Straight White American Jesus - Weekly Roundup: The Deadliness of Caucasian Replacement Theory (CRT)
Aired: 2022-05-20
Duration: 06:21


=== Cool Kid Church Politics (05:38) ===

[00:00:00]  AXIS Moondi AXIS Moondi You're listening to an Irreverent Podcast.
[00:00:17]  Visit irreverent.fm for more content from our amazing lineup of creators.
[00:00:34]  Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
[00:00:36]  My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
[00:00:39]  Our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at UCSB, here today with my co-host.
[00:00:44]  Dan Miller, Associate Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College.
[00:00:49]  It's good to see you, Brad, even if it's been another kind of rough week, as we'll discuss here in a few minutes.
[00:00:54]  Yeah, a lot going on in the wake of what happened in Buffalo last weekend, and we have some pretty big primary election stuff to talk about from all over the country.
[00:01:05]  We'll get to all of that.
[00:01:07]  We'll say though, Dan, we have a couple of announcements at the top here.
[00:01:10]  You have an amazing series going at the moment on Wednesdays, and that's It's in the Code, basically decoding American Christianity for people.
[00:01:18]  Last episode was amazing, Cool Kid Church.
[00:01:20]  And so anyway, friends, if you haven't checked all that out, I would highly recommend it.
[00:01:25]  Whether or not you're somebody emerging from one of those communities or traditions, or if you've just never been part of one and you need a decoder ring, well, Dan Miller's got it for you.
[00:01:35]  We've re-released the Orange Wave, which is a docuseries I made a couple years ago.
[00:01:39]  It's 10 parts.
[00:01:41]  And I interview folks like Kristin Kobes-Dumais and Sarah Posner and Randall Balmer and Chrissy Stroop and basically provide a kind of window into the history of the religious right from the 1960s all the way to Maga Nation.
[00:01:54]  You can check our show notes to get access to that in terms of either Patreon or through an outside provider.
[00:02:02]  And finally, we have a seminar coming up next week or next week, next month, and that is Christian Nationalism and Identity Politics.
[00:02:09]  So, Dan, you want to give us just a little little explainer on what that's going to look like since you'll be leading it?
[00:02:15]  Yeah.
[00:02:15]  So in terms of the format for folks who might have done a seminar before, maybe if you haven't, we'll meet four times.
[00:02:22]  It's virtual, but we'll be meeting live.
[00:02:24]  You'll also get some videos we put together with some of the materials, some readings, different things like that.
[00:02:31]  But in terms of themes, it's themes that we talk about a lot.
[00:02:34]  We talk a lot about Christian nationalism and identity politics.
[00:02:37]  I just did a series on identity politics.
[00:02:39]  I know some folks wanted to know what the difference is going to be.
[00:02:43]  Basically, the good fun thing about doing a series is you just kind of say stuff, right?
[00:02:47]  And there's nobody there to pause and say, wait, can you tell me why you said that?
[00:02:52]  Or can you say more about that?
[00:02:53]  Or If I'm talking to my Uncle Ron at the cookout and I want to be better prepared than just hearing Dan Miller's opinion on this, where do I look?
[00:03:01]  That's what we do.
[00:03:02]  We spend time talking about that and looking at some of why we talk about identity the way that we do and all that kind of stuff.
[00:03:08]  And then relating that specifically to Christian nationalism.
[00:03:11]  Christian nationalism as a kind of identity politics How understanding identity politics can help us to understand Christian nationalism, and how understanding Christian nationalism shows us that it is a form of identity politics.
[00:03:23]  And so those are the kind of things we'll be talking about.
[00:03:25]  It is sadly and tragically relevant, as we'll talk about here in the next few minutes, because so much of what happened in Buffalo is And expression of a kind of Christian nationalist identity politics, at least that's my take on it.
[00:03:39]  So a lot of that, a lot of that going on on a lighter note, I will say, since folks can't see Brad Onishi, whenever he talks about the series and cool kid church, he gets this kind of grin because the part of and I say this in the series, the part of California where he lives is like a cool kid search central.
[00:03:59]  So yeah, so I think it's struck a note with him.
[00:04:03]  Well, what's funny is, so I'm in Northern California now.
[00:04:06]  I grew up in Southern California.
[00:04:10]  So I worked at a megachurch.
[00:04:12]  I converted at a megachurch.
[00:04:13]  But our megachurch was never actually the cool megachurch.
[00:04:16]  So don't get me wrong.
[00:04:17]  We had a rock band.
[00:04:19]  We had lattes.
[00:04:20]  Uh, but there was always these other churches like five and ten miles away that we thought of as like the really cool kids, like they were better looking than us.
[00:04:28]  The rock band was there was more lasers, a lot more deep v-neck shirts, probably tattoos.
[00:04:36]  So anyway, that maybe the lattes used organic milk or almond.
[00:04:40]  I don't know.
[00:04:41]  Anyway.
[00:04:41]  So it's interesting to think about the scale of cool kid church, because we were I was probably at what some would consider a cool kid church, but we always felt like we were pretty, pretty middling on the cool kid church scale.
[00:04:55]  So just just just to map American Christianity, right.
[00:04:58]  All people have to think of is like the middle school lunchroom, basically.
[00:05:02]  And you've got like the table with the really cool kids.
[00:05:04]  Yeah.
[00:05:05]  And then Brad's at the table that's like cool kid adjacent.
[00:05:08]  Yeah.
[00:05:09]  Maybe talks to a couple of the cool kids, you know, whatever, but doesn't actually get to sit at the table.
[00:05:13]  Yeah.
[00:05:13]  But he's at the table that lots of other people would be happy to sit at if they could just get cool kid adjacent.
[00:05:19]  And that's very much how parts of American Christianity work.
[00:05:23]  And we yeah, once the cool kid saw like the cool kid kind of looks you up and down is like, huh?
[00:05:27]  Haircut?
[00:05:27]  Not that great.
[00:05:29]  Clothes?
[00:05:29]  Yeah, not not that bad.
[00:05:31]  Like once the cool kid from the actual cool kid megachurch checks you out a little bit, they're like, yeah, I don't think this is going to cut it.

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