Brad is joined by guest co-host Dr. Leah Payne. They begin by discussing the first primetime hearing of the J6 Select Committee. Brad observes that they seemed to have two goals - first to show that Trump and Trump's team knew that there was no legal basis for contesting the election, whether via voting machines, vote counts, or anythign else. Two, that there was a months-long conspiracy to stop the certification of the election by the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.
They then focus on Tucker Carlson's response to hearings. He had a White supremacist guest, Darren Beattie, on the show to put forth the conspiracy that J6 was an inside job conducted by the FBI.
In the final segment, Leah zeroes in on some election results from the recent primaries in order to talk about whether or not the national headlines match local realities when it comes to criminal justice reform and other issues.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
Our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center, UCSB, and my co-host Dan Miller is on vacation.
Apparently he thinks that's a good idea to spend time with his family and get outside, go camping.
I don't know what his problem is.
So I have an amazing guest co-host today, and that is Dr. Leah Payne.
Leah, thanks for being here.
Oh, it is my great honor.
I'm glad that he went on vacation.
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm going to text him and say, Leah says to stay on vacation.
Stay on vacation.
You've been on our show before.
We talked all about shofars and Pentecostalism, but just tell folks a little bit about you.
You're coming to us from the Pacific Northwest, but what else is the profile of Dr. Leah Payne?
Oh, thank you.
Well, I'm a historian of American religion, and I am a student particularly of new American religious movements, so it helps to be located on the American West Coast.
And I'm a big fan of this podcast because I'm also interested in how these religious innovators interact with the American body politics.
So I love the weird stuff and I love thinking about how it makes us who we are just as a culture.
I'm delighted to be here.
Thank you so much for inviting me.
Well, you're a couple of things.
One, an expert on various Pentecostal traditions and new religious movements, as you talked about.
You've written about January 6th and some of the various instruments and artifacts that one might hear, including shofars.
You're also, you teach at Portland Seminary, which is amazing.
And you're the co-host of Weird Religion, which is an amazing podcast and people should listen to.
And you're writing a book about contemporary Christian music.
So we've got a lot of heavy stuff today.
We just had our first January 6th hearing last night.
We're going to jump into that and some other things.
But in order to ease in here to what, you know, is a kind of heavy morning after the first J6 hearing, I think we should talk about CCM a little bit.
And I just want to give you a deep cut.
Are you ready?
Oh, I was born ready for this.
So when I was in youth group in the mid-90s, we did listen to Ska, as I told you before.
I'm from Orange County, so we love the OC Supertones.
Five Iron Frenzy was in there.
So that's a group.
But a lot of my friends were into punk and like So the MXPX folks and the P.O.D.
P.O.D.
is not punk, but P.O.D.
is more heavy.
Like they were into like heavy Christian punk metal, whatever.
And it was never my scene.
And so in order to be like contrarian and to just be the sort of like.
Weird philosopher in the corner who didn't like to mod.
I listened to Javelina.
Do you know Javelina?
Really?
Yeah.
Wow.
That is a deep cut.
I'm very impressed.
I, I, so, okay.
I just have to ask you, what was the response among the POD crowd to your, did it have the desired effect?
They just, so folks listening, Javelina's like, it's almost like a big, it's like a big band folk meets folk kind of deal.
There's an upright bass and there's a, you know, a man singing with violins in the background.
You know, it's that kind of thing in a Christian, in a Christian tone and Christian sort of approach.
It was my way of just being like, nobody like gave me that hard of a time about it, but I definitely wasn't like the guy who was like, hey, it's Friday night, let's go to this obscure Church basement and listen to someone's brother's punk band.
They were all doing that and I was like, that sounds terrible.
I'm neurodivergent and there's so much noise and I can't even handle it and it's very sweaty and I don't want to do it.
So yeah.
You know, I love that you were a fan of that band.
So for for many of your listeners who are like, you know, grad students, you might not personally remember the 90s music scene, which was eclectic, I would say.
And there was like a there was a minute in in pop culture wherein big bands were super.
Yes.
Influential.
And, you know, the movie Swing Kids.
Do you remember that?
Yeah.
And so it's really interesting to me that contemporary Christian music, for those of you who are familiar with it, which I think a lot of your listeners probably are, there's this sort of pattern in contemporary Christian music where something will happen in mainstream culture and then CCM, as it was called, would create an imitation of that.
But there are certain forms that didn't really It didn't catch on.
Metal did fine, and that's something that I'm writing about.
There's a lot of metal, a lot of punk, a lot of ska, but there are other forms of pop music that didn't really make it.
But you found one of the ones!
I saw them at Knott's Berry Farm in 1996, I think, on one of the Christian something nights there.
A lot of folks listening are like, OK, pal, we're glad.
We could go on.
I know.
Thank you very much, Brad.
You don't need to do this right now.
OK.
So let's do it.
Last night, we had the first hearings from the J6 Select Committee.
Benny Thompson was the chair and spoke a lot, and him and Liz Cheney were really the ones who were up front and presenting the material, the evidence.
There was witness testimony from one of the police officers who was one of the very first to encounter the mob, and also from a documentary filmmaker who provided video footage that had never been seen before.
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