Testing the Boundaries of Traditional Evangelicalism | Tim Whitaker | Episode 6

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hey guys, this is Jared Tafta and Grant Lockridge. Glad to have you at the counter. We're on the Across the Counter podcast. We did a recording with Tim Whitaker and NewViet Evangelicals and we just want to give a little context before we jump into the episode. We don't believe deconstructing is the end of the path. Reconstructing is the most valuable follow-up. So Tim has asked a lot of great questions and is seeking to rebuild with true building blocks of faith.

Speaker 2: 0:41

We do not endorse every belief represented on our podcast. Instead of listening to respond, we're listening to understand.

Speaker 1: 0:51

There's a bit of language in this interview, so if you have any little ears around, take preventative measures.

Speaker 2: 0:59

We were super excited to interview Tim Whitaker, and welcome to the Across the Counter podcast. Let's get going. Hi, this is Grant Lockridge and Jared Tafta. On the Across the Counter podcast, where we create space for real people to have honest conversations. Today we're with Tim Whitaker and just tell me, tim, just tell me a little bit about your personal journey and kind of how you got started with the podcast.

Speaker 3: 2:13

Yes, Hello everyone, nice to meet you and thanks again, grant and Jared, for having me on the podcast. Anytime another podcast host gets invited to another podcast to talk, we have to say yes, because usually we're the ones asking the questions. Now I get to talk about me, so of course I'll come on to your podcast. So yes like you said, grant, my name is Tim Whitaker. I'm the founder and creator of the New Evangelicals. It's a nonprofit organization mainly devoted to holding space for folks who are marginalized by the Evangelical Church. We help advocate for accountability in the Evangelical Church and we help people explore the Christian tradition beyond their inherited faith tradition which usually, for our context, tends to be like a fundamentalist evangelical kind of belief system. So my background, briefly, is I grew up deeply entrenched in conservative Evangelical spaces. My parents went to a church that was big on folks like John MacArthur, very reformed. I was homeschooled for nine years, heavily involved in church ministry, pretty much from day one. I mean. I remember being eight years old and, wearing a suit and tie, being an usher handing out bulletins to everyone. That was kind of like my earliest memory of just always at church doing something. My dad was on the worship team and he was also really involved. So that's kind of like my background and I was that way all the way through my young adult years and my teenage years up until now, even though my faith has, of course, really shifted throughout the decades. But I've been as entrenched in church culture as you can get, minus maybe being on paid staff, but I caught myself a full time volunteer, you name it. I've done it in church at some point.

Speaker 2: 4:02

So what is the? You say that you have had kind of a transition in your faith. Can you kind of describe what that means and what that is?

Speaker 3: 4:13

Yeah for sure. So you know, when you I'm not sure of the whole makeup of your audience, but when you grow up in a certain faith tradition, especially one that is very focused on being right and being what I would call fundamentalist, you know, focusing on the fundamentals of what they tell you, is the faith you really just kind of are. You're led to believe, like what the faith you've inherited is the only way to be Christian and anything outside of that is not Christian. So I grew up in a more conservative, um, um, cessationist, uh, reformed tradition, which means I grew up in a, in a belief that said, charismatic gifts like speaking in tongues are not for today and people who do that might even be kind of demonically influenced. And women shouldn't be preachers, because the Bible is clear and God probably has predestined you to be saved and God predestined whoever he wants. That's just that's the version of Christianity I grew up with and it was taught as. It's just what it is Like you are. This is what it means to be a Christian, and anything outside of this we kind of question if you're really in the club or not, and I was someone who took my faith really seriously. You know your pastor, your youth pastor, tells you oh, in your faith, take it seriously, examine the word, study the Bible for yourself. So I did. I did that and I started playing drums at age 11 in the church. And when I was 17, uh, a more charismatic church that played cooler music they said hey, you want to come over and play drums for us on Friday nights? And that was my first time kind of being in a more charismatic space. They would speak in tongues sometimes and believed in women, in leadership, and I said, wait a second. I was taught that you guys were demonic. You know.

Speaker 1: 5:53

And then they would say exactly.

Speaker 3: 5:55

And then they would say to me well, actually you guys might be the demonic ones. I'm like, wait, what If you're? If you think you're I'm demonic, I think you're demonic. Well, who's right? Like, who's the demonic one Right? And that was kind of like the first moment. I mean I was 17, maybe 16. That was one of the first moments where I went wait a second like they're they same claims, but they're pointing the finger at each other and they're both using the Bible to justify why they have these views. So maybe things are a little more complicated than what I was led to believe. And through a long series of twists and churns I got really involved with, like, with like a young adult ministry. That was really beautiful. Actually it was not part of a church, it was just our own little thing. At one point there was like 40 of us meeting every week and you know we were 18, 19. So that level of you have maximum freedom with minimum responsibility. You're kind of at that part in your life. So we're hanging out all the time. We just became good friends and we were super committed to being as devoted to Jesus as we knew how to be. We would spend hours. I mean I would have friends over my house on Wednesday nights at 20 years old with a huge whiteboard, just being like amateur theologians. You know, what is the gospel? What is the Bible? What can church really be? Those are the questions I was asking at 21. That was my life, and one of the things that really started shifting me was when I was 18, I took an overseas mission trip to Europe for three months. I was in Germany, belgium and Finland for a month in each of those countries and in Belgium I found out with my friend that I was with, that we were going to be working with a church that met in small groups around the city of Brussels, including in bars, and I said to my friend I said, oh, dude, I don't know, man, like churches bars, bars, yeah right, I mean there's alcohol there, and you know, christians do not drink alcohol. I was super skittish, you know like I don't know if this is really a church. But that month actually really shifted. It kind of blew all my categories, honestly, and I was like Whoa, like this church doesn't have the. Their model at the time was small groups all over the city and then once a quarter they would come together for a huge meeting, almost like like an all church, you know like get together and I said this is really different. And then one of the people there gave me a book by a guy named Frank Viola, called Pagan Christianity, which his big thing is like hey, all of our roots in modern evangelical church culture are Pagan. Go back to the house church model. So I'm reading this like, oh my God, the church is Pagan. I'm getting more and more radicalized. So I tell this story to tell your audience that I was someone who was always really committed to finding out the truth of the gospel, the truth of God's word. I was reading, you know, on one hand I would read someone like Rob Bell, the Okay, this is kind of interesting. But then I'm also listening to Paul Washer sermons. He's a you know a John. MacArthur. He's really down that reform rabbit hole and I'm like, yes, paul, the truth of the gospel. So so that's kind of the stage that was set In overtime, really in 2016,. This is very, this is a very common story for many people. But for me, 2016 was a moment with Donald Trump where I said Wait, wait, wait, guys, guys. I'm sorry, I'm really confused here. You know, like I'm all in on this faith thing. You radicalize me for Jesus. You taught me that integrity matters, purity matters. You told me, don't touch myself or anyone else sexually until I'm married, and I did that. I passed the test that you gave me, and now you're mad at me because I can't vote for the guy on the cover of Playboy magazine, the guy who bragged about assaulting women. Somehow I'm the problem here. That was like the first real moment of something is disconnected, like something isn't adding up to for me. And then from there I saw, you know, the Black Lives Matter response by the evangelical church. And then COVID happened and I saw again many churches and many high profile leaders saying, you know, wearing a mask, just tyranny, and it's this COVID thing was planned and it's all pandemic. I'm like what is happening to my faith tradition, like I just felt more and more at odds with all of it, and that's actually what led me to start the new evangelicals was. I had this moment during COVID where I said we just need to, we need a new evangelical movement. Like something is not adding up here. I can't reconcile the people who radicalize me for Jesus in these, in this behavior by them, and so that's that's kind of how we got to where we are really two years ago. And then, once I started this work, I really fell down the rabbit hole and so much of my theology changed. So that's a long story, but that's kind of the bits and you know the nuts and bolts, so to speak.

Speaker 2: 10:35

Oh yeah, so that's super interesting that you kind of mentioned house church model and stuff like that, because I know that's something that's near and dear to Jared's heart, of kind of getting back to the roots of Christianity more or less. And you know, it's kind of that thing of the church is we can all point fingers of like what's wrong with the church. And man, did I, like the second, I kind of figured a lot of that stuff out. I was like all right, maybe we, how do we burn this thing down and start from scratch? And then I was like wait, wait a second. Okay, so it was. It was Spurgeon, I think, that basically said the best way to change the church is to like change yourself, kind of thing. And that's something that stuck with me on, like just kind of my inner rage. I wouldn't even call it holy rage, I call it just like grant rage of, just like I'm a little upset by this. This isn't the way that I would do it and obviously I know better than everybody.

Speaker 1: 11:44

So why not do it my way?

Speaker 2: 11:46

And then I was like I really looked into it and I was like, okay, so how do I change myself? Like what's the best way for me to be good for the church?

Speaker 3: 11:59

Yeah, so that's yeah, you know it's tricky because I I really feel that sentiment a lot. I went through a very much an intense phase of burn it down give me the grenade, I'll be the first one to throw it in kind of thing. And honestly, a lot of my, a lot of what we do when it comes to the evangelical, like mega church and like the industrial complex, we're very much kind of in that vein. Still, I mean, if you look at our content, we strongly critique these systems because they seem to be repeating cycles of harm over and over again and have no, have very few avenues of accountability that lead to actual change. And so when people are getting harmed by these theologies and they're, you know, being exploited, there has to be people who say, hey, enough is enough. Like, listen, the, the church is not the problem, it's the systems that we've mapped onto the church that are causing problems. And, to be clear, there is no perfect church model. I'm sure any. Both of you would agree with me on that. But I do think that we can talk about maybe some healthier ways of being community centered as opposed to event centered and as opposed to consumeristic centered, that that that looks less like a capitalist corporation and more like an actual people of God, trying to love their neighbor and love God. You know, as, as we've been instructed to that's really good.

Speaker 1: 13:18

Yeah, you you mentioned, tim, like the, obviously, getting back to community is a. It's a huge key to a lot of the factors that are missing, because a lot of times my, like, my longing for even looking back to, like you know, whatever the right way the church was done, that even seems to be like a fallacy sometimes, because we're all, we're all dealing with a new day, right, like there's not, there aren't old solutions to new problems. Um, there's, there's, you know, the day that we have, that we're made for, and so, like how much of the the battles that you feel, um, well, the new evangelicals are met with have to just do with just consumerism in general and just the idea that we are, um, we're made to be, isolated beings that feed ourselves. You know we're not made for one another. Yeah, uh, does that make sense?

Speaker 3: 14:25

oh yeah, I think about that a lot because you know, as nice as it is when people say, you know we're not in the world or we're not of the world, but we're in the world, kind of thing. Like, no, like we're all in the culture, we're all of the culture, okay, like, like, like we're swimming in 2023 in American culture, like you just can't escape that. And the sooner we can recognize that, I think, the sooner we can be a little more more aware of, like, some of the pitfalls and also some of some of maybe, the benefits. Right, like, we have access to unprecedented technology and and things that are that that really people throughout history never had access to, and that that's really a global thing in so many ways. But also this consumeristic model of just consume, consume, consume. Everything is designed for you, everything is tailored to you, uh, and and also this hierarchical structure of like one ceo, then like his little minions and you know down it kind of trickles. I don't think, for a church model, it creates really healthy people in any sense of the word. I don't think it creates deeply formed christians, uh, broadly speaking, I don't think it creates a a healthy sense of accountability for these ceo pastors who end up exploding, uh, and then finding themselves in places that they never dreamed of, with all this power and access to finances, um, and I don't think ultimately it really helps, like the volunteers either. You know, like, I just think there's so many layers there, uh, so I agree with you. I mean, let's not pretend that, you know, this is just an evangelical church problem. I think it's an american problem. However, the difference is that the church has these, makes these massive claims, right, like, oh, you're, this is your family, your home here, find healing, find hope, find joy, whatever it is like. They make these, you know, wild, almost like infomercial level claims, and they make it seem like like there's no barrier to entry, like, hey, all you have to do is show up, maybe walk down the aisle, pray a prayer, you're good to go, but then but then I call it the fine print happens where it's like okay, well, now that you're in, all right, you can't do all these things. You have to fully commit to the church. You have to make sure you start tithing and also attend our bible class once a quarter. I'm not saying that we should not count the cost of being a christian. I just think those are the wrong costs to be counting frankly.

Speaker 1: 16:41

So that's how I would put it. Yeah, that's good, yeah, and it even even hearing you say that, you know, I've often thought about in in the corporate context uh, what you just described. It often makes me think of the business that just paints a mission and a vision, mission, vision and values on the wall, and then that means that validates who we are. And so it's even similar to what you just said of like, yeah, just because you can make these, you can make these claims of um of truth or community or honesty, or, but it's almost like the fine print of any organization, anybody's word for it's like nah, it's all kind of seems a little bit like bs, like you know, it doesn't, it doesn't follow through. Um, yeah, so I it's just. Whenever you especially like mentioning technology, um, there's been this like globalization of the world, where supposedly the world got much smaller yeah but in many ways the world also got a lot larger. We're a lot further from one another. It seems not closer to one another.

Speaker 3: 17:46

Um, yeah, yeah, go ahead well, it just seems, yeah, I mean, our communities are further apart, it seems like than ever um, because we're all, in a sense it's like a paradox, right, like we're all closer, therefore we're all proximinally speaking, we're, we're, we're farther um. It is, it's a weird world, man, you know. I mean it just is and like solve all the problems too.

Speaker 1: 18:07

I mean, yeah, okay, well, here we go. Let me give you a three plan. We can do it in an hour, you know first we approach the world.

Speaker 3: 18:13

Yeah, um, but I do think, like I think, and I understand I'm speaking broadly here. So, yes, there are always exceptions to these rules, but it seems like american evangelical culture has like a cognitive dissonance built in where they, where people, can say things that don't match reality and they still believe it, like here's. Here's maybe a very, you know, generic example, but how many times do we see, um, you know some megachurch that's like this is all about jesus. It's all about jesus. Here, we exist to lift up the king. But everything physically points to the stage, everything points to the people on stage, everything points to the singers and the band and the livestream and the lights and the speaker. But then they'll say, but no, it's all about god, but the reality is it points to something different. It points to other people being elevated on a physical stage and having fancy light shine on them or shown on them, right, while they say it's all about god. So there's already a disconnect there. Same thing we exist for the community. Well, if most of your money is going back into your building and back into your salaries, then I don't care what you say. The reality is you actually exist for yourselves. Now I understand that pastors who might be listening are saying it's more complicated than that. I agree, which is why I do not. I'm gonna say something radical here. I'm gonna say it, guys I don't believe in these full-time pastor or leadership positions, financially speaking. I do not think the church was ever designed to have this like business model mapped on to it, where most of the tithe money goes to paying the salaries of people. I really don't believe that. I I'm a big believer in either bivocational or or or team-led little churches that are able to take care of the needs of each other through the tithe or through other physical means. I don't. I just don't think that, like this mega church thing was, was the ideal that I guess we could say god you know, had in mind. That being said, I'm not going to say it's sinful, I'm just saying I don't think it's the best model. I don't, I don't think it's an effective model for the mission of the church. I think it's really effective if you want a lot of butts in the seat, if you want to get a lot of money, if you want to get notoriety, if you want to feel like you're reaching the culture for, for god, it's a great illusion. But the statistics show people. They show us that most mega churches actually just absorbed all the small churches in the area. They're not converting people. That's just data. They have to figure out what they're gonna do with that. But it's like a Walmart. You know, when Walmart moves to town they crush out or force out other small businesses. So I just don't think that this mega church thing and then the systems and exports to smaller churches you know like the 700, 800 person, 100 person church that goes, oh, we wanna be like Hillsong or you know, gateway worship, let's just start taking their resources. Again, I'm speaking extreme here. For some people I really believe this. It's almost like a virus that gets like just kind of spread out through all these little churches and before you know it, their mission is to have the newest light show or to try and attract people through these fancy shows. But people just want friends. You wanna attract people? Just love the hell out of them. Show up in your community, start volunteering, show up on your school board and fight Christian nationalism. I mean, there are so many ways to actually love your neighbor that are not. That's not fancy and not glamorous. It won't get you shared all over Twitter, but that's okay, because that's not your call, that's not your role. Now you got me preaching up here, boys.

Speaker 1: 21:39

Look what you did to me Give me a soapbox. Something's not.

Speaker 3: 21:44

It's funny because I love this stuff but I don't talk about it a whole lot because it's not in our main vein all the time. You know, usually I'm covering stories of church abuse.

Speaker 1: 21:52

Well, this is what.

Speaker 3: 21:53

I'm passionate about it.

Speaker 1: 21:54

This is what this is about. I mean really hearing your heart and making space for that. You make space for everybody else. So this is for you, Tim, Thanks buddy, I try, you know.

Speaker 2: 22:04

Something that I'm curious about is where are you involved in like a local church somewhere? Are you just kind of trying to find people on the streets and be like hey, let's love one another the best we can?

Speaker 3: 22:17

Well, perhaps that's part of my own hypocrisy. I'm currently not part of a church. I was kind of forced out of my other church two years ago by doing this work online. My church pretty much gave me an ultimatum of either stop serving as a drummer a volunteer drummer with us, or stop doing this work. So I chose to stop drumming and I ended up leaving the church. I tell people I was at church every Sunday for 32 years, so I'm taking a small break. I don't know where I'm at with, like, the institutionalized church. Right now I feel kind of stuck because all I know is evangelical church culture. So I'm very comfortable there, but I find it completely insufficient and also I can't attend a non-affirming church. I mean, I just have to attend a church that is fully inclusive because of where my theology has taken me At the same time mainline Protestant churches. Although I think liturgy is beautiful and it seems like a beautiful place, it just feels so foreign and like sterile to me that I would feel I just feel awkward even thinking about going to one. But I am kind of slowly kind of turning the bend because I'm finding myself more and more interested in trying to find some kind of faith community. But yeah, right now, as of this recording, I'm currently not attending.

Speaker 2: 23:23

Yeah, that's, and I get that because it's super hard. Me and my wife got a grace church downtown Greenville but it just is incredibly hard to find just kind of that community that you're talking about, of just like, where people are actively like trying to love you and they almost don't care about your theology Like they do care, but they would rather love you than convert you to their specific theology which to me is fantastic theology Cause it's like you know, hey, I'm gonna love you and I'm gonna love God, which is gonna help me love you better. It's like that's fantastic theology. So how do we get to that point? And I agree with you that it's really hard to go through the various you know belief systems and the various theological points and agree with somebody on all of them, cause that's so difficult. But if you don't agree with them, it's just you've gotta still be like, hey, we're gonna love one another and we could be a part of the same quote unquote church, like we could be a part of this loving community that we center around the God of the Bible, something that I was curious about too, because we've actually had some deconstructionists on the podcast. Something that I'm curious about is how far did you go with it? Did you eventually end up deconstructing Jesus Christ or did you go? Did you kind of stop at theology?

Speaker 3: 25:03

Yeah, I mean deconstruction is a very broad term. I call it. It's really an explosion. You know people go in all different directions so I'm not sure if there's like a linear path from beginning of deconstruction and then at the other extreme is like atheism or something. I think people deconstruct what they need to to make sense out of the world because they're kind of done trying to trick themselves into thinking that somehow their theology and the experience of the world matches up. So some people say, hey, listen, I thought about it long and hard. I think I just kind of want out of, like, this whole Christian thing. You know, if Christianity is a house, they wanna get out the front door. So, hey, okay, I get that People have a right to do that. I respect it. Certainly God's big enough to handle that part of their journey, I understand. For me, deconstruction was a term I discovered when I started this work. I never heard of the term before. I went, oh, deconstruction, okay, yeah, we can use that term. But really I think a better word for me is I had to renegotiate my faith. I was having a crisis of theology, not a crisis of faith. I wasn't worried about like losing my belief in God. But I was like well, what do I believe about God? What do I believe about the Bible? What do I believe about Jesus? What does the Bible actually say about these things? If we take the Bible incredibly seriously, right, instead of just picking and choosing certain Bible verses and assuming that, like the English version we have, is infallible with no problems, which I think is not a serious approach to the Bible at all. So I just went for it and I just kind of let myself, you know, down the rabbit hole. I listened to all kinds of different theologians, people that I never heard of before and I realized, oh my God, like this Christian thing is so much bigger. I mean, I tell people I walked out up the stairs of the basement of fundamentalism expecting to find a desert wasteland. That's what you're told, right? Anything beyond their boundary is. There's no Christianity there, it's just a terracy. And I was like, oh, can I curse on your podcast or should I not curse? Whatever's true to your heart, thank you. I said, oh shit, I'm actually in a massive house Like there's more rooms than I ever imagined in this Christian tradition and I was told that this basement is all there was. That's bullshit. So a lot of my journey has been just exploring, you know, what does Black liberation theology say about Jesus? What does women's theology say? What is the Eastern Orthodox tradition that they say about original sin? Where do we get the idea of biblical and heresy, you know? So that was more of my journey. Is I tell people I went deeper into my faith instead of kind of leaving it? But just to be very clear, I respect the journey. I have several friends who ended up walking away from the Christian tradition as a whole. I respect it. It's not my job to gatekeep, you know, and God is in all and through all, and so certainly God also exists outside of my own Christian tradition. Jesus chooses to hope, like many others.

Speaker 1: 28:22

So, tim, I'm kind of holding a few different pieces in my mind and so I also process that out. So thank you for the patience as I come to my questions. But even the idea of finding community at a local level and even at maybe some language, that's helpful, like at a micro level instead of that macro level of all of the lights in the stage and the mission, vision, purpose, but just like and I don't love the idea of the word like home church, but I just like community that happens in homes, like oftentimes is that most familial level. So getting around to my question like a lot of times people that love one another as family don't see eye to eye on a plethora of topics Like you can. I don't think this podcast is really because, like we can, we can get into issues or we can like get into one another's hearts and so like getting into issues kind of pulls in a lot of like I don't want to say like he said. She said like we can obviously like debate ideas, if you will, in theology or in psychology, but more so like something I've found is there's not as much space made available in the Christian community to just have differing opinions and to be able to just sit with one another and, like you mentioned, a non affirming like that's. That's one of the things like, if you were to go to macro level, like you want to participate with a, with a firming congregation, but at a micro level, like there may be community, could be a part of that or any of us get to be a part of with people that we just don't agree with and that's almost something that, like it, it's foreign to us to participate in like family or like chosen community with people that that we just have disagreements with it going to grow into agreement with. So what do you think about that?

Speaker 3: 30:28

Well, I think that not all disagreements are the same. Listen, we have people in our community digitally who are not fully affirming yet they DM me, scared to death. Oh my God, if you. I was afraid to tell you because if I told you I didn't want to get kicked out of the group or something I said. That's not how this works. You know we're all on journeys. I was not affirming fully when I started this work, but if you can hold space for people and affirm their Amago Day as you navigate this, you know, and not to humanize and support the rights of other people to flourish in a free society, like we understand people, we can work with that right. That's different than, hey, I'm just using this as an example. But hey, queer people are abominations, they're going to hell. The Bible's clear and you know, can we still be friends, like? Well, I probably can still like, maybe talk to you sometimes, but just know that what you're saying is incredibly hostile and dehumanizing to an entire people group that has been historically marginalized by the evangelical church since the 70s and 80s. I mean, people forget that during the AIDS crisis, many evangelicals would quote the Bible. They would quote Romans 1 to people who got AIDS, calling it the due penalty for their sin. That was how they weaponized the Bible. That's abhorrent, you know. So the evangelical church has to reckon with its own past of how it has treated and continues to treat the queer community. That's different than someone saying I'm on a journey. I want to expand my loving acceptance for all the people that God made. I'm not fully there yet, but I'm working towards it. You know how do I hang out with you? It's like, oh well, of course we can work with that, like we're all here. But that's a different thing than like, hey, the Trinity, do we have this view or that view? It's like, okay, that doesn't affect the well-being of a people group. You know, I mean, maybe to put it in a more stark contrast, because we're hopefully, for most of us, listening, we're way beyond this. But imagine if someone in your church said, hey, listen, man, I want to be friends with you. I'm a faithful believer, I just think that black people should be separate from white people. Is that cool? No one would be like whoa, hey, I agree, disagree. Well, both sides, right, I mean. But in the 60s that very much was an issue. The church was heavily divided over integration. Bob Jones Sr, the founder of Bob Jones University, has an entire sermon arguing that the Bible is clear that the races should stay separate. No one today would argue that, or at least tolerate that, hopefully, and no one who would not tolerate that would be accused of being intolerant, because some things you should be intolerant of. So I say that because it depends on the situation. I love for fun. I love arguing theology. I think it's fun as shit. You know, I love talking about the Bible. How do we get the Bible? What do we do with certain verses? What do we do with this view versus that view versus that? That's great. But when it comes to the human equality and equity of people and then what's happening currently in our society, for us that is very much like a hard line.

Speaker 2: 33:36

So what do you do with kind of the verses like the one in Romans 1 of? It's definitely it's basically calling sin, sin, and I'm just, I'm not taking a stance, I'm just curious on what you think of those type of passages in there of like.

Speaker 3: 33:57

You mean the passages that would like condemn homosexuality? Yeah, those, yeah, I mean. Here's what I think in a nutshell. I'm not the most brilliant theologian. I rely on the work of others, mainly David Gushy, who wrote Changing Our Mind, and a couple others, but one thing, and also the documentary 1946, but one thing I will say is that I find this interesting because Thanks for joining me today. Kyloarians, be safe, everyone. Sure, it's time to say good bye. Ok, there are a lot of things. Okay, I'll give you an example. The Bible is pretty clear, if you take it on face value, that women should not be allowed to be pastors or a lot of preach. They should actually be silent. That's the actual word. Yet the church, broadly speaking, is pretty divided on, like, what we do with that, and some say, hey, culture and context not really, not really what Paul had in mind, if they understand what's happening, and some say, no, listen, the Bible is clear women are to be silent. There's there to submit to men, etc. Some, for some reason, we have a framework for, for debating those passages, but for some reason, these six, what they call clobber passages, three of which are in the New Testament, other ones are in the Old Testament. Somehow those are like, not debatable. Somehow we can't appeal to context, we can't appeal to culture, we can't even appeal to the fact that the word homosexual is our kind of, our kind of. So so I think that's actual term, which just means Mail better and is to this day scholars don't know exactly what Paul meant. We can't debate that stuff because the Bible is clear. So I just find it interesting I'm not accusing you of this, of course, grant, I'm just saying in general and even gelical spaces. I find it interesting what they'll say is super crystal clear and not up for debate. But then look at passages that are just as quote-unquote clear on the surface and a good chunk will say well, it's not really what you think. You know, we have to do a deeper dive here. So I think that's just one really easy way of looking at this for people who might be like well, listen, I mean if it wasn't for the Bible, I wouldn't be not affirming Well, the Bible is highly negotiable. I hate to tell people that, but there's a reason why we're all debating over these texts for literally hundreds of years. I mean, we just are, and I'm personally convinced that when you really dig down past, like the English translation, all that stuff. I don't think that the Apostle Paul or the authors of the scriptures had any Context what we're talking about today, frankly, because the idea of sexual orientation is a brand new category in human history. We can thank Freud for that. All right, that is a Way of viewing humanity that historically has not existed. If you told Paul, hey, are you heterosexual? You like? What are you talking about? It's just not a framework. I'm more under the impression that these are more ultimately about power dynamics who is penetrating who? Who is the submissive? Men are not to be submissive, men are to act like men. That's what we're talking about more than two people who have, you know, a love interest, who want to live Together monogamously. So I think that's kind of how I see it at this point in my journey.

Speaker 1: 36:50

Yeah, like what you said at the end there about like power dynamics, when my brain starts going down, just the it's on. Do you know what I've talked about? Like fractals, a lot with grant, or like it's just layers upon layers of of reality. So like even just the idea of Masculinity and femininity and like what that looks like. It is more of a like the spirit of masculine and femininity is the spirit of like power. It's, it's the spirit of like a stronger and a weaker in a lot of ways. And then what that looks like and and yeah, you're right, there's a lot of, there's a lot of conversation in in every category, especially about, I feel like what Jesus spoke most about, the idea of like Lordship and servanship and like even at the heart of Christianity, to to Submit like it has to do with that power dynamic. It has to do that yourself and I think maybe a question I have is from your perspective. I Was just kind of like writing earlier, taking notes, so so, as an example, when, when we lean toward certain beliefs of the community At a macro or micro level, you know, may not be in alignment with we, naturally aligned with those that align with us, and so like we can find community. Like outside of the you know given church context or whatever is available. So like we naturally bent towards those that were in agreement with. So what? What do you see is like Almost wrote down and I guess maybe a better language. Like are there any lines in the sand? Like, are there any? Like, how do you determine From your perspective, as you're discovering with others, like, what rightness is, if that makes sense? Do you understand what I'm saying? Like it almost, you almost have to throw that baby out, do you not?

Speaker 3: 38:47

You're saying about are you? Are you saying like rightness, in the sense of like objective truth, or are you saying like, in like the sense of like morality?

Speaker 1: 38:54

Well, yeah, I mean I think they're, they're like inextricably linked in some ways, like whatever is true then, like dictates, you know, like morality. So yeah, I mean in any context, like however that question hits you.

Speaker 3: 39:06

Well, I think, I think, to be frank, I think context matters. I mean for it, you know, I tell people all the time like is lying morally wrong? Well, it depends on the context. If you're lying to protect Jews from Germans, no. If you're lying because you cheated on your wife, yes, you know, like, like there's. There's a pretty clear example of like Lying isn't the issue, it's how it's being used. Right, and I don't want to sound for your audience like I'm trying to be wishy-washy, I'm just trying to be as honest in, and you know, and think about this stuff critically, because I do think we are living in very much like a post enlightenment way of viewing the world which says you know, hey, we can know objective truth. I think some things we can know objectively, we know objectively that the earth is not flat, despite what some people want to tell you, okay. But when it comes to ethics and morality, we have to be willing to acknowledge that culture and society does have a very big play or a big effect on how we view what is right and what is wrong. I mean, the Catholic Church for hundreds of years Decried the use of usury, you know, lending out money at interest. That was like a cardinal. No, no, now, today, most Christians don't think twice about being in the financial industry. Martin Luther said that people who practice birth control are worse than people who engage in incest. Almost no one today thinks that okay. So what do we have? A new objective reality that Martin Luther just never had. So what I'm trying to say is that I think we we build those boundaries Carefully and and by thinking about, about, about what's the community we're trying to serve, and that might look different for different communities. So, for our community, what we tell people is that listen, really, on honor, we have a private, a private Facebook group. Anyone's welcome there. Like, literally, you can be a Trump voting, you know maga person you are, you can be there. However, we prioritize the voices of the people who have been marginalized by the church, which means if you come and swing in with with with your maga rhetoric and you're not gonna listen to others, we are gonna make a call and say listen, you have to listen to what these folks are telling you. Okay, so you're welcome to be here, but there is a rule, and the rule is you have to be able to listen and your voice is not elevated here. Their voice is elevated here. So that's like a boundary that we have and if someone cannot buy by that boundary, then they shouldn't be in the group. Now, that does not happen super often, but it happens. But we're transparent about that. It's not a bait and switch, right? Our group rules that you have to click on before you even ask to join are very clear about this. What we're not saying is hey, anyone's welcome, we have no rules, and all of a sudden we start arbitrarily enforcing our boundaries, right? So for us, our community, we think about it in the, in that framework. Okay, who are we trying to prioritize? Who are we trying to create a space for to be able to kind of vent and just say things and kind Of get it out there? However, even for that group of people, one of our hard lines is we do not participate into humanization of the other. So even the folks that we really don't like, like maybe Donald Trump or Sean Ford or someone like that, we can, we can definitely critique. Of course, we can call to attention what the problem is. But once we start calling him the you know, the orange man, or start talking about like their, their physical features, or calling them pieces of shit. That's a hard no like. We're not gonna participate in that because for us, we believe that dehumanization puts us on the path of violence ultimately, or a path to violence. You know, once you start dehumanizing the other as less than human, we run a pretty dangerous road and history has shown you know, where that leads. So that's kind of how we navigate that. But I fully admit that, like this stuff is complicated, messy, and it's not always. Of course there are examples, like you know, sexual assault for is a very hard, like blanket rule, right, like no, and. But the question is why? But because you're violating someone else's autonomy. That's different than don't have sex before marriage. Well, why? Because God said so. Well, first off, is that really what we're talking about? But even if it is, are you sure? How do you know? And also, do people have it? How do we even define Marriage, especially considering that in the Bible, marriage pretty much as you have sex I mean Adam and Eve there is no wedding ceremony. Folks hate to tell you that. There is no walking down the aisle, there's no pastor, there's no document to sign, and the wording in the Bible is the man goes into the wife, she, he claims the wife essentially its ownership. So I'm just saying, like that's why I see those things as different, even though some might say, oh, you're just, you're just being Postmodern. No, I'm just trying to think about these ethics and what we do with them, and why for some they might be hard and fast rules versus others might be a little more flexible.

Speaker 1: 43:51

I Gave you a lot, but does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, I mean I, Simon Sinek, has a book in a few of his notes like, he uses, even just at a simple level, the idea of like existential flexibility, just the ability to. I mean, the easiest example in the world is like that blockbuster didn't have existential flexibility, so that's why Netflix, like Domina, dominated them, obviously because it's like, are you a VHS company or are you a entertainment company? So I think that has to ultimately do with like a higher purpose, if that makes sense, like there's context, that is, you know, there's, there's these are probably not the right words, but there's like momentary purpose. And then there's like Eternal or higher purpose of like what is this Referencing? And then we're in, we're constantly in organic time that changes and fluxes, and so like there's never been a day like that and there will never be a tomorrow, and so, right, I relate to that, I think. I think maybe the bedrock of that for me, I mean this is like super evangelical, right. Like it comes down to like where CS Lewis said like what do you say about Jesus? Like do you call him, you know, liar, lunatic or lord? Like oh, yeah, yeah yeah, right, does that make sense? Because, like, at the end of the day, like it comes, there has to be some place that, especially in the information age, like we can, like, we can find anything to like, unravel to the extent that my brain can't even maintain conversation anymore. Yeah, 100%, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 45:25

No, I mean, as far as that goes, I mean, I'm a pretty typical Christian, you know. Physical resurrection, virgin birth, I affirm all that, no doubt about it, you know. However, I do realize that there are some Christians out there who maybe wouldn't affirm a physical resurrection. Now how do I deal with that? I don't know.

Speaker 1: 45:41

I'm thinking in particular yeah, that's what I'm thinking of.

Speaker 3: 45:44

I'm thinking in particular about John Dominic Crossen. I'm not sure if you know who he is. He's pretty much one of the most foremost leading New Testament scholars. I had the chance to interview him. This guy is like, he's legendary and he we had a long discussion and he's like, listen, I'm a Christian, like I am fully a Christian, I'm a follower of Jesus I think I'm putting this in my own words, but essentially he's like I think a physical resurrection is more about metaphor than a physical reality. That gives us hope for a new heaven, new earth. Now I go. Okay, I mean, listen, I think it's safe to say that, like the majority of Christians would affirm a physical resurrection. However, is it my job to say hey, john or Dom, sorry. When you die and get to heaven, presumably God will say sorry, dom, you were just so close but you didn't have this right belief. So to hell you go. You love your neighbor, but now your belief is a little off here. I just don't think that's how it works. So I'm fine with other people having very radically different beliefs than me regarding the Christian tradition and going. I'm not sure how this works, but I'm willing to kind of listen and just try to understand. But for me personally, I definitely affirm a physical resurrection, I affirm a virgin birth, et cetera, realizing of course those are pretty audacious claims to make, like I realized for some people why they're not believable. It's an understandable thing, but I tend to affirm them. They give me a lot of hope, just for a better world ultimately.

Speaker 2: 47:09

I think something that's really cool that you do is basically and I think you do this too, jared is basically you're able to hold two completely conflicting ideas in your head and able to wrestle with that rather than saying, hey, this is going to be what I say about, let's just say, six-day creation. This is what makes you a Christian. If you don't believe that, I literally saw a billboard in Greenville that literally was talking about six-day creation and how it's true and how you should believe it and go to this website, and I was like what are we doing with a billboard? Like, who paid for that Number one? Why are we paying for somebody to get you on Team Six-Day Creation? Like, if you're not about that, probably not a Christian.

Speaker 3: 48:07

Well, his name is Ken Ham. I guarantee you so the first thing that I did, that.

Speaker 2: 48:12

But just anything like that of being able to hold maybe it was six-day creation, but also maybe it was over billions of years, and is God good in that? Do I believe that he's got it and we don't kind of thing Like just that idea of holding two separate ideas and being able to comfortably distinguish between those and not just throwing one of the garbage. You know what I mean.

Speaker 3: 48:45

Yeah, I mean I think we also have to ask ourselves, where do we get a belief-centered faith from? Like when was being a Christian just about having the right beliefs? That's not like an ancient thing, I mean, it's just not. I mean it's not just about the belief. Many people make the argument like if you're not loving your neighbor, I mean that's the command love God and love your neighbor, not have the right Orthodox beliefs, you know. And so I think, like once you start asking those questions, that puts you on a hunt and then you start realizing how Christianity has evolved over time. I mean, the creeds are not eternal. They did not always exist. The earliest church probably were not Trinitarian in their view of God, most likely because that was developed over time. I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just saying to make that the boundary for who's a Christian and who's not, you're automatically writing someone out and so what I tell people is like listen, here's what I ask them. I say, ok, you tell me what every Christian in history has to believe to be a real Christian. What is it? Because the second you answer, I can guarantee you there's some Christians in history who did not believe that and that were also awesome.

Speaker 2: 49:53

Christians.

Speaker 3: 49:54

Right. And so then, all of a sudden, now we're judging jury and let's, let's think about, let's go even deeper for a second. What are we really talking about? For many evangelicals, it's who's going to heaven, who's going to hell. That's not even the primary concern of the New Testament or Old Testament text. The whole point of Paul is that Jesus is coming back immediately to reconcile all things. The resurrection is happening, like tomorrow, so don't, don't even bother. Getting married, I mean the highest calling, celibacy. That's. That's the mindset of Paul. It's not, hey, guys, like hell's coming if you don't repent and believe. I mean that. That's not on the lips of Paul at all in so many respects. So when you really undo, like where some of these concerns come from, oh, he doesn't believe, he doesn't believe a physical resurrection. Okay, what are you saying? What you're saying is that you don't believe what I think are the key things to go to heaven, not hell, and therefore, if you tell someone else that belief and they believe you, you're leading them down the wrong path. That's what we're really getting at, ultimately. So I think we have to be willing to unpack this stuff and see where some of these beliefs even come from.

Speaker 1: 50:57

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 50:57

Or why they're so important. I should say yeah.

Speaker 1: 51:00

I think, well, maybe I'm wondering just for the sake of I don't. I think there is one, one key grain of all Christians and we can get into this, but like the, at least the statement like Jesus Christ is Lord and there's a bunch tied up in that, but like that's the but just that sentiment and some manner like that's at least the over the prevailing, like consistency, so like I would agree, like there's so many ways that that breaks down, but like that that would be the identity of Christianity, even like a little Christ, so it's like that. I think that would be that like that bedrock of, like okay, it's some level, this is where we're starting from. But the way that I process that now is like we live in the most, I think I, like in my own language, I make up words like we, we're, we deal with infobesity, like we live in the most informationalized reality that's ever existed, but we're also the least historically and traditionally educated that's ever existed. So like even just not even using the context of what we know now about discovery and reality, if we just went back on the traditional historical timelines of all the Christian traditions like things start to break down as far as, like our, even our, failure to understand what Puritan theology was or what like it, or in a badness theology, or like we take snippets of Calvin and snippets of these Puritan and snippets.

Speaker 3: 52:39

Yes.

Speaker 1: 52:41

We have so little comprehension of the, the depth and the breadth, and even the fact that, like, language changes and so we're not even reading what we think we're reading now, right, totally. We're just so stupid in the way that, like we just don't even understand. Like I think Lewis was the one that said, like you can read 50 commentaries on Play-Doh, or you could just read Play-Doh and it'd be a lot easier, and like that, and I'm paraphrasing about it there Part of the roots of like living in this information and immediate access to whatever the answer is age to me feels like like even just getting in a room together and having our own opinions that aren't influenced by whatever we click on as far as like somebody else's voice, but even growing into our own voice, that almost is a prerequisite to getting to a place where we can speak to one another. And I don't know like that. That has been the biggest hurdle in my own walk with like community and Christian communities. Like you don't like how do I get to the real grant or the real Tim without just spending enough time and getting enough of the manure out of the way to like to see something grow and then we can determine, like what's the most healthy way to get fruitful growth. But first, even like, is this just a bunch of BS? And I just learned recently, like BS, like bull, you know shit is the reason that it's not helpful is it doesn't have nutrients in it, like the way that cow manure does, and so, like nothing will grow in it, and so I don't know. I just think that in a lot of ways, like we don't even know what it means to yes, we don't know what it means to listen to one another, but we don't even know what it means to like think our own thoughts, yeah, so Right.

Speaker 3: 54:29

Well and to your point. That is why I think a lot of us are like hey, before I start making new claims about what it means to be or not be a Christian, I have to sit and listen right, because I think a lot of us who grew up in our evangelical tradition, we're just kind of given like the megaphone answers hey, just tell the world these things. Here you go, just tell them ABCD and E, and this is absolute truth, and we'll give you a few apologetics to defend it. And then you break out of that and you go oh, my God, like I'll put it this way, I've been a professional drummer now for a long time. I'm 21 years in actually, wow, longer than that I'm well, no, that can't be right. Hold on, am I 23? I think I'm 23 years into being a drummer. Okay, I've been doing it for a long time and I put a lot of work into it to get pretty proficient. I still play professionally to this day. I'm only aware, now more than ever, how little I know about drumming. 23 years into drumming, okay, but for some reason at age 18 evangelicalism I thought I was hot shit, you knew everything about Christianity. That's something is wrong. Okay, and so I agree with you, jared. We do live in this microwave age of just Google and find the answer, and I think people are naturally hesitant to trust quick answers, including the ones that we give, which is why we always try and give our sources so people can look into this for themselves. Listen people who are listening might be driving off the road in anger at some of my views, and that's fine. I'm not asking for you to come over to the way I view things to live a flourishing life. What I'm asking people, mainly Christians, to do is to stop pretending that your particular beliefs have to be mapped on to every single person in humanity for them to live fulfilling lives Like the world's. Bigger than your theology it just is, and I would argue we need the other perspectives to help us understand the complexity and beautiful nature of God and of the world that God created. Right, we don't need 10 white guys sitting in a circle being the gatekeepers of what is right or wrong theology. You need other voices. You need Latin X voices, you need black liberation voices, you need queer voices. You need those people to help you flesh out what is going on in this massive and complicated world we call theology.

Speaker 2: 56:51

I'll tell you what that's also that you said that, too, because that's kind of the vision of our podcast of just like what is it more beneficial for us to like Google something or to try to like wrestle it out, like online with your Bible, or is it more beneficial to talk to someone that you know has a different point of view than you? Yeah, because that's something that I find super important in my own personal walk of like you know, if we're both of us are willing to count each other better than ourselves, so I say that Tim Whitaker is better than Grant Lockridge. Like you have something valuable in you, so which is a Mago day, basically. So if I say that to you, and I truly believe that, then you have something incredibly valuable to teach us, rather than us trying to dissect your view and try to like argue about LGBTQ or argue about Trump or argue about like evangelicalism and stuff like that. Just the fact that you have value and you have something that we believe is valuable because you're a cross from us, like it's. That's kind of the whole, the whole premise of this, so I love that you said that.

Speaker 3: 58:19

Yeah, now for sure, you know that's. I appreciate that a lot, grant. I think what. What I think what you might find difficult interviewing people like me is that because we've kind of come from that evangelical world, we kind of already know the answers, like like we already know like what. I'm not saying I don't really know much about you at all, grant, but like, let's say, you were that typical, you know, just conservative evangelical who, like voted for Trump. Right, I already know, most likely, the arguments that you're going to present, because I believed in the grew up with them for like most of my life. You know what I mean, and so I think what makes it difficult is that a lot of people who are in my position are like man, I just wish that maybe some of these evangelical leaders would actually listen just to learn, instead of listening to respond, because I hate to tell them this, but I kind of already know their justification for insert. You know what I think might be a harmful way of living here for the sake of our neighbors, and it doesn't add up. And so I think that's maybe part of like the tension that a lot of us are feeling, because I don't want to write off someone like you, grant, by making certain assumptions about you. Maybe you have something to teach me about, like you know the way you approach people, or like your posture or your way of being curious, because we don't want to become fundamentalists all over again, right, I'm saying no, no, no. We have a new objective truth that like overwrites your objective truth. Like that's just not a healthy way. First off, that's arrogant, that is prideful and it doesn't help us learn. And I think at this point in my journey with where I'm at, in my faith, I'm just more convinced than ever that, like a posture of approaching people with curiosity and listen, I have plenty of friends who are more progressive than me. I'm not sure I'm sold on everything that they might believe or advocate for, but we can. Certainly I can take it in, I can go yeah, there could be something here. Hey, maybe it's not for me, but are we trying to promote human flourishing? Are we trying to promote the good of our neighbors, like we're instructed to? Are we taking the words of Jesus seriously to fight for liberation of the oppressed? Like, for some people listening this language might sound liberal or, you know, maybe Marxist to them. This is not about any of that Like this is just about reading the scriptures and being like listen, whether you want to acknowledge it or not, god takes sides usually of the oppressed. That's what the Exodus story is. God violently drowns the empire. I'm not even a fan of that. I'm a nonviolent person. I don't like the idea that Pharaoh is drowned personally. But you know, god liberates his people, drowns Pharaoh. I mean, okay, what do you do with that so we can have these discussions while completely bypassing the political landscape we live in, even though it is very polarized, and I know so much of this comes back to that. But the Bible has things to say about this stuff and that's not Marxist or Socialist or whatever. It's not conservative. It's just you know the narrative or the themes that we see in scriptures and it is complicated, but it's there and we have to wrestle with it.

Speaker 1: 1:01:10

Yeah, so this shifts gears kind of, but I mean it's more interpersonal and we're getting close to Tom Grancy. You keep tabs on us but, like Tim, how do you deal with the anger? Like there's just a lot to put yourself in a category that's outside a lot of like common belief and to be an advocate and even to put yourself outside of maybe a lot of community you grew up with and a lot like that just sound like, especially the inner turmoil you know at some level, like where do you find peace?

Speaker 3: 1:01:51

Well, I mean, I'm pretty angry all the time, like it's like the Hulk in the ventures. You know what's his secret he's always angry. I'm angry, I'm angry. I have no problem admitting that. I'm angry at the injustice of evangelicalism. I'm angry at the hypocrisy. I'm angry at the lack of accountability. I'm angry at the Christian nationalism that is just growing in these spaces again, with, like, not a thought in the world. I'm angry about that. That anger fuels me, though. It can either become bitterness and resentment or it can fuel people to do things. People get angry at injustice, and that motivates them to try and make those wrongs right. I completely, a thousand percent, believe that anger is not wrong. Anger is not sinful. Anger is a very powerful thing, but it's powerful and it could do a lot of damage if we're not careful about it. I find a lot of motivation from our community. We get amazing DMs from people that were helping them, that were helping them navigate their faith in better ways. We get stories of people who have been really abused by church. We've helped break some pretty big stories in, even to local circles, because the survivors will talk to us, because they trust us. That's a huge responsibility. That's a huge. There's a lot of power there to have people who go by the name Jane publicly, for you to know them and have their number and be able to connect them to other news outlets. That's a big deal For me. My anger is actually, in a weird way, a source of a lot of my joy of like. Yeah, I'm pretty ticked off and this is motivating, not discouraging. Someone asked me the other day dude, how do you do this work all the time? That is motivating for me. I sleep well at night, as long as I'm not too anxious, of course. I sleep well at night knowing that I'm hopefully trying to make a difference. Not just me, it's our volunteers, it's the board, it's the many people who donate to our organization, it's a whole community effort trying to do our best to hold space for people and advocate for change.

Speaker 2: 1:03:59

Thanks for listening to the Across the Camera podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please rate us five stars, wherever you got this podcast. Thanks, y'all.