Straight White American Jesus - Weekly Roundup: Is this Freedom?
Aired: 2022-07-08
Duration: 08:15


=== Christian Musicians Mentioned (07:11) ===

[00:00:00]  Axis Mundy Axis Mundy You're listening to an Irreverent Podcast.
[00:00:17]  Visit irreverent.fm for more content from our amazing lineup of creators.
[00:00:22]  Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
[00:00:39]  My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
[00:00:43]  Our show's hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center UCSB.
[00:00:46]  And once again, my co-host Dan Miller is out being healthy and with his family.
[00:00:51]  I don't know what's wrong with that guy.
[00:00:52]  I'm going to talk to him about it.
[00:00:54]  So I have an amazing return co-host, guest co-host, and that is Dr. Leah Paynes.
[00:01:00]  Leah, thanks for coming back.
[00:01:01]  Oh, thank you so much for having me.
[00:01:03]  It is a great honor.
[00:01:05]  You are a faculty up at Portland Seminary.
[00:01:08]  You are an amazing scholar who is finishing a book, as we talked about last time, on contemporary Christian music.
[00:01:15]  You've written many places.
[00:01:16]  You just had an op-ed at NBC, which was great.
[00:01:20]  I've cited you in my book, which is coming out, about Epiphars and Pentecostal Christians and other folks, so super thankful for your work there.
[00:01:28]  And because You are working on Christian contemporary music.
[00:01:32]  I'm going to have to throw some deep cuts at you before we get started.
[00:01:35]  Oh, please do.
[00:01:36]  Last time you really brought it.
[00:01:37]  And before I do that, I have two announcements, though, friends.
[00:01:41]  One, our next Straight White American Jesus Seminar is up and available for registration.
[00:01:46]  And that is once again with Sarah Mosliner, Purity, Culture, Race, and Embodiment.
[00:01:51]  It is amazing.
[00:01:52]  You can see the description and all the kind of topics at StraightWhiteAmericanJesus.com.
[00:01:56]  There's limited spots.
[00:01:57]  We're going to keep this one smaller than we have before.
[00:02:00]  So people are already signing up if you'd like to do that.
[00:02:04]  Check it out in the show notes.
[00:02:05]  These seminars have been great.
[00:02:06]  Sarah is just a dynamic teacher and is a world expert on this topic.
[00:02:11]  So if you'd like to participate, check it out.
[00:02:14]  Four weeks in August and September, four classes, two hours each, videos, readings, discord server.
[00:02:22]  It's really cool.
[00:02:23]  And, as I just mentioned, I'm really excited.
[00:02:25]  My book, Preparing for War, The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism and What Comes Next, is now available for pre-order.
[00:02:31]  And pre-orders matter!
[00:02:32]  They really signal to publishers and to journalists and others like that book is kind of something people are interested in.
[00:02:39]  So, if you are interested, Go ahead and check out the show notes and you can pre-order the book.
[00:02:44]  And if you're like, you know, I'm interested, Brad, but not that much, probably, you know, maybe contact your library or your university and maybe they want to order it.
[00:02:52]  So, all right.
[00:02:54]  Those are our announcements, Leah.
[00:02:55]  Here we go.
[00:02:57]  I was thinking last night of Christian musicians.
[00:03:00]  I'm going to put Christian in quotes because this is the debate.
[00:03:04]  Who we debated in youth group.
[00:03:06]  Were they still or ever a Christian, Christian artist?
[00:03:10]  So I think Amy, I'm going to throw these at you and then I want you to give me the ones I missed.
[00:03:15]  So I think Amy Grant, Amy Grant was like one of the biggest.
[00:03:19]  Right, right.
[00:03:21]  I remember, I'm going to throw some others at you here, Switchfoot made it big.
[00:03:25]  And yeah, right.
[00:03:26]  They were they were Christian rock band, alternative, whatever.
[00:03:30]  Yeah.
[00:03:31]  Here's one I'm going to throw people that you may not realize, Creed.
[00:03:34]  Creed.
[00:03:35]  Oh, yeah.
[00:03:36]  Creed, many of you know, as the wannabe version of Nickelback.
[00:03:41]  But nevertheless, in 90s youth group culture, There was a lot of talk of whether Creed was a Christian band.
[00:03:47]  And then I'm going to give you one more.
[00:03:48]  This is the big one.
[00:03:50]  You two, there was a time Bono was like Mr. Jesus.
[00:03:54]  And then do those hit for you?
[00:03:56]  Am I, you know, are there ones I missed?
[00:03:58]  What do you got here?
[00:03:59]  You know, I would say yes, those hit for me.
[00:04:02]  And just the whole question of what is a Christian band is such an important one because it, it teases out all of these assumptions about Who counts as Christian and what is the messaging of quote-unquote Christian music?
[00:04:18]  And that's a huge part of what my book's about.
[00:04:21]  I would say the only person I'd add to that would be kind of the original is he or isn't he, which would be Bob Dylan.
[00:04:29]  So yeah, Dylan had kind of a gospel experience.
[00:04:33]  And a Boardigan-ish kind of experience.
[00:04:36]  Sing about it.
[00:04:37]  Really one of my favorite Dylan songs, you got to serve somebody.
[00:04:40]  It may be the devil.
[00:04:41]  It might be the devil.
[00:04:42]  It might be the Lord, but you got to serve somebody.
[00:04:44]  So yeah, I think you had, I wish I could have been a fly on the wall.
[00:04:49]  You know, when young Brad Amnesia was having those conversations.
[00:04:55]  Did you, I got to ask you though, like which side of the line were you on?
[00:04:58]  Was it like Amy Grant is no longer or Or did you think that she still?
[00:05:03]  You know, I was I was less invested in Amy because I didn't I wasn't like that wasn't my jam in terms of music.
[00:05:11]  We were a little young for Amy to maybe being like.
[00:05:15]  You know, the one to ask about that, Switchfoot, right?
[00:05:18]  I think you're right.
[00:05:18]  Switchfoot, definitely we, we, we claimed as our own.
[00:05:22]  We were like, no, Switchfoot is the real deal.
[00:05:24]  They're still into Jesus.
[00:05:25]  And Creed, we weren't sure.
[00:05:28]  Like, you know, if you really looked at the lyrics, you could make the case about, you know, he, there's these verses about still small voice and... Right, right.
[00:05:36]  And hiya!
[00:05:38]  Yeah.
[00:05:39]  Wait, I got to tell you.
[00:05:41]  So I, I...
[00:05:42]  I think I tweeted about this a while ago that I was doing work on just research and stuff.
[00:05:47]  It was late.
[00:05:47]  I went, I went to bed like a classic academic.
[00:05:50]  I have probably 60 or 70 tabs open and I forgot that I had had Creed up and I opened my computer and it was just like, won't you take me higher?
[00:06:00]  And it was like, that is a weird way to wake up.
[00:06:03]  So that's my research story.
[00:06:05]  That's my alarm.
[00:06:06]  That's what I have as my alarm.
[00:06:07]  It's really, that's what I use.
[00:06:09]  So we're in good company.
[00:06:12]  There's also one, all right.
[00:06:14]  Some of you are listening and you're like, guys, please stop.
[00:06:16]  What are they talking about?
[00:06:16]  I just want the weekly roundup.
[00:06:18]  Please give us the depressing news.
[00:06:19]  Okay.
[00:06:19]  One more thing and then I'll be done.
[00:06:22]  A lot of youth group crushes on the young Mandy Moore because Mandy Moore was supposedly a Christian artist.
[00:06:29]  And and then by the time I was like in college, Mandy Moore was doing Saved with Macaulay Culkin and was very clearly was not on Team Jesus anymore.
[00:06:38]  So.
[00:06:40]  Yeah.
[00:06:40]  She's a huge Switchfoot fan.
[00:06:42]  Put their music in her movie.
[00:06:44]  Yeah.
[00:06:44]  Yeah.
[00:06:45]  She's borderline, I'd say.
[00:06:46]  Yeah.
[00:06:47]  What was that movie she was in?
[00:06:48]  They used Only Hope from Switchfoot, and now I forget the name.
[00:06:53]  I can't believe I'm blanking on the title, but it'll come to me halfway through the news roundup.
[00:06:57]  But yeah, Switchfoot's Only Hope.
[00:06:59]  Yeah.
[00:06:59]  She does a beautiful rendition of it in the film.
[00:07:02]  Yeah.
[00:07:02]  I hope your next book is on how all of those young girls slash women of the 90s who were stars came up in period culture and CC, like Britney.

=== Mandy Moore's Faith Journey (01:03) ===

[00:07:12]  Oh yeah, I've been there.
[00:07:13]  Mandy Moore.
[00:07:15]  You got it all.
[00:07:15]  Okay, Jessica.
[00:07:16]  I mean, all of those folks.
[00:07:18]  I'm sure you're on it already, but yeah.
[00:07:20]  Pretty major, and I'm so glad you brought up Sarah Mosliner because I'm a huge fan of her work.
[00:07:25]  And so, yes, I'm building on a lot of the stuff that she's done in her excellent Virgin Nation.
[00:07:32]  Such a great book.
[00:07:33]  Thanks for listening to this free preview of our Swag episode.
[00:07:37]  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.
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