Conspirituality - Bonus Sample: Imaginary Children: “God’s Word on Spanking”
Aired: 2024-07-29
Duration: 03:21


=== Imaginary Children, Symbols of Fear (02:56) ===

[00:00:03]  Hello, everyone.
[00:00:04]  Welcome to Conspiratuality, where we investigate the intersection of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience, and authoritarian extremism.
[00:00:14]  I'm Matthew Remsky.
[00:00:16]  We're on Instagram and threads at ConspiratualityPod, and you can access all of our episodes ad-free, plus our Monday bonus episodes on Patreon, or just our bonus episodes via Apple subscriptions.
[00:00:29]  We've got a book out.
[00:00:30]  It's called Conspiratuality, How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat.
[00:00:35]  It's in print, ebook, and audiobook format, narrated by me.
[00:00:40]  Okay, so this is the second episode in an occasional series called Conspirituality and the Imaginary Children.
[00:00:48]  At the end of March, I released an introduction to this series, so you can scroll back through your Patreon feed and look for that before jumping in here.
[00:00:57]  To recap that intro, this series will be looking at how children, as symbols but not persons with their own internal lives, are at the center of conspirituality, anxiety, and discourse.
[00:01:09]  I'll be looking at two types of imaginary child in this landscape.
[00:01:14]  One is an object of dread and the other is an idol of aspiration.
[00:01:20]  Now, the first episode that I produced in this series back in the spring, it started in that dread category with the title being Fetal Remains.
[00:01:29]  And it was about how two men, both leaders in the anti-abortion movement, invested real fetal remains with passionate but imaginary desires that obscured from them how much harm they were causing.
[00:01:43]  Reverend Rob Schenck woke up from that fever, but Frank Pavone is still burning with it.
[00:01:50]  Now today's episode is called God's Word on Spanking, which is the title of a pamphlet published by Ralph Drohlinger, a former professional basketball player from San Diego who founded a 501c3 called Capital Ministries in 1996 to facilitate prayer meetings and study guides for congresspeople in Washington and state legislatures in more than 40 states.
[00:02:13]  And I'll give a content warning here at the top.
[00:02:16]  I'll be speaking about corporal punishment, which is a form of child assault.
[00:02:21]  And on that language note, I've come to use the term child assault as a replacement for corporal punishment or physical discipline.
[00:02:30]  Because I think that it makes it more stark, because no child gives their consent to violent contact, and words like punishment and discipline make it sound like there's something to punish or discipline, or that either of these work to punish or discipline or guide children when they actually don't.

=== Access All Bonus Content (00:37) ===

[00:02:47]  They can enforce compliance through dread, but that's the opposite of learning and guidance.
[00:02:55]  You've been listening to a Conspirituality bonus episode sample.
[00:03:00]  To continue listening, please head over to patreon.com slash conspirituality, where you can access all of our main feed episodes ad free, as well as four years of bonus content that we've been producing.
[00:03:16]  You can also subscribe to our bonus episodes via Apple subscriptions.