Brad is joined by guest co-host Blake Chastain, who is host of the Exvangelical Podcast and the Post Evangelical Post newsletter. They discuss a surprising LGBTQ-affirming church in Texas (5:30), the way some white Mainline and Catholic voters prioritize their whiteness over anything else (10:20), and the incident at Baylor University's chapel this week, which shows the toxic effects of envisioning God as a white male (20:15) ---
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I am Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Skidmore College, and I have the pleasure today of hosting, or co-hosting, I should say, with Blake Chastain.
I have not voted Dan off the island, don't worry.
Dan is away with family on vacation, and Blake and I have been talking for a long time about Trying to do like something together, an episode and some commentary and stuff like that.
So this just ended up being a really good time.
Many of you will know Blake as the host of the Exvangelical Podcast and he was part of the CBS documentary about deconstructing my religion.
He is active on Twitter, is Part of the Exvangelical Facebook group.
But one of the things that's great about recording today is that it also happens to be the day that Blake just launched his newsletter, which is incredibly exciting.
I got to read the first edition today.
And one thing I will say, Blake, is not only is it an honor to have you on, I mean, when I really started entering this space of sort of exvangelical stuff online a couple years ago, you know,
I think like many people you and Chrissy Strube and so many others through the documentary and through other outlets were just so inspirational and really kind of encouraged me to like really get active in in all of this kind of work and so it's just wonderful to now be able to co-host with you but it's I think it's also so great that you have your newsletter because now folks are going to see a part of you which has always been there of course but I'm not sure everyone has been able just to access which is you are a writer by You know, nature, that is a gift and a talent you have.
And now we all get to see it.
So you want to tell us a little bit about that before we get into our discussion?
Oh, well, Brad, thank you so much for the kind words.
And it's an honor to be on your show.
Thank you very much for inviting me on.
Yeah.
So I started this this newsletter recently.
I've done a couple of newsletters in the past, but with this sort of resurgence in the popularity of them, I thought I would give it another go, especially as we enter into this election cycle.
When a lot of coverage of evangelicalism in particular becomes more pronounced and at least more visible than it does, and a lot of when it sort of wanes and goes away, or is it waxes?
I always get those mixed up.
But whichever one is when it recedes, that's the one.
So, it's called the Post-Evangelical Post because all my ideas start as puns.
I love it.
And really, the focus of it is to do very similar to what you're doing on these roundups, but in a newsletter format, which is to take a look at both current events as well as just long-running issues within evangelicalism, especially white evangelicalism here in America.
So, Free edition comes out on Fridays and there is a paid aspect to it as well.
And those editions come out on Mondays.
So thanks for letting me plug that there.
No, that's I mean, that's amazing.
And I again, I'll just say I got to read the first You know, the first one today, and you all should check it out.
It really is a little bit similar to what we do on Fridays with our weekly roundup, but Blake's really able to get into some depth on the issues and do some analysis that I think is pretty essential.
So we will all look forward to that, and I'm always grateful to have more, and I love the name Post-Evangelical.
Yeah, for some, some people think ex-evangelical is too inherently negative, which that's fine.
And that's a totally valid feedback.
This sort of is a way to both be punny, again, as well as just encapsulate that experience of folks that may not necessarily relate to that term.
Yeah, no, my students and my wife will tell you that, unfortunately, I love puns as much as anyone, and so this is good.
But so our first segment on our weekly roundup is always, Did You See That?
And we jump into a story that is, in our eyes, important, but might be a little bit undercover or something that, you know, slipped by people's radar.
So, Blake, I think you had a pretty interesting story coming out of an Assemblies of God context.
And what do you got?
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