I Would Have Been at the Capitol Insurrection with author Monica Rodden
Monica Rodden is a novelist and ex-evangelical. She wrote this recent piece in the Boston Globe about how she would have been the type of Christian to be part of the Capitol Insurrection. In her interview with Brad, she discusses the binary thinking that plagues Evangelical culture, how certainty can act as a shield from the harsh realities of the world--and why that's a bad thing--and how the Capitol Insurrection brought back all the memories of feeling hate and disrespect towards those who disagreed with her.
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 new 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
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus, hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty in religion at Skidmore College, and I am joined today by Monica Rodden, who is an author and has just published her first book, Monsters Among Us, which is a work of YA.
Lots going on.
I'm going to ask Monica about it in a minute.
So for now, I'll say she is a Virginia Tech graduate who now lives in Austin, Texas.
And has just sent her second book off to her editor, and that book is something I'm very excited about.
It's a YA mystery novel on a young woman who is going through the process of deconstruction and obviously just has direct ties to the work we do on this show and to so many other folks in the ex-evangelical community.
So first, Monica, thanks for being here.
Thanks for taking the time.
Yeah, thank you.
I'm excited to be on.
I listen to you guys a lot.
So I wanted, you know, we connected because you wrote a great piece just last week about the Capitol insurrection and basically articulated in your op-ed in the Boston Globe that as you watched it, you wondered if you would have been there had you not left the evangelical community, that as you watch this thing take place, the first thing that struck you was essentially I was that kind of Christian.
I was brought up in that culture.
And there's a chance that I could have been part of that insurrection or something else in terms of a kind of violent mob uprising in that kind of vein.
So I want to get there in a minute.
But before we do that, I want to ask you just about you.
So first, tell us about your book because it just came out.
So we got to stop.
It just came out like like the beginning of January.
So tell us about Monsters Among Us, and then we'll talk about you and your story.
Yeah, so Monsters Among Us is a YA mystery novel about a girl named Catherine, and she comes home after her first semester of college, kind of not processing at all something that has happened to her right before the holidays, goes home looking for solace, does not find it, tragedy strikes her hometown again.
And she teams up with an old friend and a maybe stranger new to town, to figure out what secrets her small town is hiding.
And I think this might intrigue people who listen.
She does end up in a cabinet eavesdropping on a secret meeting between two pastors.
So there's a little bit of church corruption in there.
Nice.
Nice.
If there's anything that straight white American Jesus listeners love, it is church corruptions.
So many of them know a lot about it.
That leads us to you.
That leads us to you and your story, because your story is not without a lot of church and a lot of piety.
So let's just start here.
Where did you grow up and how did you sort of become involved in the evangelical movement?
Yeah, so I actually hated church as a kid.
We went to a super boring Episcopalian, maybe?
And I would say I needed to go to the bathroom and then just explore the church basement.
And my mom was like, you have to sit still.
And I'm like, no, this is so boring.
But during my adolescence, we moved to a mega church in the D.C.
area and super charismatic pastor.
He was I think to me the coolest person I'd ever heard speak, and I just soaked up everything he said.
It was young earth creationism, it was homosexuality as an abomination, it was purity culture.
You know, tick all the boxes, right, of growing up in that kind of environment.
I was all in.
I mean, I was completely in, and something I'm realizing now, I'm 29, and I've done a little bit of soul-searching of like, why?
Why did I love it so much?
And I honestly think it gave me a place to belong.
I was really insecure, and I was really introverted, and this thing told me where to be and gave me a safe place to live, and I lived in that space for a very long time.
So one of the things you and I have in common is that we were not necessarily raised in the evangelical subculture.
It sounds like you and your parents attended church, but as you said, you weren't connected.
You didn't feel like it was a personal thing for you.
It was a chore.
So how did mom and dad react when you sort of came home and started to be this evangelical Jesus freak?
Oh, I mean, they were fine with it.
And, you know, I talk to my dad about this all the time.
He goes, did we do something wrong?
And I was like, no, you took me to church.
But I think for some people, it just clicks in your brain in maybe a way that, looking back, is not the healthiest.
And yeah, I went to the Bible studies.
And actually, I don't think it was until going to And I went to Virginia Tech, so that's a very conservative environment, and getting involved with, like, campus ministry, which is a whole nother level of just, you're being very intentional for Christ at that time in your life.
And I think, yeah, I think overall this idea of, I'm not going to swear, I'm going to wear modest clothing, I'm not going to have sex until I get married, I'm going to go to church, I think all of that is, for most parents, not any cause for concern.
I'm wondering how things changed because you go from, as you said, your church where you really converted and became this energized evangelical, bought into all of the trappings of evangelical culture, purity culture, all of the music and the Bible studies and the charismatic personalities.
But as often happens, you go to college and something changes because Now you're in an environment where people are partying, you know, Virginia Tech's a huge sports school, football's big there, people are, I'm sure, having a lot of fun in ways that evangelicals are not supposed to have fun.
Did that sort of change, did that change your relationship to faith in some way?
Did that perhaps give you a different perspective on what it is exactly you were up to as a religious person as you looked around at your peers and the ways you were being intentionally unlike them?
Thanks for listening to this free preview of our Swadge episode.
In order to get access to the full episode and so much more, become a Straight White American Jesus Premium Subscriber by clicking the link in the show notes.
It'll take you like two clicks, I promise.
In addition to getting access to this episode, you'll have access to the entire Swadge archive, over 550 episodes.
You'll also get an extra episode every month, ad-free listening, Discord access, and so much more.
All that for less than six bucks a month, and it helps us keep our flag up and continue to safeguard democracy from religious nationalism, extremism, and rising authoritarianism.
