestly, the house I grew up in – It was strict, but it didn't feel like crazy in a lot of ways.

Like, you know, I mean, I guess looking back, it just depends.

Like, I couldn't watch Power Rangers because of the violence, which as a parent, I kind of get now because it's pretty violent for kids to watch.

But yeah, I mean, like my church, I could trade Pokemon cards.

They let me do that somehow.

I know.

there and then it took about a 30-year break from ever watching any horror movie after that because it just my imagination does just get triggered with that stuff and i think a lot of that is just my upbringing that i just really take it very seriously

How, how much of this essay is based on the real-life analysis and disappointment you've had to suffer?

Uh, I, I mean, uh, uh, all, all of it.

It, it's a combination of my experience growing up in, in what I call is the basement, right, of fundamentalism, and also, um, when I started coming out of that basement and reading beyond the bubble that I brought, was brought up in, and s-started reading about American history, and just, you know, h- kinda how we got here, and reading more about the white evangelical tradition, I just realized, oh my God, we have been on the wrong side of, like, every major cultural issue that I can think of, from slavery, segregation, the fact that, you know, uh, White Southern Evangelicals were the biggest group to try and, uh, uh, maintain that institution, right, to the-

What was your personal process on evolving on LGBTQ brothers and sisters, Tim?

Oh, man, yeah.

I mean, look, the, um, as someone who grew up deeply committed, by the way, to conservative Christianity and is now much more a cr- still much more Christian, but also more on the left, the beginning stage, the, the, the one pivotal moment that really got me to think differently was meeting and working with my first ever gay coworker at Starbucks.

I was 18 years old.

I'm coming out of this world of fundamentalism where I'm warned about the gays and the atheists, and I have permission to tell this story.

If you were to say that to them, what would they say?

So, uh, really e- e- easy.

They would just say, "That's not what the Bible's talking about in context." For example, Matthew 25 is a very iconic passage where Jesus is giving all the commands to love the stranger, take care of the sick.

They would say, "Well, that's for the church to do.

He's not prescribing for a nation to do that." Of course, these are the same people who will then say, "Well, because the Bible is clear on abortion," uh, hint, it's not clear on abortion, but they'll say that it is, "therefore we have to outlaw all abortion." Or, "Because the Bible is clear on, on marriage," hint, it's not clear on marriage, "we have to, we have to, you know, um, um, ban gay marriage from the country." So it's always a selective interpretation.

Uh, it's, it's always what, what, what you can call is, it's like a motivated literalism.

Only certain parts of the Bible are taken literally that advance their agenda.

Yep.

Okay, so what has Trump had to do with this? I mean, was this like a movement before Trump came in, or did he really like— solidify all this and now we see it everywhere um so like what did trump coming into office have effect how did he affect all this

so trump is simply the fruit i would argue of what has been a multi-decade long um coalition building exercise of the white evangelical movement i can explain that This really starts in the late 70s, early 80s with a man named Jerry Falwell.

He's the founder of Liberty University.

He is a man who starts working with a conservative organizer named Paul Wyrick, and they start realizing that— Jerry Falwell got political for the first time after integration started happening.

So when the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v.

Board, which essentially dismantled segregation, at least federally, Jerry Falwell said in a sermon that if the justices knew God's law, they would have never ruled the way that they ruled.

So he had a big problem with black students and white students integrating.

And so, like, how do we balance as people who see the harm and danger of like Christian nationalism and all this stuff? How do we balance like celebrating our freedoms? with knowing that like our freedoms are getting taken away or like, are we just like the spoiled nation who's like, we want it all, you know, like how do we look at America as especially like as LGBTQ people?

Right

...

the rule of thumb you need to understand.

This term, like I said, dispensationalism, it actually was invented in recent history, the 1800s, by a guy named John Nelson Darby, who, by the way, fell off his horse and hit his head, FYI.

But he essentially posits that God works uniquely in different ages of history, AKA dispensations.

There are seven of them.

And we are currently in the second to last one.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

I, I'm not someone who, who left my faith.

In fact, I left the White evangelical church because I thought...

I watched Jesus leave the church, right? I'm like, "Okay, I'm going where this, where, where this person's going." I'm committed to following Jesus no matter what.

So I say this as someone who's still very much an insider.

But we have to understand that in particular, the White evangelical project is what has bred so much of the hatred we're seeing today.

You can start with the Moral Majority.

It's very effective, yeah.