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April 3, 2020 - Straight White American Jesus
07:56
Weekly Roundup: Pastors Endanger Lives by Holding Services: Masculinity, Anti-Intellectualism, and Ecclesiology

Brad and Dan begin by adding some humor to the mix--they tell stories of how they didn't fit in at Oxford and the hijinks that ensued (00:30). They then discuss the pastors who continue to hold services and how a mix of toxic masculinity, resistance to science, and disdain for the government are factors in this phenomenon. They also explain why theologically evangelicals should be the group most willing and able to halt large in-person gatherings (12:40).They finish by discussing how conservative media has covered the pandemic (27:50), Trump blaming states for lack of healthcare equipment (28:40), and the stunning admission of ignorance on the part of GA governor Brian Kemp (39:50). Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC Order Brad's book: https://www.amazon.com/Preparing-War-Extremist-Christian-Nationalism/dp/1506482163 SWAJ Apparel is here! https://straight-white-american-jesus.creator-spring.com/listing/not-today-uncle-ron To Donate:https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/BradleyOnishi Venmo: @straightwhitejc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Time Text
AXIS MUNDY AXIS MUNDY Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Skidmore College, and I'm here with my co-host, I'm Dan Miller, Associate Professor of Religion and Social Thoughts at Landmark College in Southern Vermont.
So Dan, today we have another laundry list of things we need to talk about when it comes to coronavirus, religion, politics, all those things.
However, I know, I mean, you and I have been talking, there's a lot of folks out there who are flooded with, you know, just really hard news.
The numbers are rising in terms of infections and deaths.
It just feels like it's been a hard week so we thought we would start with a couple of a little bits some things that are a little lighter than normal for our show and folks if you're like hey I didn't come here for levity you can fast forward this part and maybe if you are just in need of a break then just listen to this part and then turn the rest off whatever it's up to you but I was thinking Dan about the fact that you and I are friends we Went to the same Oxford College.
The way we met and became friends is a little more complicated than that, but basically we both ended up somehow at Oxford getting graduate degrees.
This was unlikely.
If you know us, we're not from, I mean, you know, you can tell me if this is offensive to you, but we're not really from like fancy families.
Like my dad did not go to Yale and my mom didn't go to Stanford, you know, like it was not clear from our upbringing that you and I would land at Oxford.
And when we did, there was just moments of sometimes like, you know, looking like we were not part of the elite landed gentry that often walked the halls of this university.
So when I showed up at Oxford, you had been there for a year already.
Folks, Oxford is broken up into like 40 different colleges.
So we were at a very small college called Regents Park.
Shout out to Regents Park, which is a Baptist college.
And when I got there, I met a couple of other master's students and they were telling me about this guy, Dan Miller, who was the president of the Middle Common Room, which is like being president of the postgraduate sort of like association.
And then they showed me his picture and I have to say at that point as soon as I saw your picture, Dan, I decided that I would try to never make you mad because you did not look like someone I wanted to mess with.
Do you want to confirm or deny that?
I'll confirm it.
A much younger, fitter, pre-child, pre-Professor Mill.
Yeah, when I went to Oxford, I was a pretty strapping lad, as they might say.
And I looked, as the Brits might also say, a lot like a hooligan.
Yeah I mean you hit on there like we you know I was similar background I did not go to a prestigious undergraduate institution and and um you know I've talked about that what that institution was and stuff so it was a big big shot for me to get in there but yeah I got there I had like I had long hair and I was this big burly guy and I I'm a pretty competitive person uh and sometimes that matters and sometimes it doesn't but one of the things that I got into at Oxford I don't know why You and I would call it foosball.
Most people listening will know it as foosball.
In England, they call it table football, like table soccer.
I really got into that, and the same with one particular mutual friend that you're talking about.
We would play for more hours than we should have when we should have been doing graduate work.
But I became known for screaming profanities.
Huge, loud profanities from the room where the foosball table was set up.
I had this long hair.
I don't know if people remember, but there used to be a tight end who played mostly for the New York Giants named Jeremy Shockey.
People would tell me that I looked like him and they would call me the swearing American and things like that.
So I was basically like every stereotype.
I was this big, bumbling American guy who was loud and swore a lot and was also studying systematic theology, as it turned out.
I've meddled a lot by choice and also just by age and circumstance, I think.
Well but when I saw you also have like people who can't often see this but you have you have a few tattoos and so yeah like you kind of look to me like
Triple H from the Wrestling Federation, and the rumor going around at this point, so you're Dan Miller, you're chair of your department, you're an established scholar, you write on political theory, you work a lot on queer theory, you're a super dad, you're part of a queer family, and so that's how folks know you, and that's how they should know you, because that's who you are, but you're also a guy who, when I showed up at Oxford,
The first rumor I heard about you was that you were injured and had to be sort of out of commission for a while because you had been trying to bench press 400 pounds and your pectoral muscle just sort of exploded and you know, you were injured for months.
So do you want to confirm or deny that part?
Yeah.
If we were more famous, we could make those YouTube videos where they talk to celebrities about like confirming or denying different rumors.
But no, it was, it was true.
I was really into weightlifting and uh, I had built up to my goal of bench press max, which was like 400 pounds, and yeah, I basically shredded the right side of my chest.
It basically popped like a rubber band, and it's pretty gross.
You want to talk about a shout out to real things?
I had to go to the emergency room.
And then I went to my general practitioner because for like a day I tried to pretend that I wasn't hurt and kind of hoping that it wasn't what I thought it was.
She sends me to a trauma clinic where I see the head of orthopedics at the hospital there and then they do like a scan of it and confirm that I can't operate on anything.
I had like physical therapy for three months and out of pocket I paid a grand total of 60 pence.
For all of that so yeah so to put some seriousness into the levity but yeah that was me.
I shredded my chest and it's still you know not very many people see my bare chest now but the ones who do would note that it's malformed now.
It's as recovered as it can get but it's pretty funny looking because they couldn't operate on anything.
Yeah, so that's Oxford, among other things.
Well, the only reason, I mean, just to balance out the scale here, the only reason I was at Oxford was because of a very... I mean, this is not the only reason, folks, and don't at me on Twitter saying you didn't deserve to be there, whatever.
But I will tell you, I think the clinching factor in me getting accepted was a very strange episode I had at Regent Spark College with a man named Paul Fittis.
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