I was a Teenage Fundamentalist. An Exvangelical podcast.

In this hiatus repeat episode, we revisit our 2021 Season 2 discussion on the prevalence of narcissists and psychopaths in Pentecostalism and our experiences with these kinds of people. We asked why the Church attracts these people and if Pentecostalism actually helps to create them.

Warning: This episode touches on issues concerning psychological abuse. If you are in A...

In this hiatus repeat episode, we revisit our 2021 Season 2 kick-off where we remembered some our favourite CCM artists, Brian's time as support crew for DC Talk's Australian tour, and a few songs that used to really move us. We think you'll enjoy this episode, even if you heard it the first time around.

Th...

In our final episode for 2023, we talk with Janice Selbie, a former fundamentalist Evangelical Christian of over 40 years and now a counsellor and specialist in the area of religious trauma. Janice shares her own story and the work she does with others in helping heal the pain caused by religious trauma. This is the first of a two-part episode we did with Janice. You can find part two on Janice's The Divorcing Religion Podcast.

In...

We talk with April Ajoy, a well-known viral TikToker, YouTuber and podcaster. She describes herself as a “recovering conservative, humorously detoxing religion.” Raised as a pastor's kid, April was deep in Evangelicalism to the point of working for The 700 Club and singing her original song, America Say Jesus on The Jim Bakker Show. While deconstructing from fundamentalism, she walked away from her Christian nationalist beliefs and...

Brian & Troy take a look at how divorce is presented in the New Testament and how the Church has handled it over the last 2000 years. Our hosts also reflect on their own experience and ask, do Jesus and the Bible really offer adequate guidance for the 21st century. Spoiler alert, no.

The resources suggested in this episode are:

• Christian views on divorce - Wikipedia
• A Theology of Divorce – Religion Online
• Ep #69 - Troy Stor...

Dan Barker served as an evangelical Christian preacher and composer for 19 years before leaving Christianity in 1984. He and his wife Annie Laurie Gaylor are the current co-presidents of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, and he is co-founder of The Clergy Project. In this fascinating chat, he shares his journey out of faith and why he identifies as an Atheist today. 

You can connect with Dan and his work at:

• Freethought Rad...

Catherine Quiring describes herself as a reformed people-pleaser, Exvangelical and an aspiring advocate for anti-oppressive spirituality. She is a licensed Mental Health Counsellor, and Self-Trust Coach. Catherine tells Brian and Troy why she believes the Evangelical god is a narcissist and that the symptoms experienced by those who have experienced covert narcissistic abuse are extremely similar to those experienced in high-contro...

Picking up where he left off in Episode 79 - Troy Deals With His Religious Trauma in Korea, Troy journeys to Singapore in search of his next adventure. In this episode, he continues to unsuccessfully park his religious trauma and finds himself in a very glamourous scene in Singapore. He falls hard for a Chinese woman and they return to Australia to start a new life, but Troy is soon confronted by his religious baggage.

---

Transcri...

After Troy and Brian appeared on Stephen's podcast, Cult Hackers back in 2021, Stephen now brings his expertise to talk about cults from an organisational psychology perspective. He shares how organisational models help us understand cult leadership, coercive control dynamics and why people join and stay.

You can find Stephen's podcast here: Cult Hackers and his website here: culthackers.com 

---

Transcript of the episode is here.

...

Krispin and D.L. Mayfield are a husband-and-wife team and hosts of the Prophetic Imagination Station. Both were missionaries and published Christian writers who have recently been very public about their deconversion from Christianity. Brian and Troy talk with them about their deconversion journey and its impact on their careers and marriage.

---

Transcript of the episode is here.

Podcast links: https://linktr.ee/iwatf 

Doubting yo...

Marc Fennell is an award-winning Australian journalist and documentary maker who was once a teenage fundamentalist...but he claims he was not a very good one. He has just released a documentary about Australian Pentecostalism called The Kingdom where he confronts his own past spent in church. Brian & Troy talk with Marc about why he left and why he’s remained largely silent about his religious past until now.

You can learn all abou...

Picking up where he left off in Episode 64 - Troy Story II, Troy left the Church & his Christian marriage and headed off to live & work in South Korea. In this episode, he recounts his largely unsuccessful attempts to deal with his religious trauma by parking his religious issues and indulging in the maladaptive coping strategies of casual sex and alcohol abuse.

---

Transcript of the episode is here.

Podcast links: https://linktr.e...

Ross Blocher and Carrie Poppy have a hugely popular podcast where they join religions, undergo alternative medical treatments, and hunt for ghost, goblins, demons, and deities...so you don't have to! If it has an extraordinary claim attached to it, they'll check it out and report on it. In this episode, Brian and Troy talk with them about their teenage fundamentalism and what they have discovered about some of the wild claims of Ch...

Clare Heath-McIvor is an exvangelical blogger and podcaster who has been operating under the pseudonym 'Kit Kennedy' since a dramatic and shunning-esque exit from her pastor father's church in 2016. In 2022, she and her ex-husband (a gay conversion therapy survivor) became whistleblowers for a 60 Minutes Australia political and religious expose on her father's City Builders Church and its tactics in Australian conservative politics...

Following on from Episode 072 Was Keith Green a Cult Leader?, we interview Sharon Madere. She was 'led to the Lord' by Keith and experienced the 'baptism in the Holy Spirit' experience with Keith in the 1970s. She lived at the Last Days Ministries commune in California and later in Texas in the 1980s. In this episode, Sharon tells her stories and claims Keith Green arranged her teenage marriage to Martin Bennett, one of the three e...

Following on from Episode 53 - The Cairns Christ, Brian recounts the breakdown of his marriage and the end of his faith in Jesus. Ladies and gentlemen, Brian has left the building. 

---

Transcript of the episode is here.

Podcast links: https://linktr.ee/iwatf 

Doubting your beliefs? Have questions about changing or leaving your faith? You are not alone and Recovering from Religion is here to help. Please visit: https://www.recoveri...

No one had as profound an impact on Troy's deconstruction as Dr Bart D. Ehrman, the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. An expert on the New Testament and the history of Early Christianity, he has written or edited thirty books, numerous scholarly articles, and dozens of book reviews. Six of his books have been on the New York Times Bestseller list. Brian and Troy talk to Bart a...

Shane Clifton taught Theology and Ethics at one of Australia's leading Pentecostal Bible Colleges from 1999 to 2018. During this time Shane had an accident that left him with a C5 spinal cord injury (quadriplegia) which radically altered his life and his faith. After a lengthy and traumatic fight over academic freedom and his support for LGBTQI+ inclusion in the church, he left the college and his Pentecostal denomination. Shane is...