Gods of the Smoke Machine (with Scott Latta)

Author Scott Latta's new book examines and exposes the dark side(s) of the American megachurch.

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Episode Transcript

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Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
There is video of this conversation which was recorded in
my home just a few weeks ago. If you want
to watch the YouTube version, that link is in the
description box. Talking here with author Scott Latam. He has
a new book out called Gods of the Smoke Machine, Power, Pain,

(01:19):
and the Rise of Christian Nationalism in the Megachurch. Scott's
been kind enough to stop by. Heybro Hey, I was
in the neighborhood, thanks v So. I used to be
a video producer for a company that served churches, and
we did a lot of fundraising and promotional videos, and
sometimes those were megachurches, like we went to Fellowship Church

(01:41):
in Dallas pastor Red Young Junior.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
Like twenty thousand people, you know, a weekend, massive pac
huge stage, lights.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
Fog and I remember I was there with a fellow
Christian and they said to me, wow, you know after
the service, they said, enjoyed the show? Right, Yeah, was
that your experience when you walked away, did you think, oh, yeah,
enjoyed the show.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
Yeah, that was actually our exact experience, my wife and I.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
Is that sort of the vibe of the modern megachurch?
I'm with fireworks?

Speaker 3 (02:14):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 (02:15):
I mean I think that's kind of what distinguishes the
megachurch actually, and what I actually think makes megachurch is
kind of contradictory as even an idea, which is that
they exist to look completely like the.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
World around you.

Speaker 4 (02:27):
Right, the brand, the fonts, the music, the clothes that
the pastors wear. It looks just like the modern world.
But the problem is, and where people get hurt is
you get in there and you discover what one woman
told me in the book, which is a fundamentalist core
of steel at the heart of it, which is that
you get in and they tell you, well, you can't
look like the world around you. You have to follow

(02:48):
these fundamentalists, these legalist strictures, and I think that's where a.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
Lot of people get hurt.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
So it's Batan's well, it's not. I don't know. It's
like Scientology is the extreme example, but starts with just
this really happy, clappy, benign, non dogmatic you can be
successful in your life, and you deserve happiness and common
we will life coach you. And then people join Scientology

(03:14):
and then once they get deeper into the system, that's
when the hard dogmas and the high control stuff comes out.
That's what you're talking about.

Speaker 3 (03:21):
Yes, So megachurches they open the doors.

Speaker 4 (03:23):
Why, they want as many people as they can bring
your friends, and they really prioritize getting as many people
in the doors as they can.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
And then when you get in the doors, they really.

Speaker 4 (03:31):
Start pushing small groups a lot, because that's really the
only way to form a community in a church that large,
especially if we're talking about the ultra megachurches where there's
ten even forty thousand people, the only way to form
community is with a small group of people.

Speaker 3 (03:45):
So they start pushing small groups.

Speaker 4 (03:46):
But the more you get pulled into that funnel, that's
where you start to hit issues where people get hurt. Legalism, fundamentalism,
and so you might come in thinking one thing and
then discover quite quickly that it still is a fundamentalist
angelical church at the core.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
I mentioned at Young Junior's church at twenty thousand. I
know Lakewood down in Houston with ostein. I don't know
how many they run, Like, is there a there's a
forty thousand member church in this country.

Speaker 4 (04:13):
Yes, So actually the largest church in the country is
not far from US Life Church, which is based.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
Out of Oklahoma.

Speaker 4 (04:20):
And then I think the second largest church in the country,
Church of the Highlands, has they claimed sixty thousand people.
The third largest church, CCV christ Church of the Valley
and Phoenix claims fifty four thousand people. But what's really
interesting about megachurches is the model for a megachurch is
really completely flipped in the last really specifically in the
last twenty years. So the large church that I grew
up in and maybe the ones that you grew up

(04:41):
or worked in, was the big building, the big auditorium,
kind of the righteous Gymstones church, right, But that has
really flipped. So the most common if you want to
be a mega church now that prioritizes growth, you're going
to start franchises in a city. And so Church the
Highlands in Alabama and the second largest church in America.
They have twenty six locations across the state of Alabama.

(05:02):
Or CCV in Phoenix has eighteen locations across Phoenix, and
so that's franchises.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
Really, it's not a huge auditorium. It's a small building.

Speaker 4 (05:10):
And when I was reporting the book, I went to
CCV in Phoenix and they had bought the building of
a church that didn't make it, and so we were
sitting on pews, there was stained glass around us.

Speaker 3 (05:21):
The band would come on stage and.

Speaker 4 (05:22):
Perform megachurchy sort of music, and then they would step
aside and the pastor would appear on a screen. He
was miles away, and there were probably one hundred and
fifty two hundred.

Speaker 3 (05:31):
People in the building with me.

Speaker 4 (05:33):
And if I hadn't known any better, I wouldn't have
any idea that there were fifty four thousand people at
that church. So it just looks and fields very different,
which I think says a lot about what we look
for in community right now and why megachurches actually are
thriving in a lot.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
Of ways, like the blockbuster video of churches just the
same thing every well. Well, I used to be a
video producer for churches and that model was starting to
take off. And the rationale or the reasoning that the
pastors and the church staffs were using was well, even
if the pastor was live on stage at a big
enough church where you had a screen, people are looking

(06:06):
at the screen anyway. So if you go to a
satellite church, you're looking at the screen. It's really nothing different.
You still got the live music, you still probably have
the associate pastors.

Speaker 3 (06:17):
Did they have those not a campus pastor?

Speaker 4 (06:19):
Yeah, and they'll always come up and welcome people and
then they would step side.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
So there are some people, though I'm sure, who are
attracted to the megachurch because of the anonymity. Yeah, you
walk in and there's seven thousand people at the nine
am service. You can go, you can sing, you can
feel good, hear a few words, high five, and you're gone,

(06:44):
and that's it, like you punch the time clock anonymously.
That's got to be part of the attraction for some.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
I think that's a huge part of it.

Speaker 4 (06:52):
And I could say even my personal experience just reporting
the book and going to megachurches for a year and
a half was I never shook anyone's hand, no one
asked me my name.

Speaker 3 (07:01):
I didn't have to personally interact.

Speaker 4 (07:03):
With anyone, which was someone for someone who's kind of
introverted and like with social anxiety, is kind of the
dream reporting gig because you could just float in, you
could sit there, you can flow back out, and you
don't have to speak to another soul. But it is
I mean, there are a lot of reasons people are
drawn to these churches, and you know, the anonymity, the
ease with which you can just go to this church

(07:23):
and then flow back out is a huge part of that.
Because I also went to some really small churches when
I was reporting the book, and I had forgotten it
could be really difficult to go to a small church
where you feel very seen. So it's easy, I think,
to go to a megachurch and just do your thing
and then just float back out.

Speaker 3 (07:38):
And that's that's certainly a big part of it.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
I used to go to a small church and we
would visit other churches, like we're seeking our home, our
church home, so you go visit and I remember One
of the most terrifying parts of that would be when
you were visiting and the pastor at a small church
would be like, is there anyone here who's visiting with us?
Please stand up so that we can welcome you.

Speaker 3 (07:59):
And that's the last thing I wanted to do.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
Man, you know, I just want to sit here, quietly,
unseen and check it out. That was kind of my thing.

Speaker 4 (08:08):
I know, right, how many times have you heard turn
to the person you're right and the person your left,
shake their hand and welcome them to church this morning.
I mean, it was a nightmare for me growing up.
So I mean I think that's why the last churches
my wife and I were going to before we walked
away were megachurches, because you know, it's just easier to go.
And I will say, like, it is a viable community,
it's a viable faith experience for a lot of people.
And so there's a large church in Alabama, so Churchill

(08:31):
Highlands in Alabama. They have a ministry specifically for kids
with serious special needs. And so if you're a parent
of a child with serious special needs, it just makes sense.
I mean, what a gift for you to be able
to go to church to drop your child there in
a trusted environment that you feel is safe. It's just
easier to do that than to go to First Baptist,
which has you know, seventy five people, and they're not

(08:52):
equipped to provide those level of resources. But I just
as a writer, I was drawn to I think that's interesting.
I think there's something curious about it because I think
the numbers we've seen about evangelicalism is so evangelicalism is
flattening out or dropping in the US. Fewer people are
going to church now than ever, but megachurches are actually growing,
They're thriving. So from twenty fifteen to twenty twenty, the

(09:15):
median megachurch grew ten percent. So while evangelicalism is going down,
megachurches are going up. And so I was drawn to
just why. The question is why, what is it about
these churches? The pie is getting smaller, but they're cutting
themselves a larger piece in some ways.

Speaker 3 (09:30):
And I think there's a lot of reasons for that.

Speaker 4 (09:32):
I think the pandemic had a lot to do with that,
But I just think it's a curious kind of sociological trend.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
I think too, a lot of the bigger churches are
not selling the hard theology. I mean the old school
guys like John hay Gee, etc. You know, they're pretty
hard line. But Joe Loustein was asked once about homosexuals
and where a lot of pastors who are fundamentalists with
draw from the Old and New Testament and say this.

Speaker 3 (09:58):
Is an abomination or at the very least it's a sin.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
Ostein responded, it's not God's best And I wonder if
the empty calorie version of it. You know, these guys
largely unless you've seen something I haven't in the big
mega environments, they're not going hard at people going to hell,
and they're not going hard at gay people, and they're
not going hard at you know, all the people that

(10:27):
most of the fundy church used to target. Was that
your experience or I know, mind's a narrow view. What
do you think?

Speaker 3 (10:33):
No, one hundred percent.

Speaker 4 (10:34):
And megachurch pastors will actually say that they're on records
saying that Sunday mornings are not for hard theology.

Speaker 3 (10:41):
So you don't want to turn people off. You want
people to feel welcome.

Speaker 4 (10:44):
You're not going to get into really obscure books of
the Bible and hard fundy theology and things.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
Like that, now do they get there? What once you're
deeper into the well.

Speaker 4 (10:52):
That's I think one of the reasons they push small
groups so much is because small groups are really the
context where people go deeper. And so that's a group
of ten to twelve people in your stage of life.
You go to their house on a Thursday night, and
that's where you go deeper into the scripture and things
like that. But on a Sunday morning, I mean, there's exceptions,
it's certainly not a rule, but on Sunday morning, the
message is going to be a lot lighter. And I
think this is where you see a lot of people

(11:14):
get hurt in megachurches, because I spoke to a therapist
in the book who works with people who have experienced
serious spiritual abuse who came out of megachurches, and she said,
what her clients tell her is that you go to
these churches and you get to feel like all these
people are cool, especially if you're in the city. You're like, oh,
they're kind of down, like we could go get a drink,
or maybe they don't, you know, they're more progressive to

(11:36):
her gay people. But then you get in and you
start to unpack the theology, and there's this fundamentalism at
the core of it because there's still, you know, evangelical churches,
there's still fundamentalist churches, and they have fundamentalist beliefs, and
so it really becomes a very different environment the deeper
you get into it.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
Are you religious?

Speaker 3 (11:54):
No, So, I grew up in a large Southern Baptist church.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
You know what I want? Who I asked, don't you are?
Are you an atheist? Dunt, dun, duh. I'm not going
to ask you to paint yourself into the corner. I'm
asking the question many of my viewers and listeners of
wanting to ask.

Speaker 3 (12:08):
I mean, it depends on the hour. I think.

Speaker 4 (12:10):
I think so I live in Portland, and so I
think it's it's more of a spirituality where like anything's possible,
like what do we know?

Speaker 3 (12:19):
Like what do I know?

Speaker 4 (12:20):
Certainly me personally, like there's nothing, there's no I don't
know enough to be confident that I know what the
meaning of life is or anything. So I'm open to everything.
I mean, the truth is some of my this may
be very difficult, but some of my most pleasant conversations
in reporting the book were with pastors, which really surprised me.
I would get off the phone with the pastor and
I would feel good about the way our conversation went,

(12:42):
which may have just been kind of taking me back
to my upbringing in church. But I'm on most days,
you know, I have. I'm in a place now where
I've found peace with you know, what I believe in
and the way my family and I live our lives.
But it took a while, and it can be a
real grieving process when you leave church.

Speaker 3 (12:57):
I think that is is underreported. I don't know what
you felt. Sethan, with your background, we talk a lot about.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
You know, it's easy for people who are non believers
to look at religious people and be condescending and say, oh,
suck it up. It's Santa Claus for adults, you know,
join the rest of us here in the hotel reality.
And many people don't realize what they're asking believers to
sacrifice because and you'd mentioned the ministries that the church has.

(13:27):
The church really has provided childcare. It's the place where
you make often lifelong friends. It's divorce recovery, it's addiction recovery.
It's a sense of belonging. It's a chance to have
an identity that gives you really good feelings. It alleviates
the fear of death for many people. And so when

(13:48):
you say, well, the Bible falls apart upon even the
most cursory scrutiny, That's not why I really think most
people attend church, not for reasons of theology. I think
they go for identity and community. Am I wrong?

Speaker 3 (14:04):
No, especially in very large churches.

Speaker 4 (14:06):
I mean, there is a feeling when you get in
that really the doors closed behind you, and the people
who are there become your whole community. It's not just
your church on Sunday. It's your friend group. It's your
kid's friend group. It might be where they go to school,
it might be where you work. It's the podcast you
listen to, the coffee mug you drink out of, the
beanie on your head, the hoodie that you wear it.
Megachurches reach into all these different parts of your life.

(14:28):
And so if something painful happens, if you experience harm
or abuse, or if you just end up walking away,
you don't just lose your church.

Speaker 3 (14:35):
You lose all of that stuff. You lose your whole life.

Speaker 4 (14:38):
And I spoke with people in the book who experienced
really profound pain in large churches, and that was compounded
so much more by the fact that they lost everything.
They were shunned, the doors closed behind them, and they
lost all of their friends, They lost all of their
kids' friends, and they might have gone to their church
for twenty years and it was the only friends their
kids have. And so it is easy to say, oh,

(14:59):
just walk away, like this isn't your boss, this isn't
the law, you don't owe them anything, just walk away.

Speaker 3 (15:05):
It's hard to walk away.

Speaker 2 (15:07):
Really hard. I was working for an employer, making a
good living, and I was exiting the faith, and I
thought he was hardcore religious. Most of our clients were churches,
and I thought, he's going to find a reason to
fire me. And if he does, how in the world,

(15:28):
how will I pay my mortgage? How will I pay
the bills? How will I support my family? What's my
future look like? And that's a reality for a great
many people.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
Yeah, totally.

Speaker 4 (15:37):
And I think that's what makes a megachurch distinct is
that they have the resources to really reach into all
the different parts of your life. And also I think
it's harder to do that the older that you get, too.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
So I walked away.

Speaker 4 (15:48):
When I was younger when I was in my twenties,
and that was really difficult. But if you're in your
fifties or sixties or older and you're starting to question
and maybe leave a more fundamentalist church, that can be
really difficult if it's all you've known for DEAs and
it also leaves you spinning, like where do I belong now?
Like this has been my whole community, my whole life,
and now you have to replace your belief system the
way you feel about the universe.

Speaker 3 (16:09):
And life and death.

Speaker 4 (16:10):
But you also have to just fundamentally replace the people
you got to eat with and that your kids hang
out with.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
We struggle with that in the secular community. We're playing
catch up the churches at thousands of years to figure
out the model for community, and we're hurting cat. We've
got a few models Oasis, you know, Sunday Oasis, Sunday Assembly,
and some other ones that are doing some great work
out there, But you know it, a lot of the
secular groups are copying the agendas, the formats the churches

(16:39):
are using, because the formats actually are pretty effective. Right,
Why create mediocrity when you can copy genius? I guess
I don't.

Speaker 3 (16:47):
Know that's interesting still to come.

Speaker 2 (16:49):
I want to get into some of the darker shades
of the megachurch. And yes, we're talking about abuse in
many of the worst forms. What's going on and how
have many churches attempted to sweep abuse under the rug.
We're going to talk more next. My guest for the

(17:12):
broadcast this week is Scott Lata, is author of the
new book Gods of This Smoke, Machine, Power, Pain, and
the Rise of Christian Nationalism in the Megachurch. So why
are you doing this? I guess the question that might

(17:32):
be asked by someone who attends a megachurch and loves
it is why do you hate God? Scott Lata? Why
would you publish this affront to the faith? What motivates you? Brother?

Speaker 4 (17:44):
I would say, it's not about hating God. It's about
probing it a system that has coalesced power and influence
outside structures of accountability. So megachurches have very little to
know external accountability.

Speaker 3 (18:00):
Much of religion.

Speaker 4 (18:01):
It's all internal, which is not real accountability. And so
these are systems and so it's the same. I think
it's the same reason you would say, well, why would
you write a book about the military, or why would
you write a book about.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
Abuse in universities.

Speaker 4 (18:13):
These are large systems where people have experienced pain, and
with megachurches in particular, it's about spiritual influence in a
person's life, which is really powerful. I think that's one
of the most profound kinds of power you can have
over a person's life, is spiritual authority.

Speaker 3 (18:28):
It's hard to question.

Speaker 4 (18:29):
That, and especially if it's led by one man at
the head of a system, and it's always a man,
almost always a man. It's impossible to feel like you
have a voice in that system. You have to leave
it to have a voice. And so what I wanted
to do in the book was to flip the table
on that and to give people a voice, to give
them a platform, because you have no power in a
large church, you have no voice. Your pastor doesn't know

(18:51):
you exist. The truth is you could drop dead and
your pastor wouldn't know at a large church. And so
if you experience pain or harm, where can you go?
I mean, there are people in the book who experience
abuse in a large church and the pastor's relative was
the director of HR or you know, one pastor's mom
was the director of HR and his dad was the
associate pastor, and so she literally said, who can I

(19:14):
go to with this? You know, you were trapped by
so many layers of protection for these men in power,
and I think it was just important to kind of
unpack what that looks like and how it hurts people.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
I'm stair stepping us further into the abuse questions because
I have a lot of them. I went back to
I got to bring up Fellowship Church. It's just where
I go. It's a great example Dallas, Texas. They have
a place where people can apply for membership, and I
made some notes. There was a form and it asked
a lot of questions that I mean, the church is
giving itself permission to really get into our personal lives.

(19:47):
Are you single? Are you married, divorce, widowed, remarried? How
many kids do you have? What is your salvation scripture?
The date of your baptism? Will you promise to serve
our church? Do you to live daily to please the
Lord Jesus Christ and allow him to control your life? Now,

(20:07):
control your life doesn't really sound like freedom through faith
to me?

Speaker 4 (20:13):
Well, and who actually are you giving control to when
you answer that question? Because I think very practically you're
giving the church control. You're giving the pastor control when
you say yes to that, because the pastor you are
told as God's representative on earth. The church is God's
representative on earth. I think we've probably heard that our
whole lives, and so to relinquish control to God very
practically means to give the church control over your life,

(20:36):
which gets into really hairy issues of legalism and fundamentalism
and morality.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
At the end of the offering plate at a church
that has ten twenty thousand people, come on this big business, right.

Speaker 3 (20:49):
Huge business. I mean.

Speaker 4 (20:50):
I tried to not be cynical in my reporting of
this book, but it was hard not to feel like
a lot of these really big churches in some ways
are just kind of tax free, realistic companies. And I
think here it's important to distinguish what we mean by
a megachurch. So kind of the statistical definition of a
megachurch is any church that has at least two thousand people,
but it's kind of an arbitrary number. A church with

(21:11):
nineteen hundred people is not that different from a church
of twenty five hundred, and a church with fifty thousand
is a completely different animal. So I tend to take
a more I think sociological view of a megachurch, where
it's this kind of church that can have so much
influence in your life. But if we're talking about the
ultra megachurches, maybe ten twenty thousand people and up, yes,
very large, very large revenues and assets that they hold,

(21:33):
and no transparency. They're not required to report anything to
the IRS. They're not required to file a Form nine
ninety or anything like that. And so an any church
that does report that stuff is doing it of their
own volition, and there's not many that do it. And
so when you do start to see the numbers, I
mean Life Church, which is the largest church in the US.
They in twenty twenty three they reported they had over

(21:54):
five hundred million dollars in total assets, over two hundred
million dollars in revenue, and that's bigger than the GDPs
of some countries. And so yeah, I think that is
I think that's fair.

Speaker 3 (22:05):
Different.

Speaker 2 (22:06):
If the Lord prospers those who donate unto him, Cast
your bread upon the water, I mean, how much of
this is the prosperity gospel. Give until it hurts, and
it will be given to you. It may not happen
until you're dead when you're in heaven and you get
the jewels in your crown, but a blessing is coming
just sacrifice? Now, Is that how they're making their money?

Speaker 3 (22:26):
You literally hear that.

Speaker 4 (22:27):
So I went to Dream City Church in Phoenix, which
is a very outspoken political church.

Speaker 3 (22:31):
It was Charlie Kirk's.

Speaker 4 (22:33):
Church in Phoenix, and it was at the beginning of
the service, which I clocked that because I thought that
was interesting because growing up in the church, the offering
came at the end in so many churches.

Speaker 3 (22:42):
It's now at the beginning, which is interesting.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
Well, normally they you know, they soften you up. You
get worship music and everybody's high fiving and your hug
and all that stuff, and then they prime that pump.

Speaker 3 (22:51):
You know.

Speaker 2 (22:51):
No, they might at the start.

Speaker 4 (22:53):
Right at the start, and you can give through QR codes.
You could text dollars signed to a five digit number.
They're also passing big bucket. There's any number of ways
to give, I assure you, But that was exactly the
way they framed it was. Even though it might hurt
a little, God will bless you. And so they asked
people around the building to hold their cash up to
the sky, and so the gentleman in front of me

(23:13):
was holding a folded twenty dollars bill to the sky,
and it was framed as, you know, an investment in
a future blessing from God.

Speaker 3 (23:21):
Hunterson.

Speaker 2 (23:22):
I remember when TBN was a big deal. This was
eighties and nineties. Mostly it was Paul and Jan Crouch,
you know, those flamboyant televangelists that were just caricatures, but
they had a following and they got freaking rich. And
I remember Jan Crouch was in the news because she
bought one hundred thousand dollars luxury RV for her dogs.

(23:44):
You know, So we do see excess and other five
oh one c threes have to follow all of these rules,
and churches are not total double standard. The parsonage exemptions
alone just seemed like a way to shield red. How
much of this is in your opinion subjectively, how much

(24:04):
is kind of shady?

Speaker 3 (24:06):
Well, it's hard to know.

Speaker 4 (24:08):
So I spoke with a tax expert in the book
who said that, you know, if you wanted to hide something,
this is kind of the system you would set up.
And you do see, I mean the really predatory televangelists
that have been widely reported on. I mean, that's kind
of really the worst of the worst. But I think
there's a more kind of subversive form of predation happening,

(24:28):
which is the more prosperity gospel, where you feel emotionally
manipulated to give, which I think is the wrong spirit
to kind of put people in if they're going to
give money to a church body. But yeah, I mean
the seven million dollar personage, the million dollar parsonage on
the lake, the three private jets that you see among
the really predatory guys. I mean, that's really it's it's

(24:49):
shameful obviously. Now.

Speaker 2 (24:51):
I I know the kraflow dollars are very extreme into
the scale. I mean, I get that. But you know,
you and I could start a religion. You know, we
could call it the Church of the Wholesome Brothers, and
we could go out and you know, declare, and then
we could pass the play. You and I could clean up. Man.

Speaker 3 (25:07):
We should do it. Buy a bus or a van,
tour the country.

Speaker 4 (25:10):
We could do it today. We would not have to
tell the irs we existed. If we folded, we wouldn't
have to tell them either. Also, we could design our
own form of accountability, and if we didn't like it.
We could just quit and start a new church. I mean,
that's you know, really just.

Speaker 2 (25:24):
We kind of both look a little churchy and we
could pull that off. I don't know, I'll have my
people call your people. A running threat in your book
relates to a term that we hear but often don't
fully understand. Power dynamic a person of influence who uses
their clout, celebrity, authority, et cetera to exploit people. We

(25:49):
had a local church here and there was a children's minister,
and it was brought to the pastor's attention or the
church leadership's attention, that he was being and appropriate. He
was touching, molesting children. The church decided, this is a
spiritual issue, so we're going to handle it internally. We're

(26:09):
going to pray for him, and we're going to counsel him.
We're not really going to tell anybody. But they allowed
him to keep his position, and for a further several
years he continued to use his power and position to
exploit and abuse vulnerable children. When I say handle it internally,

(26:31):
you and I both hear cover up right.

Speaker 3 (26:35):
I hear.

Speaker 4 (26:37):
An obvious lack of interest in external accountability, which is
probably a little wordy.

Speaker 3 (26:42):
We of say yes because.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
Well, I mean, I guess there are some people who
I'm not trying to give cover to the freaking abusers
or the abuse apologists, but there may be some people
so brainwashed that they're like, they really do believe.

Speaker 3 (26:57):
God can fix it. That's not an excuse. Well, I mean,
here's the truth.

Speaker 4 (27:01):
If you want to be a pastor, you don't have
to be licensed, you don't have to appear before any
sort of legal board or accountability board. In many states,
pastoral abuse is not a crime. And so the practice
that I unpacked a little bit in the book is
a process called pastoral restoration, which is where essentially a
pastor at one church can commit some kind of quote
moral failure, which is often an extra burrital affair, but

(27:23):
many times it's much worse. They will step away from
that church. They'll go to another church. They're kind of
laundered through that church for a couple of years. They're
often brought on staff in a paid position for a
year or two, and then they'll put back in the
pulpit and they'reither sent back to where they came from,
or they stay on staff where they go to another
church and there's no set standard for what that practice

(27:44):
looks like. And the big problem with it is that
pastoral accountability is completely internal and opaque, and the pastor
choose their own accountability. So a mega church is overseers,
which is a group of men, usually five to seven men,
who will be called in in a moment of crisis.
They handpick their own overseers. It's their friends in many cases.
And there's a pastor, a megature's pastor in the book,

(28:06):
who gave an interview with local news in Florida about
this issue, and he said, I have two forms of accountability.
I have my trustees and I have my overseers. They're
chosen by me. He saw that as real accountability because
he said, they're my friends, they can be honest with me.
A lot of people would look at that situation and say,
is that accountability. If it's your friends and you do

(28:26):
something abhorrent and you hurt someone, can they be trusted
to hold you accountable.

Speaker 3 (28:31):
I think that's the big question in the book.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
I find when someone's preaching hard about a specific sin.
I watched those people very closely, because it doesn't take
long in many cases before it's that particular sin. It's
like Colorado's Ted Haggard, right, another big pastor, and he's
like homosexuality is an abomination that he's going hard at
the I mean it turned out literally apparently at gay people.

(28:56):
And then all of a sudden it blows up that hey,
look what he's been doing. He's been having an affair
with a guy, and he leaves in disgrace. But the
model is, you know, whether it's Jimmy Swaggered in the
eighties or whether it's the Hillsong past or whatever it
seems to be, maya culpa, I've sinned against the tears

(29:18):
performative apologies disappear for a few months, and then they
come back waving and smiling, and hey, the slate is clean,
thank you Jesus.

Speaker 4 (29:27):
Right yeah, Ted Haggard, who by the way, is now
back and started his own church in Colorado.

Speaker 3 (29:32):
He restored himself. So yes.

Speaker 4 (29:35):
I mean, the truth is, any pastor who goes through
this process gets kind of their own bestoke restoration process.
There is no rhyme or reason for it. And if
you ask pastors and religious research organizations have done this.
If you ask them, how long should a pastors step
away from the pulpit if they commit an offense like this,
there's no consistent answer. Some say a year, some say

(29:55):
ten years, some say for life. And so if you
have your own hand chosen group guys who are going
to restore you, there's no example in the Bible of
this happening. So there's no standard for them to even
look to. It's completely case by case. It's completely different,
and it leads to I think men with predatory histories
being put back into the pulpit.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
You think it attracts predators. Let me stop here because
I have to put an asterisk even more than an asterisk,
and I know a lot of people hate it when
I say this. A ton of Christian and other pastors
are wonderful people who are respectful and responsible, and they

(30:35):
are true believers. They aren't getting rich, they're making very
low wages. They're on call twenty four to seven. You know,
they're at hospital bedsides, and they're you know, they're doing
charity work in their communities, and they're serving literally in
productive ways the members of the church, and they love people.
I mean you, and I have to admit a lot

(30:59):
of the more powerful pastors are not necessarily the norm
and this whole idea that all pastors just want to
lie at the end of an offering plate, and it's
totally reductive and wrongheaded. Right.

Speaker 4 (31:08):
Yes, So fewer than one percent of the churches in
America or megachurches. The average church in the US has
less than sixty people in it, So I think it's
a third of pastors now are bivocational. So the average
church in the US is very small, and the pastor
may be working a second job. You're exactly right. These guys, statistically,
they are the exception. I think what makes them worth

(31:30):
questioning is the fact that their influence is so disproportionate
to that minority. So the rock stars exactly so. And
it's not just the people who come to church on Sunday.
So I think Mark Driscoll, pastor Martors School, who is
at mars Hill Church in Seattle. He's not at Trinity
Church in Scottsdeal. He's a great example of this because
on a Sunday morning he'll have between four to six thousand.

Speaker 3 (31:49):
People come through his church.

Speaker 4 (31:51):
But if he puts a video to YouTube, he gets
over one hundred and fifty thousand views, and so the
influence extends well beyond the pulpit, which I think is
unique these kinds of personalities. So back to your question
of who does that attract, I think it attracts narcissistic personalities.

Speaker 3 (32:06):
And that's not me.

Speaker 4 (32:07):
I mean that's experts in the book saying that as well.
Because you have to believe that God called you to
stand in a spotlight in front of sixty thousand people.
You have to believe that's your purpose in the universe,
is to be seen, to be on camera and to
guide people spiritually. And I think that's an interesting and
it's kind of a weird belief to have in a person,
to feel that the creator of the universe specifically called

(32:28):
you to that. But I think that that's where you
would start to understand. The kind of personality that gets
called into the ultra megachurch setting is someone who has
to has to believe that they are set apart, that
God set them apart, to lead that many people.

Speaker 2 (32:42):
Well, let me jump down to this question. This note
I made about Mark Driscoll. Salon did a profile of
him eleven years ago and that called his culture a
cult of personality. It was suspected that he wanted controversy
to be seen and heard to boost his brain, and
he would sometimes speak an uncomfortable and even sexual terms

(33:04):
from the stage. Why did he step down from mars Hill?

Speaker 4 (33:08):
So Margriskill was the lead passor of mars Hill Church
in Seattle, which had I think fifteen campuses at its
peak across five states. And so there's a podcast called
The Rise and Fall of mars Hill that unpacks this
and they did a great job.

Speaker 2 (33:22):
Wait, there's a whole podcast about the scandals in one church.

Speaker 3 (33:27):
From Christianity Today. Yes, there is, and it's quite good.

Speaker 4 (33:30):
It was very thoroughly reported and it really unpacks the
culture of abuse that he fostered there. And it wasn't
like sexual abuse or aything like that. It was spiritual authority.
It was the things that he did behind closed doors
to make people feel submissive to him.

Speaker 3 (33:44):
He was a bully in a lot of ways.

Speaker 4 (33:46):
Higgs had a lot of power over his subordinates, and
the church really worked hard to try.

Speaker 3 (33:51):
To hold him accountable.

Speaker 4 (33:52):
There was a lot of evidence they were going to
put him through a restoration process where he stepped aside
for a number of months and would go throughnseling and
then come back, and he refused it. He just said no,
and he resigned and the church dissolved instantly. Instantly, Mars Hill,
one of the biggest, most influential churches in the US, dissolved,
and driscoll moved to Arizona and started a Trinity Church
where he is now and which I think I would

(34:15):
not be surprised if that ended up being as large
as Mars Hill five years from now, because he's very
good at what he does and he has something that
people are daunting.

Speaker 2 (34:22):
One guy leaves Mars Hill, the entire freaking thing dissolves.

Speaker 3 (34:26):
Yeah, one hundred percent.

Speaker 4 (34:27):
I mean, so much of the identity of the church
gets caught up in the identity of the pastor. When
you're at this level, these pastors are the churches, Like
what would Lake would Church be.

Speaker 3 (34:35):
Without Joel Lostein.

Speaker 4 (34:36):
I mean, we may find out one day, but they
become synonymous with the church brand. And that was one
hundred percent in the case in Mars Hill. So you
talk about a cult of personality, and I was really
interested in Driscolle, and I spoke with a woman who
had researched him for a number of years in Seattle,
because now I see him very differently than when he
was in Seattle, and I'll say when he was in

(34:57):
Mars Hill, I was streaming his sermons on iTunes while
I was at work on the other side of the country,
a young guy in my twenties, because I was really
drawn to way he was preaching.

Speaker 3 (35:04):
Then, was he like the hip you know, a shirt
sleeve kind of passed her?

Speaker 1 (35:09):
Yes.

Speaker 4 (35:09):
And he was in Seattle, which I think really mattered.
Like if he was in Dallas or Orlando, I don't
think I would have cared. But there was something interesting
that he was in this really stereotypically secular part of
the country and was really appealing. So he had a
lot to say about masculinity. He had a lot to
say about what it meant to be a man. And
I look back now and I see how toxic that
stuff was, but I was really drawn to it in
my twenties. I did not see him as a very

(35:32):
outspokenly far right political commentator. I think that's the big
difference in him now is he is very, very openly
political and aligning with the far right. And so I
spoke with the researcher Jessica Johnson, and I asked her,
when you were studying him at Mars Hill and Seattle
was he this way? And she said yes and no,
and she compared into a chameleon that he can just
assume the colors of the culture around him. And Scottsdale,

(35:55):
Arizona is very different from Seattle, Washington. And so I
visited his church in Scottsdale and reporting for the book
and the sermon series that he was preaching. The night
I went there was called should a Christian Be a
Globalist or a Nationalist?

Speaker 3 (36:07):
And this was a couple.

Speaker 4 (36:09):
Weeks before the election, the twenty twenty four election, and
it was very much just a screed of.

Speaker 3 (36:14):
Far right talking points.

Speaker 4 (36:16):
It was about foreign aid to Ukraine, it was about
climate changeing COVID, of course, but the World Bank, the UN.
I mean, he was reading off a list of far
right talking points and about how globalism is what Satan
would want, and globalism and issues in the last days
and God wants you to be a nationalist. And there
was a guy in a Maga hat in front of me,
in American flags everywhere, and that was very different from

(36:38):
the Driscoll that I remember seeing in my twenties, and
I just thought that was a really interesting contrast.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
When you're sitting in the audience. I mean, it's not
like you're a mole or anything. I mean, if you're
not there under false pretenses, you are there to be there.
It's kind of feel weird.

Speaker 3 (36:53):
Like I'm a secret agent.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
I'm doing forensic research on the church man, and you're
scanning to find out what's going on. You're you know,
you're an observer.

Speaker 4 (37:02):
Is that the vibe you have when you're sitting there?
It was kind of that's a great question. So it
was kind of an awkward pasture for me to be
in because I grew up in these spaces, and so
it did feel a little subversive to kind of be
in there taking notes and guilt.

Speaker 2 (37:15):
Did you a are you?

Speaker 3 (37:16):
Like?

Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yeah, like the emotional part of you has got to
be like, you know, you still have the baggage.

Speaker 4 (37:23):
Well, I can remember a version of myself that sat
in those spaces, and they felt very set apart.

Speaker 3 (37:29):
They felt very special in some way. But I'll also
say like, as a white dude with a beard, it
was very easy for me to kind of flit in
and out of these spaces, right Like, no one cast a.

Speaker 4 (37:37):
Second glance at me because I looked like everyone around me,
especially when I was doing the more political stuff like.

Speaker 2 (37:42):
White Jesus painting on the wall anyway, right, would you
fit right in? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (37:46):
Everyone looks like me, so like it was if it
would have been very different if I had been, you know,
from a different background.

Speaker 3 (37:53):
But yeah, I think it was.

Speaker 4 (37:54):
It was difficult, but a lot of times I just left,
Like I walked out of Trinity Church, Mark Diriscos Church,
I walked out early. I walked out of a bunch
of the more political spaces I just I had Physically
it was hard for me to be there, Like it
felt like oppression on my body just to be in
that room.

Speaker 3 (38:10):
It felt dark.

Speaker 4 (38:11):
I went to a conference led by Sean Foyt, who
is kind of a far right worship white supremacist fluencer.

Speaker 2 (38:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (38:18):
I went to his conference in Washington with a megachurch pastor,
and I walked out at lunch like it was just
dark and I just didn't want to be in that space.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
You've seen enough. I've seen enough.

Speaker 3 (38:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (38:29):
I was asking myself like, if I sat here three
more hours, what would.

Speaker 3 (38:32):
I get that I don't already have? And it was
that made me feel sad.

Speaker 2 (38:37):
Lots more to come with author Scott Latta. Let me
take one last break and be right back. Thanks for
listening and thanks for your support. On Patreon, you get
the show early and commercial free by becoming a supporter there.
Go to patreon dot com slash seth Andrew and the

(39:01):
final segments of my chat with author Scott Latta. His
new book is called God to the Smoke Machine, Power, Pain,
and the Rise of Christian Nationalism in the Megachurch. Okay,
In the book, you tell the story of an abuse
victim named Cindy. Her ordeal went on for a long,

(39:24):
long time months year's what years?

Speaker 3 (39:28):
Yeah, so, Cindy Clemischer.

Speaker 4 (39:29):
This story was in the news last year's She was
when she was a child, she was abused by a
pastor named Robert Morris, who at the time was kind
of a traveling pastor. It happened in Oklahoma when she
was a twelve year old child.

Speaker 3 (39:40):
He was sexually abused by Robert Morris for four years.

Speaker 4 (39:45):
When she came forward when she was a teenager, her
father reported it to the church and Morris stepped aside
for a couple of years, but he came back. He
was restored and over the next four decades he really
grew his cachet into becoming one of the most influential
megachurch pastors in the country at Gateway Church in Texas.

Speaker 3 (40:01):
Now this is after it has gone public.

Speaker 4 (40:04):
Well, it's after she came forward to the church, and
she struggled for decades to seek accountability, including calling the
church and speaking to Morris directly, and she was rebuffed
every time.

Speaker 2 (40:14):
Okay, So the accusations are still sort of protected under
the bubble of the church itself.

Speaker 3 (40:20):
But they were known by the church certainly, okay.

Speaker 4 (40:22):
And it wasn't until last year that she came forward
to a Christian blogger actually from a website called the
Wartburg Watch run by a former nurse in North Carolina,
and she came out with her entire story about how
she was abused as a child by Robert Morris, and
it finally landed and which is why Robert Morris is
in jail right now because he was just he played

(40:44):
guilty to I believe five counts of sexual assault of
a child.

Speaker 2 (40:47):
I think they gave him six months. That's probably said
we'll pray for you.

Speaker 3 (40:51):
That's what it was.

Speaker 4 (40:52):
Yeah, Yeah, And when he comes back he could go
back to the pulpit if he wants, he can start
a new church. His son was set to inherit Gateway
Church and he left started a new church immediately. But
that story was really sad for me. It was probably
one of the biggest megachurch scandals of the last decade.
I think the Robert Morris issue because of how long
it took for her to find accountability and how long

(41:13):
she struggled through therapy and trying to move forward and
to find anyone who would listen because the system was
set up to protect him, and he got so wealthy,
he got so much influence. He was in Trump's inner circle.
He was a multi multimillionaire many times over, and while
she struggled moving forward, and so it was really gratifying

(41:34):
I think to see her reclaim a lot of her
power and autonomy in that process and finally seek a
form of accountability.

Speaker 3 (41:40):
So you spoke to her and you had conversations.

Speaker 4 (41:43):
I spent some time with her attorney, Boz Shavisians who
is actually a really interesting character. He's Billy Graham's grandson
and he is an attorney in Florida and now he
seeks accountability for abuse survivors and he sues churches.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
And so he is a descendant of really a Christian
nationalist fundamentalist, and he's fighting for accountability directed at churches.
That's refreshing.

Speaker 4 (42:07):
Yeah, it's really interesting actually, because he tried to go
another way. So Bo's chevision. He founded an organization called Grace,
which was meant to give churches all the tools they
would need to prevent abuse in their church.

Speaker 3 (42:21):
And then he went to teach law at Liberty for
a while.

Speaker 4 (42:24):
And then these problems kept happening and it kept getting
worse and worse and worse. And so he's now in
private practice and he represents survivors of abuse, and he
sues churches. And the day before I met him in Florida,
he sued First Baptist Dallas, which is a huge church,
for on behalf of a teenage boy who was allegedly
abused on a church trip by another teenager and the
church was working to cover it up. And so you know,

(42:46):
he is sat at the tables with these churches. He
has sat next to abuse survivors. And he told me
the pastors never show. They send their lawyers, they send
their representatives, but the pastors are never there.

Speaker 2 (42:56):
And so.

Speaker 4 (42:59):
I Honestly, I think he's one of the heroes of
the book. And I think he is, you know, like
a lot of us still kind of unpacking what it
means to be spiritual and to be to believe in
something right now.

Speaker 2 (43:08):
Now, even if he's a Christian, if he's on the
right side of these issues, you know, I'm okay.

Speaker 4 (43:13):
Well, yeah, And what he told me was that there
was no one really equipped to take on abuse in
the Protestant Church like it was seen as a Catholic
issue for a long time. Abuse in the Catholic Church
has been reported on over and over again, but no
one was really equipped to do it in the Protestant Church.
He was really the one that was equipped to do it.
And the phrase he used to me was he described
himself as a unique bird because growing up on the

(43:34):
knee of Billy Graham, he saw it all right, and
so he you know, he gets it, he understands it,
and he knows what it means to.

Speaker 3 (43:43):
Be hurt in a really large church.

Speaker 4 (43:45):
And so yeah, I thought he was a fascinating character
and he's doing really important work.

Speaker 2 (43:49):
We could talk all that. I have like a few
more quotess are you doing Okay for time.

Speaker 3 (43:52):
I'm good.

Speaker 2 (43:52):
Yeah, because I could. We could chat about this for
a long time, and I'm sure our viewers and listeners
have you know, this is it's relevant stuff because the
United States really is a culture of churches of all shapes,
striped sizes, etc. We've seen some major players in mega
church or mega ministries that are female. Paula White advising

(44:15):
the President, didn't she a piece of work? Victoria Ostein
she's down next to Joel at Lakewood, Joyce Meyers huge.
I mean they're at a point position to be fair.
So does that refute the whole Hey, women are secondary
claim by many, it's the defense of the church. We'll
look at all these frontline women. Is it still a
man's world?

Speaker 4 (44:36):
Yeah, I think in those cases, the exception kind of
proves the rule. So if you look at large church staffs,
it's all male.

Speaker 3 (44:45):
I mean it's all male.

Speaker 4 (44:46):
So Church of the Highlands, which is a church in
Alabama that it's spent a good bit of time reporting
in the book they have I think at last count
they had forty they had fifty one pastors and staff members,
campus pastors and overseers, trustees, et cetera. And forty nine
of them. We so they had two women among their staff.
And that comes back to fundamentalism. That comes back to
a belief that women are not to be in leadership
positions in the church.

Speaker 3 (45:07):
Which so I had someone in the church.

Speaker 4 (45:09):
Bring me a note of criticism when I was speaking
to him in the book, and I had asked him,
is there something about megachurches that makes them more.

Speaker 3 (45:15):
Prone to cases of abuse or harm?

Speaker 4 (45:18):
And he told me no, He said you should if
you're going to ask that question, then you should also
look at universities, nonprofits, in the military, that the cases,
the stats are even among all of these industries. And
if there's harm in megachurches, it's because the staffs are bigger.
It's just a math case. Well, what sets megachurches apart
versus the corporate world of the military or universities and
nonprofits is that women are just not in leadership positions

(45:41):
inside these large churches, whereas you know, there are very
high Also, if there's very high rates of abuse in
the military, which I thought was interesting, he told me
to look at that, which a.

Speaker 2 (45:50):
Male dominated culture even today, misogyny running rampant.

Speaker 4 (45:54):
And cover ups some internal accountability and so I thought
it was interesting that he said that because I went
in looked at the numbers, and there's widespread cases of
abuse on college campuses. A quarter of women on college
campuses report being rapist, sexually assaus it. So like that's
the math case inside these large churches. Okay, fine, But
also women can't be in power in so many of

(46:14):
these larch churches.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
No, they can't. Another point that a lot of people
don't realize. We'd like to talk about abuse, specifically child
abuse in the Catholic Church, but I think the statistics
across the Protestant Church are pretty close. I think it's
like six percent, which is massive in the Catholic Church.
But I mean that number kind of jives with what
we're seeing here. The Southern Baptist Convention's been going through it.

(46:36):
Of course, they're acting like it's the year eleven hundred
over there. They're still casting votes that women should not
preach in church.

Speaker 3 (46:44):
Have you touched the forgive the phrasing?

Speaker 2 (46:48):
Have you touched the Southern Baptist Convention thing at all
in your research?

Speaker 4 (46:53):
Well, I grew up in the Southern Baptist Comision at
a large Baptist church in Alabama.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
And no wonder you walk away from the church. I
get that.

Speaker 4 (46:59):
Yeah, well, I mean also, it was interesting when I
was a teenager they took the word Baptist out of
the name of the church, which I think a lot
of churches were doing at the time.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
Now this was back what was it nineties?

Speaker 3 (47:10):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (47:10):
So was it white podium on the stage and you
had the big Bible open in front of it, and
wooden pews and the standard sanctuary Baptist church.

Speaker 3 (47:21):
Yes, that's the church that I grew up in.

Speaker 4 (47:23):
And then when I was kind of a teenager, a
transitioned into more of the like modern large church which
was like individual chairs, big screens, no more choirs and
orchestras and things like that. So I saw both of
it so edgy. Yeah, I know, right, very edgy. So
what about you, Like, what was the churches.

Speaker 3 (47:40):
That you grew up in?

Speaker 2 (47:41):
Word?

Speaker 3 (47:41):
Were they?

Speaker 2 (47:41):
I had thirty one flavors? You know, Mom was Pennycostals,
so she wanted she took us to these sort of
Sunday go to meet and speaking in tongs, very experiential places.
We had one pastor, Reverend Billy Wheeler was his name.
I don't think he even graduated from college. He's one
of those guys who I think just had passion, but

(48:03):
he didn't really have education. He used to preach with
the tambourine in his hand. It was crazy. But my
dad was ex Lutheran and my school was Baptist, and
so I sort of got and one of the Baptist
churches that we did go to, my attendance, I remember,
was perfect. When my girlfriend went to that church. I
was there Sunday, Sunday night, Wednesday. It was always there

(48:24):
until you know, we broke up. But it was that
kind of deal. It was just as I am, you know,
and it had the everything was white and brown. They
had those big silver offering plates that they would pass around,
and every agenda was exactly the same. You come in announcement, song, announcement, offering,
one more song, preaching, and then you have to be

(48:45):
done at eleven point fifty nine or people are going
to be late for lunch and they're going to get pissed. Right.
Was that it? I'm on target, Right.

Speaker 3 (48:55):
You nailed it, man.

Speaker 4 (48:56):
That's the church I grew up there, and that's what
I still think about and I still have, honestly, like
so many fond memories of that of growing up in
that world, and it was a very you know, you know,
that was my community, that was our family community.

Speaker 3 (49:08):
But it's changed a lot. It's really has changed a lot.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
Magat churches often have big and often financial ties to
the university scene. Liberty University is obviously going to be
the easy one, but you covered some major college players
in your book. These are not education first institutions. They
are really ideology first.

Speaker 4 (49:29):
So this is I think one of the most interesting
trends about really large churches in the US, which is
that almost all of the largest churches in the US
have now started some kind of college or education or
ministry training program. And it can be really hard to
parse out what that means and what it looks like
if it's accredited or not, if it's accredited by a
legitimate accreditation organization or a scam accreditation organization, which.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
Is more it's like a church accreditation. Which is that
in five Bucks, they get you a cup of coffee.

Speaker 4 (49:54):
At Starbucks, Yeah right, they all demand a lot. But
I think this is a strategy among large churches to
really keep young people in the fold because what we
heard growing up and I'm sure you did too. Was
that that's when people walk away from church, right, is
when they leave high school, they leave the home, they
walk away.

Speaker 3 (50:10):
That's when you really lose people.

Speaker 4 (50:12):
Well, I think this is one of the overt strategies
to keep people coming back, is they're just building education
institutions now. And so the one that I spend a
lot of time reporting on in the book is Highlands
College in Alabama. Then it's attached to a megachurch, and so, yeah,
this is a really fascinating trend, which is that they're
not education first institutions, they're instruments of the church. And
this is where a lot of people really have gotten hurt,

(50:34):
young people. And these were some of the most difficult
but also interesting conversations that I had, was hearing the
different kinds of harm, abuse, and trauma that people have
experienced in these institutions spiritually but also physically, like physical
trauma to the body. Because these churches they have a
very interesting and curious focus on the physicality of the body.

(50:57):
They put them through very extreme physical events. There's a
program called twenty four to seven that a lot of
megachurches ran a New Life church in Colorado. Did this
church on Highlands did this where it was like a
missions boot camp that young people would go through and
they slaughtered animals. Their ankles were shackled, they shaved their heads.
They had simulated martyrdom situations and old warehouses and barns.

(51:21):
Like it is like messed up training.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
Times type stuff, right, is that what it was?

Speaker 4 (51:26):
They it was like persecution. They gave us preparation to
go to the mission field and it was like, as
a missionary, you're going to be persecuted. It was like
exposure therapy to these kids, but they were like mock
kidnapped in the middle of the night where they were like,
you know, jerked out of bed at two am and
driven to an old barn, like that's what happened to
one of the guys in the book. And so now
like that is like, you can't do that now, And

(51:47):
so they've started these like glossy colleges. That's the new
form of this, But still there's still an interesting focus
on the body and there's a lot of body shaming.
It leads to a lot of pain.

Speaker 2 (51:58):
We did show years ago about some of the more
extreme religious summer camps and someone called in and they're like,
we were in our little cabin and in the middle
of the night we were rousted out of our bunks
by people in masks screaming that were holding what looked
like rifles, and it was they were creating a scenario

(52:21):
where it's the tribulation and the Christians who have remained
are being persecuted. Right, they accepted Jesus too late, so
christ had already come. I'm doing this from memory, but
I believe I'm close. And so this is the meat
grinder of the seven year trib right, And they verbally
abused him, and they sort of kicked him around, and

(52:42):
they locked him in a room and it was horrifying,
And of course the message was you don't want this
to happen to you, so accept Jesus and commit now
before the final trumpet sounds right.

Speaker 4 (52:55):
Yeah, I went to one of those two where they
put you on a bus and said close your eyes
and we're going to drive around and you wake up somewhere.
So do you remember Ray Bolts, Ray Bold, the singer.

Speaker 2 (53:04):
Yeah, he came out as gay. I remember that was
a big deal.

Speaker 4 (53:07):
Right, Yeah, So his song I still remember the music
video for his song, I Pledge Allegiance to the Lamb.

Speaker 3 (53:11):
Yeah, it was a huge song in the nineties, and
that's what it was.

Speaker 4 (53:13):
It was like a father being taken to his death,
like during the Tribulation era, and he's like speaking to
his son.

Speaker 3 (53:18):
That was so disturbing to me as a child to
watch that video.

Speaker 2 (53:21):
So you were a Christian music guy too, big time?

Speaker 3 (53:24):
Oh dude, that's a whole other interview.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
What time is it? What to No, I can't do it,
I can't do Have you ever seen the Patent Oswald?
The comedian Patton Oswald has a great bit on new
songs the Christmas shoes, Oh no, Christmas shoes, and the
way he phrased it. We used to play that song
on the holidays, and I remember I didn't even think
about it until Patton Oswald was like, Okay, So there's

(53:47):
this kid and his mom has terminal cancer and he
has like a few pennies to his name, and he
goes into a store because he wants to buy Christmas
shoes so his mom can be dressed in pretty shoes
in case she dies and meets Jesus in heaven. But
he doesn't have enough money to buy the shoes, and
so he's like turned away and he goes out into

(54:09):
the street. I don't know if he's begging for money,
and then Jesus provides the bounty that he needs to
buy the shoes for his mom to die in to
go to heaven. He's just wacky.

Speaker 3 (54:20):
That's really That song's gonna be in my head for
the rest of the day.

Speaker 2 (54:22):
For the rest of the day. You are welcome, You
are welcome. Okay, some final thoughts. I'm going to link
to the book in the description box. I thought it
was fascinating and compelling. It's really well written. It's something
anybody can really I mean, you get specific, but there's
there's a lot there that just keeps me going, you know,

(54:43):
from one one to the next, which is why I
reached out and I was like, dude, I know you're
coming to Tulsa. We got to talk, but you know,
pitch the book. Give me the elevator speech before we
wrap up, would you.

Speaker 3 (54:54):
Yeah, thanks, thanks for offering you.

Speaker 4 (54:55):
So the book really unpacks power dynamics in really lif
arch churches. And so the subtitle of the book is Power,
Pain and the Rise of Christian Nationalism in the Megachurch.

Speaker 3 (55:04):
And it's broken into three parts.

Speaker 4 (55:06):
So the first part is about pastoral abuse and sometimes
that's physical abuse, but also.

Speaker 3 (55:10):
Emotional or spiritual abuse.

Speaker 4 (55:11):
The second part is about megachurch colleges, administry training programs,
and the third part of it is about politics and
the eighteen months.

Speaker 2 (55:18):
Leading up to the election, which is, you know, oh, yeah,
these places are and now the Trump administration is totally
uncuffed them. I mean they were pitching and endorsement candidates anyway, right,
they have some churches handing out voter guides totally illegal, totally,
and now I think Trump has essentially said, go ahead,
we're not going to you know, it's not like they

(55:39):
were being prosecuted anyway.

Speaker 3 (55:40):
But gees yeah, one hundred percent. Yeah, totally. It's bad
and it's going to get worse.

Speaker 4 (55:44):
But I think what I really wanted to do with
the book was I wanted it to be driven by
people's stories because I think a lot of what you
see in these kinds of books a is they're either
written by people who are still in the evangelical world,
and so they're interested in things like reform and like
what what do we see in scripture? Like I was
approaching it from a different place. I was approaching it
more from a reporter's perspective to try to unpack what
was happening and what accountability looks like. But it was

(56:06):
important to me that they were driven by people's personal
stories and experiences, because what we said earlier, like you
can't have a voice, you can't have a story in
these large churches, and so I wanted to find some
people who could really kind of humanize and exemplify what
it looks like to suffer the grief and pain of
experiencing harm in a large church, but also what it
looks like to walk through that process and where you

(56:26):
come out on the other side. And sometimes it takes years,
and it takes therapy. Sometimes you're not there. There's people
who I met who were there's still not there it's
been years, and some people who are in a much better,
more peaceful place. And so that's my pitch for the
book is that I hope that people feel people who
have had adverse experiences in churches, I hope they feel
seen in some way, because I think that that is
really the first step is to normalize conversations of spiritual

(56:50):
abuse in large churches and make people feel like it's
okay to have experienced that and to be willing to
talk about it. That there's a lot of people around
you who can walk that path with you.

Speaker 2 (57:01):
I would suspect for a lot of people this will
be part of their healing journey. I really think they'll
feel related to They'll feel seen and empowered, you know.
I think I'm sure you feel the same good stuff.
Scott ladder Man, It's been an honor to have you
and all my best. All success with the book, and
I will link it in the description box of the
interview with an encouragement.

Speaker 3 (57:21):
To everybody check it out. It's worth it. Thanks again, brother,
Thanks thanks for having follow.

Speaker 1 (57:26):
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