June 3, 2025 • 60 mins
This week on Cults and the Culting of America, we’re turning the mic toward someone you all know well—our beloved cohost, Scot Loyd. With no guest this episode, Daniella takes the opportunity to spotlight Scot’s powerful personal journey and upcoming book, The God That I Was Given.
In an open and layered conversation, Scot reflects on his years inside the United Pentecostal Church, his rise to leadership, and what it meant to deconstruct the faith and ideologies that shaped him. He and Daniella discuss the gendered nature of cult experiences, the silence often expected of men, and how writing becomes both a weapon and a lifeline for survivors.
They also dig deep into the racist roots of Pentecostalism, the enduring myth of white Christian victimhood, and how cult dynamics echo through American politics today.
Whether you’ve been here since episode one or are just tuning in, this intimate episode offers a closer look at Scot’s story and the broader systems of power so many of us are still trying to untangle.
Daniella's Links:
You can read all about my story in my book, Uncultured-- buy signed copies here. https://bit.ly/SignedUncultured
For more info on me:
Patreon: https://bit.ly/YTPLanding
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:25):
Welcome to another edition of Cults and the Culting of America.
My name is Scott Lloyd and I am thrilled to be joined as always by my friend, DanielaMescinek Young, Knitting Cult Lady that she is and doing a wonderful job.
How are you, Daniela?
I'm good.
(00:46):
Done with the book, done.
It's like.
yeah, so speaking of uh books and process and things of that nature, uh in lieu of a guesttonight, we thought we would take the opportunity to kind of talk about not only your
project, but also my upcoming book that is due to be released.
(01:10):
Hopefully this year, I don't have an exact date yet.
I received the second galley, which is just basically a proof
that I'm looking at.
Got the second one uh Monday.
And so I'm to get that back to them and hopefully have a uh release date soon and we'll besure and let everyone know.
(01:32):
But Daniela, thank you so much for the support and the encouragement.
I remember um I was either just starting that project or getting into it when I discoveredyour work on
on TikTok a few years back and it was very inspirational.
So thank you for all of the input, all of the feedback and all of the generalencouragement.
(01:55):
Thanks for being you.
Yeah, of course, and now here you are.
You've come through this whole process.
So what, I mean, I'm excited for your book, of course.
I'm excited to help you sell it.
ah I'm excited because it's more rare to have books from men in the cult space.
(02:19):
What,
Why do you think that is?
just men in general probably.
Well, I mean, one of the reasons is just because I think men are maybe less likely to havethe negative experiences because since cults are, you know, ultimately patriarchal, we see
(02:43):
that women are almost always a servant class in cults.
I think you can be in there and have like a so-so experience and then like not think youhave anything to say.
You know, and it's kind of similar to the military, you know, I say like my husband is theexact soldier that like the army is built for.
(03:04):
So his 20 years was like relatively easy compared to six and a half years for me, whichfelt like, you know, very, very difficult and dramatic.
So, yeah, I think there's this like, you know, you just didn't, the men just didn'texperience the worst of it, but
(03:26):
that still doesn't mean that that perspective isn't important.
Right.
And I think you're exactly right because so many of those uh types of groups, mean, evenif you look at uh what we're experiencing in our nation, the world, uh generally speaking,
is uh built uh for men by men, right?
(03:47):
And that's what the patriarchy means.
And so I think a lot of men get involved in these particular groups.
And even if they see the abuses or they see uh
the way that people are treated or the problematic nature of it.
think sometimes uh men in our society, because of the patriarchy, because of the system,have a hard time sharing their experiences and their story first and foremost, because it
(04:22):
all benefits us, right?
I tell people all the time that this system was built
by people who look like me, for people that look like me.
And the moment that you begin to speak out about that or to push back against it, uh know,men have uh things to lose as far as power and status.
(04:48):
And I think that's important to uh keep in mind.
As far as my experience in the United Pentecostal Church, you're exactly right.
And something that I...
I try to point out early and often in the book is that even though I'm sharing myexperiences, I recognize that the experiences of my peers, especially those who are women,
(05:15):
was far worse and was uh far more traumatic than anything that I experienced.
That doesn't discount what I experienced.
It's just a recognition.
that in these types of systems, in these types of groups, because of the overarching, themeta-cults that we talk about a lot on this program of patriarchy and racism, women, uh
(05:43):
women of color, Black women especially, are on the receiving end of a lot of that harm.
So that is something that I acknowledge as often as I can.
and retelling my story.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, so how did you get started?
(06:05):
Or like, what made you decide to want to write your story down?
Yeah, so um I started a blog post probably about 2017, 2018 is when I really startedwriting in earnest and sort of reflecting on my experiences.
And of course, I think for a lot of people, this unraveled, this unraveling of uh the waythat we were brought up, the things that we experienced growing up.
(06:37):
At least for me, and I think listening to others, for a lot of us, it started unravelingat an accelerated pace in 2015 when all of a sudden everything that we had invested our
lives in, we all felt a collective betrayal, right?
When there was an embrace by fundamentalist Christianity, evangelical Christianity in
(07:06):
the United States of Donald Trump as a political candidate and then as a presidentialcandidate and then as president of the United States.
And so that sort of, I'd already been thinking a lot about uh racism and I'd gone back tograduate school and I was, I was hearing a lot of stories uh that uh weren't shared with
(07:30):
me growing up as someone who attended public school.
in Arkansas, hearing stories about my own state, hearing stories about the atrocities likethe Tulsa race massacre and other things like that.
So I began to study and to look at things from the racial perspective.
(07:53):
um And then with the embracing of the misogyny and just the downright
lack of character that evangelicals embraced in Donald Trump, that accelerated theunraveling for me.
(08:13):
And I wanted to understand my own story uh a lot more and a lot better because I wasthinking in terms of, first of all, how can I attend a church and give half of my life to
this particular stream of Christianity and never hear about the atrocities
(08:35):
that were committed against black people in my home state, in the county that I grew upin.
And we were, you know, as a church, were all about, we were supposed to be all aboutjustice, all about these Christian values that were hammered into me over and over again.
But as I began to reflect on my history, some of the most profound, uh scary,
(09:02):
and traumatic moments in our nation's history, in our state's history, were ignored insome instances, and even worse, were facilitated by doctrines of the church, by the
silence of the church.
And so as I began to look at that, there was a complicity, right, in some of theselarger...
(09:27):
these larger atrocities that were committed against black people that were committedagainst women.
And so then I began to look personally into my own story and I began to think about, well,know, unfortunately for me, because of how I was raised, because of the serendipity of my
(09:51):
birth, of my geography, I was plunged into this world.
And I really didn't stand a chance, right?
I was going to get this religion.
The name of the book is called The God that I was given.
So I was given this God.
I was given this, this doctrine.
I was given this set of values and beliefs.
(10:11):
And at the same time, where I didn't have a choice in a matter, but at the same time as I,as I grew and as I became older, I was very complicit.
I was wide open to receiving it in a lot of instances.
looking back because I was considered a leader, I was considered a pastor, a preacher, ateacher.
(10:33):
There were lots of things that I said and did in the name of this religion thatperpetuated the harm.
So not only was I a victim uh in many instances as an adult, I was complicit inperpetuating a lot of these ideas and
(10:54):
even though I wasn't directly involved in harming others, I was speaking, I was teaching,I was preaching, I was defending these doctrines and these particular points of view uh to
the point where uh I was a perpetrator as well as being a victim of these particularideas.
(11:17):
And so once you start to unpack that and once that starts to unravel,
You have to do something about it, or I feel like everybody should have that feeling, likeI want to do something.
And a lot of times uh the direct action steps that we can take as people are limited.
(11:42):
But one thing that I do have, I do have my voice.
I do have the ability to write.
I have the ability to speak.
And those are gifts that...
ironically, were given to me in large measure by the Church.
The very tools that they gave me to perpetuate their doctrines were eventually the verytools that enabled me to leave and then to turn it back on them and to speak out about
(12:14):
these particular issues and now write about these particular issues.
Yeah, isn't it great how we like use all of the tools that they taught us?
I mean, I really, I really remember I had a moment when I was reading my audio book that Iwas like, okay, yeah, like I'm good at this, right?
(12:35):
Like reading aloud is one of my basic skills from this particular cult.
And, you know, there's something very healing about being able to, in any way, I think,exploit your story.
and use it to, like you said, like help others.
Like there's, I think we all probably write our books because we didn't find a book justlike ours out there.
(13:00):
So we were like kind of forced to write it.
Did you feel like that?
Like have other people written books about United Pentecostal Church?
Are you kind of new in this way?
but a lot of people uh seem to take it from the perspective of uh attacking the doctrinalpositions or the theological positions and then attempting to tear those down.
(13:28):
And I certainly went through a phase uh in my exit where, you know, I sort of traded onedogmatic assertion for another.
And I would make those stops along the way where I would have evolutions in my theology orevolutions in my perspective.
And I would push back against the doctrines.
(13:50):
But what I've discovered is that if you end up doing that, uh in a lot of respects, youtrade one dogmatic certainty for another.
And eventually, you keep pulling on those threads.
And what you discover is that
It's not a particular perspective or theological position that in and of itself may beproblematic, but it is the dogmatic assertion.
(14:19):
It is the certainty and that certainty is taken in its leverage and it's weaponizedagainst other people.
So what I'm attempting to do in my particular book is to share my story, to share myreflections.
but also to do it in a way that sort of holds that tension oh because there's a lot ofpeople that are still involved with the United Pentecostal Church, a lot of family
(14:50):
members.
And I know that we talk about the spectrum of harm, so to speak.
Certainly, although the United Pentecostal Church I maintain is a cult, it's not a cult inthe way that
the children of God was a cult, uh but still harm is being perpetuated and things of thatnature.
(15:13):
So what I wanted to do in the book was sort of hold that tension where if somebody fromthe inside is reading it, there's lots of instances of nostalgia.
There's lots of instances where they will read it and they will say, yeah, I'veexperienced that.
That was funny.
(15:33):
uh I remember that.
things have changed now, but a little bit, but that's how it used to be.
And I wanted to be as honest as I could about the story without becoming, and I don't knowhow well I experienced this, that's yet to be determined.
(15:53):
I wanted to tell the story honestly without being uh overtly uh preachy in a way thatpeople would respond and immediately put up their walls.
So I think there's going to be plenty of room for that anyway, because, you know, it'sunavoidable if you've experienced high control religious groups the way that we did, cults
(16:17):
the way that we did.
There are points where you're just kind of unload on them and the harm that they've done.
But for the most part, I tried to maintain that tension where somebody is reading it fromthe inside, perhaps.
they'll let down their guard long enough to kind of stop and think about what I'm saying.
(16:40):
And I tried not, I mean, there's so many opportunities, right?
Just to be a standup comedian and to have fun and to make jokes and to lampoon a lot ofthe experiences, because a lot of it is just, if it wasn't so traumatic in a lot of ways,
it's just hella funny, right?
But I wanted to tell those stories and I wanted to communicate it in an honest way.
(17:03):
without being preachy um and hopefully cause people to think and to reflect on their ownexperiences while reading my stories.
Amazing.
em Yeah, you know, I think when people like when you start putting the outside language toit, to your experience, right, I think people just start to throw up their walls like, it
(17:28):
wasn't that oh, you know.
em And I think the beautiful thing about stories is like the nuance, right, you get toshow more of it.
And there's this very, I think, one sided idea that if you
If you write your if you tell your story, if you deconstruct, like now you're living inhatred and anger and you're you're you know, I think have you confronted that at all?
(17:56):
Yeah, that's uh the omnipresent charge, right?
For those of us that leave, we are bitter.
And really, we've talked about thought-stopping cliches.
And that's another one, right?
That is utilized by the cult and by these high-control groups.
(18:16):
When someone exits, they're dismissed as disgruntled or bitter.
uh
which is an attempt, right, to not address the concerns or the problems that they'rebringing up about that particular organization.
And so the way that I attempt to answer that in the book is uh because we were all steepedin so many Bible studies, uh whenever someone calls me bitter, there's a particular uh
(18:47):
story in the Old Testament about uh Esther.
and about Ruth and Naomi and all of those women in particular in the Old Testament whodidn't have a lot of agency, really didn't have any, they were considered property, things
of that nature.
But there's a particular story where Ruth's mother-in-law, Naomi, returns to her homelandafter her
(19:19):
husband dies after her son-in-laws die and uh Ruth, her daughter-in-law accompanies herand she goes back and the famous line from that particular biblical story is that Naomi
says, uh God has made me bitter.
And so I take that line and I sort of turn it in a way that maybe will communicate topeople that are familiar with the biblical story and say, yeah, I'm bitter, but
(19:48):
in the sense that Naomi was bitter and she saw it as a gift from God, right, to enable herto move forward.
And so, you know, when you take those well rehearsed and often cliched stories and thenyou're able to pull out a thread and you're able to turn the story around and to show it
(20:14):
from a different perspective, I think it...
It holds up a mirror to those who are leveling that charge because it's just, it's a wayof saying, I don't want to hear your arguments.
I don't want to hear about your experiences.
I'm just going to dismiss you as bitter and bent out of shape and disgruntled and mad.
(20:37):
Therefore, I don't have to deal with the truth of what you're saying.
And so, yeah, I dedicate an entire chapter to rehearsing
that well-known biblical story from the Old Testament.
And then I use that to show people, well, from my perspective, even though I am uhdeconstructing my faith and my faith looks completely different than what it was, and I
(21:05):
don't know what it will look like 10 years from now, but as right now, I still identify asa Christian and I still see the Bible in some areas as a source of wisdom.
and uh guidance and encouragement, although I would never say it's the word of God orinfallible or anything like that.
I'm able to take those stories, I'm able to turn them and then to use them as a tool forteaching and hopefully helping others.
(21:34):
Because I think a lot of times when people level that charge against us that we aresomehow uh disgruntled or bitter, uh they are attempting to put us
into a place of defensiveness where we feel obligated to defend our perspective or to makean argument against a particular point.
(21:58):
And I can do all of that.
And I can simultaneously be bitter and not see it as a negative thing, but as a way tofuel my work and my attention and my precision.
to what has happened in my life.
And then hopefully by telling that story and retelling that story, it's beneficial toothers as well.
(22:25):
Yeah, you know, and it makes me think of this other thing that we see in writing and I seeit in the cult survivor world too, of just like, you have a right to your own story and
the whole story and you don't have to be happy about all of it or bitter about all of itor angry, right?
Like if you're, if you're writing a whole story, you can have a whole bunch of emotions.
(22:51):
And you know, that's what I think people
that are like putting off the deconstruction, right?
Because I think so many of us do that and they're afraid of getting into it.
But you know, I also, I feel like there's so much value in your story because you aresomeone who grew up and stayed in and who was in the leadership, right?
(23:18):
And was doing the preaching and the performing.
um You know, I...
of course, in my cult story was always the problem child and then left very young.
But when I was doing my book about the military, like I kind of felt like, you know, andeven I as the golden child can show you these problems and can can bring you in and you're
(23:43):
not someone that the institution can kind of easily wave off.
Did you feel like that?
Do you feel like that gives you kind of a
kind of a power almost.
Yeah, absolutely.
And then, you know, we're all a product of uh not only uh nature, but also nurture, right?
(24:05):
So it's a combination of both.
So everything that we experience in the world, the timing, the place of our birth, uh goesa long way in making us who we are.
But also, we still have the opportunity uh as adults to make choices.
And there were choices
that I started to make as a younger man, even while I was in the cult, that set me up uhto be, to have perhaps a little bit more credibility than others who have left may have
(24:41):
had.
For instance, I chose to go back to a real school, to college, not just a Bible college,to get some real degrees, to have some education and...
I was talking to someone the other day, most Pentecostal pastors or preachers who uh had asimilar experience to mine, end up either selling insurance, and there's nothing wrong
(25:06):
with that, or selling cars, or just going into sales because that's where all of yourgifting is.
And if you don't have any education to fall back on or no other job experience, then thatis likely the life that will be chosen for you.
if you choose to exit the cult.
(25:26):
But because I went back to school and because higher ed was a big part of my journey outof it, uh when it was time for me to leave and to leave completely, I had options where
other people didn't.
And the fact that also in these scholarly circles, there's an entire society
(25:52):
uh of Pentecostal studies where people with theological degrees and history degrees, know,Princeton, Harvard, all of these prestigious schools sort of look at the movement.
And I was able to move in those circles as well to have papers that were accepted, toshare my perspective, to share my story.
(26:14):
uh And so when I go back there, because former leaders of my cult, they're always lookingfor uh
for credibility, right?
So they'll go to these types of meetings.
And it's always fun for me to kind of be there and kind of look them in the eye and askthem questions.
And they know who I am and they know where I came from.
(26:38):
But now I'm not just someone that they can dismiss, right?
As a disgruntled employee, because now I'm on their level.
I have their education and a lot of
And in a lot of ways, my education credentials are superior to theirs because they camefrom accredited uh secular state schools, whereas a lot of their education was limited to
(27:03):
denominational Bible schools and things of that nature.
So that gives me an opportunity to speak into these situations and circumstances, perhapsin ways that others have not enjoyed.
And I also feel a responsibility for all of those guys, right?
uh All of those guys, men and women who left the cult and had the courage to do that, butbecause of the choices that were made for them when they were younger, uh they are forced
(27:35):
into these situations.
Perhaps that they would not choose had they been able to make those choices earlier inlife.
So I feel a responsibility for them as well, or to them as well, I should say.
to kind of like tell the, tell the joint story or the group story, if you will.
(27:58):
You know, one of the things, one of the things I've been thinking about a lot is thatevery, not every, but like so many of the cult experts have said that like cults are
always the same.
You know, like it's always the same pattern over and over again.
And what I've been thinking about is like, that means there's a generic cult babyexperience.
(28:23):
Right?
And I think that like, that's some of the work we're doing.
And when I think about the musical, you know, I'm like, that's, that was kind of myconcept, right?
It was like Book of Mormon, but for all cult babies, right?
And I, I have these things where I say, you know, if you grew up in any version of in theworld, but not of the world.
(28:44):
or just being sacrificed for the mission, you know, or like having a sort of performanceculture that you were always on and performing when you were in public.
And these kinds of things that we all experience regardless of like what flavor the cultwas.
(29:05):
um And that's where I think like, as we are, you and I, as individuals are putting wordsto our
our experiences, but then we're out here putting it in the world, writing it, speaking itinto the world.
We're also like giving that language to other people.
(29:26):
And I keep saying like, I'm a different kind of cult scholar, because I don't really carewhat a group's called or if it fits the definition of cult or whatever.
I'm from the very obvious cult, so I'm gonna sit here and just talk about cults in minutedetail over and over again and let you identify your experience to mine.
(29:48):
And that's, think, almost like the new kind of scholarship or deconstruction that we'redoing here.
That wasn't really a question.
think that makes a lot of sense, especially for future generations.
(30:09):
Sometimes uh those of us that are doing this kind of work, uh I'll just speak for me.
uh Sometimes I get fatigued, I guess, and I think we all do, right?
If we're telling our story, it's like, my god, can we just talk about something elsebesides what I've experienced?
(30:30):
uh
But it's important to tell these stories and to tell them over and over again, because aswe said in our last episode, history uh rhymes.
And uh in a way, things that we have experienced, the world will face again.
And that's why I dedicated the book to my children and to my grandchildren and to all ofthose that follow.
(30:57):
Because even though...
uh
I know that not all of my children or grandchildren will care necessarily to know thedetails of my story.
I know that perhaps, more likely than not, there will be some future descendant of minewho will have an inquisitive nature like I am, that they'll be wired in a way that they'll
(31:21):
want to know about history, they'll want to know about the past.
And so I want to, in the very least, I want to leave a record
for them, like this was my experience.
This is the embarrassing parts as well.
But here it is, the good, the bad, the ugly.
(31:41):
Because I think one of the most difficult things for all of us, whether you've experienceda cult or not, and I think sometimes the cult experience, it makes it more difficult to be
honest with ourselves and to be honest with others.
Because we're taught in the cult, right, always to put our best foot forward, always tokeep the dirty laundry behind the scenes.
(32:04):
Why?
Because we always felt like we were representing the church or representing Jesus orrepresenting the gospel.
So we had to put the best spin on this, especially those of us that were the performers orthe speakers or the talent, so to speak, of our particular
(32:26):
cults or groups, we always felt a responsibility to put that positive spin on things.
And so I think a lot of people, they don't have the words, they don't have the vocabulary.
And, you know, this is a very difficult thing to do relationally.
A lot of people remain in cults, remain in groups that they know is a cult or they know isfull of shit, but they stay there because
(32:56):
their relationships are more important to them than telling the truth.
And I get that, and I'm not here to judge people like that, but what I want to do is Iwant to give future generations, first of all, a vocabulary and a narrative to understand
what they are going through if they go through something similar that I went through.
(33:21):
And then also to be honest, because I think in families,
and in particular in churches, and it may be a regional thing as well to the southernUnited States.
We feel this cultural pressure to always put a positive spin on things.
I work at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, and of course, we're alwaystelling the story of the Civil War narratives.
(33:48):
And there's this idea uh in the southern United States, those that
seceded from the Union, the Confederacy, that we're going, after the Civil War, afterReconstruction, we're going to put a spin on this.
They call it the Lost Cause.
And so that's why around the 1910s, 1911s, you had a lot of these southern spaces, thesemonuments going up to the Confederacy, because they were trying to communicate something
(34:20):
about history.
that was fundamentally not true.
You know, they put their generals on the horses.
They showed their Confederate soldiers in poses of being triumphant and winning.
And why were they doing that?
Well, it was the resurgence of Jim Crow.
(34:42):
It was this resurgence of segregation.
So they were wanting to communicate to the Black constituencies.
in their states and in their communities, this false narrative that somehow the Civil Warwas something that it wasn't.
And I think it's very important for those of us that were involved in these particulargroups, in these particular cults, to tell the truth about what happened so that future
(35:11):
generations can have the language, they can have the narrative, they can have the story,and they can have the vocabulary.
to apply whatever we've experienced to what they may be experiencing in some future stateto help them.
Yeah.
Yeah, you know, it's so important what you're talking about.
(35:33):
So many of these cults that we grew up in came from the civil rights movement or evenearlier than that, right?
But came from black people being freed, getting rights given to them and white people notbeing able to handle it.
And it took me many years to realize
(35:54):
how much racism can be inculcated into you.
Even like in our case, we traveled all around the world.
I didn't grow up in countries where people were mostly white, but because the group hadhad such a racist founder and racist beginnings and just the idea of we're keeping our
(36:16):
precious children away from you, that that...
you know, gets into all of us.
And it's really, you know, I've said this before, but like, if you were a white personthat grew up in the white church, like, there's, there's a lot going on there to
deconstruct.
Yeah, absolutely.
And that was certainly true.
(36:37):
That was certainly true for the group that I was involved in.
Pentecostalism in general uh found its uh beginnings in North America at the turn of thelast century, the 20th century.
There was a small group of Bible students in Topeka, Kansas.
were led by a man by the name of Charles Parham.
(36:59):
he was, uh initially, was, you always talk about these uh
these wannabe cult leaders, right?
He was a cult leader that was looking for a cult.
And he would travel all over the United States.
He was looking for these innovations.
And he went to uh some specific cults here in Illinois.
(37:21):
Mount Zion was a community that was built uh as a Christian community that was going to begoverned.
by the laws of the Bible and things of that nature.
And he went there and he investigated what they were doing and he wanted to replicatethat, but he needed some sort of innovation, some sort of religious innovation that
(37:45):
everybody's mind would be blown and like, whoa, that's new, that's interesting.
We've never heard of that before.
And so he got this small group of Bible students together uh in a rented mansion.
It was called Stone's Folly.
in Topeka, Kansas, and they rented the building and he gave them some instructions.
(38:05):
Obviously, he already knew what the answer, what the conclusion was that he wanted them toarrive at, but he asked them the question, what is the biblical evidence for receiving the
Holy Spirit?
And of course, they did a little investigation in the book of Acts and people werespeaking in tongues.
So they pointed to that and they landed on that and their innovation was
(38:28):
Yeah, when everybody gets this power of the Spirit, they're going to speak in a languagethat they've never learned before.
And of course, his reason for believing this was true was like so many of these groups, itwas connected to the impending apocalypse, right?
They believe that Jesus was returning any moment and they had to get the word out.
(38:49):
this, so being able to speak in a language that you didn't have to learn accelerated yourability to go to foreign countries.
and to speak this language and to tell the gospel and to get people ready for theapocalypse.
So that's, you know, that was the message that he was preaching and that his innovationsort of ballooned from there and he began to take it all over the country.
(39:15):
And in Houston, Texas, he opened a Bible school and there was uh a man by the name ofWilliam J.
Seymour, a black man, the son of former slaves from Louisiana.
who had sort of been doing the same thing as Parham.
He had been going around the country, looking at things and wanting to be a religiousleader.
(39:35):
And uh he found this school in Houston and because of segregation laws, he could only sitin the hallway and listen, but he listened and then he embraced it.
And then through a series of events, he took it to uh Los Angeles, California.
And in 1906, he opened up this storefront mission in an old, uh
(39:56):
an old stable, it was a livery stable before it was a church.
And he began having these services, teaching the innovations of Charles Parham, speakingin tongues, and it was received, and it was received globally.
But because Seymour was black, and a lot of his first converts were black,
(40:20):
They integrated into this particular revival a lot of uh African spirituality, a lot ofthe slave religion that was part of the culture of black people in this nation for over
400 years.
Many of them brought their religions from Africa and it was integrated into the Christianreligion that they were forced to accept by the slave owners.
(40:46):
And so, you this revival is happening in Los Angeles and Seymour is real excited as anyonewould be because he feels like something big is happening and he wants his old mentor,
Charles Fox Parham to come and sort of give his blessing to what's happening.
Well, when Parham finally arrives at Azusa Street and he sees uh black men and black womenworshiping together with white men and with white women.
(41:15):
uh Immediately his racism reveals itself.
mean, Parham was somebody who was, know, he wasn't just racist.
He was, he was uber racist, right?
He was someone who embraced the Ku Klux Klan, uh you know, and I hate to put racism on aspectrum, but there were people in the, in the day and age, right?
And time that they lived.
(41:37):
uh They were, they were racist by default because it was the culture.
It was everywhere.
But then there were others who were overtly racist, who uh championed the cause of racism.
And Parham was one of those individuals.
And he attempted to shut down what was happening at Azusa Street, which was taking hisinnovation and making it global.
(42:03):
You would think he would have been the happiest guy in the world, but no, because hisracism was the number one priority.
His racism was more important to him than the fame or the glory that Azusa Street wasgoing to give him for his religious innovations.
So he dismissed it in the crudest of uh racist terms that I can't repeat here.
(42:30):
And of course, the people of Azusa Street immediately dismissed him.
He goes across town, starts his own thing.
And then you had a lot of people who came from
all over the country to Azusa Street to see what Seymour was doing, and they took it backto their particular churches in the South to the exclusion of black people.
(42:51):
And so Seymour, who undeniably, if you're going to credit someone as being the father ofglobal Pentecostalism, it wouldn't be Charles Fox Parham because what he did was very
limited and very small in comparison to what Seymour did.
But because he was a black man, he died in obscurity.
(43:15):
The denominations that grew up in this country around him, the fact that Pentecostalism isthe largest branch of Christianity practiced in the world today.
But yet, until recently, Seymour would get none of the credit for that because of theracist overtones
(43:40):
of Charles Fox Parham and all of these white Christian pastors who wanted the innovationsand the beauty and the art and the excellence with which black people practice and
demonstrate their Christianity.
(44:01):
They didn't want to give them credit, so they appropriated what they did and thenreproduced it in mediocre
and less than excellent ways.
And so that's why we have Pentecostalism today in white cultures with white leaders, withpredominantly white congregations and a smattering of black people involved.
(44:26):
Or you have black denominations and black movements, not because black people chose that,but because white people chose that in our history.
They're the reason.
that we have segregated churches.
They're the reason that these people do not worship together because white supremacy, asit always does, uh appropriates, uh conquers, uh marginalizes others, steals, robs, kills,
(44:58):
and then attempts to pass it off as their own in very mediocre ways.
That's a brief synopsis of the history.
That was great.
That was great.
I feel like so educated on this now.
That's awesome.
Well, and I mean, it's still right.
(45:20):
They say the most segregated hour in America, right?
It's Sunday morning, right?
Like, and we're still having the repercussions of that, you know?
And I mean, this just brings a full circle to what is going on in our politics today,right?
And I
Sometimes I don't think that like all of the people that had normal childhoods out there,I don't think they understand that it's our people running the government.
(45:48):
know, like I think they think there's like some level of reason headedness that will takeover and not realizing it's just this like this guy at the top who wanted his cult, right?
When you said like they go looking for their thing, you know, that's so that was so funnyto me, but just like Yeah, know, these are these are our people what do you think about
(46:17):
like
it may be that a lot of the folks that benefit, it always comes back to me.
It's people that look like me because this system was built by people that look like mefor people that look like me.
So they see everything that's going on.
And even if they have the wherewithal, the capacity to recognize uh the profundity of whatyou just said, they're okay with it because
(46:45):
This is their normal, right?
They like this.
They don't see any problem with this because it benefits them.
I'm convinced that that's one of the big reasons that Donald Trump has enjoyed what he hasenjoyed in this nation, because you have a whole swath of people who
(47:15):
from their perspective, uh quote unquote, had to endure eight years of a black president.
And it just made them mad.
It made them long for a romanticized time when they were the center of status and power.
(47:38):
you have all of these people, it's even coming from the administration.
The fact that they say that
Christians are being persecuted in America, or we're going to accept all of these whiteSouth Africans because they're being killed and persecuted by the black government.
(47:58):
Never mind what apartheid just ended in the early 90s and how long did that go on?
And never mind that there's not an ounce of evidence or credibility to anything that these
these South Africans, white South Africans are saying or what the president with hisgrandstanding did in the White House.
(48:21):
uh Evidence be damned.
It's just the accusation and right, the perception of white people that we're under thegun now, that we're the ones being persecuted as Christians, our freedoms, our liberties
are being taken away.
And that's something that, you know, has been cultivated my entire life growing up in theUnited States.
(48:42):
People would always warn, well, you know, they're coming for our liberties, they're comingfor our Christian values.
And so Donald Trump, he just saw this and he took opportunity of it and, you know, he tookadvantage of it and he continues to exploit that because it benefits him as the cult
leader and all of these people, especially white males, my age and especially now youngwhite males, they see in him uh
(49:11):
the champion, right?
That he's the one, he has everything they aspire to be, know, success and power and abeautiful wife and all of these women and everything.
And so they live vicariously through Trump.
And that, I think, is a large part of his success.
(49:34):
Because if you think about it rationally, it falls apart.
If anybody, if you give five minutes to thinking about this,
There's no substance to it.
I know they're taking all his speeches down now.
But you know, when you said like he came along and kind of took advantage of this,somebody actually one of my comments said this thing I think is so insightful.
(49:55):
So I've talked about how cults can be led by a person or an idea.
And a lot of times something starts out as a cult of personality, and then it kind of getstransferred over to a cult of idea, right?
Like Mormonism, right?
Joseph Smith started it as like his cult.
but ultimately it was like the idea that we are the one true church that gets passed down.
(50:16):
So somebody was like, I feel like there was already a cult led by an idea, which was likeracist conservatism.
And then Trump came along and made it a cult of personality.
And I'm like, that's what it is, right?
Like we've all been trying to kind of like talk about this thing that has been buildingsince the days of Reagan and.
(50:40):
Obviously it's been building for kind of like all of American history, but this, you know,this idea that like they're coming for us.
They're coming for us to take what we have.
Not, you know, not for nothing.
I think part of why we're so scared is because we know it's ill-begotten.
(51:01):
You know, like they're coming to take our stuff because we took it.
You know, our ancestors took it.
Yeah, man.
flee, the wicked flee when no one pursues because they know that they are wicked.
And so, you know, what all of these, these white folks, they get, they get up in arms andthey start wringing their hands and they're, they're very afraid of, of, of equality
(51:29):
because they perceive equality to be inequality because that's exactly what white folkshave done for all of our history.
We say, in a paternalistic way, well, we'll grant freedoms to these people.
Or even during the Civil War, for all of the good that Abraham Lincoln did, there was alot of problems even with his philosophy, right?
(51:54):
Because he saw his primary responsibility of keeping the union together and freeing theslaves was a secondary.
part of that and he only did that when he perceived as did the nation that the Union, thatthe North was losing the war.
(52:14):
So they had to do something, right?
And so, you know, there's no doubt that he was on a trajectory where he was seeing thesehuman rights and he was coming around to this, but it was very slow.
when he was alive and when he had power and when he was in office, he was operating underthe law and under
the assumption in the United States that black people were property.
(52:39):
And he used that law uh in uh several instances to an advantage, right?
Because if black people were property, as Dred Scott, the Supreme Court had ruled, thenproperty could be confiscated.
And so what they would do is that they would enslave black people.
(53:03):
would be oh confiscated by union forces and then set free.
So that was a long way from where we're at today.
And certainly no one to this point, at least in a government and large scale fashion, hasdealt with the intrinsic systemic nature of racism that's still embedded within our
(53:28):
institutions.
We can pass all of the laws that we want
But until we have a reckoning with the founding documents, the founding institution, thefounding philosophy of this nation, which built its wealth, which built its reputation,
which built its power on slave labor, then those problems are going to continue toperpetuate and they're not going to be resolved.
(53:57):
So I say all of that to say that language matters.
power matters and who uses power and how you use your own power and your own agency as aperson to speak up about what is happening in DC.
you know, all of it is self-serving.
All of it is about, you know, this misguided philosophy of returning America to a pastthat never existed in the first place because it benefits white men in particular, white
(54:30):
people in general.
Yeah, and you know, as you were talking about this, it just made me think of all thesecults that try to whitewash themselves, you know, and I'm just like, I never believe it,
right?
Like, I don't think the Mormons got any better after they gave up polygamy.
I know the children of God didn't get any better when they supposedly whitewashthemselves.
(54:52):
And it's because of that, right?
Like, it was bad when it started.
But then also,
as you were giving us the history, but then rewriting it and talking about the black manwho was significant in that movement, that's one way to address things, right?
(55:13):
And so I kind of, I almost kind of feel like it's good right now.
We're pulling everything out of the dark corners.
We're being forced to see kind of like all of these cracks and crazy things in Americathat
I mean, people of color have always known that this country isn't a great, wonderfulplace, but so many of us have had the comfort or the ability to just not have to look at
(55:41):
it.
I almost am like, this presidency, I hate to say it, but it's gonna give a lot of peoplethe crack in the brainwashing, I think, and actually.
we're either gonna tear these systems down or we're gonna go back and redefine them andmake them work for everybody, know, one way or the other, because we're at very
(56:08):
interesting boiling point in our country right now.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think oh everything that is happening is definitely unsustainable.
think that, I mean, we all feel it, right?
In the zeitgeist, in the environment, in the culture.
We feel, at least I do, feel simultaneously exhausted and at some points wanting to ignorewhat is happening.
(56:39):
But then also,
that frustration and that exhaustion and that momentary ambivalence that sometimes comesinto my soul or into my psyche because of everything that's happening is because I
expended so much energy or I felt like I did the first go around.
(56:59):
I felt like the first term I was posting every day, I felt like I was waving my arms andshouting to anyone that would listen like, no, no, no.
You know, it's weird here.
Here we go again.
And I feel like some people are just now seeing this.
I'm like, where were you in the first term?
Where were you in the lead up to this?
(57:21):
You know, I mean, it's it's been happening.
So and now, right, he's empowered.
He's empowered by the fact that he doesn't he doesn't have to stand for reelection.
And then I, you know, and so he's doing whatever the hell that he wants to.
It doesn't matter what anybody says.
It doesn't matter who criticize him.
or what happens, it doesn't matter what the courts say, it doesn't matter what Congresssays.
(57:43):
At this point, I don't even think he cares what his constituents say.
mean, is, you know, some of his number one supporters in my home state of Arkansas, uhknow, uh Huckabee Sanders asking for uh disaster relief and then being turned down and
denied.
You know, this is happening state after state after state.
uh And so these are his supporters.
(58:06):
And, you know, uh
not to mention everything that he's doing to those that he perceives to be his enemies.
And so I think it's bad now, but just wait until after the midterms, especially if thingsdo not go his way, then you're going to see all kinds of things happen.
(58:28):
But uh my hope is that ultimately this will come to an end and whatever it is on the otherside, we'll see it.
And you know, one of the things is we got the skills for right now, right?
Like I've been saying more and more, like everything we're doing in the deconstructionworld, like America's doing.
(58:48):
And now we're just all, like, I feel like we're just all teenagers in this cult that wecan't leave, right?
And we have to just like, hold on for four years and like see what dad's gonna do.
And then, you know, yeah, try to.
try to patch it up when it gets going.
(59:09):
Anyway, what an interesting conversation that we had today, Scott, and I learned a bunchof things from you that I did not know before.
Well, thank you.
And likewise, it's always an honor and a privilege to speak with you, Daniela, and Iappreciate the opportunity.
And I don't say it enough, but thank you for uh the opportunity to speak with you weekly,to share with your audience, those that are kind enough to uh give us a listen and to
(59:41):
support you and your work.
And how about that, Haley?
Haley is awesome.
She does.
a great job.
They do a great job for us and we're very appreciative of Haley and all of our listeners.
So thanks.
Thanks for being a part of this podcast.
oh
Thanks everybody.
(01:00:01):
We'll see you on the next episode of Cults and the Culting of Ameri-
Welcome to another edition of Cults and the Culting of America.
My name is Scott Lloyd and I am thrilled to be joined as always by my friend, DanielaMescinek Young, Knitting Cult Lady that she is and doing a wonderful job.
How are you, Daniela?
I'm good.
(00:46):
Done with the book, done.
It's like.
yeah, so speaking of uh books and process and things of that nature, uh in lieu of a guesttonight, we thought we would take the opportunity to kind of talk about not only your
project, but also my upcoming book that is due to be released.
(01:10):
Hopefully this year, I don't have an exact date yet.
I received the second galley, which is just basically a proof
that I'm looking at.
Got the second one uh Monday.
And so I'm to get that back to them and hopefully have a uh release date soon and we'll besure and let everyone know.
(01:32):
But Daniela, thank you so much for the support and the encouragement.
I remember um I was either just starting that project or getting into it when I discoveredyour work on
on TikTok a few years back and it was very inspirational.
So thank you for all of the input, all of the feedback and all of the generalencouragement.
(01:55):
Thanks for being you.
Yeah, of course, and now here you are.
You've come through this whole process.
So what, I mean, I'm excited for your book, of course.
I'm excited to help you sell it.
ah I'm excited because it's more rare to have books from men in the cult space.
(02:19):
What,
Why do you think that is?
just men in general probably.
Well, I mean, one of the reasons is just because I think men are maybe less likely to havethe negative experiences because since cults are, you know, ultimately patriarchal, we see
(02:43):
that women are almost always a servant class in cults.
I think you can be in there and have like a so-so experience and then like not think youhave anything to say.
You know, and it's kind of similar to the military, you know, I say like my husband is theexact soldier that like the army is built for.
(03:04):
So his 20 years was like relatively easy compared to six and a half years for me, whichfelt like, you know, very, very difficult and dramatic.
So, yeah, I think there's this like, you know, you just didn't, the men just didn'texperience the worst of it, but
(03:26):
that still doesn't mean that that perspective isn't important.
Right.
And I think you're exactly right because so many of those uh types of groups, mean, evenif you look at uh what we're experiencing in our nation, the world, uh generally speaking,
is uh built uh for men by men, right?
(03:47):
And that's what the patriarchy means.
And so I think a lot of men get involved in these particular groups.
And even if they see the abuses or they see uh
the way that people are treated or the problematic nature of it.
think sometimes uh men in our society, because of the patriarchy, because of the system,have a hard time sharing their experiences and their story first and foremost, because it
(04:22):
all benefits us, right?
I tell people all the time that this system was built
by people who look like me, for people that look like me.
And the moment that you begin to speak out about that or to push back against it, uh know,men have uh things to lose as far as power and status.
(04:48):
And I think that's important to uh keep in mind.
As far as my experience in the United Pentecostal Church, you're exactly right.
And something that I...
I try to point out early and often in the book is that even though I'm sharing myexperiences, I recognize that the experiences of my peers, especially those who are women,
(05:15):
was far worse and was uh far more traumatic than anything that I experienced.
That doesn't discount what I experienced.
It's just a recognition.
that in these types of systems, in these types of groups, because of the overarching, themeta-cults that we talk about a lot on this program of patriarchy and racism, women, uh
(05:43):
women of color, Black women especially, are on the receiving end of a lot of that harm.
So that is something that I acknowledge as often as I can.
and retelling my story.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, so how did you get started?
(06:05):
Or like, what made you decide to want to write your story down?
Yeah, so um I started a blog post probably about 2017, 2018 is when I really startedwriting in earnest and sort of reflecting on my experiences.
And of course, I think for a lot of people, this unraveled, this unraveling of uh the waythat we were brought up, the things that we experienced growing up.
(06:37):
At least for me, and I think listening to others, for a lot of us, it started unravelingat an accelerated pace in 2015 when all of a sudden everything that we had invested our
lives in, we all felt a collective betrayal, right?
When there was an embrace by fundamentalist Christianity, evangelical Christianity in
(07:06):
the United States of Donald Trump as a political candidate and then as a presidentialcandidate and then as president of the United States.
And so that sort of, I'd already been thinking a lot about uh racism and I'd gone back tograduate school and I was, I was hearing a lot of stories uh that uh weren't shared with
(07:30):
me growing up as someone who attended public school.
in Arkansas, hearing stories about my own state, hearing stories about the atrocities likethe Tulsa race massacre and other things like that.
So I began to study and to look at things from the racial perspective.
(07:53):
um And then with the embracing of the misogyny and just the downright
lack of character that evangelicals embraced in Donald Trump, that accelerated theunraveling for me.
(08:13):
And I wanted to understand my own story uh a lot more and a lot better because I wasthinking in terms of, first of all, how can I attend a church and give half of my life to
this particular stream of Christianity and never hear about the atrocities
(08:35):
that were committed against black people in my home state, in the county that I grew upin.
And we were, you know, as a church, were all about, we were supposed to be all aboutjustice, all about these Christian values that were hammered into me over and over again.
But as I began to reflect on my history, some of the most profound, uh scary,
(09:02):
and traumatic moments in our nation's history, in our state's history, were ignored insome instances, and even worse, were facilitated by doctrines of the church, by the
silence of the church.
And so as I began to look at that, there was a complicity, right, in some of theselarger...
(09:27):
these larger atrocities that were committed against black people that were committedagainst women.
And so then I began to look personally into my own story and I began to think about, well,know, unfortunately for me, because of how I was raised, because of the serendipity of my
(09:51):
birth, of my geography, I was plunged into this world.
And I really didn't stand a chance, right?
I was going to get this religion.
The name of the book is called The God that I was given.
So I was given this God.
I was given this, this doctrine.
I was given this set of values and beliefs.
(10:11):
And at the same time, where I didn't have a choice in a matter, but at the same time as I,as I grew and as I became older, I was very complicit.
I was wide open to receiving it in a lot of instances.
looking back because I was considered a leader, I was considered a pastor, a preacher, ateacher.
(10:33):
There were lots of things that I said and did in the name of this religion thatperpetuated the harm.
So not only was I a victim uh in many instances as an adult, I was complicit inperpetuating a lot of these ideas and
(10:54):
even though I wasn't directly involved in harming others, I was speaking, I was teaching,I was preaching, I was defending these doctrines and these particular points of view uh to
the point where uh I was a perpetrator as well as being a victim of these particularideas.
(11:17):
And so once you start to unpack that and once that starts to unravel,
You have to do something about it, or I feel like everybody should have that feeling, likeI want to do something.
And a lot of times uh the direct action steps that we can take as people are limited.
(11:42):
But one thing that I do have, I do have my voice.
I do have the ability to write.
I have the ability to speak.
And those are gifts that...
ironically, were given to me in large measure by the Church.
The very tools that they gave me to perpetuate their doctrines were eventually the verytools that enabled me to leave and then to turn it back on them and to speak out about
(12:14):
these particular issues and now write about these particular issues.
Yeah, isn't it great how we like use all of the tools that they taught us?
I mean, I really, I really remember I had a moment when I was reading my audio book that Iwas like, okay, yeah, like I'm good at this, right?
(12:35):
Like reading aloud is one of my basic skills from this particular cult.
And, you know, there's something very healing about being able to, in any way, I think,exploit your story.
and use it to, like you said, like help others.
Like there's, I think we all probably write our books because we didn't find a book justlike ours out there.
(13:00):
So we were like kind of forced to write it.
Did you feel like that?
Like have other people written books about United Pentecostal Church?
Are you kind of new in this way?
but a lot of people uh seem to take it from the perspective of uh attacking the doctrinalpositions or the theological positions and then attempting to tear those down.
(13:28):
And I certainly went through a phase uh in my exit where, you know, I sort of traded onedogmatic assertion for another.
And I would make those stops along the way where I would have evolutions in my theology orevolutions in my perspective.
And I would push back against the doctrines.
(13:50):
But what I've discovered is that if you end up doing that, uh in a lot of respects, youtrade one dogmatic certainty for another.
And eventually, you keep pulling on those threads.
And what you discover is that
It's not a particular perspective or theological position that in and of itself may beproblematic, but it is the dogmatic assertion.
(14:19):
It is the certainty and that certainty is taken in its leverage and it's weaponizedagainst other people.
So what I'm attempting to do in my particular book is to share my story, to share myreflections.
but also to do it in a way that sort of holds that tension oh because there's a lot ofpeople that are still involved with the United Pentecostal Church, a lot of family
(14:50):
members.
And I know that we talk about the spectrum of harm, so to speak.
Certainly, although the United Pentecostal Church I maintain is a cult, it's not a cult inthe way that
the children of God was a cult, uh but still harm is being perpetuated and things of thatnature.
(15:13):
So what I wanted to do in the book was sort of hold that tension where if somebody fromthe inside is reading it, there's lots of instances of nostalgia.
There's lots of instances where they will read it and they will say, yeah, I'veexperienced that.
That was funny.
(15:33):
uh I remember that.
things have changed now, but a little bit, but that's how it used to be.
And I wanted to be as honest as I could about the story without becoming, and I don't knowhow well I experienced this, that's yet to be determined.
(15:53):
I wanted to tell the story honestly without being uh overtly uh preachy in a way thatpeople would respond and immediately put up their walls.
So I think there's going to be plenty of room for that anyway, because, you know, it'sunavoidable if you've experienced high control religious groups the way that we did, cults
(16:17):
the way that we did.
There are points where you're just kind of unload on them and the harm that they've done.
But for the most part, I tried to maintain that tension where somebody is reading it fromthe inside, perhaps.
they'll let down their guard long enough to kind of stop and think about what I'm saying.
(16:40):
And I tried not, I mean, there's so many opportunities, right?
Just to be a standup comedian and to have fun and to make jokes and to lampoon a lot ofthe experiences, because a lot of it is just, if it wasn't so traumatic in a lot of ways,
it's just hella funny, right?
But I wanted to tell those stories and I wanted to communicate it in an honest way.
(17:03):
without being preachy um and hopefully cause people to think and to reflect on their ownexperiences while reading my stories.
Amazing.
em Yeah, you know, I think when people like when you start putting the outside language toit, to your experience, right, I think people just start to throw up their walls like, it
(17:28):
wasn't that oh, you know.
em And I think the beautiful thing about stories is like the nuance, right, you get toshow more of it.
And there's this very, I think, one sided idea that if you
If you write your if you tell your story, if you deconstruct, like now you're living inhatred and anger and you're you're you know, I think have you confronted that at all?
(17:56):
Yeah, that's uh the omnipresent charge, right?
For those of us that leave, we are bitter.
And really, we've talked about thought-stopping cliches.
And that's another one, right?
That is utilized by the cult and by these high-control groups.
(18:16):
When someone exits, they're dismissed as disgruntled or bitter.
uh
which is an attempt, right, to not address the concerns or the problems that they'rebringing up about that particular organization.
And so the way that I attempt to answer that in the book is uh because we were all steepedin so many Bible studies, uh whenever someone calls me bitter, there's a particular uh
(18:47):
story in the Old Testament about uh Esther.
and about Ruth and Naomi and all of those women in particular in the Old Testament whodidn't have a lot of agency, really didn't have any, they were considered property, things
of that nature.
But there's a particular story where Ruth's mother-in-law, Naomi, returns to her homelandafter her
(19:19):
husband dies after her son-in-laws die and uh Ruth, her daughter-in-law accompanies herand she goes back and the famous line from that particular biblical story is that Naomi
says, uh God has made me bitter.
And so I take that line and I sort of turn it in a way that maybe will communicate topeople that are familiar with the biblical story and say, yeah, I'm bitter, but
(19:48):
in the sense that Naomi was bitter and she saw it as a gift from God, right, to enable herto move forward.
And so, you know, when you take those well rehearsed and often cliched stories and thenyou're able to pull out a thread and you're able to turn the story around and to show it
(20:14):
from a different perspective, I think it...
It holds up a mirror to those who are leveling that charge because it's just, it's a wayof saying, I don't want to hear your arguments.
I don't want to hear about your experiences.
I'm just going to dismiss you as bitter and bent out of shape and disgruntled and mad.
(20:37):
Therefore, I don't have to deal with the truth of what you're saying.
And so, yeah, I dedicate an entire chapter to rehearsing
that well-known biblical story from the Old Testament.
And then I use that to show people, well, from my perspective, even though I am uhdeconstructing my faith and my faith looks completely different than what it was, and I
(21:05):
don't know what it will look like 10 years from now, but as right now, I still identify asa Christian and I still see the Bible in some areas as a source of wisdom.
and uh guidance and encouragement, although I would never say it's the word of God orinfallible or anything like that.
I'm able to take those stories, I'm able to turn them and then to use them as a tool forteaching and hopefully helping others.
(21:34):
Because I think a lot of times when people level that charge against us that we aresomehow uh disgruntled or bitter, uh they are attempting to put us
into a place of defensiveness where we feel obligated to defend our perspective or to makean argument against a particular point.
(21:58):
And I can do all of that.
And I can simultaneously be bitter and not see it as a negative thing, but as a way tofuel my work and my attention and my precision.
to what has happened in my life.
And then hopefully by telling that story and retelling that story, it's beneficial toothers as well.
(22:25):
Yeah, you know, and it makes me think of this other thing that we see in writing and I seeit in the cult survivor world too, of just like, you have a right to your own story and
the whole story and you don't have to be happy about all of it or bitter about all of itor angry, right?
Like if you're, if you're writing a whole story, you can have a whole bunch of emotions.
(22:51):
And you know, that's what I think people
that are like putting off the deconstruction, right?
Because I think so many of us do that and they're afraid of getting into it.
But you know, I also, I feel like there's so much value in your story because you aresomeone who grew up and stayed in and who was in the leadership, right?
(23:18):
And was doing the preaching and the performing.
um You know, I...
of course, in my cult story was always the problem child and then left very young.
But when I was doing my book about the military, like I kind of felt like, you know, andeven I as the golden child can show you these problems and can can bring you in and you're
(23:43):
not someone that the institution can kind of easily wave off.
Did you feel like that?
Do you feel like that gives you kind of a
kind of a power almost.
Yeah, absolutely.
And then, you know, we're all a product of uh not only uh nature, but also nurture, right?
(24:05):
So it's a combination of both.
So everything that we experience in the world, the timing, the place of our birth, uh goesa long way in making us who we are.
But also, we still have the opportunity uh as adults to make choices.
And there were choices
that I started to make as a younger man, even while I was in the cult, that set me up uhto be, to have perhaps a little bit more credibility than others who have left may have
(24:41):
had.
For instance, I chose to go back to a real school, to college, not just a Bible college,to get some real degrees, to have some education and...
I was talking to someone the other day, most Pentecostal pastors or preachers who uh had asimilar experience to mine, end up either selling insurance, and there's nothing wrong
(25:06):
with that, or selling cars, or just going into sales because that's where all of yourgifting is.
And if you don't have any education to fall back on or no other job experience, then thatis likely the life that will be chosen for you.
if you choose to exit the cult.
(25:26):
But because I went back to school and because higher ed was a big part of my journey outof it, uh when it was time for me to leave and to leave completely, I had options where
other people didn't.
And the fact that also in these scholarly circles, there's an entire society
(25:52):
uh of Pentecostal studies where people with theological degrees and history degrees, know,Princeton, Harvard, all of these prestigious schools sort of look at the movement.
And I was able to move in those circles as well to have papers that were accepted, toshare my perspective, to share my story.
(26:14):
uh And so when I go back there, because former leaders of my cult, they're always lookingfor uh
for credibility, right?
So they'll go to these types of meetings.
And it's always fun for me to kind of be there and kind of look them in the eye and askthem questions.
And they know who I am and they know where I came from.
(26:38):
But now I'm not just someone that they can dismiss, right?
As a disgruntled employee, because now I'm on their level.
I have their education and a lot of
And in a lot of ways, my education credentials are superior to theirs because they camefrom accredited uh secular state schools, whereas a lot of their education was limited to
(27:03):
denominational Bible schools and things of that nature.
So that gives me an opportunity to speak into these situations and circumstances, perhapsin ways that others have not enjoyed.
And I also feel a responsibility for all of those guys, right?
uh All of those guys, men and women who left the cult and had the courage to do that, butbecause of the choices that were made for them when they were younger, uh they are forced
(27:35):
into these situations.
Perhaps that they would not choose had they been able to make those choices earlier inlife.
So I feel a responsibility for them as well, or to them as well, I should say.
to kind of like tell the, tell the joint story or the group story, if you will.
(27:58):
You know, one of the things, one of the things I've been thinking about a lot is thatevery, not every, but like so many of the cult experts have said that like cults are
always the same.
You know, like it's always the same pattern over and over again.
And what I've been thinking about is like, that means there's a generic cult babyexperience.
(28:23):
Right?
And I think that like, that's some of the work we're doing.
And when I think about the musical, you know, I'm like, that's, that was kind of myconcept, right?
It was like Book of Mormon, but for all cult babies, right?
And I, I have these things where I say, you know, if you grew up in any version of in theworld, but not of the world.
(28:44):
or just being sacrificed for the mission, you know, or like having a sort of performanceculture that you were always on and performing when you were in public.
And these kinds of things that we all experience regardless of like what flavor the cultwas.
(29:05):
um And that's where I think like, as we are, you and I, as individuals are putting wordsto our
our experiences, but then we're out here putting it in the world, writing it, speaking itinto the world.
We're also like giving that language to other people.
(29:26):
And I keep saying like, I'm a different kind of cult scholar, because I don't really carewhat a group's called or if it fits the definition of cult or whatever.
I'm from the very obvious cult, so I'm gonna sit here and just talk about cults in minutedetail over and over again and let you identify your experience to mine.
(29:48):
And that's, think, almost like the new kind of scholarship or deconstruction that we'redoing here.
That wasn't really a question.
think that makes a lot of sense, especially for future generations.
(30:09):
Sometimes uh those of us that are doing this kind of work, uh I'll just speak for me.
uh Sometimes I get fatigued, I guess, and I think we all do, right?
If we're telling our story, it's like, my god, can we just talk about something elsebesides what I've experienced?
(30:30):
uh
But it's important to tell these stories and to tell them over and over again, because aswe said in our last episode, history uh rhymes.
And uh in a way, things that we have experienced, the world will face again.
And that's why I dedicated the book to my children and to my grandchildren and to all ofthose that follow.
(30:57):
Because even though...
uh
I know that not all of my children or grandchildren will care necessarily to know thedetails of my story.
I know that perhaps, more likely than not, there will be some future descendant of minewho will have an inquisitive nature like I am, that they'll be wired in a way that they'll
(31:21):
want to know about history, they'll want to know about the past.
And so I want to, in the very least, I want to leave a record
for them, like this was my experience.
This is the embarrassing parts as well.
But here it is, the good, the bad, the ugly.
(31:41):
Because I think one of the most difficult things for all of us, whether you've experienceda cult or not, and I think sometimes the cult experience, it makes it more difficult to be
honest with ourselves and to be honest with others.
Because we're taught in the cult, right, always to put our best foot forward, always tokeep the dirty laundry behind the scenes.
(32:04):
Why?
Because we always felt like we were representing the church or representing Jesus orrepresenting the gospel.
So we had to put the best spin on this, especially those of us that were the performers orthe speakers or the talent, so to speak, of our particular
(32:26):
cults or groups, we always felt a responsibility to put that positive spin on things.
And so I think a lot of people, they don't have the words, they don't have the vocabulary.
And, you know, this is a very difficult thing to do relationally.
A lot of people remain in cults, remain in groups that they know is a cult or they know isfull of shit, but they stay there because
(32:56):
their relationships are more important to them than telling the truth.
And I get that, and I'm not here to judge people like that, but what I want to do is Iwant to give future generations, first of all, a vocabulary and a narrative to understand
what they are going through if they go through something similar that I went through.
(33:21):
And then also to be honest, because I think in families,
and in particular in churches, and it may be a regional thing as well to the southernUnited States.
We feel this cultural pressure to always put a positive spin on things.
I work at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, and of course, we're alwaystelling the story of the Civil War narratives.
(33:48):
And there's this idea uh in the southern United States, those that
seceded from the Union, the Confederacy, that we're going, after the Civil War, afterReconstruction, we're going to put a spin on this.
They call it the Lost Cause.
And so that's why around the 1910s, 1911s, you had a lot of these southern spaces, thesemonuments going up to the Confederacy, because they were trying to communicate something
(34:20):
about history.
that was fundamentally not true.
You know, they put their generals on the horses.
They showed their Confederate soldiers in poses of being triumphant and winning.
And why were they doing that?
Well, it was the resurgence of Jim Crow.
(34:42):
It was this resurgence of segregation.
So they were wanting to communicate to the Black constituencies.
in their states and in their communities, this false narrative that somehow the Civil Warwas something that it wasn't.
And I think it's very important for those of us that were involved in these particulargroups, in these particular cults, to tell the truth about what happened so that future
(35:11):
generations can have the language, they can have the narrative, they can have the story,and they can have the vocabulary.
to apply whatever we've experienced to what they may be experiencing in some future stateto help them.
Yeah.
Yeah, you know, it's so important what you're talking about.
(35:33):
So many of these cults that we grew up in came from the civil rights movement or evenearlier than that, right?
But came from black people being freed, getting rights given to them and white people notbeing able to handle it.
And it took me many years to realize
(35:54):
how much racism can be inculcated into you.
Even like in our case, we traveled all around the world.
I didn't grow up in countries where people were mostly white, but because the group hadhad such a racist founder and racist beginnings and just the idea of we're keeping our
(36:16):
precious children away from you, that that...
you know, gets into all of us.
And it's really, you know, I've said this before, but like, if you were a white personthat grew up in the white church, like, there's, there's a lot going on there to
deconstruct.
Yeah, absolutely.
And that was certainly true.
(36:37):
That was certainly true for the group that I was involved in.
Pentecostalism in general uh found its uh beginnings in North America at the turn of thelast century, the 20th century.
There was a small group of Bible students in Topeka, Kansas.
were led by a man by the name of Charles Parham.
(36:59):
he was, uh initially, was, you always talk about these uh
these wannabe cult leaders, right?
He was a cult leader that was looking for a cult.
And he would travel all over the United States.
He was looking for these innovations.
And he went to uh some specific cults here in Illinois.
(37:21):
Mount Zion was a community that was built uh as a Christian community that was going to begoverned.
by the laws of the Bible and things of that nature.
And he went there and he investigated what they were doing and he wanted to replicatethat, but he needed some sort of innovation, some sort of religious innovation that
(37:45):
everybody's mind would be blown and like, whoa, that's new, that's interesting.
We've never heard of that before.
And so he got this small group of Bible students together uh in a rented mansion.
It was called Stone's Folly.
in Topeka, Kansas, and they rented the building and he gave them some instructions.
(38:05):
Obviously, he already knew what the answer, what the conclusion was that he wanted them toarrive at, but he asked them the question, what is the biblical evidence for receiving the
Holy Spirit?
And of course, they did a little investigation in the book of Acts and people werespeaking in tongues.
So they pointed to that and they landed on that and their innovation was
(38:28):
Yeah, when everybody gets this power of the Spirit, they're going to speak in a languagethat they've never learned before.
And of course, his reason for believing this was true was like so many of these groups, itwas connected to the impending apocalypse, right?
They believe that Jesus was returning any moment and they had to get the word out.
(38:49):
this, so being able to speak in a language that you didn't have to learn accelerated yourability to go to foreign countries.
and to speak this language and to tell the gospel and to get people ready for theapocalypse.
So that's, you know, that was the message that he was preaching and that his innovationsort of ballooned from there and he began to take it all over the country.
(39:15):
And in Houston, Texas, he opened a Bible school and there was uh a man by the name ofWilliam J.
Seymour, a black man, the son of former slaves from Louisiana.
who had sort of been doing the same thing as Parham.
He had been going around the country, looking at things and wanting to be a religiousleader.
(39:35):
And uh he found this school in Houston and because of segregation laws, he could only sitin the hallway and listen, but he listened and then he embraced it.
And then through a series of events, he took it to uh Los Angeles, California.
And in 1906, he opened up this storefront mission in an old, uh
(39:56):
an old stable, it was a livery stable before it was a church.
And he began having these services, teaching the innovations of Charles Parham, speakingin tongues, and it was received, and it was received globally.
But because Seymour was black, and a lot of his first converts were black,
(40:20):
They integrated into this particular revival a lot of uh African spirituality, a lot ofthe slave religion that was part of the culture of black people in this nation for over
400 years.
Many of them brought their religions from Africa and it was integrated into the Christianreligion that they were forced to accept by the slave owners.
(40:46):
And so, you this revival is happening in Los Angeles and Seymour is real excited as anyonewould be because he feels like something big is happening and he wants his old mentor,
Charles Fox Parham to come and sort of give his blessing to what's happening.
Well, when Parham finally arrives at Azusa Street and he sees uh black men and black womenworshiping together with white men and with white women.
(41:15):
uh Immediately his racism reveals itself.
mean, Parham was somebody who was, know, he wasn't just racist.
He was, he was uber racist, right?
He was someone who embraced the Ku Klux Klan, uh you know, and I hate to put racism on aspectrum, but there were people in the, in the day and age, right?
And time that they lived.
(41:37):
uh They were, they were racist by default because it was the culture.
It was everywhere.
But then there were others who were overtly racist, who uh championed the cause of racism.
And Parham was one of those individuals.
And he attempted to shut down what was happening at Azusa Street, which was taking hisinnovation and making it global.
(42:03):
You would think he would have been the happiest guy in the world, but no, because hisracism was the number one priority.
His racism was more important to him than the fame or the glory that Azusa Street wasgoing to give him for his religious innovations.
So he dismissed it in the crudest of uh racist terms that I can't repeat here.
(42:30):
And of course, the people of Azusa Street immediately dismissed him.
He goes across town, starts his own thing.
And then you had a lot of people who came from
all over the country to Azusa Street to see what Seymour was doing, and they took it backto their particular churches in the South to the exclusion of black people.
(42:51):
And so Seymour, who undeniably, if you're going to credit someone as being the father ofglobal Pentecostalism, it wouldn't be Charles Fox Parham because what he did was very
limited and very small in comparison to what Seymour did.
But because he was a black man, he died in obscurity.
(43:15):
The denominations that grew up in this country around him, the fact that Pentecostalism isthe largest branch of Christianity practiced in the world today.
But yet, until recently, Seymour would get none of the credit for that because of theracist overtones
(43:40):
of Charles Fox Parham and all of these white Christian pastors who wanted the innovationsand the beauty and the art and the excellence with which black people practice and
demonstrate their Christianity.
(44:01):
They didn't want to give them credit, so they appropriated what they did and thenreproduced it in mediocre
and less than excellent ways.
And so that's why we have Pentecostalism today in white cultures with white leaders, withpredominantly white congregations and a smattering of black people involved.
(44:26):
Or you have black denominations and black movements, not because black people chose that,but because white people chose that in our history.
They're the reason.
that we have segregated churches.
They're the reason that these people do not worship together because white supremacy, asit always does, uh appropriates, uh conquers, uh marginalizes others, steals, robs, kills,
(44:58):
and then attempts to pass it off as their own in very mediocre ways.
That's a brief synopsis of the history.
That was great.
That was great.
I feel like so educated on this now.
That's awesome.
Well, and I mean, it's still right.
(45:20):
They say the most segregated hour in America, right?
It's Sunday morning, right?
Like, and we're still having the repercussions of that, you know?
And I mean, this just brings a full circle to what is going on in our politics today,right?
And I
Sometimes I don't think that like all of the people that had normal childhoods out there,I don't think they understand that it's our people running the government.
(45:48):
know, like I think they think there's like some level of reason headedness that will takeover and not realizing it's just this like this guy at the top who wanted his cult, right?
When you said like they go looking for their thing, you know, that's so that was so funnyto me, but just like Yeah, know, these are these are our people what do you think about
(46:17):
like
it may be that a lot of the folks that benefit, it always comes back to me.
It's people that look like me because this system was built by people that look like mefor people that look like me.
So they see everything that's going on.
And even if they have the wherewithal, the capacity to recognize uh the profundity of whatyou just said, they're okay with it because
(46:45):
This is their normal, right?
They like this.
They don't see any problem with this because it benefits them.
I'm convinced that that's one of the big reasons that Donald Trump has enjoyed what he hasenjoyed in this nation, because you have a whole swath of people who
(47:15):
from their perspective, uh quote unquote, had to endure eight years of a black president.
And it just made them mad.
It made them long for a romanticized time when they were the center of status and power.
(47:38):
you have all of these people, it's even coming from the administration.
The fact that they say that
Christians are being persecuted in America, or we're going to accept all of these whiteSouth Africans because they're being killed and persecuted by the black government.
(47:58):
Never mind what apartheid just ended in the early 90s and how long did that go on?
And never mind that there's not an ounce of evidence or credibility to anything that these
these South Africans, white South Africans are saying or what the president with hisgrandstanding did in the White House.
(48:21):
uh Evidence be damned.
It's just the accusation and right, the perception of white people that we're under thegun now, that we're the ones being persecuted as Christians, our freedoms, our liberties
are being taken away.
And that's something that, you know, has been cultivated my entire life growing up in theUnited States.
(48:42):
People would always warn, well, you know, they're coming for our liberties, they're comingfor our Christian values.
And so Donald Trump, he just saw this and he took opportunity of it and, you know, he tookadvantage of it and he continues to exploit that because it benefits him as the cult
leader and all of these people, especially white males, my age and especially now youngwhite males, they see in him uh
(49:11):
the champion, right?
That he's the one, he has everything they aspire to be, know, success and power and abeautiful wife and all of these women and everything.
And so they live vicariously through Trump.
And that, I think, is a large part of his success.
(49:34):
Because if you think about it rationally, it falls apart.
If anybody, if you give five minutes to thinking about this,
There's no substance to it.
I know they're taking all his speeches down now.
But you know, when you said like he came along and kind of took advantage of this,somebody actually one of my comments said this thing I think is so insightful.
(49:55):
So I've talked about how cults can be led by a person or an idea.
And a lot of times something starts out as a cult of personality, and then it kind of getstransferred over to a cult of idea, right?
Like Mormonism, right?
Joseph Smith started it as like his cult.
but ultimately it was like the idea that we are the one true church that gets passed down.
(50:16):
So somebody was like, I feel like there was already a cult led by an idea, which was likeracist conservatism.
And then Trump came along and made it a cult of personality.
And I'm like, that's what it is, right?
Like we've all been trying to kind of like talk about this thing that has been buildingsince the days of Reagan and.
(50:40):
Obviously it's been building for kind of like all of American history, but this, you know,this idea that like they're coming for us.
They're coming for us to take what we have.
Not, you know, not for nothing.
I think part of why we're so scared is because we know it's ill-begotten.
(51:01):
You know, like they're coming to take our stuff because we took it.
You know, our ancestors took it.
Yeah, man.
flee, the wicked flee when no one pursues because they know that they are wicked.
And so, you know, what all of these, these white folks, they get, they get up in arms andthey start wringing their hands and they're, they're very afraid of, of, of equality
(51:29):
because they perceive equality to be inequality because that's exactly what white folkshave done for all of our history.
We say, in a paternalistic way, well, we'll grant freedoms to these people.
Or even during the Civil War, for all of the good that Abraham Lincoln did, there was alot of problems even with his philosophy, right?
(51:54):
Because he saw his primary responsibility of keeping the union together and freeing theslaves was a secondary.
part of that and he only did that when he perceived as did the nation that the Union, thatthe North was losing the war.
(52:14):
So they had to do something, right?
And so, you know, there's no doubt that he was on a trajectory where he was seeing thesehuman rights and he was coming around to this, but it was very slow.
when he was alive and when he had power and when he was in office, he was operating underthe law and under
the assumption in the United States that black people were property.
(52:39):
And he used that law uh in uh several instances to an advantage, right?
Because if black people were property, as Dred Scott, the Supreme Court had ruled, thenproperty could be confiscated.
And so what they would do is that they would enslave black people.
(53:03):
would be oh confiscated by union forces and then set free.
So that was a long way from where we're at today.
And certainly no one to this point, at least in a government and large scale fashion, hasdealt with the intrinsic systemic nature of racism that's still embedded within our
(53:28):
institutions.
We can pass all of the laws that we want
But until we have a reckoning with the founding documents, the founding institution, thefounding philosophy of this nation, which built its wealth, which built its reputation,
which built its power on slave labor, then those problems are going to continue toperpetuate and they're not going to be resolved.
(53:57):
So I say all of that to say that language matters.
power matters and who uses power and how you use your own power and your own agency as aperson to speak up about what is happening in DC.
you know, all of it is self-serving.
All of it is about, you know, this misguided philosophy of returning America to a pastthat never existed in the first place because it benefits white men in particular, white
(54:30):
people in general.
Yeah, and you know, as you were talking about this, it just made me think of all thesecults that try to whitewash themselves, you know, and I'm just like, I never believe it,
right?
Like, I don't think the Mormons got any better after they gave up polygamy.
I know the children of God didn't get any better when they supposedly whitewashthemselves.
(54:52):
And it's because of that, right?
Like, it was bad when it started.
But then also,
as you were giving us the history, but then rewriting it and talking about the black manwho was significant in that movement, that's one way to address things, right?
(55:13):
And so I kind of, I almost kind of feel like it's good right now.
We're pulling everything out of the dark corners.
We're being forced to see kind of like all of these cracks and crazy things in Americathat
I mean, people of color have always known that this country isn't a great, wonderfulplace, but so many of us have had the comfort or the ability to just not have to look at
(55:41):
it.
I almost am like, this presidency, I hate to say it, but it's gonna give a lot of peoplethe crack in the brainwashing, I think, and actually.
we're either gonna tear these systems down or we're gonna go back and redefine them andmake them work for everybody, know, one way or the other, because we're at very
(56:08):
interesting boiling point in our country right now.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think oh everything that is happening is definitely unsustainable.
think that, I mean, we all feel it, right?
In the zeitgeist, in the environment, in the culture.
We feel, at least I do, feel simultaneously exhausted and at some points wanting to ignorewhat is happening.
(56:39):
But then also,
that frustration and that exhaustion and that momentary ambivalence that sometimes comesinto my soul or into my psyche because of everything that's happening is because I
expended so much energy or I felt like I did the first go around.
(56:59):
I felt like the first term I was posting every day, I felt like I was waving my arms andshouting to anyone that would listen like, no, no, no.
You know, it's weird here.
Here we go again.
And I feel like some people are just now seeing this.
I'm like, where were you in the first term?
Where were you in the lead up to this?
(57:21):
You know, I mean, it's it's been happening.
So and now, right, he's empowered.
He's empowered by the fact that he doesn't he doesn't have to stand for reelection.
And then I, you know, and so he's doing whatever the hell that he wants to.
It doesn't matter what anybody says.
It doesn't matter who criticize him.
or what happens, it doesn't matter what the courts say, it doesn't matter what Congresssays.
(57:43):
At this point, I don't even think he cares what his constituents say.
mean, is, you know, some of his number one supporters in my home state of Arkansas, uhknow, uh Huckabee Sanders asking for uh disaster relief and then being turned down and
denied.
You know, this is happening state after state after state.
uh And so these are his supporters.
(58:06):
And, you know, uh
not to mention everything that he's doing to those that he perceives to be his enemies.
And so I think it's bad now, but just wait until after the midterms, especially if thingsdo not go his way, then you're going to see all kinds of things happen.
(58:28):
But uh my hope is that ultimately this will come to an end and whatever it is on the otherside, we'll see it.
And you know, one of the things is we got the skills for right now, right?
Like I've been saying more and more, like everything we're doing in the deconstructionworld, like America's doing.
(58:48):
And now we're just all, like, I feel like we're just all teenagers in this cult that wecan't leave, right?
And we have to just like, hold on for four years and like see what dad's gonna do.
And then, you know, yeah, try to.
try to patch it up when it gets going.
(59:09):
Anyway, what an interesting conversation that we had today, Scott, and I learned a bunchof things from you that I did not know before.
Well, thank you.
And likewise, it's always an honor and a privilege to speak with you, Daniela, and Iappreciate the opportunity.
And I don't say it enough, but thank you for uh the opportunity to speak with you weekly,to share with your audience, those that are kind enough to uh give us a listen and to
(59:41):
support you and your work.
And how about that, Haley?
Haley is awesome.
She does.
a great job.
They do a great job for us and we're very appreciative of Haley and all of our listeners.
So thanks.
Thanks for being a part of this podcast.
oh
Thanks everybody.
(01:00:01):
We'll see you on the next episode of Cults and the Culting of Ameri-
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