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May 25, 2025 14 mins

In this unreleased episode, we dig into how Christianity, as it exists in America today, came to look so little like the teachings of Christ.

This is an unfiltered look at how empire, colonialism, and patriarchy have long used religion to justify subjugation and power. We talk about the historical roots of American Christianity, the weaponization of tradition, and how faith morphed into a culture war strategy instead of a communal practice.

From Rome to the Reformation to the rise of American evangelicalism, we trace how systems, not scripture—shaped what we now call Christianity. And why that matters.

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Hey everyone, before we dive into today's episode, I want to
set the stage a little. The conversation you're about to
hear wasn't recorded with any agenda other than truth telling.
It sat in the vault for a while,but with everything going on,
you know, regarding Christian nationalism and the way faith is
being used as a weapon instead of a guide, I felt it was time.

(00:23):
I'm not here to bash anyone's belief, but I am here to talk
honestly about how religion, specifically Christianity, has
been tangled up with colonialism, nationalism, and
capitalism in ways that were never a part of Jesus teachings.
So whether you're religious, recovering from religious
trauma, or just curious about the roots of some of the mess

(00:44):
we're living in, then I think this episode might be for you.
It's raw, real, and hopefully it'll challenge what a lot of us
were taught. So let's get into it.

(01:10):
Religion in tangent with colonialism, imperialism.
I mean like it's just they go hand in hand like.
So you're saying it's built intoreligion?
It's not built into religion, but it is wrongly interpreted
from religion. More specifically,
Judeo-christian values, Christianity, Judaism, they have

(01:32):
great frameworks for theocracy because they both subjugate a
group of people while setting apart people that it describes
as essentially saved, right, or righteous in a sense.
And so anybody who's in that religion is now your
responsibility to look at anybody who isn't religious as

(01:54):
needing to be subjugated or needing to be brought into the
fold. So mix that in with a little bit
of just humanity being humanity and prone to being greedy and
prone to being lustful and proneto being all of those sorts of
things, and those things become utilized as tools for conquer,
for the spreading of subjective truth.

(02:16):
So what you're saying is becauseif you mix a religion with
humanity and this humanity or this part of humanity is
patriarchal, they're the ones who decide like who gets
subjugated? Yeah, they benefit greatly from
that. Okay, so they're using what
you're saying they're using it. Yeah, because religion source is
God and you can't supersede God.Yeah, no one that's yeah.

(02:38):
And so I mean, replace God with whatever deity you want to
believe in. Like that's what's used to
maintain morality or to enact morality, to enact order.
And yeah, it's very easy for formen to come under that and be
like. So it's used as a tool.
Yes, a weapon. Well, like a weapon than a tool,
Yeah. OK.
And so that's just one of the many factors, you know?

(02:59):
Yeah, because. The United States is built on
like a Christian like framework to a large degree.
Yes, very much so. Like it's literally built into
the fucking constitution, but like in the way.
Because they believed what initially that they had the
right to worship freely. So they believed that they were
like God, ordained to break freefrom the British Empire and

(03:19):
colonize these lands. But also the people that came
from Britain, they were all believers of Christianity.
So why did this these group of people feel like they had to
leave? Oh, they were Catholics.
They were Catholics. They were.
Catholics, they're Catholics. So you have the you have
Protestantism and Catholicism, which at the time was maybe 102
hundred years after the birth ofProtestantism when we have the

(03:42):
founding of America, right? This is only like, I don't even
know if it's 200 years after theReformation, so the birth of
protism. So it's still very fresh.
And you have these these these people now who believe God in
this way, who believe in the Bible this way versus these
other so-called Christians. You know, they're Catholics.
What Catholic is just, I think it's just Greek or Latin for

(04:03):
Christian or universal. It means universal.
So for someone who doesn't know is who are the first Christians?
The Christians or the Catholics?Well, it depends on who you ask.
Ask the Catholic and they will say Catholic.
Ask a Christian and they will say Christian.
Looking at this from a like scholarly perspective, yeah, the
first Christians would have beenJews, which makes no sense

(04:26):
because Jews are Jewish, right? They, you know, they believe in
the Torah, but that is what Christianity is.
It's the telling of Christ. And what we learn from that
narrative is that, you know, Jesus took disciples, AKA Jews.
Jesus himself was Jewish and. Palestinian Jew.
Yeah. And after that, after his

(04:47):
ascension, after his his mark, his death and ascension,
according to the narrative, he then gives a commandment to
these disciples, go into the world and tell them about me.
And so from that point onward, that's where most Bible scholars
will look at that and be like, OK, that's Christianity.
That's the birth of Christianity, when God, when
Jesus ascends and then releases his disciples unto the world to

(05:08):
teach his teachings, that that'sChristianity.
That's the beginning. But the word Christian isn't
found anywhere in the Bible. Nowhere in the Bible, nowhere in
the Old Testament or the New Testament is the word
Christianity or Christian found that develops after tradition.
So hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years after the
biblical narrative was written, which in itself was written 16
to 50 years after the death of Jesus, is when you fight is when

(05:32):
you get actual written pieces ofNew Testament Bible.
That has the word Christian. No, that does not have the word
Christian, that just talks aboutJesus and shares that story.
So hundreds of years after that,that then develops into order
because that could spread to Rome and Rome hears about it and
and Rome realizes that or one Roman emperor at least.
Was it Augustus or something? It's I think maybe it was

(05:54):
Augustus who made Rome like officially Catholic because he
read it and learned from it. It was like, this is a really
good way to subjugate people andhe became the Catholic Church.
Like it just as religion began to become institutionalized,
from Judaism to Christianity to Catholicism, that institution

(06:15):
became so powerful because the message they were preaching was
so easy to misconstrue for your own political gain, for your own
political power. It's easy to manipulate people
with religion. It's easy to control people with
religion. It seems to be that like for
most religions, they're meant tobe like, used in a very like
communal way. Yes.
You know, they weren't meant to be like, as you said,

(06:36):
institutionalized. Yes, Christianity is no
exception. There's no exception.
It's very communal. That's why.
That's why the modern day American evangelical is a
complete paradox. You're about to say something.
Go ahead. To what Christianity stands for
a lot of the reasons why we hate, I'm going to use hate
because I really do hate so manyof these people who claim

(07:00):
Christ, but they're just, they're just politically
Christian. Like they they don't know
anything about the Bible. What does being politically
Christian mean? It is the result of being raised
in yet another generation of tradition in your family that we
have just always been Christian or Catholic and will continue to

(07:21):
be Christian or Catholic. And you were raised under a set
of values, you are raised under a set of morals, and you are
raised into a worldview that teaches you this is what is
valuable in life. This is what you must do to be
saved. This is what you must do to
prove that you are saved. So that then becomes your

(07:43):
lifestyle, your culture. And if anything outside of your
lifestyle, culture is not that, then it is bad.
So you have the birth, you have the rise of polarity, you have
the rise of the binary and wherethings become much more black
and white because a line is clearly drawn through it, this

(08:03):
becomes politicized. Like no, no president in in
American history has ever not been Christian.
True. Every single one of them has
claimed Catholic or Christian, including Donald Trump, which
could not be the furthest from that ideology.
Maybe next to Kennedy, I don't know because you know, Kennedy
had like, you know, Marilyn Monroe or or Bill Clinton with

(08:26):
Monica Lewinsky. But anyways.
OK, so you're, I think you're touching on something.
So, so the people that were simply just raise on
Christianity as like, I think what you're saying as like a, it
was passed down as like a set oflike family values derived from
Christianity. But they didn't, they didn't
read and preach the Bible. They didn't fully preach the

(08:46):
Bible. So meaning like they didn't
actually read it. At least in the context of which
it was written, because it's very easy to just call anybody a
pastor. Right.
So they don't actively read it. And every part of religion has
like a some form of like congregation, right?
Yeah. Oh yeah.
Yeah. To a degree, but but on a very
like communal level, yes, you congregate and as and as best as
you can. And you learn someone's got to

(09:07):
teach you right. Yeah, and you try as best as you
can. You practice those teachings in
your daily life. Yes.
Would you say the modern political Christian is that
person that didn't really didn'tread the Bible, but they have
the value passed down to them Sothey when asked, they will
identify as religious and as Christian.

(09:28):
But if you look at like a politician, whenever they're
confronted with like actual information from the Bible, it's
in direct contradiction to what they just said because they
didn't read. It Yeah.
Is that what? Is that Why that is what it is?
Yeah. They will, as you said, they
misconstrue the teachings of, yeah, in this case,
Christianity. So is that because they didn't

(09:50):
actually read the Bible? Yes and no.
They're reading it. OK.
I mean I I'm without a doubt, I believe some of them are reading
it. I say that because it happens
all the time. Someone will say like, they're,
I don't know, they'll be like, really, I don't know,
homophobic. And someone comes out of nowhere
and says actually it says on this page, so on and so on.
And the person who just crashingout goes really, it's so good.

(10:12):
Yeah. They're like, yeah bro, like
that's what I'm saying, like. Yeah, because.
It doesn't seem like these people are, really.
They read it under, they are reading it, but they're reading
it through the lens in which they're told to see it, which is
why I said, like now in modern day, we have generation after
generation of generation of tradition of traditional
Christianity as expressed in America.
You have to remember that America, America, United States

(10:35):
was founded on these Christian values utilized by colonialism.
2 as a weapon. 2 As a weapon to justify their presence, right.
To justify the the genocide of indigenous people, to justify
all of the stealing of that land, to justify everything evil
that America has ever done. That justification found its

(10:56):
roots in its belief that they their presence was God-given or
God ordained. Google Manifest Destiny.
Exactly. Manifest destiny is exactly
that, the expression that God has given them unclaimed land to
subjugate and cultivate into cities, to culture.

(11:17):
And so put Christianity in that type of culture for now almost
250 years where 249 years I think, or something like that.
Do that and it'll pair very wellwith politics.
It'll pair very well with yeah, with, with American politics, or
just, or rather just capitalistic politics.

(11:38):
Right. Capitalism it just it it again,
it pairs very well because it's easy.
It is easy to misconstrue for your benefit.
And who are people going to flock to?
Are they going to flock to the people who are telling them easy
messages, the ones that that make you feel great?
Or are you going to flock to thepeople who are telling you

(11:58):
something you don't want to hear?
Like you don't want to go to church to fill Kitty.
You don't want to go to church to believe that you've got to
make yourself fucking uncomfortable because you're
supposed to love the guy who's Indian right there or who's
Mexican or who's Asian. You're supposed to like that
person that doesn't look like you, that does things.
That's not normal to you, that makes you feel uncomfortable.

(12:18):
You have to face your on your, your, your discomfort.
Or as Christianity explains it, you have to face your own sinful
nature and reflect the teachingsof Christ, which are, I mean,
look at, look at what Jesus does.
Look at how Jesus approaches those who are marginalized in
the, in those cities, in those communities.
He does it in a way that angers most of the population, or if at

(12:43):
least, sorry, not most of the population, because most of the
population was following him. Who he angered was not most of
the population, but those in power, because it wasn't the
people who wanted to kill Jesus.It was the Pharisees, the
religious zealots, if you will, of Judaism.
Israel was a theocracy ruled by who?

(13:03):
By the religious leaders, AKA the Pharisee, the Pharisees.
And so you know they want to kill Jesus because he's
preaching. You should care for the poor,
you should care for the sick, you should care for the widow.
He was preaching socialistic, communistic essentially.
Oh shit, he was crashing out. He was crashing.
Out, you know, whatever you would call communism socialism

(13:25):
today. I mean most of that has It's
over overlap in in the teachingsof Christ.
So. So the the true teachings of
Jesus would have been socialism,what we now call socialism, what
we now call communism. But yes, you know, because we
have those labels, yes, but you know, Jesus himself wouldn't
call it that. He would call it the Kingdom of
God or whatever and that but. Different terminology.

(13:47):
Yes, different terminology. It's semantics essentially, but.
But just the idea of like, just not being an asshole.
Yeah, you're saying these memes everywhere online right now
where everybody's poking fun right now at just conservatives
because it's like we're pointingout everything that Trump is
doing and then like just literally proving how unbiblical
that is. It's like, it's like people will

(14:09):
be talking about how, like Republicans are rejoicing over
mass deportations, and they'll be talking about like, they'll
literally be sharing passages from the Bible.
They're like, totally not for that.
So yeah. So American, American
Christianity is deeply politicized.
It has its roots, not classical Christianity, or rather biblical
Christianity, but yes, this, this unique culture of American

(14:34):
Christianity, Yeah, feeds into the patriarchy.
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