One of the central admonitions within theologically conservative American Christianity is that Christians are not defined by a “spirit of fear.” What does this mean? Where does this way of talking come from? And what are its effects? Dan answers these questions in this first of paired episodes on this topic, decoding this language to reveal what’s really going on with this insistence on not experiencing fear in the Christian life.
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Hello and welcome to the series, It's in the Code, part of the podcast Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Dan Miller.
I am your host, and I am professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
As always, Straight White American Jesus and this series are offered in partnership with the Kapp Center at UCSB.
We thank them for their support.
Also, as always, I want to sincerely thank all of you for your support—those of you who listen, those of you who support.
Our podcast, Financially, those of you who contact me, DanielMillerSwag at Landmark.com, DanielMillerSWAJ.com.
As I was saying, those of you who contact me with ideas for this series, with feedback about other things, with questions, with comments, with insights, we value that so much.
This series is built on that and I can't do it without you.
People ask how long this series will go because they tell me that they still find it to be useful and I tell them As long as people are saying that, as long as folks have things worth talking about that they want to hear more about, we'll keep it going.
So thanks to all of you.
Before diving into today's episode, I do want to remind everybody that coming up in November, in just over a month, just a few weeks here, November 18th, 2022, we will, the podcast will, Straight White American Jesus will be having our first in-person event, live event.
Looking at Christian nationalism in the future of democracy.
That's the title.
We're really going to be looking at the 2022 midterms, which will have happened by then, sort of lessons that can be learned from that.
And we will be joined in speaking with what for us is a very exciting sort of who's who of people thinking about religion, politics, the religious in America, Christian nationalism.
So many of the folks whose names you will know from this podcast, from the work that Brad and I do, the things we talk about, so many of the interviews that he and I have done with others, folks like Robert Jones, Kyadi Joshi, Larisha Hawkins, Philip Gorski, Samuel Perry, Catherine Stewart, to name a few.
Bradley Onishi and I will be there, as will Sarah Mosliner, a friend and sort of sometimes host of the show.
Sarah and I will be moderating sort of roundtable discussions to talk about the midterms and what those mean.
So, if you go to BradleyOnishi.com slash nationalism, you can find out more about this.
Again, BradleyOnishi.com slash nationalism.
It's a live event.
You can order tickets for it.
And it will also be live streamed, so if you're not in Denver or can't make it to Denver, can't make it to the University of Denver, which is where it will also be held, join us live online and we would love to to participate with you in that way.
So Just want to throw that out.
If folks have questions, by all means, you can contact Brad, you can contact me, you can contact the podcast.
We would love to have as many people as possible.
First time we've tried it, and like everything else with this podcast, the success of it depends on all of you.
So please do check it out and think about participating if that's something that would be interesting for you.
All right, let's dive into today's episode.
I'm calling this one, Not a Spirit of Fear.
And I want to tackle an issue today that I think cuts the heart of a lot of contemporary conservative Christian identity.
As well as a lot of contemporary sort of what I call culture war language.
We're going to get into that issue more in the next episode.
For me, again, as with a lot of these episodes and these topics, this is very personal for me.
It's a defining feature of so much of the conservative Christianity that I grew up with.
Also, the conservative Christianity of which I was a part back in those days when I was a pastor in an evangelical church.
And many of you know that, know my story.
By all means, go back, listen to the recent kind of retrospective episode that we did on Straight White American Jesus, or some of the very, very first episodes we ever did talk about that.
But it's a sort of defining feature, and I know, again, as always, from hearing from so many others, that you see it and feel it too.
And I hear this and see this from observers of American religion and politics and nationalism and populism, but also the people that I work with as a coach.
Many of you know that I am a practitioner with the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery.
Working to provide coaching services for those who are trying to process or work through religious trauma.
Virtually all of the people that I encounter through the Center give voice to this.
And what it has to do with, the focus is the role of fear within contemporary conservative Christianity.
And specifically, the unique shape that this takes within that sort of subcultural context.
Because this expression of Christianity takes shape around the insistence, often a kind of bold, even militant assertion, that Christians do not live a life of fear.
That they are confident, that they have assurance, that they know that they are right, that they know that their God will win in the end, and so forth.
But nevertheless, fear remains a constant and defining feature of this Christian expression for millions of practitioners, people who are within the tradition and those who have left it.
And so as I was thinking about this, and again, as always, so many people reaching out and kind of bringing this to my attention and asking me to talk about this, and I've had it on the back burner for a while.
But as I sort of was putting this together, I realized that once again, this is another episode that really developed to the point where it's going to be two episodes.
So we're going to look at it over the next two episodes, this episode and the one that'll be released next week.
And what I want to look at today is really the way that this notion of fear and this language of not being afraid and so forth impacts really the consciousness of individual Christians within these kind of religiously and theologically conservative Christian contexts.
The reason I pause there is I think this language can make its way into other kinds of Christian contexts as well.
But I think that it, like so many of the things we talk about, it's a really distinctive way of talking and thinking and speaking within conservative Christian contexts.
And so that's really what I'm going to focus on today.
And what we'll get into next time is the way that this same mindset, the same dynamics that play out at, say, the level of the individual church or the individual congregation, play out socially and politically because it really is the same dynamic at work and there are some clear continuities and parallels to be developed there.
So that's what we'll do next time.
So while these movements, these congregations, conservative Christian groups, conservative Christian congregations, conservative Christian churches, Maybe individuals in your life who are conservative Christians, you will be familiar with this.
They project and even sort of fetishize an emphasis on sort of power and strength.
And this could be tied in with conceptions of masculinity and so many other things we talk about on the podcast.
But they project power and strength If we decode them just even a little, just for a few moments, and again, many of you have reached out and you see this, we can see that there's a deep-seated fear underneath those projections of power and strength.
In so many ways, the cultures of contemporary conservative Christianity and Christian nationalism, they reflect a kind of classically dysfunctional expressions of confidence and rage and anger as ways of masking Really fundamental emotions of fear and anxiety.
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