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Ep. 96 - ”History’s a Funny Thing:” Christian Antisemitism & the Holocaust w/ Dr. Lucas Wilson, PhD
90 Plays3 years ago
This week, we are once again joined by our good friend, Dr. Luke Wilson (that’s right, he’s a freakin’ doctor, now)! This time, Luke was kind enough to tell us a little bit about his two fields of focus - Holocaust studies and Critical Evangelicalism. Spoiler alert: there’s some overlap… Historically, the Christian community has played a large role in the persecution of their Jewish neighbors, and like so many other examples of persecution by a religious group, their spiritual beliefs are bent, stretched, and all together ignored in order to justify their actions. Was it the only factor? Not by a long shot. Were some of those instigators overstating their commitment to the church? Absolutely. Are Christians the only religious community to use their doctrine to justify atrocities? Not even close. However, Luke does a great job at giving us some context for Christian influence in the years leading up to the events of World War II, as well as some deep topics to think about. If you enjoy this discussion half as much as we love talking to Luke, you’re in for a real treat! Follow the good Dr. Wilson on Instagram (@lukeslamdunkwilson) and Twitter (@wilson_fw), and if you haven't already, check out his article in The Advocate about his conversion therapy experience at Liberty University, you can find it here.
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Transcript
Holocaust Studies and Trauma Transmission
00:00:00
Speaker
My work spans a few different disciplines. Most of what I've done up until this point has been in Holocaust studies. I specifically look at the transmission of trauma between Holocaust survivors and their children and their grandchildren. I also do work on the intersection of Holocaust history, literature and Christian theology and how Christian theology in a number of ways laid the seed bed for the Holocaust itself.
Sam and Casey's Travel Adventures
00:00:45
Speaker
Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Growing Up Christian. I'm Sam. And I'm Casey. And we've had a busy couple of weeks, Casey. We're both traveling men these days. Yeah, on the road. You are currently in an all wood room with what looks like to be a stacked washer and dryer combo next to you. Yeah, that's very good of you, actually. Yeah, I'm in an Airbnb in Kentucky. I'm drinking bourbon.
00:01:15
Speaker
made in Kentucky. It's like millennial inception. Oh, yeah. What kind of what's the name of that bourbon? Can you remember or did you just buy something that's on it? Some throwaway thirty dollar bottle. It's fine. Yeah, I mean, I will. I'll go through some Jim Bean pretty easily, so I'm not overly concerned with the quality all the time. I mean, I love a good quality bourbon or scotch or something like that, but I'll drink the cheap shit all day. Also,
00:01:44
Speaker
cheap scotch, right? Doesn't normally seem like a thing. I mean, you can obviously like quote unquote, uh, Kirkland Costco brand has like a $15 bottle of scotch. And I would definitely compare it to something like a Jim beam as far as quality scale obviously doesn't taste like it. Cause it still has that scotch taste. I don't know that I'd give it to a lot of people, especially people with higher standards or any standards really, but I,
00:02:11
Speaker
for 15 bucks or whatever it was, maybe it was 18, but still for a handle, I probably drank that too fast. I think, I don't know what the actual timeframe was, but it was probably like, that's why Scotch, honestly, good price, Scotch. Like I do enjoy it. I used to buy it more, but it's just so good that I drink too much of it. I'm like, oh, this is great. I'll just, I'll have another glass. And then like, well, I just spent $80 and it was gone in five days. So maybe I'll just hold off on doing that anytime soon.
00:02:41
Speaker
Dude, I think I think drinking Kirtland Scotch in Kirtland jeans, like while eating a tub of mini eclairs. I was thinking Kirtland as it gets. Kirtland corn. Yeah. Yeah. You know, dinner and dessert. That Costco brand, dude. That shit slaps.
00:03:02
Speaker
All right. So I was also trash. So I was in New York City this weekend, which is pretty cool. I mean, we took my kids and it was for some reason, my daughters had like this, like obsession with going to New York. So we were like, we have
00:03:21
Speaker
New York's fucking expensive. I have, I got hotel for free there because we have a, well, I guess it's not necessarily for free, but we have a Marriott card, which makes traveling a lot easier. You know, you just build up points and get free nights at a hotel and stuff. So we had enough points to get two nights in New York. So we're like, Oh, perfect.
00:03:40
Speaker
I was all on board. I'm like, this won't be an overly costly weekend. And, uh, turns out even, even with, uh, two, yeah, right. Even with two free nights at a hotel, turns out New York is still actually really expensive after you pay for parking and you know, your kids get tired of walking. So you have to fucking Uber places or take a cab or whatever, but it's like,
00:04:02
Speaker
But then you go out to eat and everything's twice as expensive. And by the end of it, you're like, well, this like not expensive, quote unquote, free weekend away got very expensive very quickly. So I stopped having as much fun when things start getting expensive because I'm a curmudgeon. And even though I don't really look at our bank account, it bothers the shit out of me when I'm spending too much money.
00:04:26
Speaker
Well, you know, it takes a lot of money to keep that big city afloat, especially when, you know, you've got 75 percent of the real estate there owned by Chinese billionaires that pay no property tax. Yeah, I'm sure that's part of it. I we did drive by Trump Plaza at some point. I guess he's probably got a few of them, but I thought that was cool. And it felt like I saw all these trendy looking young people eating outside of it. And I'm like,
00:04:54
Speaker
I mean, at the end of the day, capitalism still rules, I guess, because I bet none of them voted for Trump, but all of them were happy to patronize his plaza.
Small-town Parade and Religious Reflections
00:05:03
Speaker
Yeah. It's like, wow, I've never seen an above ground septic tank before.
00:05:08
Speaker
I actually speaking of what you said regarding real estate have something I do want to get into. But before we touch on anything remotely serious, I have a couple of things that I think are worth talking about. And we'll see how quickly this is like rapid fire around. We'll see how quickly we get through them. But the first one is what I was most interested to tell you. So I was cleaning out my grandmother's my grandmother passed away a number of months ago. But
00:05:35
Speaker
she has a ton of shit in her house like her basement is packed to the gills with stuff that's i mean it's all essentially like trash because the basement is a damp basement everything's water damage dude she has life magazines dating back to like 1952 all the way to like probably the late 90s every but i'm knocking like every issue just stacked in boxes i think i
00:06:03
Speaker
had to have moved over a thousand pounds of life magazines to take them out of the basement old people like even paper products which are consequently like the heaviest thing in the world to move yeah and dude if they were in good condition it would have been sick i probably would have like tried going through some of them and like found some neat stuff but all of them were water damaged
00:06:22
Speaker
Um, yeah. And I bet dude, a collector probably would have had a fucking field day with those things. I mean, I flipped through some of them and you're like, cool. 1958. Like, let's see what the big news stories were in 1958. And I mean, it's neat when you go through it or even see what the cover of each one was. And you go, that was big news in that decade or that year. But like,
00:06:46
Speaker
Now, nobody's going to talk about it. It's not coming up as relevant at all for anybody. And I think that's what's neat about it, seeing what was relevant and interesting and on people's radar at the time versus what isn't. And then even still, what is? What kind of political things are happening where you're like, oh, yeah, I knew about that. I learned about that. So I don't know. It's really neat to go through them and check out the history. But I think what's even more neat is another magazine that I found while I was there.
00:07:16
Speaker
which my that at some point the basement was I don't know if it was it was my uncle's bedroom um and that was what not zoned for a bedroom that would not pass today but it worked then so
00:07:31
Speaker
Basically, they just put up wood panel on the walls and threw down a carpet and called it a bedroom. The only exit was a bulkhead on the other side, completely windowless, not even those tiny windows that just let in a little bit of light. So you don't want to kill yourself if you're down there for too long. And there's my uncle. I mean, my grandfather had like
00:07:51
Speaker
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of records. He loved jazz, most of them were jazz records, but he probably had a good 300 records. And a lot of them were ruined, broken, they'd just been down there for like 30, 40 years. And in the back corner, there was an old record cabinet. And I'm like, so I open it up, I pull some of the records out, you know, some of the vinyl is broken. It's all
00:08:20
Speaker
Again, everything's water damage and age down there. It hasn't been touched in so long. And after like, so I'm trying to get stuff moving to like throw stuff out. And what, like, what are we going to try to get rid of and just put it in the dumpster? And where are we going to try to maybe give away? Some people might want the old records. I don't know. I think everything needs to go in a dumpster, but people are having a hard time. Some people have a hard time with just putting everything in a dumpster. So I moved this record cabinet and underneath it, I find a June 1980 penthouse magazine.
00:08:53
Speaker
And it was completely water damage as well. But I just think what was funny about it is I'm like this was I mean, 1980 was 42 years ago. So that was I mean, it could I don't know how I think my uncle was like 63, maybe 64. So it's possible. I don't think he was still living at home at the time and especially living in the basement. But it's also possible. Like my grandfather had that hidden under his record cabinet and maybe he had a record player on top of that cabinet and would go down to
00:09:22
Speaker
quote unquote, listen to music, you know, it's gonna say turn on some jazz really loud and be like, don't disturb me. I'm meditating. Yes, I'm, I'm getting heavily invested in these jazz tunes. And I don't want anyone to say down here. Everyone in the family is like, we know not to bother dad when he's listening to his jazz music. That's personal alone jazz time. Okay. But hands down here. He
00:09:50
Speaker
my grandfather was a funny guy. Like I knew him as very, very quiet, um, very reserved. He would get upset with us for being too loud when he was watching Jeopardy. So to think of him as like having his private time down there with that one 1980s June catalog would have been us. I was just
00:10:10
Speaker
I thought it it kind of humanized him a little even if it's not his I'm pretending like it is because it's just like oh he was just just another regular ass guy that I is like a seven or eight year old had I had no clue what it was like to be an adult human at that point in life now is that like is that like hardcore stuff or is that like a
00:10:30
Speaker
like a playboy or something like that. It's nothing. I don't. It's like playboy. Yeah, I will. I don't actually have never looked in a playboy magazine to be perfectly honest, because we had the Internet by the time I was looking for that kind of content.
00:10:44
Speaker
Um, but I did obviously crack open this magazine. Like you don't just find that and be like, well, I guess I'll put that back. You're like, what the fuck is going on here? And you're like, but what's interesting about it is it's, it's a, it's literally, it was almost entirely articles. So like that, that joke of like, I get it for the articles that guys would say,
00:11:08
Speaker
Actually wasn't as irrelevant as I thought it was like only like the oh look almost all the pages were like glued together probably because my grandfather came in between each page, but it it you had to like pry it open and then it would you know each page would like leave Yeah, yeah, so like when you're done with it you just run a line of goo and seal it up So I didn't get
00:11:35
Speaker
A full clear picture of what kind of content there was there, but like it seemed like it was directly in the middle of the magazine. There was just some like people doing naked stuff and then the rest on the on the before and after that was like it seemed like it was all articles and I was like, oh, that's fascinating. And so what I did when I was after I like.
00:11:56
Speaker
looked at it to check out what the fuck a penthouse magazine. That was the first I'm fucking 34. And that was the first time I've ever seen a penthouse magazine. And like I said, I've never seen a playbook. The whole like nudie mag thing completely missed me in life. Never got to go out into the woods and find some old pervert stash or anything like that. So I just tucked it right back under that that record. But yeah, the
00:12:22
Speaker
record cabinet and just put it back to where it was. I was like, I'll let somebody else find this. I made me a little bit sad that I didn't have the kind of family where
00:12:31
Speaker
I could just bring that out and show people what I found. Like that would have been so much more fun, right? If I had a kind of family that would have found that shit kind of funny. And maybe they would have. It's possible if I wasn't there and they found it, they would laugh about it. But I just don't have the kind of relationship with my family where I'm like, I'm going to bring this out and we'll all have a good laugh. It just, that would have been very uncomfortable for me. And I probably would have just put myself in the dumpster to be taken away.
00:12:57
Speaker
Yeah, it's like even if they don't care, really, and they probably have a pageantry of caring. Yeah. And my uncle and my aunts and they were around and I'm like, this is all of it would just get to to uncomfortable. So I just put it back where it was and hope that, you know, my mom or dad or one of my uncles finds it when they next time they end up there.
00:13:22
Speaker
What's like the worst thing to find like within the realm of reason, nothing illegal will be like the worst thing, the most embarrassing thing to like come across in your grandpa's life magazine stash.
00:13:37
Speaker
Well, before you said nothing illegal, I thought immediately like a box of fingers or something like that. But I don't know, man. I can't think of anything awful of fun. Like, I mean, nothing more interesting than a penthouse magazine. I mean, maybe what? Like a box of a box of strap ons would have been interesting. We just we just started that new Netflix Dahmer series.
00:14:03
Speaker
OK, I see where you're going. And I don't want to spoil things, but, you know, like stumbling across a like a mannequin torso that had like lip prints all over it or
00:14:19
Speaker
you know, dried just discharge would be upsetting. Where discharge is more upsetting than like semen. Just saying discharge. I've not. I don't love that term. Seminole fluid. Perfect. It's more medical. No discharge.
00:14:38
Speaker
Something like that where you just think, this isn't the best way for you to express your needs. This is weird. Have you ever seen the videos of the dudes that wear like the latex lady masks?
00:15:03
Speaker
Oh, yeah, like the full latex suits kind of. And then the kid can ask and you like unzip the mouth or some shit. Oh, no, no, these ones are like it's like you skinned a Barbie and then slid that overhead. So you kind of look like a sex doll, but you're you know, there's eyes cut out of it. It's it's strange. It's a strange way to express, you know, whatever that that is. There's like whole communities of them that have like these
00:15:32
Speaker
You know, latex, um, lady suits. I guess it's not hurting anybody or anything like that. It's just, it's, it's unsettling to see. I don't know why there isn't like a good horror movie where that's, that's the thing that somebody wears to kill people or like, even like a, you know, any movie where someone commits like a crime that they know is going to be recorded.
00:15:55
Speaker
where they rob a bank and they put on like old president masks or some shit. Why don't they wear those? I think that's basically it's like it's like leather face if he skinned a real doll. Yeah, I mean, I would prefer horror movies to incorporate more creepy shit like that. Well, interesting. Yeah, that is too bad that you couldn't just bring it up and have fun with it.
00:16:21
Speaker
Yeah. All right. It wasn't exactly rapid fire, but the next thing I'm jumping to is, um, my town, I've talked a good bit about my small town and it's goofy quirks and shit like that. But, uh, we had, we were supposed to pre COVID have our like 100th anniversary as a town. And it's, I mean, you can, if you're having a hundredth anniversary anniversary celebration of a small town, you can imagine that some of the stuff is
00:16:50
Speaker
just pretty silly but we because we didn't have it now it's technically like the 102nd anniversary of our town and they had a whole day really the whole summer like had events related to it then one day last week it was a whole bunch of stuff that centered around a full day of extravaganza and there was a parade and it was a long parade
00:17:14
Speaker
too long of a parade and I hate parades. I'm pretty sure I've talked about hating parades before, uh, here, but it was what you'd expect. And okay. So to be clear, I would never go to a parade ever. But the only reason I did is because my wife's grandfather is the, he was like the grand marshal of the parade and he was riding in the front car. Uh, he's a big, like, I mean, he's, he's a big name in the town. He taught here for a long time. He coached here. Like he's got a,
00:17:42
Speaker
a baseball field named after him at my kid's elementary school. Like his name is, like everybody knows him in this town. He's like the mayor kind of. And it's like, so that's cool. Like I was really neat to see like so many people be like excited to see him. And he was awarded like a
00:18:04
Speaker
he was given I forget what it was but he was basically like given this like he got there was a softball game that they organized and he got to throw out he threw out the first pitch for and they award him with a bat that had stuff engraved on it and it was just like a nice ceremony for like how much he's given to the town and
00:18:22
Speaker
Uh, but this parade at the very end of it, dude, um, the, the local, the local Baptist church here had a float and that float consisted of their worship team playing worship songs.
00:18:38
Speaker
Oh, cool. So we had like a mobile generator stage. Yes, that's what it was. And dude, I don't want to throw shade at like church bands because look, I know that's working on volunteer shit, but that's fine in church. Do you want to put that on a parade? My feeling is no after listening to it. And as they go by, they're singing the song of the days of Elijah. Do you remember that one?
00:19:06
Speaker
I don't know. All right. Well, I wasn't prepared for this, but let's see if I can pull up some of it. Can you sing it? No, I don't like to sing. So I won't. Days of Elijah. But the chorus is what I thought was funny. And it got me thinking about a whole bunch of other things. But it's like these are the days of Elijah declaring the word of the Lord.
00:19:30
Speaker
And these are the days of your servant Moses, righteousness being restored. A lot of this is very like Jewish stuff. So it's a lot of like appropriation or supercessionism. But what I thought was so funny is like the chorus for it. And I had never really thought much about it, but it's, behold, he comes riding in the clouds, shining like the sun at the trumpet call. Lift your voice, the year of Jubilee, out of Zion's hills,
00:19:59
Speaker
salvation comes. And I don't know if you recall what Jubilee was, but it was basically this like every seven years, all debts are forgiven, all slaves are set free, and very much in the Bible, the Old Testament, certainly. Sorry, the Hebrew scriptures. And I just find it so funny that
00:20:23
Speaker
Christians sing that song around the globe in Baptist, conservative, Southern Baptist, any sort of church that has more conservative undertones. And here they are singing about this concept of Jubilee, which is complete and total debt forgiveness every seven years. And 95% of those people would shit their pants over the idea of any level of student loan forgiveness.
00:20:48
Speaker
Yeah, I think that that concept would not fly today at all. No, it actually didn't fly historically because there is legitimately no historical record of something like that ever happening.
00:21:02
Speaker
It seems unlikely that it ever actually happened. It's possible, but it's very unlikely. So even the people who were like, had that in their book were like, yeah, we get it, but like, maybe we'll just wait till next year. And they just did that indefinitely forever until we're in the year 2000. Yeah. Like, uh,
00:21:22
Speaker
Like, well, I like the idea, but I did just loan out some money last year. Last week? So it seems a little premature. You know, I'm not ready to sign away the obligations here. Yeah, it sucked for the people who got the calendar wrong and they thought like Jubilee was like just a few days ago.
00:21:44
Speaker
but they had lent people a bunch of money last week and they were just like, just fucked out of their finances straight into servitude. And then they had to wait seven years to get their life back. I'm ruined for the Lord. All right. Do I have anything else? I feel like there was something else that I wanted to talk about. Okay. You decide. So we don't like completely run out of time. Do I jump into a serious topic or do I keep going with stuff? That's ridiculous.
00:22:13
Speaker
Hmm. Let's go. I'm going to drift towards a more serious topic because I keep talking and I think we need to hear more from you.
00:22:20
Speaker
Thank you for asking me and for hearing my perspective. Yes. Well, you can thank my white male privilege for dominating your white male privilege. Where is my white male privilege? That's what I want to know. You don't have it anymore. I took it away from you and I will speak for you now. Go ahead, answer the question. I'll wait. What was the question? The original one that you gave me shit for not letting you answer.
00:22:47
Speaker
I'm I'm lost about a series. Are we going in a serious direction and having a conversation about something? Oh, yes, I think you know what? I think I'd love to go in a serious direction. Thank you. Okay, you're welcome. It's it's nice to be here on the same page. Yeah, no, you are not heard and practically not heard. This is what I chose and you just are going along with it as a sub. All
Economic Inequalities in NYC
00:23:12
Speaker
right. So when I was in New York this week and I
00:23:17
Speaker
thought a lot, you had already joked about the Chinese owning a bunch of housing developments in New York. I assume you have your sources to cite for that, and I'll let you do that later. But I- Yeah, you know, internets, papers, magazines, journalist bloggers.
00:23:38
Speaker
uh no dude it was crazy like being there and you look i mean all the buildings are obviously very tall and above the first and second floors essentially all businesses but what was crazy is like everywhere we would go like and all the reasons anybody goes to new york is you get a hotel and you walk around and you go into stores and you
00:24:02
Speaker
are interested in where you're going. Maybe you go to a bar. Maybe you go to a nice restaurant. Maybe you go into a Starbucks, for Christ's sake, because they're fucking everywhere. And it's like we went into, I mean, places we went. There's like a Harry Potter World Store that opened up. That was really cool. And then there's like, we went to, I think it's FAO. It's like a toy. It's like a famous toy store. I forget what it is. It's FA something. FAO Schwartz.
00:24:30
Speaker
Yeah, that's it. FAO. Okay, so I was right. It's FAO Schwartz. And we went there with the kids. And I'm like, holy shit, every single place we've gone is, it's all almost entirely people my age working. And they're working, you know, you're working at a Starbucks, you're working at FAO Schwartz, you're working at Harry Potter World, you're working in, it's all retail stores, coffee shops, restaurants. And I'm like,
00:24:54
Speaker
New York pricing and is unbelievable. I don't know how anybody affords to live in York. It costs a shit ton of money to park. And I just found it so I think it really hit me being there like where you are really like where I live. I don't think the juxtaposition is there quite the same. But in New York, we're like every almost everyone who lives and works here and has and faces the public.
00:25:20
Speaker
like a ton of these people all work in places where it's like I don't know what they get paid. I imagine it's not as good as the people who are working three or four floors above them in an office that wear a suit and tie to work. And when you look at like the the amount of housing
00:25:37
Speaker
and how the developments just like, they'll put up like a high rise. It'll take up like a, you know, an eighth of a block and they'll build hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of apartments that some rich motherfucker owns that prices out a ton of people. And they just, I don't know, man, I was just really blown away by like the amount of like regular ass workers there were versus how impossible it is to live in New York and how
00:26:02
Speaker
unfair. I mean, we've talked a lot about how unfair our economic system is in shit on this podcast, but I don't know, man, it felt like it was slapping me in the face the whole time because it's like,
00:26:14
Speaker
Why I don't get why people live in those places. It's really bad. I think there's there's like a romance to it for sure. I mean, you look at how many TV shows and stuff like that are centered around New York or L.A. or whatever. I mean, like I feel like half the people we talk to as guests on this show are in L.A. I guess if you want to be in the entertainment industry or something like that, I mean, you know, it makes sense that you would live there. But
00:26:44
Speaker
I don't know, I don't get why. If you grew up there and that's your home, sure, makes sense. I think a lot of those people are Long Island and Queens and stuff like that, suburbs that I know the name of and have never been to.
00:27:02
Speaker
But I don't know. I don't get why people try to settle down in those places knowing that they're that crazy expensive. Actually, I just watched this video. I can't remember what publication did it. It's on YouTube, but
00:27:21
Speaker
They talked about Billionaires Row, which is like a street in New York that's all like these really tall, really skinny buildings that are just like luxury apartments that sell for crazy astronomical rates. You know, they have broken the most expensive condo, most expensive, you know, housing or whatever rate several times. And like almost all of these things are empty.
00:27:46
Speaker
because they're not really useful as a home. They're useful as a place for you to store money, especially, like I said, if you're a billionaire in another country that, you know, needs a safe place to store money for, you know, whenever, uh, that's a great way to do it. I mean, our real estate market climbs and climbs and climbs, and, um, it's just a good way to go. You know, there was this video was talking about how
00:28:15
Speaker
The way that New York's property tax assessments are set up, it basically allows builders to continually build these like high-end, really expensive housing projects and
00:28:30
Speaker
for people to purchase those at, you know, with like crazy low property tax rates. It really don't correlate to the value of the house itself. And I don't know, the whole thing is just strange. And you listen to, I mean, I listen to so many podcasts with comedians and, you know, they go half and half. Half are from LA, half are from New York. That's kind of the split, right?
00:28:57
Speaker
And you listen to a lot of the New York comments talk about just how New York City is sort of changing and dying in a way because because of those factors like it's so expensive for normal people to live there and you know people are leaving because it's just hard to make it there and really at the end of the day like
00:29:19
Speaker
Does it have the cultural backbone that it used to that made it worth the price? I mean, people fled LA like crazy, you know, in the pandemic and post pandemic and stuff. Yeah, I think partly because you look at how much you pay and property taxes and all of these different things, how much just the cost of anything is higher there.
00:29:41
Speaker
And, you know, when you went through this time period where you really couldn't enjoy any of that, I mean, they had some of the toughest restrictions. You couldn't go outside for time periods. I mean, you couldn't use certain types of, I mean, you couldn't dine, you couldn't do this and that. I think a lot of people just started looking at it and saying like, this just isn't worth it. Like the benefit structure is not here anymore for what it costs to be here.
00:30:06
Speaker
Yeah, it feels like New York has to be that way, but there's so many people, dude. I mean, you're constantly walking by thousands of people. And I was just shocked, I guess, by, like I, dude, I went, like I got, right before we left, I went into a coffee shop next to the parking garage where I left my car that weekend. Dude, this, this coffee shop was, there wasn't a single table in there. You walked in and you had like a three foot,
00:30:36
Speaker
entryway like you're like three feet between the counter and the door you're probably two and a half feet to your right which is where they kept like cream and sugar and shit like that and then right in front of you is obviously like the count like i said the counter and then there's three baristas and like this like it feels like a four by four area in the back and i'm like
00:30:57
Speaker
Where do they keep the where they keep their anything where they keep fucking literally anything? And I overheard someone go. He came in after me. I overheard like I was like far away and barely heard it. He was right next to me. Like I had a backpack on.
00:31:14
Speaker
And we could barely like get by each other when he was trying to get to the cream and sugar. And I was trying to get to the door. We had to like get sideways and sucker stomachs in and try not to touch private parts. And I was like,
00:31:28
Speaker
On my way out, I hear him go, is this the same they asked you if he had a punch card or something like that for the for their place. And he was like, no, I don't I don't think so. It's like I feel like I've been here before, but it's just the same place I was here like a couple of months ago. And they're like, no, no, this is a new place. We just we just opened. And I'm like, what the fuck is the turnover? Like you're getting a six by six square to open another coffee shop. Like obviously they're roasting their beans somewhere else. They're
00:31:57
Speaker
whatever, like that, whatever their main hub is, it's probably somewhere that's more affordable. But like, what do you, what are they doing? Like this? And for this guy to go and then have it be like recently turned over, I'm like, what's the turnover rate for businesses in New York that don't make it? Like unbelievable. It's got to be so high. And I just, I don't know, man, I was, there are times where you're like, Oh, you hear about living in New York and it seems kind of cool. You, you, you walk out your,
00:32:25
Speaker
apartment and you can you walk everywhere or you get on the subway or whatever. But Boston I guess is kind of similar. But I feel like Boston is much better. I loved Boston when I lived in it. I love going to Boston. New York is cool. But like it's also it is cool. Like I'm not trying to downplay
00:32:45
Speaker
It's a neat. I will. I always love the idea of visiting New York. I want to go back. I would love to go with just my wife and like go to neat bars and good restaurants where, you know, the kids don't complain about the spaghetti sauce not being good, even though it's obviously better than any place I've ever had spaghetti in their life. And it's fucking spaghetti is love spaghetti. No, my kids actually love it. We went to an Italian restaurant. We decided to go to eat to a nice place once.
00:33:12
Speaker
And it was a good place to go for kids cause they had like a family style thing. So we just ordered like spaghetti and meatballs. And then we ordered like a half size of something that her and I would like, but it was phenomenal.
00:33:24
Speaker
And it made me want to be like, it makes me want to go with Jill just to like enjoy New York city as an adult. Uh, cause I mean, hands down, they probably have some of the best food you've ever had anywhere. You know what I mean? And uh, but then the people working in these restaurants where you're getting the best food you've ever had, like,
00:33:44
Speaker
restaurant, dude, make like doing a food service and whatever is like, that's a tough industry to make it in. And there's thousands of restaurants in New York. So wherever you're going, it's like people go to the place in their area. But if you don't like you as an individual, if you live there, couldn't go to every place, you couldn't try out all the restaurants in New York. You know what I mean?
00:34:07
Speaker
Yeah, I mean it's so much from what I've heard. And I think that's part of the appeal too is just there's so many things there and so many, you know. Yeah.
00:34:18
Speaker
I don't know. I think moving to Wichita from, you know, like that Flint and surrounding area of Michigan, we didn't have much for local restaurants and stuff like that there. And even moving to Wichita, I'm like, man, it's like overwhelming how many different restaurants there are here. And I don't know how you'd ever try all of these. I can't imagine in a place like that where you actually have like a decent sized population
00:34:45
Speaker
to pick from. Yeah, I think what really just what struck me going to all these places is that working a customer facing job in New York is not easy. And I, you know, I have a salary job in a corporate office.
00:35:04
Speaker
And I do well for my area. I do okay. Once I shift into a school system, I'm going to take a pay cut and that's going to be really tough. But for what I do and where I live, I do okay. And I'm thinking about all these jobs that I watch people do where I'm like,
00:35:25
Speaker
There's no fucking chance that I want to do any of these jobs. I honestly think working in a Starbucks in New York and having or there was this kind of it was a bagel shop, dude. There's this bagel shop down the street from the hotel I was staying in lying out the door for at least six hours. You know, you wake up in the morning and maybe that's an exaggeration. But I woke up. We went out to breakfast with the kids.
00:35:52
Speaker
When we left, there was still a line out the door that I could see the bagel shop from where we were eating breakfast and the line never got smaller. And I'm like, you're that, that is awful. I would never want to work that. I think what I do isn't as hard as dealing, doing a customer facing job in New York, where you have people who hate standing in line, have somewhere to go are in a rush. And it's like a busy ass city, dude. Everyone needs to be somewhere and thinks that they're more important than everyone else.
00:36:22
Speaker
that they're the only person in the planet running late and i'm like that those jobs suck they're not easy and i and all these like you think about all these corporations that own them or these corporations that own the real estate that they're in or own the real estate that people rent and you just think about how like the
00:36:39
Speaker
the average individuals just constantly continuously fucked over because they don't put on a tie and go to the office two stories up while they're serving these office people, this stuff and getting berated by them. I don't know, man. I just really like, there's such a serious juxtaposition in New York where you don't get to like, it's hard to partition those two things. You don't get to just go about your business and be like, okay, people who work at McDonald's don't deserve as much as me because they don't work as hard or care as much or
00:37:08
Speaker
Anyone can do it, but I don't honestly think that's the case in a lot of places. I just, I'm like, I see. What are you going to do that? I mean, not all jobs are fulfilling. Not all work is like everyone's passion to do. There's jobs out there that are just jobs. And some people just want to go do a job and then go home and do what they really love. You know, I mean, that's, I don't know.
00:37:35
Speaker
I think what is there to say about it? I mean, it's like there. I think those are a lot of those jobs are temporary jobs for people who are on their way to something that they really find fulfilling.
00:37:50
Speaker
I think where the problem is, is like, okay, yeah, not everybody gets to do something that's like their passion at all times. How do we make sure that they're making enough money to survive? We need people to do those jobs. We need people to work at the bagel shop, right?
00:38:11
Speaker
How do we make sure that we're making life at least somewhat comfortable for the person who does work at the bagel shop dealing with customers on a day-to-day basis? Right.
Impact of Corporate Housing in NYC
00:38:22
Speaker
I mean, I think that's my ultimate point here is like,
00:38:27
Speaker
that you can do these jobs in the city and just like basically be destitute is like what I found so inferiority. Cause it's not even always like a one stop. Oh, this is my stop. This is one stop to get to where I want to go. It's like you're like in your thirties or forties or fifties and you, these are like, these are the jobs that are available because there's more people in New York than there probably is jobs. Uh, and you,
00:38:52
Speaker
or jobs that you might want. I don't know, man. I'm just like, I just found it very eye opening in the way that you're like, people have to do these jobs. Everyone who works in the corporate offices that show up and depend on their coffee or their bangles or whatever. Like I think that what I found so frustrating is like when you think about the wages people make and how people will like,
00:39:17
Speaker
just kind of demean entry level positions like that because any like, Oh, I guess anyone can get them. Sometimes that's like all anyone can get. Maybe people like doing it too. That's also fine. But either way, when you look at the amount of money that's wrapped up in a city like that and the how like
00:39:36
Speaker
It's just the imbalance of it's not hard to funnel and sink a little bit more money into these first and second floor businesses or into the people who manage them or run them or make sure that they can even exist. So that way the people who work on the next 12 to 23 floors can
00:39:57
Speaker
keep doing their shit in New York. Because if any of those first couple, I mean, if any of those like first and second story businesses just stop existing there, like New York culture also dies. People don't go want to live there, work there, put on that suit and go to the 45th floor of some stupid fucking sky rise. Like, I don't know, man, New York is just so bizarre. I found that I've been there before, but for some reason, something about it stuck out to me this time is particularly bizarre in the way that
00:40:27
Speaker
in a small landscape, everyone is like, you could have like low income housing and then like the next block at the, you could have this skyscraper and the top floor is like this penthouse suite. And it's just, it's strange. That's all it's like, it's just, I think it's headed for a correction.
00:40:47
Speaker
I mean, ultimately, like, I think that's what we're starting to see with some of these, you know, areas where it's become so hard to exist unless you make a certain amount and stuff like that is, I think it's heading for a correction. The thing that, that bothers me is just that, you know, now we see all of these like corporate entities and, and
00:41:11
Speaker
financial firms and stuff like that that are making it impossible for people to live.
00:41:17
Speaker
other places, you know, places that aren't cultural hubs by buying up real estate and stuff like that, like BlackRock and some of these companies that are that are buying up all of the residential real estate and stuff. That's that's the stuff that I think is just ultimately like the most sinister is like your option if you're in a place like New York or something and you're finding it just impossible. It's so hard to live that it's taking the joy out of living there.
00:41:48
Speaker
Yeah, your option to move is made that much harder by the fact that like, you know, an equity fund comes in and buys up, you know, 70% of the of the mortgages that are available on, you know, residential real estate in a place like Wichita or
00:42:06
Speaker
you know, Omaha, Nebraska, or Louisville, Kentucky, or you name it. You know, any of these smaller cities and the sunshine belt and stuff that are hot spots right now. I mean, I have a friend that lives in Phoenix and moved there, you know, years ago with the intent to like save up and buy a house and stuff. And right now, if you look at numbers, I mean, Phoenix is one of the most out of sync
00:42:33
Speaker
markets in the United States. I mean, the real estate market is astronomical. Inflation is heavy there. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that big equity firms are buying up a lot of the available housings that's there. So you're taking away the option of people who are even willing to leave those hotspot areas and move to someplace more affordable. And that is completely unsustainable.
00:43:01
Speaker
And this is going to bite us. This is going to lead to like real pain across the country unless we do something to regulate this. I mean, they should not be able to come in and buy. This is like the last possible way for normal people to build some sort of wealth throughout their their lifetime. You know, it's it's home ownership.
00:43:25
Speaker
And the fact that they're taking that away from average people who are, you know, working these middle class jobs that we need, we need those people. We need the person who's willing to work at the bagel shop, you know, and maybe he's not going to make his money as like a real estate developer or something like that. But you know that that.
00:43:43
Speaker
The dream that existed that like, well, you know, you work hard, you save your money, you buy a house, you can send your kids to college. Like all of that is a threat because of how we've allowed these like equity firms and stuff like that. And some of these, I mean, college is a whole nother topic, but the way that the cost structure is totally out of control because of those things is it's upsetting and it's going to bite us.
00:44:10
Speaker
Yeah, like those are things that are gonna lead to real disk, you know malcontent and stuff across the country and I don't know. I mean, that's one of those depressing issues where you're like, I don't see a way out of this because who in the world is gonna stand up to these people?
00:44:28
Speaker
Yeah, I know. And housing, it's like there is not enough housing for people who need it. It's like so that the option is, I guess, to build, but you can't build in the city, so you get to go somewhere else. But also building materials are an all time high. So once again, we end a conversation with everything's terrible and it's not going to get better. I think let me let me let me lift the spirits a little bit. OK, because I am in Kentucky right now.
00:44:56
Speaker
and I went to an amazing store that I loved called Rural King. You ever been to a Rural King? I've never heard of a Rural King. Me neither. But they had a number of really fun t-shirts, hats, and socks for sale that I thought were a lot of fun. Can I read you some of these? Yep, let's hear them. Okay, so this was an entire rack of socks.
00:45:23
Speaker
that I thought were really fun. So this first pair, this is their cow spot pattern, right? And it says move mountains with three O's, Matthew 1720. Beautiful. That's in the Bible, right? Matthew is, yeah, he's in the Bible. Matthew's a Bible guy. Yeah. Shout out Matthew if you're listening.
00:45:51
Speaker
This one has little guacam or avocados all over it says Jesus guacs my world. Okay. I love it. I need those fun people love avocados even Christians like avocados. That's one thing that Christians and really any any variation of Christian and millennial
00:46:16
Speaker
Can can get on board with his avocados, man. Avocado toast. That's just blown up. Avocados are the new bacon. They are. And they are priced like it, too. These ones have horses on them, little ponies and hearts, and they say, love your neighbor. Mark 1231. All Bible songs.
00:46:45
Speaker
Yeah, this one's got a little pigs on there. It says hog wild for Jesus. First John four nine. Oh, wild. That's good. Ball hog wild for Jesus. Yeah. This one has llamas on it and it says no problema. God is in control. Who makes this shit?
00:47:09
Speaker
It's a company called Bless My Soul, S-O-L-E. Okay, I saw that coming. Got a cactus pear that says, stick with Jesus. Oh, this one's fun. I didn't say Jesus was my prick.
00:47:28
Speaker
I would have bought a pair if it would have said that. This one says, it says, what a friend we have in Jesus, but it's the friends logo. Okay. Friends is a TV show that's popular. It's kind of like family friendly in a way. Yeah. Yeah. I hope they get sued for some light sexual humor. You may want to talk to your pastor before you let your kids watch it, but
00:47:55
Speaker
Jesus makes me a happy camper, his little campers on it. And then there was a number of different t-shirts that were really fun. Well, one said one has like a pioneer man with a gun and it says God, family, firearms and freedom. Now that doesn't have a scriptural reference underneath it, but I think it's kind of like because you could quote the whole Bible. How do you pick one? What part of the Bible doesn't address that?
00:48:25
Speaker
This one is like a parts diagram of a Colt 1911, which is a real popular pistol. And it says, the anatomy of my rights. That's cool. I mean, your rights are the entirety of a disassembled firearm. Okay.
00:48:41
Speaker
yeah you wouldn't have rights unless you had the the the right to shoot at someone's head right okay this one looks like a hinds logo and it says mayo light shine for jesus spread it around matthew 5 16 mayo that's m-a-y-o yeah like mayonnaise like mayonnaise
00:49:03
Speaker
Um, yeah, so there was a whole bunch of them that were really fun. I liked this one a lot. It said, uh, it's Bravo Lima echo Sierra Sierra echo Delta, which spells out the acronym for blessed. That is so dumb. Is that like, it's so bad. It hurts. Is that like what you say over a walkie talkie? Yeah, I think so. Alpha Bravo Delta beta gamma.
00:49:32
Speaker
Yeah, something along those lines. Alpha Bravo one. This is Alpha. Whiskey tank. Are you picking up Alpha Bravo one? This is I repeat, I repeat, this is Alpha Bravo two. We have a Delta Beta Gamma in sight. Is that how they do it? Yeah, I think so. Perfect. I mean, I feel like you're kind of stealing Valor right now, but dude, it's not long. I'm blessed with that shit. I didn't steal anything.
00:49:57
Speaker
The only one that I bought was it says buck fever and it has a cowboy riding a deer. I thought that was kind of fun. I bought a medium though, and it says pretty shrunk cotton, but like it's pretty tight in the bus. I'm a busty boy. Yeah, I think I had at one point posted on Instagram a joke about how it was it was you holding up a shirt. And I said the only joke here is that
00:50:26
Speaker
Casey thinks of the medium. So it turns out I'm right. I am buying more larges now because I have to start buying shirts that don't fit like a sports bra kid from recess who the bard who has his shirt doesn't have a shirt up over his tummy sometime. No, maybe not.
00:50:49
Speaker
Am I thinking about that wrong? Oh man, I can't remember who it is. I know who you're talking about. I'm thinking of Harold from Hey Arnold. Okay. Okay. Oh yeah. He was the bully, right? Yeah. I think his shirt sticks up over his tummy. I'm like a tiny him.
00:51:08
Speaker
I also like that you bought it because we've also previously talked about how you can't go to any rest stop, truck stop, convenience store without buying something. So you're continuing to prove that right as well. It's just courteous, you know, like if I'm going to go in and clog the toilet at your gas station, like I should at least buy something from the Quick Trip Corporation, you know, it's just good manners. Oh, my God.
00:51:37
Speaker
Well, we've got a little long here. I don't. When we get to this point, I'm like, do we just keep going and make this an entire episode or do we just decide to cut it short?
Interview with Dr. Luke Wilson
00:51:47
Speaker
Not cut it short. We cut it long. And if you've been listening to this podcast for a little while, you'll be excited to hear that our guest this week is. Well, it used to be Luke Wilson, and now it's Dr. Luke Wilson.
00:52:06
Speaker
Yeah, so our buddy Luke finished his doctorate. He is officially a doctor and he joins us this week to talk about. I think he pulled a fast one of those.
00:52:20
Speaker
Right right so he joins us this week to talk about his field of study, which is Holocaust studies and specifically, you know, we talk a lot about how Christianity and Christian culture contributed to the mentality that led to the Holocaust and
00:52:43
Speaker
I realized like for some of you that may sound crazy or far-fetched or something like that and it's not. It's a really interesting discussion. There might be parts of it that you disagree with but I think in the end you'll find that there's definitely some really interesting points here and of course it's Luke Wilson.
00:53:09
Speaker
Like, if you walk away from this conversation mad, what's wrong with you? You need to lighten up. And the problem's not you or problems, not Luke. It's you. Exactly. Amazing. Amazing. No, Luke is the best. We love him. We talk about him all the time. He's one of our favorite people on the planet. I'm thankful that we have such a wonderful friend of the show who's.
00:53:31
Speaker
always willing to hang out with us and chat. And I think you're all going to really enjoy this conversation where I at least one or two times probably put my foot in my mouth because I sometimes talk about how I know things and I don't. And smart people who have a D, a capital D, lowercase R period in front of their name get to tell me why I'm wrong. So it's. And nobody does it more gracefully than Dr. Luke Wilson. Yeah.
00:53:59
Speaker
So if you are enjoying the podcast, share it with a friend, leave us a five star review wherever you listen to podcasts, unless of course there's the option to leave more stars. Then give us, give us the highest stars. Just all the stars. It doesn't cost you anything to give us stars given to us.
00:54:19
Speaker
And if you want to get in on the conversation, join our discord. You can find the link on our social media. And if it's not there for some reason, because of, uh, you know, oversight or laziness messages and we'll get it. And with all that being said, enjoy our conversation with Dr. Luke Wilson.
00:54:44
Speaker
Hey, everybody. We are back with our guest. Very excited. Dr. Luke Wilson. We can call you the doctor now. Doctor?
00:54:53
Speaker
I thank you for having me, gentlemen. It's always a pleasure to be back on this darn show. It's always a pleasure to have you here. So right before we hit record here and jump back into this, we were talking off air about I did. We had to look it up because it was hard. Despite going to Liberty University, it was hard for me to believe that they actually have a Constitution Week. It's like shark week, but shittier.
00:55:22
Speaker
So what the fuck was constitution before we talk about you and your life and all of your awesome accomplishments that you have recently.
00:55:30
Speaker
accomplished. This is why you're a doctor and I'm not. I don't know if they did Constitution Week when I was there. They must have, but what was that? What was it? Yeah, so Constitution Week was, at least when I was there, it was this week where they invited a bunch of speakers, mostly politicians. I remember one guy, I think he was the former governor of Ohio, and he would always be there every time they had this. Everyone's favorite speaker.
00:56:00
Speaker
yeah that guy and so we would we would have to sit through you know instead of chapel we would have you know these these politicians come and speak and it was essentially just like let's pump America's tires week and yeah they would come in and just like say all these things never one guy specifically this is the guy the the governor whatever of a former governor of Ohio
00:56:18
Speaker
He came in and he starts going on about all these different things that America has done and all these things that America, you know, invented or, you know, was the first part. And so I remember talking about the cotton gin because that probably, you know, he says, he says, uh, I mean, you probably did, but the things that stuck out to me as a Canadian were things that weren't invented or done first in America.
00:56:44
Speaker
And I'm sitting there and he's like, and the telephone invented by an American. I was like, no, the telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell, who was Scottish, who lived in Ontario, Canada. Like Bob or whatever. His name was Bob. Good. Bob Goodlap. I don't think that's right. But this dude.
00:57:02
Speaker
the indoctrination must be pretty heavy because i think i may have also thought the telephone was invented in the united states well maybe you heard it during constitution week you know like maybe that's where you you quote-unquote learned that but so what happened was like there are a bunch of us canadians who like we all kind of looked at each other because like this is something that in canada
00:57:20
Speaker
like we only have a few things you know like give us our things please don't take those from us the things we invented right there's like we're just just small people we're not we're not we're a humble foe and so he he we're all looking at each other we're like no like we all know that like we learned that like grade two kind of thing right and so
00:57:35
Speaker
afterwards, we all get together all like, what the heck was that? What the heck was that? And so we're like, let's go talk to him. So we won one of these Constitution weeks. We marched down in the vine center, which was the basketball stadium in which they held convocation chapel. We walked down to the front and you know, people are like shaking this guy's hand, like all these like Americans are like, you know, loving this guy. And so we go down and we're like, hi, sir. Like, you know, whatever. Like we heard your we obviously heard what you said. We just want to let you know that
00:58:04
Speaker
that an American or America did not invent the telephone. And he's like, well, history is kind of a funny thing. And there's a lot of interpretation. We're like, oh, there's no interpretation here. This is a matter of fact, sir. Like what in the world are you talking? Anyway, long story short, we had fun with it. We really enjoyed our time as an international student at Constitution Week. The irony of that response is if you were talking about the Bible, your positions would have flipped completely.
00:58:36
Speaker
like ambiguity there interpretation for evangelicals that's all the rest of the world right they're the ones with interpretation oh it's up to interpretation see i mean he could he was Canadian but like also that's like American and then there's you know Scotland we have Scottish people so when you when you look at it that way it's like
00:59:04
Speaker
It was invented in America. It's probably more like he invented it and then America, an American bought the patent for like pennies on the dollar. And part of the deal was that you can't talk about how he invented it anymore. That was also the invention of NDAs, surprisingly. That's funny.
00:59:29
Speaker
And I, and I just look back and I think to myself, like, imagine having a student population where like one 10th of your student population are international, right? Like one in 10. And I'm not saying that's the majority. Obviously it's the minority. It's the, it's a fraction, um, of, of, you know, the overall student population, but like, like friends, Liberty, like what in the world are you thinking? Like know your audience or at least part of your, I don't know. To me, I just, to this day it's still kind of mind boggling, but who am I?
00:59:55
Speaker
So the place where I work, we, you know, it's, it's, it's not sinister or anything like that in any sort of way, but they say, uh, a prayer and the pledge of allegiance at like every meeting. That's how we start every meeting. And it's awkward when it's like, uh, you know, it's an international event. So you have people from like all over the world in this room and they're all kind of like standing there. They look uncomfortable. Sometimes they'll play them the national anthem.
01:00:24
Speaker
And it's just, yeah, it seems so weird in the, you know, with that audience, it just doesn't make sense. Casey, do you ever remain seated? Do I? Yeah. No, because I want to go to heaven. Right, right. Also known as not get inspired. He stands for the flag and kneels for the cross, Luke. Absolutely. God bless the USA. That's all I have to say.
01:00:54
Speaker
Oh my God. Well, I'm glad we started off there because I can't believe Constitution Week did not. I don't imagine they stopped it. It sounds like it's still going. You just looked it up. It's still a thing. So I don't know how I missed that. I was still pretty patriotic at that time. So shame on me, I guess.
01:01:15
Speaker
Luke, we wanted to talk to you just because we love you. But we also wanted to talk to you about your accomplishments. You're a doctor now, and that's really cool. And we don't know anything about your doctorate or what you studied. And we've had you on to talk about gay stuff and made you the token gay guy. And I figure we can give you a shot at being a person on this podcast. No, I'm nothing more than bisexuality. How dare you try to humanize me?
01:01:42
Speaker
But Lisa, Luke Wilson, author of the controversial doctoral thesis, Baby in the Bathwater, why eugenics gets a bad rap. Am I off? Is it OK? That's like what I would have written if I had have been. Although, you know what, we did learn in contemporary issues, our contemporary issues classes about eugenics. Slash, what was it? Never mind. That's a different story. It was about euthanasia.
01:02:12
Speaker
We learned about eugenics, didn't we? Yeah, I definitely think we did. Yeah, I'm sure we did. No, I don't remember if they said anything like that. We talked about eugenics. Week 12, the silver linings of eugenics. Well, Lynchburg actually had like a rocky history with eugenics because there's like a
01:02:36
Speaker
They had a sanitarium there or something like that, and they euthanized. I'm pulling this out of the archives here, but I think it was several thousand people at this sanitarium.
01:02:50
Speaker
You're not euthanized, I'm sorry. Sterilized. Sterilized. Okay. Euthanized is a lot different, yeah. You know what, I was going to say with a name like Lynchburg, are we actually that surprised by this? But even with sterilized, I mean, you know, this sounds, yeah, right in line with what I would have expected, actually. I mean, history is a funny thing in that way, you know. Yeah. It's a little ambiguous.
01:03:17
Speaker
No, but you so I got to read one of your papers that you wrote talking about like the role of Christianity and and the doctrine that you know.
01:03:29
Speaker
kind of played into the general attitude that led to the Holocaust. I'm fascinated by this topic. I don't feel like I've ever really heard this angle on the Holocaust or on that like German nationalism front. So yeah, tell us a little bit about it. I'm curious to hear what your thoughts are on it.
01:03:50
Speaker
So, no, my work spans a few different disciplines. Most of what I've done up until this point has been in Holocaust studies. I specifically look at the transmission of trauma between Holocaust survivors and their children and their grandchildren. I also do work on the intersection of Holocaust history, literature and Christian theology and how Christian theology
01:04:15
Speaker
in a number of ways laid the seed bed for the Holocaust itself. I also do work on evangelicalism, which is not to say that I'm an evangelical. It's quite the opposite. Instead, I look at evangelicals and talk about how they form their moral communities and how they cohere in certain spaces. But that's actually gonna be my next project, but I digress to answer your question, Casey. The work that you read and the work that I've done up until this point,
01:04:43
Speaker
on the history of the Holocaust and, again, how Christianity influenced that really started when I was in div school. I remember for the first time I heard people talking about and then also in my classes about how Christianity was the fertile ground from which the Holocaust sprung. And it's not to say that the Holocaust was a monocausal or there was one sort of like thing that led to the Holocaust, i.e. Christianity.
01:05:13
Speaker
No, obviously there were a number of other things. There were economic factors, there were political factors, there were German mythopoeia and how that influenced the Aryan race and what people thought about it as this pure folk.
01:05:29
Speaker
all that to say that Christianity certainly shaped and influenced what ultimately happened. And I would argue ultimately that without Christianity, anti-Semitism and also the Holocaust by extension would never be what it is.
01:05:47
Speaker
had it not been for what was written in the Christian scriptures, specifically the New Testament, the gospels, and then also Paul's letters. And then on top of that, later early church fathers and how they talked about Jews because of what they were reading in scripture. Without Christianity, again, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust wouldn't ever have been what it was or what it is, because that was in a lot of ways the intellectual, if we can call it intellectual,
01:06:19
Speaker
influence behind what we think about when we think about Jews or when we think about stereotypes about Jews. And so, you know, if you think about, like, really any stereotype about Jews, what I do in my classes when I teach, I'll say, like, you know, I'll ask students, like, for instance, when we talk about gender, I'll say, give me the stereotypes of gender. Like, what do we think is a stereotypical understanding of masculinity or femininity? And, you know, all the students are nervous to say, like, what, like, I don't know. And they're like, I don't think this. I'm not asking you if you think this. I'm just asking you what are the stereotypes. Yeah.
01:06:46
Speaker
For Jews, what are the stereotypes? I mean, you can spitball a number of different stereotypes about Jews. And if you think about all of them, the vast, vast, vast majority find their genesis in the gospels themselves, right? We can think about specifically the gospel of John, which is arguably the most beautifully written gospel, but it's also by far the most anti-Semitic, right? And you can think about different verses
01:07:12
Speaker
where even just the very phrase, the Jews, right? If we apply the word the, which is the definite article that before a certain group, oftentimes it's a totalizing sort of move. It's a totalizing gesture, right? And if you think about it being the definite article, it's ultimately shaping or framing a specific group in a definite sense, right? So like making them a monolith.
01:07:37
Speaker
Right. It's like saying the blacks or the gays. We don't use that language. However, to this day, we still think about, or we still say the Jews. And if you walk up and down the street in any American town or even Canadian, if in fact Canadians know what the gospels are, anything about Jesus, which 99% of them I swear at this point just don't. But putting that aside, if you go up to people in America and you say, who killed Jesus? What are folks going to say?
01:08:02
Speaker
Usually the Jews but Jews right and again, we're still using that definite article. Yeah, and so if you think about that You you start to realize how sort of imbued anti-semitism is in our just sort of like What's the word cultural consciousness or cultural imagination? Maybe more accurately because this is imaginative even if you look at the scriptures themselves, right? It wasn't the quote-unquote Jews or that pardon you quote the Jews end quote It was it was Roman Empire, right?
01:08:31
Speaker
It was right. I feel like we do get a mix of those responses depending on what people are talking about. But but yeah, it's not uncommon. And it definitely even if even if there had been some language shift around, like, again, it could change between the evangelical group that you're part of. I don't feel like my personal experience growing up was a lot of the Jews killed Jesus. I remember having conversations with my parents about anti-Semitism, especially when you learn about the Holocaust and like, where does this come from?
01:09:01
Speaker
And then you can, you know, you learn about people like Martin Luther and all the horrific things he said and called for. I mean, he called for straight up violence against them. And it's like, I remember like, you talking about this is kind of a spit in the sound as I think about it, but it's actually making you remember a conversation that I had with my mom, which was like, oh yeah, you know, some like, some Christians,
01:09:30
Speaker
like think that you know the jews killed jesus or that's where some anti-semitic stuff comes from but it wasn't and she kind of would say that it was that that it's the roman empire it wasn't
01:09:42
Speaker
And also, oh, that was his whole point was coming to die. And of course, I believe that at the time, too. But it's it is interesting because there was still that even though like you tried to like skirt around it, it was still like everyone who's trying to say that it's wrong to be anti-Semitic because even Jesus was a Jew. So you can't not like the Jew. But then it goes. But it's so common. Like everyone knows it. And once you kind of know that and when it's that
01:10:08
Speaker
much a part of it, where it's your immediate talking point to explain it away. It shows you how embedded it is in the culture. And even as an attempt to get away from it, you're probably still making associations that you're unaware of. And you know, even even this idea, because I think you're right, there's there are so many evangelicals like Jerry Falwell, our good pal, who were phyllosemites, right? These are folks who love Jews, whatever that means.
01:10:33
Speaker
And then on top of that, like, are very much pro-Israel, which of course, Israel and all of Judaism and also all Jews are not isomorphic. They're not all the same. They're connected. I would say they're... It's more like pro-Netanyahu. Sure, sure. And so if we think about this idea of phyllosematism, if we even say like, let's even put away like Christian Zionists and all those wild folks. Before you go into that, just for anyone listening,
01:11:02
Speaker
Do you want to do a quick definition of Zionism between between Zionists and phyllosimites? I think is what you said. Yeah. So Zionists are people who think that like they're essentially trying to restore. How do you say?
01:11:17
Speaker
Israel. Yeah, it's very much like pro-Israel, right? And it's very much trying to create this Jewish nation. And of course, Israel has been created and it's there. But it's this very much like pro-Israel stance. And then phyllo-Semitism is the idea of loving Jews, right? And so to be phyllo-Semitic, phyllo-love-semite, in this case, it means actually a whole group of people, but we're specifically talking about Jews oftentimes, phyllo-semite, so people who love Jews.
01:11:45
Speaker
And if you think about phyllosematism specifically, and you're thinking about, you know,
01:11:52
Speaker
the idea of saying, I love an entire group of people. What does that mean? Would I say ever that I, it's like when people say I have a heart for Africa. You're like, what? Are you talking? Don't say that, please. Thank you. You have a love for an entire continent? A, have you been there, right? B, can you name me seven or 10 countries in Africa? Probably not. And then on top of that, what do you mean? There's only nine. Yeah, gotcha.
01:12:20
Speaker
And on top of that to say like you love an entire group of people. It's like, you don't like if you met all of them, you probably wouldn't love them all. Like there's some people you just like, again, like you love an idea of people. And I think that's what phyllosematism is. It's loving the idea of a group of people. And this is so central to the evangelical imagination.
01:12:39
Speaker
They don't love people. They love the idea of people, which of course is an incredibly dehumanizing way of approaching any group of people, right? Saying, I love this entire group of people. And I think what's so scary about phyllosemitism is that if you can love a group of people so easily, right, without really any context or condition, you can really hate that group really easily as well. And that's what we find throughout Christian history.
01:13:01
Speaker
Right? Because if you think about Martin Luther and saying you brought up Martin Luther, you know, this guy, he said he loved Jews for a long time and he loved to engage with different Jews in the time in which he was living. However, by the end of Martin Luther's life, some people say it was because of a certain disease or whatever that he changed his mind, which I don't think so. I think he was all set for us.
01:13:22
Speaker
They're going to all shifflish. It's the idea that they never converted. And so finally he was like, I'm frustrated with this group of people, right? Not individuals. And then said they're homogenized, totalized into this entire monolithic group. You know, he turned on the Jewish community, right? And he has that treatise, and it's literally titled On the Jews and Their Lies. That's the name of the treatise, right? And if you've ever read it, it's just
01:13:49
Speaker
Unbelievable to read because you're like, oh my god, number of like animal comparisons that he makes between Jews and you know, pick your animal. It's like, holy guacamole, like this guy hated his stomach. Like, hey, Marty, this is a little on the nose, but
01:14:05
Speaker
And I think, so I think all of this to say, it's like, when you're so able to love a group of people so easily, you're also so able to hate a group of people so easily. When they don't fit that mold of what it is that you quote unquote, love about them, right? What's up? So I think this whole like concept is fascinating, because I very much grew up in that like, phyllosimitism realm.
01:14:28
Speaker
And it wasn't something that we really, like, examined. It was just this weird, like, Christian belief that you had to support Israel, quote-unquote, you know, because, you know, what was it, a passage that was like, I'll bless them, that bless thee, and curse them, that curse thee, or something along those lines. And like, what was weird about it for, well, there's several things. One, I know, I feel like in my life,
01:14:55
Speaker
I've known almost no Jewish people. And certainly before I left my little town in Michigan, there was no Jewish community to speak of in my town that I lived in. I've spent very little time with Jewish people. So it's weird to have these ideals about a people group that you really have no experience with or anything like that.
01:15:19
Speaker
And the other weird thing about it, the flip side of it, is it totally colors the way that you look at that entire part of the world. Because the flip side of being like, phyllosomatic and supporting Israel, whatever that means, which basically comes down to like, you have to rubber stamp everything that the Israeli government does, right? The flip side of that
01:15:41
Speaker
is that it turns the Islamic world into the enemy. And maybe not in every context, but in the context of it that I grew up in, I heard so many explanations that were like, look, here's the thing, man. The entire Middle East is Islamic, and you've got this one tiny little strip that is democratic and that supports human rights and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That was the interpretation that we were given.
01:16:11
Speaker
And again, just looking at how many countries and how many millions of people as a monolith is like, well, they're all Muslims, so they need to be pushed out of this whole section of the world. You get the idea.
01:16:30
Speaker
Yeah. And no, I think he said that you bring up like an incredibly important point, like how many evangelicals know, or not just know, but are our friends and maybe even good friends with Jews, right? Like with, with Jewish folks, I, the number is, is, is, is quite small, right? Like, and I think that when you, again, love an entire group of people blindly,
01:16:53
Speaker
You're able to, again, really, you think about them. You don't know them, right? Like you imagine who they are. You tell, you know, also this whole like sort of myth of the Judeo-Christian foundation of the US. Like this is a myth, just like Jews and the way that Jews are framed in the Christian imagination.
01:17:15
Speaker
are mythical, right? Like, they're not real. There's no such thing as a Judeo-Christian narrative. Like, no, there's a Christian narrative that Christians, evangelicals are like, hey, Jews, you're part of us, right? And then people like, yeah, we are. And then the rest of them are like, no. And somehow they get roped in. They're like, we don't want to be a part of this. Like, leave us alone. Like, ask most Jews. They're like, no, it's not Judeo-Christian, it's Christian. And it just so happens that our holy book is the foundation for yours. And that's really all that
01:17:40
Speaker
is Jewish in this sense. But, you know, and to your second point, and I didn't define Christian Zionism while I was more so focused on Christian, uh, uh, uh, of BiloSemitism, Christian Zionism, right? Like Christian Zionism is really like a love of Israel and specifically a desire to return Jewish people, the Jewish people back to the land of Israel, right? Like we don't want them here, right? That's the context.
01:18:03
Speaker
I loved it, but over there. I like it more over there. They should have their own country and get out of Western Russia. I think that was part of the motivation at the time.
01:18:14
Speaker
But you know what, I think that there's, I've never thought about that, but you're absolutely probably onto something, right? Like I think there's, there's gotta be something there, but with, yeah, I think that what's, what's, what's damaging about all of what we're talking about is really when we're talking about a group of people, but we don't know that group of people, when we theorize. And of course, theology at the end of the day is theory. When we're theologizing or theorizing about people, but not actually like engaging with flesh and blood individuals were
01:18:43
Speaker
thinking about these people as abstract concepts, right? Even where, you know, there's, there is the verse that says, like, until all Jews are returned to Israel, Jesus won't come back, right? Or, no, pardon me, until all Jews, what is it, not returned to Israel, sorry, that all Jews, like, profess the name of Jesus as Lord and Saviour, then Jesus, it's not until then that Jesus will come back. So, really, these are people who are pawns in this, like, unfolding, quote, unquote, divine drama, where it's like, Christians are like,
01:19:09
Speaker
We got to get them to know Jesus, because until then we're not going to be able to go to heaven or the rapture is not going to. Right. And whether or not they're, you know, you know, thinking like a number of things, whatever. All this to say is that in that case as well, like all of what we've been talking about, Jews are not seen as people. They're seen as pawns. They're seen as
Jewish and Christian Identity Intersection
01:19:27
Speaker
as as abstract ideas. They're seen as not really people, which of course is never OK. Yeah. Well, it's like super fascinating about what you're saying is the whole
01:19:40
Speaker
them being pawns again is it's subtext. It's like, I would never have thought that that's the message I was getting. But then you look at the way that a lot of evangelical communities respond to with such exuberance towards what they would, I don't, I don't know if who gives them the name, but quote unquote messianic Jews, right? They're like, it's like better than Christian. It's like,
01:20:07
Speaker
Oh, shit, that double whammy is coming in strong. You're going to get that extra jewel in your crown. And we knew I remember the first family I met who was they were a Jewish family, but also.
01:20:21
Speaker
also Christian, but they didn't go to church. They still went to temple, but we're still part of the Jewish community. And that's actually not really, depending on how you do it, as long as you're not taking that shift into evangelicalism or being Ben Stein about it. That's not a taboo thing. No one really cares.
01:20:40
Speaker
Um, well, sort of, yeah, like Messianic Jews are Jews for Jesus is, uh, those, that was the brand that I, um, they, a lot of Jews don't like them. And to be a Christian, like they're not necessarily like in a lot of folks, uh, understanding of Judaism, they're not compatible. Um, again, like if they're doing their thing and like not proselytizing.
01:21:07
Speaker
cool but of course they are proselytizing of course they are they are out there on the streets and they are trying to convince people or convert people. I guess you're right about the quote-unquote Jews for Jesus movement. I think I'm thinking about it and you still correct me and I'm not trying to be defensive about what I said or anything but I think what I'm thinking about of is in terms of like your it being your
01:21:30
Speaker
your culture in the sense that a lot of atheists are still Jews and they participate in the traditions and it's still deeply important to them and they're deeply invested in their community. It's cultural Judaism, right? Isn't that what they call it?
01:21:47
Speaker
I guess that's what I was thinking of it in terms of, if you're not overly, again, evangelical about it. If your mission shifts to like, all right, now let me get all these other, let me find all these Jews and try to get them onto my team, then yeah.
01:22:01
Speaker
changes things a little bit. But anyway, I didn't mean to get off too much on that. It's still correct me if you think it's warranted. But my point was really only that these families, these people who were Christian and Jewish was like, this is the absolute best, purest form of what it is that we think this is.
01:22:26
Speaker
Well, yeah, we were always taught that. Right. And it's always this sort of ambivalence about the about who's who are the chosen people. Right. Like that. Because, of course, like scripture itself, you know, number, I always feel weird saying that scripture itself says this. It's like, no, our interpretation, whatever. I understand everything's interpretation. But like.
01:22:45
Speaker
Like a lot of Paul's writings, we're thinking about like a book of Romans, right? Where he talks about like the chosen people and he talks about like Christians being grafted in to this tree. But like Jews were and are according to
01:23:01
Speaker
I think pretty reasonable readings of scripture, like God's chosen people, right? And I think that that doesn't take like, if in fact, Christians, according to the evangelical Christian imagination, they're grafted in, it does, they're grafted in, they're not the primary sort of like plant in this, you know, metaphor. But so often, Christians see themselves as like, you know, as, as, as
01:23:24
Speaker
you know, God's chosen people. But then on the other side, I think to your point, Sam, where they're like, but those Jews who have converted or who are Messianic Jews or, you know, Jews for Jesus, they are the purest form and they are all, they're also, again, venerated. They're seen as this like,
01:23:39
Speaker
like a real Jew and a real Jew who loves Jesus, AKA like the realest of Jews, right? Like all of this leads back into what we're talking about, which is this crazy sort of like abstract understanding of Jews. And then based on that, like one encounter that they invite this Jew for Jesus to their church to speak on a Sunday morning, like from that encounter, they're like, ah, see, like I know about Judaism. I remember, I can even give you like a personal anecdote. And of course, this isn't concrete evidence, but it is certainly
01:24:08
Speaker
anecdotal evidence, and I remember when I went to Liberty.
01:24:13
Speaker
I took a few classes. One was the history of antisemitism. Another was Jewish American literature, Jewish literature, and it was mostly Jewish American. And then also what was affectionately called Old Testament survey, which, you know, maybe Hebrew Bible survey, but I digress. So I take these classes and after I left Liberty, after I was graduating, I had been accepted for my master's in English and I was going to write on Holocaust literature. And in all my like evangelical hubris, I remember leaving there thinking, ah,
01:24:42
Speaker
I've got this. I know all there is to know about Jews. I took a few classes, and maybe that's in line with a lot of undergrads. They take one class on women and gender sexuality studies, and they're like, I'm an expert. It's like, you're not, but okay. Well, you took the introductory class though, for sure. However, I didn't really take an academic approach to these topics. I took a Liberty University approach to these topics.
01:25:05
Speaker
Um, which, um, I like newsflash is not academic. Like it's just, I was wildly under prepared for when I got to, uh, to grad school. Um, so I go into grad school and I remember my professor, I begin, I begin one of my, my, um, uh, what do you call, uh, like my seminar presentations with.
01:25:25
Speaker
the phrase, the Old Testament, he pauses me and for about five-ish minutes, even how long five minutes is during your own presentation, which was only supposed to take about 10 minutes, but five minutes he stops me and goes on about how incredibly like, you know, anti-Judaic or anti-Semitic that phrase is and goes into this long time.
01:25:45
Speaker
And then he's like, and continue. And it was like, forward, I was like, I know Jack all about Jews, Judaism, and Jewish literature. Like I accept, I'm, you know, here we go. But I think that what happens is, is that Christians, again, they'll have a Jew for Jesus come to their church, or maybe they've read the Hebrew Bible, what they call the Old Testament.
01:26:05
Speaker
And afterwards, they're like, well, I know it all. I know who Jews are. I know about God's plan for these folks. Therefore, what's left to really discuss? And I think this goes into or this feeds into or is a function of or a symptom of how evangelicals kind of think they have the world figured out, right? Everything's right, wrong, good, evil of the devil, of God, whatever.
01:26:28
Speaker
And Jews are part of that. Jews are part of that imagination. And they are part of these like they are these theological pawns. They are these abstract ideas. And all of this speaks to not only how little Christians know about Jews, but what they do think they what they think they do know is wildly wrong. Is that fair in saying? It seems to be very fair. I think one thing I want to jump off on, it's probably a little tangential that you but relevant.
01:26:57
Speaker
that you had said about calling it the Old Testament. And one of the things that I see a lot, and that I mean, I do it sometimes too, but it's when you're making jokes about evangelicalism, right?
01:27:12
Speaker
You often harp on their literalist translations of the Bible and then talk about the Old Testament and then you'll try to rub their face on that. It's so funny how much of that I see now and think about how offensive that must be to Jewish people.
01:27:30
Speaker
And in
Humor and Religious Critique
01:27:31
Speaker
the context of trying to make fun of evangelicals, I think it, if for the sake of comedy, I think it often lands because you're speaking to that world and that's the world you're trying to harp on and their understanding. I'm not going to stop doing it or anything. I mean, go back like two weeks ago and check a meme I posted. I'm sure it's I'm doing it. Here I am. But I do also think about simultaneously like
01:27:38
Speaker
You're like,
01:27:59
Speaker
If it could be mistaken, you know, that you're maybe making fun of just the Hebrew scriptures as a whole. And the way they understand their scriptures is so wildly different than the way evangelicals interpret those scriptures that
01:28:14
Speaker
you're harping on two different things or you're harping on something completely different than the way that I would say the Jewish people would understand their scripture. So I don't know, but it is weird to see a lot. I notice it a lot now where it's just like, oh, and then God put
01:28:32
Speaker
you know, two of every creature on the boat and everyone makes fun of that. And you're like, it's funny to make fun of if you think it's a real story, if it's just a, if it's a story for the purpose of communicating people's developing understanding of what they think it means to
01:28:48
Speaker
to be a spiritual or chosen people like that becomes interesting and cool and I want to learn more and hear those perspectives but when it stops at this literalist translation is when I want to make fun of it but then still also feel a little bad about it because I know I'm making fun of something that is important to a group of people in the but understood completely differently does that make sense yeah and I think that for me like when I think about religion I don't think religion
01:29:19
Speaker
I don't think, I would ultimately say I don't think religion is inherently bad. I don't care what your religion is, like literally take any, take your pick from any religion across history, time, space, whatever. I think some religion is like super cool, super good, and it actually does a lot of good in the world. But I think if you're any sort of
01:29:40
Speaker
religious tradition that is literalist in how you understand the scripture, in conservative and how you sort of hold on to a lot of really outdated beliefs, whatever that religious tradition is, it oftentimes comes with the oppression of specific groups of people. Yeah, it's like the worst iteration of it.
01:30:04
Speaker
Right. And I immediately think of women and queers. Why? Because I'm queer and I hang out a lot of women. You can think of like other, you know, again, take your pick of whichever sort of like identity category you want to talk about. If you're talking about race, ethnicity, you know, like sex, not just gender, like so much. There, what you oftentimes find accompanying these religious traditions is really
01:30:31
Speaker
dangerous and in some cases, deadly understandings of particular groups of people, both within the community and without, right? And so, I mean, as a former evangelical, I have no problem making fun of evangelicals and I will continue to do so. Why? Because I think, like, humor is one way of pointing out the
01:30:52
Speaker
Lunacy of this of this religious tradition right like there's so much in it that is so death dealing that is so detrimental and it was not just towards me right like i am one of many groups who have been affected by evangelicals very negatively.
01:31:09
Speaker
And through my writing and also through my, I guess, again, I guess like, I can't really call it comedy because it's not that funny, but you know what I mean? Like I make jokes from time to time. Sometimes they land most of the times they don't, but whatever it is, right? Like that's a form of critique. I think humor is a form of critique. I think academia is a form of critique. I think this podcast is a form of critique, right?
01:31:30
Speaker
And I think that it's necessary and it's good. So I think that, I mean, humor is a funny thing. Ah, funny. But humor is a weird thing, right, in the sense that, you know, a lot of people sort of understand it in a very like, you know, it's either good or it's bad, it's right or wrong. Again, that sort
Christianity's Role in Antisemitism
01:31:47
Speaker
of goes into this binary state of the world. I think humor is a lot more complex and humor and jokes and comedy can do a lot more than just, you know,
01:31:55
Speaker
It's not, I think sometimes we take jokes at face value, but of course there's a lot deeper meaning. And again, sometimes it's problematic. There's no doubt, but sometimes it's not. And it's sort of a line we have to decide for ourselves.
01:32:10
Speaker
So okay, so I might I had a question about you know getting back to anti-semitism Nazism and the role that like Christianity played and what some of the stuff that went down so we've talked a lot about homophobia and how Christianity in at least you know in in my
01:32:34
Speaker
realm was it was like the final justification for how you already felt about gay people you know it was like i don't like gay people and oh by the way the bible says that that's valid you know it was kind of like the the last point on a powerpoint slide when you're trying to sell something to a group of people
01:32:57
Speaker
And I mean, is that similar in some ways to how it how it fed into like the Nazi understanding of Jews and stuff? Because I know that there was a lot of I mean, there was, you know, the hysteria about communism and there was a lot of, you know, Zionist communist overlap and stuff like that. I know that
01:33:22
Speaker
you know, with some of the stuff that happened after like the Versailles Treaty and things. I mean, there was a lot of things that led to that anti-Semitism and Christianity was one of those, like you were saying. How dominant of a factor was it? Well, here's the thing.
01:33:39
Speaker
There were like Nazi, the Nazi party as like officially was not a Christian affiliated party. This is not to say that there weren't Christians who were Nazis. In fact, there were many Christians who were Nazis, whether Catholic or Protestant. But I think sometimes people think, well, because Nazism, like they weren't, they weren't promoting Christianity. It wasn't like Christianity had a role.
01:34:02
Speaker
And it's kind of like saying how a lot of Americans today aren't pro-Christian or aren't like Christians themselves, but that they aren't affected or influenced by Christianity, right? Like those like country bumpkins who don't go to church but are still conservative, where do they think a lot of these ideas come from, right? And so the Nazi Party itself
01:34:22
Speaker
Again, it wasn't that Christianity was the only factor. In fact, like you said, there were so many factors, right? There was this desperation after the Treaty of Versailles for trying to find a way out of this economic depression, right? That people were literally, it was in some cases worth more to burn your money as fuel for your fires than it was to use those bills themselves to cash in on milk or bread or whatever.
01:34:51
Speaker
Right. And so they were paying $4.50 a gallon. So, for gas. The price is $1.50. I don't want to make light of their situation, but things are pretty tough here right now.
01:35:05
Speaker
stop. And then you can think about, and there are people who were like wallpapering their houses with their money, right? That's one factor, that the economic factor was huge and there's no way of not seeing that. There were also, again, there were
01:35:25
Speaker
I'll put all those aside and we'll just talk about the religious aspect. Again, it wasn't like even from the gospels, there was this one sort of like easy shot from the gospels to Auschwitz, right? Like that wasn't how it worked. The gospels to Auschwitz pipeline, I keep hearing that. Right, we've all heard of it. And so I think what I would say in part
01:35:48
Speaker
is that again, even with the question of who killed Jesus, and again, a lot of evangelicals, like you're saying, Sam, I think some of them would actually say no, it was the Roman Empire. But that doesn't take away from the fact that if on the street, a lot of people aren't evangelicals, a lot of people are just, you know, whatever sort of faith confession they have, they will say, they will say Jews killed Jesus.
01:36:10
Speaker
Um, you think about Jews as, uh, oftentimes people talk about Jews as like money hungry and they're, you know, they're, they're, uh, uh, what's the word pinching pennies. And where does that come from? I mean, if we think about Judas, who was the purse holder? Oh, right. Our boy Judas. Um,
01:36:25
Speaker
We then have, of course, other sort of cultural documents that amplify these ideas of Jews as money hungry. Of course, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, it was this small little document that was written I think in 1905 or 1906 in Russia, then translated German, then disseminated from there. And in this, it's this idea of Jews having this global monopoly.
01:36:46
Speaker
And they're out, you know, they're controlling the banks and all this kind of stuff, right? There are so many, and then of course there are other historical factors of how Jews were associated with money and specifically how they were forced into certain professions, i.e. banking, because Christians weren't allowed to lend on interest, and Jews didn't see a problem with that. And then once they became, you know,
01:37:06
Speaker
Associated with that then of course they were associated with money and etc, etc, right? There are so many factors that play into this but it's like self-fulfilling like the anti-semitism is what paved the way for them to get into professions that people would hate them for and Continues their own route. It was the only route available to them. Exactly. It's so fascinating and then the idea of sorry, pardon me, Casey Oh, I'm sorry. I I think like we we look at at what you know, the the
01:37:34
Speaker
the Holocaust under the Nazis, you know, is like that gets all of the attention when you talk about anti-Semitism, but it was kind of like one of the last in like a long line of really awful persecutions against Jews, you know, all throughout Russia and Poland and basically all Eastern Europe, like the pogroms and stuff. I feel like I didn't really hear a lot about those until the last few years. I mean, I've listened to some things on them and horrific, horrific stuff.
01:38:03
Speaker
And that's exactly what I was about to say, because first of all, when I teach about the Holocaust, like the first, not quarter of the class, but the first, like sixth or fifth of the class, we talk about the Christian New Testament and students are like, what the heck?
01:38:18
Speaker
Are we doing like, what are we, why are we reading this or why are we talking about this when we can be talking with the Holocaust? I'm like, if you don't understand the foundation, you're not going to understand what we're, the argument we're building throughout this class. Like just be patient and we'll get there. And eventually they're always like, yep, yep, yep. Um, but the first few weeks, it's kind of confusing, right? And so you think about like, you know, the verse where it's, what is it? Barnabas and Jesus are standing before the crowd, Pontius Pilate. He says, who do you want to release? And you know, the crowd says,
01:38:45
Speaker
Jesus and Pilate washes his hands, of course, you know, in this very peaceful gesture. Meanwhile, historically Pontius Pilate was known to be incredibly violent, was actually removed from his post because of how violent he was. But in the Christian Testament, right, there's this, of course, politics at play and how he was represented at the time.
01:39:02
Speaker
And so he's this gentle meat kind of guy, he washes his hands, right? And then what does the crowd say? And of course it doesn't just say the crowd, it says the Jews, right? It says like this like definite group, they say, let the blood be on our heads and our children's heads, right? So this idea of Jews as violent, Jews as not just killers, but killers of God.
01:39:22
Speaker
that this understanding, this violent understanding of Jews as violent people, of course, trickles down. We see, you know, Casey, to your point, this idea of how throughout Christian history, and yes, it is Christian history, because these are the folks who were in charge, right? How Jews were framed for so many things. We think about the blood libel, right? That there was this story of how Jews got this little kid, killed him, and used his blood for matzah, right? This violent understanding of Jews as violent people. And so- You don't think that happened?
01:39:59
Speaker
So there's, so the blood libel, right? And you can think about, you know, so many different instances after that, uh, throughout Christian history of how Jews have been framed because of how they were framed originally. Right. And then of course the early church fathers, if you read the stuff that these folks said, like you're like, Oh my gosh, like it is absolutely bonkers to read like how they, they talked about Jews again. And it, where does, where did their understandings of Jews come from and Judaism come from? It comes from the scriptures themselves, right? Like they're not getting this out of thin air. They're getting this from.
01:40:15
Speaker
All that to say.
01:40:28
Speaker
scriptures. And if we even think about the scriptures and why is it that the scriptures are so anti-Jewish, at the time Christians and Jews were parting ways. It's called the parting of the ways in like this in this field of study and how one group is trying to self-define in contrary distinction to the other group. And Jews are trying to find themselves and Christians not really kind of they were more so like just like okay you go offshoot of whoever you are go do your thing like we don't really care about you too too much.
01:40:51
Speaker
And but Christians being the younger sibling in this case you think about sibling rivalry, right? They're trying to like to find themselves over and against their bigger brother bigger, you know Sister and they're gonna use some really colorful language to self to define them and also then in turn to define themselves That's one factor again. There's also just the other factors of like you know, I
01:41:16
Speaker
There are never other factors. All this to say that the reason why we have such violent understandings of Jews in Christian history, and again, it starts with the early church fathers up until Martin Luther and beyond is because of the scriptures themselves and how they were framing Jews. And so when we get up to Hitler, Hitler wasn't a religious man himself. And in fact, he was very much against religion.
01:41:42
Speaker
But what happens is by the time we get to the Holocaust and by the time we get to, you know, when Hitler writes Mein Kampf in 1925, when he's in prison, and he's talking about Jews and he's using all these different references to Jews as X, Y, and Z, or if we're in America, Z, right? He's using all these different caches, drawing upon these caches of anti-Semitic tropes that we're finding that, again, found their genesis in scripture.
01:42:05
Speaker
And so it's not that we find this like easy, oh, this is how this leads to this. History is not like that in a lot of cases, maybe in some cases, but by and large it's not. It's sort of this, this cultural consciousness, this cultural imagination that's seeped in Christian anti-Semitism that ultimately
01:42:20
Speaker
It bleeds throughout history, throughout time, up until the Nazi Party is formed. Then when the Nazi Party is formed, these ideas were so... They found such fertile ground, among other reasons. Again, Jews were scapegoated for the loss of World War I.
01:42:40
Speaker
I can think of this one specific cartoon from Der Sturmer, which Der Sturmer was this anti-Semitic propaganda magazine, and it has this picture of this German soldier at the line, you can tell how much you know about fighting and combat, at the line. And you have this presumably Jewish creature, it's very creature-esque.
01:43:07
Speaker
that this person's like unsexed or like both sexed or one and it's like it's like boobs but also has like very mainly feature and you can't really tell it so it's this like creature like figure but again it's trying to represent Jews or you know frame them in a certain way and it says that the war like the the wound are essentially like the the loss didn't come from without it came from within and there's this Jewish creature person with this like knife behind this German soldier's back
01:43:32
Speaker
So they were being scapegoated even right after the end of World War I. So there are so many different factors that are playing into this, but again, all these different factors and all these different anti-Semitic influences were shaped, formed, and ultimately catalyzed by Christian theology and Christian scriptures themselves. I think
Religious Influence on Politics
01:43:53
Speaker
one of the things that's interesting to extrapolate from the New Testament and talking about how that...
01:44:03
Speaker
I feel like when you talk about how much of it gave way to anti-Semitism, there's a certain amount of people who want to be apologists for it, right? And in that, they'll say, okay, well, that's not really the way that
01:44:24
Speaker
These people extrapolated the information from it or the way they understood it wasn't what the intent was of the writers or the authors. I think in a lot of ways we know that impact is worse than intent, but a lot of things have been written across a lot of generations.
01:44:45
Speaker
look at the anti-Semitism that is extrapolated from the New Testament, even within it, like within Paul's writing, you see that that debate is contrasted within about whether or not they should that talk about circumcision, right? Huge thing. Do Christians need to be circumcised like
01:45:05
Speaker
Jewish people? Do they not? There's always this back and forth about how much you need to graft into the Jewish identity or how much of it you're going to branch off and do something different. You'll see the real animosity there sometimes. I'm blanking on the names, but it's like
01:45:29
Speaker
There are two people who are arguing about and they just like decide to go their separate ways because they can't come to terms with whether or not they just can't agree on whether or not you should maybe like not eat shellfish or hold to certain traditions. And I don't know. I just think that's really interesting that that debate is captured within the Christian New Testament. And I think I want to make a parallel. I want you to tell me what you think of it.
01:45:58
Speaker
in the way that people extrapolate from the culture or use language to get culture to do what they want. And that there's always going to be language to get culture to do what you want or to entice it into a certain direction. So think about like, all we know now, it seems pretty common knowledge for a lot of people at this point, but
01:46:22
Speaker
the moral majority in the way that they used abortion, right, to really launch their culture war. And it's like we always had, there was that debate within Catholicism, but because that was Catholic and it wasn't evangelical or Protestant, it was like they
01:46:43
Speaker
they didn't really care about it. But then there became this shift. There was some shifts happening and they realized at one point, the moral majority realized at one point, this needs to be what we take. They didn't really care about it personally, but if they took that as their linchpin, they were able to
01:47:03
Speaker
get enough of the culture on board to push a voting block where they need. It's useful as a vehicle. Yeah. So I guess what I'm thinking about is.
01:47:15
Speaker
Useful as a vehicle, like Casey said. Hitler, anti-Semitism, useful as a vehicle, use religious language, steal some of Martin Luther's speeches and use those and rally the troops against him. I feel like humanity is so fucking flawed that
01:47:36
Speaker
If you push past all of that and you decide that we'll never, ever speak of Christianity again, that they'll just find that there'll be something new to graft, to pull people onto their side to do fucked up stuff. And that's not to be an excuse. And to say that that means using Christianity poorly, that you just get off the hook. I'm just saying that it does feel like in a lot of ways,
01:48:02
Speaker
We're destined to repeat this with new language if the language shifts from this old religious language to maybe something new. What do you make of that? From your studies and the way that you see people weaponize popular culture or religion to get people to do what they want.
01:48:22
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, before I had said that, I don't think religion is inherently bad always. And again, I stand by that statement. And I would ultimately say that that statement is accurate for a very small, small, small, small, small fraction of like religion. I really don't think, I think a lot of religion really has a lot of issues. I should say, but in this, this might sound like I'm contradicting that, but I'm not because again, I wouldn't include Christianity as part of that small, small, small, small group.
01:48:50
Speaker
Christianity in and of itself is not inherently benign, or good even. I think oftentimes people say, oh, it's a perversion of religion or perversion of Christianity. That's presupposing the idea that Christianity at its core is good. It's not. Christianity at its core, if we are to understand Jesus' great commission, which is pretty central to what it means to be a Christian, to go out and proselytize, to go out and convert people,
01:49:17
Speaker
That is a colonizing mission. Like that is something where you're saying, I know better than all y'all, and I'm going to make sure that you fall under the rubric that I've really in a lot of ways created myself, straight white men, right? That we've created this rubric, what it means to be a Christian. If you don't align with that, then you're either other, you're outcast, you're gross, you're dirty. Think about queers, we're always described as very gross and dirty, right? You can think about, you know,
01:49:45
Speaker
The people are framed in a certain way if in fact they don't subscribe to that. That is not an inherently benign or good way of thinking. So first and foremost, I do want to say that I don't think that Christianity was perverted during the time of Nazis or it was perverted now. No, I think it was always quite bad and it was used in a way that justified certain moves and certain movements and certain ways of thinking.
01:50:13
Speaker
And I think that today you find something, and I'm not trying to say that in America, it's the same as like, you know, the 1930s. I'm not saying that. And people who oftentimes make these tripe comparisons between the Holocaust in America or, you know, whatever.
01:50:26
Speaker
It's like you're really just not reading the books. I don't think the way that you should be reading these books are like, again, again, like maybe your, um, critical thinking or your ability to make strong or solid comparisons is a little off anyway. Um, however, that's not to say that there aren't parallels. There are certain things that, yeah,
Moral Majority Origins and Religious Freedom
01:50:43
Speaker
history doesn't, um, repeat, but it does, uh, rhyme according to Mark Twain. Right. And so we see some things, we see some continuity is we see, and I think Sam, what you're saying is the idea that Christianity is being mobilized again.
01:50:55
Speaker
Again, it's not that Hitler, even though he wasn't a religious man, was saying don't, you know, church shouldn't happen. He was very down to board. Why? Because he knew that pastors were out there actively preaching against Jews. Today, I don't think a lot of pastors, I mean, there are some, we can see some of those just like those nutcases in these like fundamental, what do they call them? What is it? Fundamental Baptist?
01:51:20
Speaker
those folks. I would only assume that they are railing on Jews today and it's like, okay. But what I would say is that Christianity is being mobilized particularly right now during a time of Christian nationalism and Christian, it's always been Christian exceptionalism. That's always that sort of definition of Christianity, right? They are the exception. They are the ones who are right.
01:51:42
Speaker
And I think it's being used in a way that isn't being perverted or isn't perverting the original religious tradition. It's actually very much using it for what it's been used throughout history, which is to exert power, right? And we can see these different expressions of power throughout history and these different moments when Christianity was used to control populations. It's still being used to control populations, right? You know, and Sam, you said before that abortion was sort of the beginning of the religious, the moral majority. And in fact,
01:52:12
Speaker
What I should say is that if we understand Randall Balmer, he's a historian from Dartmouth. He's just a dream. He's such a good guy. And he does great work. He actually makes the argument that abortion wasn't the first issue that evangelicals used. It was actually race. And there actually are some connections to Liberty University in his book, but again, I neither here nor there. Those don't matter for now. What does matter is that they were terrified of integration of schools, right? They didn't want black kids with their white kids.
01:52:40
Speaker
in the classroom. And so they started, at this time, creating all these Christian academies. And then, of course, these different Christian universities started popping up more and more. Again, there were some before. There's no doubt like there were some older Christian schools in the country. A lot of the, I believe, religions as well. But these like very particular evangelical religious institutions, whether they be middle or elementary, middle, high or beyond institutions, these all started popping up.
01:53:06
Speaker
And it was actually the moral majority first said that they really like the issue was race and they wanted to find a way so that is not to mix with black folks specifically. And so in that case as well, right, they were using
01:53:25
Speaker
very popular ideas both within the greater culture as well as within the evangelical culture specifically they were using these ideas and they were mobilizing religion uh to to rally the troops right and they were using this in a way that was politically helpful why because
01:53:40
Speaker
Jerry Falwell as well as the other founders, the moral majority, saw what Martin Luther King Jr. was doing with black folks and how he was allowing or creating sort of a political awareness and actually mobilizing people to vote and using the pulpit in some cases and also just church spaces in general and also getting pastors to be involved to actually make some political change. And that was obviously wildly effective in a number of senses. Of course,
01:54:09
Speaker
But then Falwell saw this and was like, let's do the same. And again, Falwell and his cronies, they all did it together. All this to say is that I think that we do see similarities. Again, it's not that history is repeating itself, but it certainly is rhyming right now. I think I wonder how much of some of that is amplified by the fact that in the US, at least, our constitutional freedom to worship and stuff has made religion
01:54:39
Speaker
one untouchable sphere for political movements and stuff like that. I wonder how often it's commandeered for that specific purpose, whether it's knowingly or unknowingly. It's like if you come at this issue, which we all have feelings about already, if you come at this from a religious standpoint, you can't really touch this because it's part of my religion. Hey, look, this is my religious doctrine and heritage.
01:55:08
Speaker
And because of that, you really can't touch that. Because you see the same thing now with discrimination against gay people. It's against my religion to serve a gay couple a pizza or whatever.
01:55:23
Speaker
You know, like, does religion really play that much of a factor in what you're talking about and why you think that way? Or is, is that just the most convenient way out of this pickle you find yourself in where it's hard to legally be a bigot? That's exactly it. Like when my mom
01:55:40
Speaker
found out I was gay, all of a sudden she became very religious. And I was like, Cheryl, look at this conversion moment you're having. Where is all this religious rhetoric coming from? Oh, right. It lends itself very well to excluding and discriminating and ultimately speaking gets your own son. Cheryl's been getting deep in the word, y'all.
01:56:01
Speaker
Yeah, Cheryl, and again, I think that that experience in and of itself just showed me how much religious rhetoric or the scriptures themselves, how they can be used as such a force for division, where they can be used in such a way that they're used very divisively, right? And I think that
01:56:27
Speaker
Really, like you can't, I think Casey, that's exactly the point. Like so often now it means it's not about being, you know, faithful to the word, whatever that even means. But I think in some sense, we do kind of know what folks are trying to say when they say that, but at the same time not. But all
Reconciling Christian Identity with Historical Actions
01:56:44
Speaker
this to say is that for, for a lot of today, I don't think a lot of people are really trying to follow Jesus as much as they are trying to, um,
01:56:55
Speaker
fall within what they understand to be a Christian, which is no longer really just defined by the Bible and a personal relationship with Jesus, which for a long time, I think that was sort of the goal. It's now anti-gay, pro-Trump, anti-Muslim, all these sort of things. And I think that that's why I always tell my students when we're reading, when we are discussing the Holocaust, they want those sort of American parallels, and of course I'm going to give them to them, or a Canadian when I teach here.
01:57:20
Speaker
I say to them, we can't understand American politics if we don't understand American religion, specifically Christianity and even more specifically evangelicalism in our cultural or sort of historical moment right now.
01:57:31
Speaker
right, that anyone who tries to talk about American politics, I love it when Canadians try to talk about American politics, but know nothing about theology. I'm like, my friends, you honestly know so little. Like you can't talk about these things unless you, or unless you understand, you know, Christian theology, right? So much of what is spewed these days finds its genesis, like we were saying with like how antisemitism finds its genesis in the scriptures, so much of like,
01:57:57
Speaker
sort of like discriminatory rhetoric finds its genesis where? In the scriptures, right? I think what we're seeing throughout this conversation is that there are so many parallels to be drawn against so many differences as well. And those differences need to be recognized and honored. But what we can see is that scripture and Christian theology lend themselves so well to dominating and exerting power over other communities.
01:58:18
Speaker
And in some cases, what you would say is maybe the logical end, which is their demise. If Christians had their way, queers wouldn't exist. They literally want us to be gone. I think we've talked about this before, that's a genocidal intention.
01:58:33
Speaker
During the Holocaust, Hitler wanted Jews gone. And again, a lot of Christians wanted Jews gone. They wanted to exterminate, which of course is a word we use for pests or bugs. They wanted them gone. And I think that what we see even today, I can think about there was this one pastor, I forget which country, it was
01:58:55
Speaker
Where was it? It was somewhere in Africa. I don't know which specific country. He talked about the queer community as pests or bugs or insects or whatever. Pest was the word. And how they needed to be exterminated. We see these parallels. We see these connections. And it just shows us how powerful Christian theology and the interpretation of Christian scriptures can be.
01:59:18
Speaker
to rationalize belief. I think that's what's so challenging for... I mean, these conversations like this are always a challenge to me because I've mentioned before, everyone who listens knows, I still find myself wanting to
01:59:35
Speaker
I still like kind of consider myself Christian in the way that I've allowed certain like the good parts of it that you've talked about to impact my life. And then so we recently had Brian McLaren on and I don't know if you're familiar with Brian McLaren, but great guy. His new book is Do I Stay Christian? And it's a lot of really good reasons why you shouldn't. And then some reasons why if you choose to, you can do it well. And it's just like a like
02:00:03
Speaker
for people who feel stuck like you have, you can leave this. You don't have to do this anymore. And you can still be the kind of person that you think you're supposed to be within Christianity. And if you want to be that person, you can also do that within Christianity. And I thought about him a lot in the conversation we had and I was able to skim his book before he talked, but it was like, it feels like
02:00:30
Speaker
The parts of Jesus that are compelling to people would almost say at this point, given the negative
02:00:41
Speaker
of Christianity throughout history. When you look at its empiricism and how much it's just been about usurping power and dominance and land and control, it feels like if those good parts that you love are
02:01:03
Speaker
are impacting you. Also note that Jesus wasn't a Christian. It feels like the most Christian thing to do, the most Jesus thing to do would be to move on from any language that is being used to harm
02:01:20
Speaker
and hurt and control and dominate in an empirical sense. And I say that right now, I do, I struggle with saying that because I still feel like I, so my identity is rooted in that and it feels, it's almost embarrassing for me to even say it because I know what that means and how much time I feel like I would have to spend explaining myself afterwards, but it does like,
02:01:44
Speaker
But talking to you and other people who have been so directly harmed by it. It's so much easier for me to not feel that way because I haven't had the direct harm. And I've benefited from the harm that it's caused in a lot of ways. And I just, I don't know. But no conclusion here. That was just kind of the end of my tangent.
02:02:04
Speaker
think like so Christianity is what we're all close to because that's what we know the best right it's the screechiest nail on the chalkboard currently in the US and a lot of other places right but
02:02:17
Speaker
I think sometimes what gets lost in this discussion, especially within the deconstruction realm, is that there's a lot of ideologies that have done these exact same things. What's funny, and it's another weird one to talk about because of the modern day connotations of it, but you go back and you look at
02:02:40
Speaker
you know, communism in the past like 150 years. And I don't think communism as a as a theory or as an idea or whatever is is necessarily negative or bad or anything like that. But it's been used to like totally dominate and wipe out cultures all over the world. And it's led to a lot.
Global Religion and Politics
02:03:00
Speaker
And in a way, when you look at how it was practiced and professed, it was more of a religion than a political system or
02:03:08
Speaker
or anything like that but i think that kind of speaks to the point of of what we're talking about is that like
02:03:16
Speaker
people rationalize what they wanna do already using the language that's gonna be most, what's the most effective vehicle to push the point that I wanna push? And in a lot of cases in the past 150 years here, it's been Christianity. But that same rhetoric has been used against all sorts of different groups and stuff like that in other countries, aside from Christianity.
02:03:44
Speaker
There's a really interesting short Vice documentary that you can watch on YouTube about the rise of Hindu nationalism in India. It's weird. You should go watch it because it makes you feel really uncomfortable. You look at the way that that religion and ideology is being used by people who want to rationalize harm to others.
02:04:13
Speaker
and they're using that ideology to do exactly that, apart from Christianity, but the parallels are scary. The way that they're weaponizing their religion against Buddhists and Muslims within India is rough. This happens with
02:04:38
Speaker
Every ideology, I think, people use it to their own ends. It's just a matter of, well, what's left to salvage after that type of history? And I think that's kind of a personal thing. Is there enough good left there for you to stick with it? Does it make sense to keep it? Or if you...
02:05:01
Speaker
If you really feel strongly about the harm that was caused, maybe it's, maybe it is a net negative. Maybe you should ditch it, you know? I don't know. I think that's something that people have to decide for themselves. Well, one thing you said there, Casey, was how communism becomes almost a religion in and of itself.
02:05:17
Speaker
And I think that sort of begs the question, what is religion then? And how do we define religion? And it's fun because you can have an entire semester or year long course on the question can be like, what is religion? And you're never going to find an answer.
02:05:36
Speaker
I think that maybe ideology is the word to use here because if you think about it, again, what does it mean to be religious or is it a perversion of religion? And if it's a perversion of religion, is it still religion? No, it's not anymore. It's something else. And it's like all of what we're talking about is really just politics in different senses. And when you think about politics, the idea of where the people are and controlling those people.
02:06:00
Speaker
Right? And like, this like very Foucauldian sort of like understanding of power and how power sort of operates and how it sort of like, is, you know, expressed and exerted and whatever. Really, like religion, like you were saying before, I think you were talking about this, you know,
02:06:15
Speaker
today, like, you know, same your question before, it's like, how is religion being used to control the masses? How is religion being used to control specifically the American people, right? And all of this is like, what is religion? Are these Christian nationalist Christians?
02:06:31
Speaker
Are they just political crazies looking for some sort of control because they're terrified of a changing and shifting landscape that's surrounding them? Are they real Christians? Are they pretend Christians? All these questions, all this points back to how
02:06:48
Speaker
you know, at this point, religion, and this isn't like, Casey, to your point, like it's not just a Western thing. We can see this, you know, you're saying like the Hindu nationalists and whatnot. All
Popular Culture and Theology
02:07:00
Speaker
across the world, we're just seeing how religion is being used in a way that's supporting what folks want to do or how they want to live their lives and ultimately how they want their neighbors to live their lives, even though their neighbors don't necessarily, or pardon me, don't in any way agree, right? And there's some sort of desire for like,
02:07:18
Speaker
you know, everyone agreeing or sort of being all on the same page. And of course, that's not the world. Like that's what liberalism is at its at its core is the idea that we can all coexist in a very, you know, in the same space, but we ultimately be allowed to be very different because we are ultimately very different as people. And so I think that all of this really just points to religion as politics, politics as religion. And it's terrifying in some cases, particularly right now in the States.
02:07:47
Speaker
Yeah, god damn. I feel like that sums that up so good. God has a plan. Okay. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Drake's our modern day prophet. God's plan. All things work together for the good of those who love God is what you're saying. I got you. That's it. Perfect. All that to say. And then we have, of course, our modern day theologian Ariana Grande, but that's a different story. Sorry. I interrupted. No,
Trauma Transmission Dissertation
02:08:12
Speaker
you didn't. I don't I.
02:08:17
Speaker
We have a little bit of time left if you can hang with us for a minute because I am curious about you just recently defended your doctoral doctoral dissertation. And that sounds terrifying to me because I.
02:08:31
Speaker
don't like even doing a group presentation in grad school right now. So I'm just curious as to what that was. What was your thesis? And then what's that process of defending it? Let's finish with that. Yeah. So my dissertation was on the transmission of trauma between Holocaust survivors and their children. And then the very last chapter was a little bit about their grandchildren. Fascinating.
02:08:59
Speaker
Yeah. And so I looked at really like my whole argument was, and ultimately this, this can actually be done for anyone I love. Like right now, like I'm looking at the screen and I can see your, your guys's backgrounds and my whole dissertation was really like reading quote unquote people's houses.
02:09:14
Speaker
Like looking at the house and then talking about how that house transmitted trauma in and of itself. Like how that house, like the way that they express themselves, the way they decorated, the way they controlled movement, the way that certain folks, children had to have their doors open at all times because their parents were terrified, their kids were gonna get stolen in the middle of the night, right? How there'd be a packed suitcase. What does that communicate? Oh, we're ready to flee at any point, right? All these different things of how homes were decorated, arranged, organized and navigated.
02:09:41
Speaker
how all of this was an indirect expression of Holocaust trauma and then how that then traumatized the children to the point where some children imagined their houses being concentration camps or gas chambers or ghettos or places of hiding. So they'd look at their shower head and they'd say, I don't want Zyklon Bay coming out of this. I don't want to be gassed to death.
02:10:01
Speaker
Right? And you know, they have to be terrified of confined spaces because of cattle cars or things like this. They wouldn't go in subways, whatever. Of course, the subways aren't domestic, but whatever. So I looked at the way that children of Holocaust survivors describe their homes. I argued was an indirect expression of how they related to the Holocaust. So to give you a quick example, I did not just I studied literature and oral history. There was this one woman I said to her, I said, can you describe your childhood home? She was a child of Holocaust, a child of a Holocaust survivor.
02:10:30
Speaker
And she said, sure. She's like, yeah, when I was a kid, you know, I, my parents were around a lot and we would normally go with my, my siblings and I would go outside. We played until the lights were, you know, the street lights were on. Uh, we had a lot of friends outside. We'd go to the beach, blah, blah, blah. And I said, okay, well.
02:10:45
Speaker
Sorry, can you, can you describe your childhood home? And she's like, yeah, yeah. My parents, well, my parents, we go to a lot of vacations. We go to Florida, we go to Pennsylvania. Like, and I'm sitting there like, ma'am, like you're not describing your home. You're talking about everything outside your home. Um, and she wouldn't answer the questions. And finally I said to her, I was like, Hey, I'm not sure if you've noticed, but like, when I ask you to describe your home, you're not really describing it. And she's like, that's funny. And then she went on again, not to describe her home. So.
02:11:08
Speaker
Throughout the other parts of the interview, she was talking about how her parents called her problem. Her problem were these panic attacks she'd have as a kid, and she would literally just start booking it. She'd start running. She would say that she'd be driving on the highway, and all of a sudden she'd have this panic attack coming on.
02:11:26
Speaker
her quote unquote problem, she'd get out of her car, park it and just start running down the side of the highway, like freaking out. This is like in college and this kind of stuff. She said she always was constantly trying to avoid the Holocaust. She didn't want to talk with the Holocaust. Her mom talked about it a lot. She didn't want to hear about it. She wanted to avoid it. So she kept avoiding it throughout her entire life. So then when I'm sitting there, I'm listening to these three sort of moments, right? She's not describing her home. She has these running moments whenever her problem quote unquote comes out, which of her problem was just like an expression of her inherited trauma from her mom's
02:11:54
Speaker
Holocaust experiences. And then, and she even identified it as that as well. And then on top of that, not wanting to talk about the Holocaust throughout her life, I said to her one day, I said, do you think that like you're running, like you were physically running? I said, but you were also like,
02:12:10
Speaker
figuratively running from the Holocaust, just like you're running from talking about the Holocaust throughout your life. And on top of that, when I asked you to describe your home, which of course the home itself is a nexus of like your relationship with your parents. It's like a very space that sort of frames your understanding of the world in a lot of ways. It's the first cosmos for you in some senses. I said like all of these things were connected and it was that interview that really sort of crystallized this idea for me that
02:12:35
Speaker
She was avoiding talking about her home. She was avoiding talking about the Holocaust. She was running from the Holocaust. She was running from her truck. Right. All these things sort of like revealed themselves in a way that I saw these connections across these three different points. And then that ultimately framed how I understood a lot of the literature and then other oral histories of children of survivors. But that's what I said. That's what I say. That's what I was working on for the past three and a half years. And the interviews like you do a lot of interviews with. I think I did.
02:13:05
Speaker
eight in total, but I also used a lot of interviews that were already done. So I went to the public library on a fellowship. I went to the university of Hartford on a fellowship. Um, and then I conducted my own at the college of Charleston. Uh, I wasn't at the college of Charleston. I was just there on a fellowship as well. Um, doing these oral histories. And so, uh, I, the scariest part of the entire process was, was certainly not writing. And I, in fact, writing it was like the, my favorite part of, of, of all of it.
02:13:32
Speaker
It was, Sam, to your point, the defense. Like, what the heck is the defense? And my supervisor, he's one of the coolest people I've ever met in my life. Like, I could start crying talking about how much I love him.
02:13:44
Speaker
And I cried a lot writing my acknowledgement section to him. I couldn't stop crying and I kept rereading it and crying and crying because I love this man so, so, so, so, so much. So the week before the defense, he keeps calling me, right? He's like, I think he's 85 or 86. He keeps calling me and saying, so, uh, the defense. And I'm like, yeah, Dr. Berger, like, uh, you want to give me like a little bit of insight and like to what to expect. He's like, Oh no, no, you're fine. And I'm like,
02:14:07
Speaker
What? What should I be expecting? I said, no one's really told me anything or really even what to prepare. And he's like, oh, it's going to be good. And like he literally like every time for the entire week and he kept calling me too. And I felt like saying, like, is this a practical joke? Are you doing this just a little?
02:14:27
Speaker
And he wouldn't tell me what was going to happen. So I was like, OK, then I'm just going to do what I saw my one friend do during his defense. And so I just made like an outline of what I did. I talked about changes I made to the dissertation and then ultimately like what I plan to do in the future and that kind of stuff.
02:14:42
Speaker
So I did that for the first like 20 minutes and I was like extending it as long as I could because I just wanted to think of as much time because I didn't want to do the rest of the defense. But the rest of the defense is where they can ask you literally anything. They can be like, look on page six, you wrote this. What do you mean by this word? And how does that relate to this overall argument? And how does this connect to this with something completely different? And really what a lot of academics do is they, they read your work or they listen to you talk. And then they're like, how does that relate to my work? And it's like, ah,
02:15:10
Speaker
A lot of academics are narcissists. Right. But no, my committee was just phenomenal. They were so good. They asked me a few questions. Some made some comments and then were like, how do you respond to that? It was really just like a conversation about the work that I had been doing because the beautiful part about it was that they had all read it before more than once. They had all read the individual chapters when I would submit them to them and they would give me their edits or their
02:15:37
Speaker
OK. And then they ultimately, well, I think they reread it before the defense. I don't know. They probably didn't. Maybe they did. Maybe they didn't. And they just asked me questions. And then at one point, they kicked us all out of the room, the Zoom room, because this was done online. I didn't want to fly down to Florida again. And so then they invited me back. And they said, like, congratulations, Dr. Wilson. And I'm like, ah.
02:16:03
Speaker
That must have felt so good. It's weird, right? Because I still think of, gosh, it's like, I don't feel like an imposter. People talk about the imposter syndrome. I don't feel like an imposter. I'm like, oh, I know my stuff and I enjoy this topic and I enjoy talking.
02:16:21
Speaker
to the people that I study and I enjoy reading the literature that I read, of course it's incredibly sobering and incredibly tough to do at times emotionally. But I'm fascinated by the people I study. I'm fascinated by the topic. And so it wasn't imposter
Future Academic Projects and Liberty University Speculation
02:16:34
Speaker
syndrome. It's just like in a bigger picture, I'm still like,
02:16:38
Speaker
Luke Wilson from like, you know, the beaches. I'm not like adult toddler, like who who allowed this, you know? I think I know it's quite neat. It's weird. My supervisor said, Luke, if I can teach you anything, it's that when you make a dinner reservation from this point forward, you tell them that Dr. Wilson made the reservation.
02:17:00
Speaker
That's all I learned, all that to say. That's so good. Dude, I'm so happy for you. Since getting to know you through doing this, you're one of my favorite people and to know that, like to see you like, just watch it like, you know, on Facebook and Instagram, all your posts about
02:17:18
Speaker
doing this or that, submitting this chapter, that chapter. I feel like I've been able to watch you play the journey out and be able to talk to you a few times here and there through it. God, I'm just so happy for you. Thank you. I'm pumped because my work in Holocaust studies, it's not done. I was working on an article today.
02:17:41
Speaker
But my next project, which of course, this is how we really connected in the first place, it relates to liberty. Like I'm writing a project on liberty that will hopefully be done within the two years that I have to write it. And that's begin September 1st. And I cannot wait to begin that. And I should also say that there's a chance
02:18:06
Speaker
if everything goes according to plan. I have another small article coming out about Liberty Soonish and it's about their conversion therapist and some of the things that he's been doing that he probably should have been doing. But I don't want to give away the details just yet. That's what I'll give a teaser for what might be coming up next through a certain online queer publication. Is this the conversion therapist that we talked about originally? Yeah, that's Sweetheart, Dane Emmerich.
02:18:37
Speaker
Beautiful man. What a great guy. Okay, here. Hypothetical scenario. Okay. Liberty in a lot of hot water. You put out a couple more articles talking about your experience there and critiques and things like that. You get a call from Liberty and they're like, Luke, we want you to be on the board of directors. Would you take it? I would say, um, tell me where to sign, you know,
02:19:10
Speaker
And you can tell them, you can set the record straight at a whole bunch of shit. What if they said, we're going to give you the universe? It's yours now. Yeah. Imagine that. I'm like, just kidding, everyone. What I was saying for the past five years, it was all, you know, according to this plan, God's plan, of course.
02:19:26
Speaker
I'm going back. You would have such a good convert like reconversion story. You could sell that everywhere. You'd be on Joel Osteen. You'd be all over. You get fucking Oprah with that shit.
02:19:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's called selling out but There's no God and we're all gonna be dirt someday and so get your money, you know what I mean? What could you imagine a like I oh my gosh, I've thought about like
02:19:57
Speaker
what if they were to like ever, I don't think they will contact me. But if, you know, what if they ever were to contact me and say like, Hey, Luke, we would actually like to fly you down and like, we want to have a conversation or we want to have like a debate or whatever. I again, I don't think they would do that. And be I'd be like, are they going to like fly me down and then like, crash that plane, beat the shit out of you, break your fucking legs. Yeah, never exactly like
02:20:20
Speaker
cut my tongue out of my throat. I don't know. I just think to myself like, like, if they like, yeah, would that ever happen? No, I don't think it would happen. But could you imagine though? Yeah, all of a sudden, I'm like, just kidding. I'm one of them.
02:20:35
Speaker
Like on one condition, I want you to name one of the, uh, you know, the ski runs on the, on the snowplex, like Dr. Luke Wilson from Memorial black diamond or something like that. Yeah. The guy, the guy who has zero athletic ability. I want, I want you to name an entire ski slope after the guy with no athletic ability, specifically when it comes to, you know, winter sports. Yeah. It's just money. And that's what they have an abundance.
02:21:04
Speaker
They have plenty of that. We know that for a fact. And shame. Do they have shame? I don't think they do. I certainly don't have dignity, but that's another story. Well, I can't wait to see what those projects are. Now that you have your doctorate, what's your outside of working on these? Is that what is next, working on these projects? Do you have other academic endeavors? What's next, Mr. Wilson?
02:21:34
Speaker
I am the incoming justice equity and transformation postdoctoral fellow at University of Calgary, which is- Sounds important. Yeah, right. What it means. Makes me feel a lot more important than I am. No, what that ultimately means is that I will be researching for the next two years for the University of Calgary. And thankfully, and I'm like unbelievably indebted to this institution, I think they're just phenomenal. I get to choose my research and my research is- That's amazing.
02:22:01
Speaker
on liberty so okay nice oh my god that's all dude everything's coming together for you man that's so fucking sick yeah i'm excited good for you man well look you thanks so much for hanging out with us again it's gonna happen again too we're gonna bother you about uh stuff for the rest of your life now so i will see you guys next wednesday i can't wait where's the best place for people to follow your work
02:22:30
Speaker
So my Instagram is at Luke Slam Dunk Wilson, and my Twitter is at Wilson underscore F W. I think I always forget my Twitter. But let me. OK, let me just double check. Hold the phone. Yeah, posted in the in the in the phone right now. So it was it was exactly as I said, that's all that all that to say.
02:22:55
Speaker
All right, everybody, we'll follow Luke on Instagram and Twitter. If you need the address, they'll be in the episode description, and we will see you next time.