The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse by Chuck DeGroat

Episode Date: September 23, 2020

When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse by Chuck DeGroat Chuckdegroat.net Why does narcissism seem to thrive in our churches? We've seen the news stories and heard the rumors. Maybe we ourselves have been hurt by a narcissistic church leader. It's easy to throw the term around and diagnose others from afar. But what is narcissism, really? And how does it infiltrate the church? Chuck DeGroat has been counseling pastors with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, as well as those wounded by narcissistic leaders and systems, for over twenty years. He knows firsthand the devastation narcissism leaves in its wake and how insidious and painful it is. In When Narcissism Comes to Church, DeGroat takes a close look at narcissism, not only in ministry leaders but also in church systems. He offers compassion and hope for those affected by its destructive power and imparts wise counsel for churches looking to heal from its systemic effects. DeGroat also offers hope for narcissists themselves―not by any shortcut, but by the long, slow road of genuine recovery, possible only through repentance and trust in the humble gospel of Jesus. About Chuck DeGroat Chuck DeGroat is Professor of Pastoral Care and Christian Spirituality at Western Theological Seminary, MI, and Senior Fellow at Newbigin House of Studies, San Francisco. He is an author, speaker, consultant, and therapist. Chuck is married to Sara and has two teenage daughters.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show dot com.

Hey, we're coming here with another podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Thanks for being here. Holy crap. You might be listening to this podcast later, but today is Monday. It's the beginning of a strong week. We've got a crazy week coming up. We've got Peter Strzok with his book on, I think, Thursday.

Molly Ball, who is the Time Magazine, I think she's a co-editor for Time Magazine, she's on with her book Pelosi on Friday. And Calista Ward from CNN is on later today on her book. So we've got some of the most excellent authors on today, and we have one of the most excellent with us, so I'll save that for after the plugs. You'll need to just stay in suspense, if you will. So some plugs we want to take and put on the show. We just started a new book club on goodreads.com. You can, of course, follow me under Chris Voss on Goodreads. And the Chris Voss Show is building a book club on there to give away books, talk about our reviews of books and everything else. Go to goodreads.com.

The Chris Voss Show is listed everywhere. I mean, just you name it, we are there in the syndication of the Chris Voss Show. But you can now go to Amazon Music. So you can go to Amazon, I think it's.com forward slash music or AmazonMusic.com. You can search for the Chris Voss Show podcast, and all nine of our podcasts are over there as well. So thanks, Amazon. We like you and love you, and please send us traffic. If you want to see the video version of this, go to YouTube.com forward slash Chris Voss. Hit that bell notification as well. This follows in the series of some of the books and great authors we have that are coming from the Christian community.

They're talking about what's going on in their communities, what their alliances are with Trump, white nationalism, different things. They're calling out some of the different sections or groups within their group that are maybe the rabble-rousers, the trouble-causers for some of the things that are going on. And so we've been inviting them on and having a great, brilliant discussion. We've been learning a whole lot more. Today we have another person, author, who takes that into another realm and kind of extends that, if you will. He is the author of the new book, When Narcissism Comes to Church, Healing Your Community from Emotional and Spiritual Abuse. His name is Chuck DeGroat, and he is the author of the recently released book, When Narcissism Comes to Church, Healing Your Community from Emotional and Spiritual Abuse.

Chuck was a pastor for years, starting church-based counseling centers from emotional and spiritual abuse. Chuck was a pastor for years, starting church-based counseling centers in Orlando and San Francisco. He's a mental health counselor and serves as a professor of pastoral care and Christian spirituality at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan. Welcome to the show, Chuck. How are you doing? Good, man. It's good to be with you. Awesome sauce. So here, let me hold up your book here. I'll kind of hold it up, see if we can get some good lighting on it. It's a nice yellow, isn't it? I mean, I wasn't sure what to do with the yellow at first,

but it's, yeah, it's very yellow. It jumps out at you right off the bookshelf. So there you go. So give us your plugs so people can look you up on the interwebs and stuff yeah so it's chuck to grow.net is my website d-g-r-o-a-t um i've got five books over at amazon i'm on twitter i'm on instagram and facebook uh so it's not hard to find me if you can spell my name there you go go. There you go. So give us an understanding of what made you motivated to write this book. Yeah. So I'm sure your listeners are aware that the word narcissism is in our conversation nowadays for a lot of different reasons,

not least because of our president. And you're going to say something? And every tweet. And every tweet, every single damn tweet. But the conversation about narcissism is alive in church circles as well. I'm sure probably a lot of your listeners have heard about the Roman Catholic Church scandal, the sexual abuse scandal, major megachurch pastors falling from grace, lots of scandals in the church, suicides, and then the underbelly of that, depression, anxiety, addictions that were revealed. But no one wants to talk about it because we don't talk about these things in the church. And so I, about five years ago, with the help of some friends, was encouraged to talk about it because we don't talk about these things in the church. And so I, about five years ago, with the help of some friends, was encouraged to talk about it. And so that's a little part of

what this book does. It begins to name our big problem in the church. Okay. So what is the book about in context? Yeah. So what I'm looking at is the phenomenon of narcissism in church circles. I mean, it's broader than that because we can talk about narcissistic leadership and organizations. I was out in the Bay Area for a long time. I've hung around politicians and CEOs and software engineers and founders, and there are narcissistic cultures all over the place, right? But what people are surprised by sometimes is that there are narcissistic leaders, well-respected leaders in the church. And so I put words around that dynamic, like, how do we understand narcissism in these leaders? And why do we follow narcissistic leaders? I mean, particularly in the church, when we're supposed to be oriented around Jesus, who is kind of the last person you'd expect to show up narcissistically, you know, humble, self-giving the names even that back Trump.

Why did they show up with such grandiosity, such egocentricity? And I look at that whole phenomenon in individuals. I look at it in systems, how whole systems can become narcissistic, and what we can do about it. Awesome, Sauce. And I think this is really interesting. One of the things we talked about pre-show was I watched a lot of videos from you, and you were talking to, I think, a lot of people in the faith area.

And a lot of them kind of really seemed surprised. And, like, I was surprised they were surprised. I'm like, they were like, narcissism? What is that? And I'm like, have you been reading someone's tweets for the past three? Yeah, yeah, right. So talk to us about that. Does a lot of the people in the faith community have a good understanding of this or is it kind of new to them yeah i'm kind of a youngin i don't

know if you've read any carl young uh carl young the great psychologist 20th century psychologist follower of freud talks about our shadow side um Christians, we by and large don't like to talk about the shadow side of things, you know, the kind of the ugly, the demons in the closet. And I don't want to say that, like, I don't want to say that everyone's like that, but by and large, we don't want to talk about narcissism. We don't want to talk about abuse. We don't want to be seen as people who are complicit in these things. So, you know, even in the last five years or so, I'd say, you know, this whole hashtag Me Too movement that has arisen, you know, it was pretty big during the Kavanaugh nomination to the Supreme Court. There was another hashtag

called Church Too, where people started talking about their stories of being abused, toxic abuse, cultures of abuse in the church. And they began naming names of big, leading figures who'd started churches and global movements who had large followings, thousands of people coming to their church and naming the kinds of abusive and narcissistic patterns. And of course, you know, if we're looking to protect ourselves, then we don't want to have a conversation about this. But I'm pretty concerned about the church and its health at this point, you know, and I think if we're going to move in a direction and be a contributor to wider health in society, we've got to get honest with ourselves

before preaching self-righteously to other people. I fully support what a lot of you and other authors are doing, where you guys are calling from inside the house going, hey, there's something wrong. And, you know, for me and a lot of people on the outside of religion, you know, I've read the Bible. I know what Jesus did. Even as an atheist, there's times where I go, what would Jesus do? I should be a better person and a nice person.

I subscribe to the golden rule. I subscribe to, you know, I'm a good person because I don't want other people, you know, if I'm a horrible person, then I believe in a little bit of karma and not too much. But I just believe if I make the world a better place, it's better for everyone. Rising tide lifts all boats. If I'm an ugly human being, it just gets passed along and then, you know, pretty much people are mugging, stabbing, killing me too. And, you know, it just becomes chaos. So, you know, there's a certain, there's a certain moral compass that I go from. And, and even then I will look, I look at the Bible as a, as a, like a nice self-help book, like you would look at Buddha or other, or tom tomes and and there's there's good stuff there

um but yeah when the hardest part for a lot of us outside of the christian community um or but we should just probably say the white christian community yeah um is is uh we're like hey have you heard of this jesus guy would you like to know more um we're knocking on your door on Saturday morning. And, you know, me coming from a business background, becoming a leader of anything, there is a certain conduciveness to narcissistic tendencies or people who want to be narcissists or there's food that can feed that i've watched businessmen uh who are like the who are like almost the steve jobs or other people

where the force of their creation is just right ahead of the force of their destruction they leave behind them and and you'll just see this wave of destruction like what that's going to catch up to in one of these days um and so i understand leadership i've gone through probably some narcissistic tendencies i could probably tell you my employees might be like yeah it was a narcissist once um the uh i wouldn't be surprised uh my father was a narcissist uh he could do no wrong yeah like one time i confronted him and i said dad i want you i want you to say that you did one thing wrong just anything pick a thing like you made a wrong turn driving down the street today you didn't turn on your signal you said something wrong you used the wrong word just

what i want you to be able to name one thing wrong couldn't do it punch me in the face and left uh that's love um so so you know part of part of being a leader or you know like you want to be a pastor of a church you're like hey i i i think i'm a leader um whether it's a business pastor and all that sort of stuff this just kind of plays right into that whole thing i guess if we have some people listening this that don't know what narcissism is explain to me what why don't you explain to us what you think narcissism is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What it's about.

Sure. Well, first, what you just described in terms of what you like about the Bible or Jesus, I call like general wisdom, you know, like there's a wise way to live, you know, honor people, wear masks, mask up because, you know, people could get sick because you're sick. And like, just be kind to people, right? There are general things like that, right? And I think when we talk about narcissism, we're talking about a whole orientation, a whole personality. It's called a personality disorder that's oriented in a like fundamentally selfish direction. The features are things like grandiosity, entitlement.

One of the big ones that people don't see often is a lack of empathy. Like they have an inability to get into the shoes of the other person. And this is why I think it's so antithetical to what we call like Christian vision of life, you might say, right? Because when you think about what Christianity represents, when you think about Jesus in particular, for me, I think back to the early church before Constantine, when the church was actually known as people who ran toward plague-infested cities to help people. To think about narcissism now and how selfishly oriented it is and how it's all about my reputation, my brand, my self-aggrandizement.

That's what's so off-putting, I think, to so many of us who still call ourselves followers of Jesus, you know, as we scratch our heads wondering why we do sometimes. You know, a lot of us actually say we like Jesus. We don't like the church very much because it seems like we are, we're trying to compete. We're trying to keep up, right? And in doing that, we're kind of addicted to the same measurements of success and relevance and influence that businesses are. So it feels almost like the business of the church, and it's gotten pretty rotten. Yeah, I would agree to you. You know, in thinking about it, I just had a great book idea.

I should write a book on if Jesus was more like Trump, and then I'd do a whole book where Jesus was doing all the nice things that he was doing in the Bible, only you do it in a Trump thing. The opposite. Yeah, that would just be a horrific book. But there's the point. I almost wonder, because in business, if you work for a narcissistic jerk like Donald Trump, you know, his employees at the time,

you work for someone who's a real jerk, which I've been around, you can just quit. You can be like, hey, man, screw you. No pay is worth this amount of BS. I'm out. But I think maybe, and I'm just kind of whiffing this as I go, but it now occurs to me that being in a church kind of can can really make narcissism worse especially from a follower aspect because you're taught you're taught to be a follower you're taught to

respect your leaders you're taught to have faith and uh and you're really you're really belonging to a like in a job you're just like hey man i'm out of here i'm not your cult i'm not your i'm not your mob i'm not your you know i'm not a believer in you like i don't care i can go get another job and they'll pay me and another boss that's not a jerk but with with churches if they get narcissistic pastors um yeah i mean and you're right the empathy is not there they don't care about human beings what a lot of people don't get about narcissism is they don't see us as human. authority. They have a master of divinity. You know, I love that language. Our pastors have masters of divinity, like they've mastered divinity, right? They are called reverend. And because of that, we give them a pass sometimes. I had a woman who I worked with who was sexually

abused by a priest. And she said, because he was a priest, because he had authority, I thought what he was doing was somehow of God, right? And so probably wouldn't give that same leeway to a CEO, but because he wears the collar, because he wears the robe, because he's got authority, we give him some leeway. And that's part of the problem. The other problem is a toxic theology. They use guilt and shame in order to keep people in their place. And so it's just sort of set up for people who already feel bad about themselves. It's set up for them to hear from this authoritative leader, yes, you're bad, and by giving me money or plugging into my ministry, you will be okay.

God will give you God's blessing, right? And so they stay plugged in, and they give them a pass and all the crap because they think they're getting some sort of blessing. Yeah, that's really hitting me now. That's quite the setup for a narcissistic system. It works. Because you're just like, I grew up in the Mormon cult as a kid, and I got told all the things. I'd ask all the questions, and I knew it was kind of silly from the beginning.

And I'd ask the questions, and they'd be like, shut up. Just have some faith. You need to quit asking these questions. You need to have faith. You need to believe. And, of course, I'm not like that, but I think a lot of people are. A lot of people are looking. A lot of people go to religion because they're looking for stabilization, the chaos of life. They're looking for, you know, what's my meaning and stability,

maybe some morals. They want to raise their kids with some sort of system. And so I think they approach it in a good way. But like you say, it's hard to define. My uncle was a Southern Baptist preacher actually. And it's hard to define that difference between where it crosses the line with, with narcissism and do these people really care about you and what they do? Yeah.

Yeah. It's really confusing, right? Because I know you had my friend Kristen to may on at one point and Kristen talks about the, the history of evangelicalism, right, particularly in the United States over the last hundred years. And it's like, it's conflated with things like family values, you know, and so we're going to be meaningful contributors to society,

and we're going to be monogamous. And we're like, there are all these things that are supposedly good that are part of a much larger package that can be at times really bad and really toxic. And it takes some humility to say, hey, I'm a part of something that is actually a real problem. This is why I think, by and large, the evangelical allegiance to Donald Trump shows how, maybe it's an exaggeration, but how rotten to the core certain aspects of the Christian church are because of this. And so it's a real problem to me that we can sort of elevate a narcissistic leader while at the same time professing that we want to be followers of someone who gave his life for others, right. And we talked about, you, you talked about shame,

uh, being part of the church context where, uh, you know, shame and, and, uh, you know, you're a sinner and, and, you know, it's, it's really deep in your guys's fabric. Um, and one of the things that a narcissistic person does is they're really good at throwing that on you. They're really good at keeping you on your heels at making you the problem. Like when you go to them and you go, Hey, we're having some issues here. And I think you're the problem. They, they know how to really spin it back hard and throw it at you. Like you're the problem and they can overwhelm people, uh, whether it's in a relationship or any, any sort of narcissistic situations i've

had a lot of uh gals that i've dated that that came out of narcissistic relationships and the guys are just good at overwhelming you spinning them and they literally you literally wander off going well i guess i am the problem i just need to fix myself and yeah he's perfect and yeah he's right it's clearly me and they're really good at that like they are intense and um and you see it and then if they don't if they can't follow through with that then they advert to violence or some sort of other manipulation it's called gaslighting right i mean it's it's it's crazy making it's and what i like to say is if we think psychological abuse or psychological torment is bad, spiritual abuse is all the more bad because it takes now religious concepts and layers it on top, right? So now I need you to do this and do that, have sex with me, do whatever I want you to do because you're my wife and I'm the head of the household, you know, and you're supposed to submit to me and do everything I say. It's taking a kind of toxic theology and putting people in their place so that she says, well, I guess I have to, to be good with

God and to be good with you and to, you know, find my place in the hierarchy. I better just give in and do what you want me to do. Then they wake up 15 or 20 years later and come to therapy. Usually for me, I'm kind of a first, I'm an entry point, I hope, to a first possibility of hearing that you're not crazy. Like I tell people the main purpose of the book for Christians is to say, when they're experiencing this, you are not crazy. This is crazy making stuff, the theology, the authority, whatever it might be, and there's a way forward other than complying. Yeah, and I'll plug Kristen's book here, Jesus and John Wayne.

We had her on the show, so you check that out, Kristen Dume. That's really what they do. They convince you that you're the crazy one, that you need to fix yourself, and they gaslight the crap out of you, And we've seen that out of this guy. So do you talk in the book about how people in churches can identify if their pastors or their church leaders are out of control? Yeah. So I do talk about it, and I hope that the book in and of itself is a kind of diagnostic. What I'm hearing from people, and I'm hearing from a lot of people who have been in and around the church, who are saying, the categories that you're giving me, and I name like 10 characteristics of a narcissistic pastor.

I talk about narcissism and systems. The categories you're giving me for the first time are giving me a lens to see that this person who I've elevated, who I thought was God's gift to the world, had all these fruits and grew this really large church, may actually be a phony, may actually be a fraud, right? And so I'm hoping that the book does that. At the same time, one of the things that Christians are not taught to do is trust their gut. In fact, we're often taught to do the opposite, just obey, just comply. And so often, like I'll sit with a woman who has been a part of an abusive marriage to a narcissistic Christian man or something like that, or in a church like this for a while. And I'll say, just tell me what your gut says. She'll say, well, you know, I'm not supposed to

trust my feelings. I'm only supposed to do what I'm supposed to do. And okay, for just this hour with me, just in this counseling session, just tell me, what are you feeling? I don't feel safe. I feel scared. I don't trust him. I feel like my dignity is being torn from me, whatever it is, right? And so oftentimes, you mentioned being a part of a sort of a cultist religion. Oftentimes, it's like helping them step away and get clear and get centered for the first time. You know, it's like they can't, in that moment, it's not possible for them to do all the work to get to a place of clarity. They actually have to step away for a season. Sometimes they just have to step away from the church completely and start to do significant work in therapy to get clear. And, you know, when you

realize what's happened to you, then now I'm going to put on my psychologist hat. Then you have to deal with all the trauma. And now it's like years and years of dealing with, like, I can't trust anyone. I can't trust God. I can't trust the church. There's a lot of sorting out to do. And this is where I get in trouble sometimes because people will say, well, Chuck, are you telling people to leave the church? And I say, absolutely I am. If you've been traumatized, if you're in an unsafe and unhealthy environment, you've got to get out. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to see your way outside of religion uh you know i was raised with all the brainwashing stuff and it it's i don't think i've ever been

fully free of it uh and um it took me like five years to really get clean after i after i fully left and started my problem was i left i think, I left when I was about three or four and I ditched most of up until I was 16 and at 16, I put my foot down. I said, I'm not faking, you know, I used to fake going to church. And, uh, so I said, I'm just not faking. I'm going to play with my friends on Sunday, but, uh, I was still living with my parents, obviously. But then when I went into the world in my 19s and 20s, got my own place and started interacting with the world and, and started running up against some of the different belief systems that have been buried in me. Yeah, it was a hard time. It took a lot to unpack.

When you stand outside of it and you look inward, then you're outside of the box, if you will. Yeah, it never really occurred to me but yeah that's do you think that's one of the reasons that people are are following trump so blindly they don't see the you know i i know there's gotta be christians i know that look at their heart and they go yeah it's the kids ages and yeah that's ugly and nasty um yeah you know in in Kristen's book and other books that we've had on there talking about, uh, the abortion play and, and, and stuff. But, but, uh, you know, and how they go along with the white nationalist segment, the real racist segment. Um, do you think that's why that's all going on is because they're, uh, I don't know, the the follower the narcissism yeah do you know do you know the work of gerald post he's a cia former cia profiler he's written for 30 years on narcissism um uh he wrote a book on

bill clinton uh he wrote so he's an equal opportunity offender i guess right he's fascinating guy he's in his late 80s now just published a book on trump uh 30 in the late 80s now, just published a book on Trump. In the late 80s, 30 some odd years ago, whatever, he started talking about the dynamics of what he calls the mirror hungry narcissist. In other words, the narcissist loves the stage and the audience. That's the mirror and the ideal hungry follower. The follower is hungry for an ideal. I see in you what I don't see in me, because I can't possibly accomplish what you can accomplish. And we follow, he says, we follow leaders like Trump in times when we feel particularly weak or oppressed. And the narrative within the Christian world these days goes something like this. We are steadily losing our rights. We're losing our liberties, our rights,

institutions are in jeopardy, things that Christians believe about abortion or LGBT stuff, whatever it might be. There's a slow erosion, a slow moral erosion, and we need a leader, even a leader that's a little rough around the edges, to save us us that's how the narrative goes so forget about all the ugly stuff yeah it's in in some of the discussions that i've had people really you know they like that whole idea of the apostle uh you know trump even though he's evil he's the he's basically the form of the destroyer to put it in ghostbusters terms and, and, and the angel of destroyer and, and, you know, he's going to punish all the sinners and whatever. He's like, they're, he's like, they're, um, he's like, they're, um, Oh, who's the guy from the movie? The Godfather. He's like Luca de Brasi, uh, Luca Brasi. He's the enforcer. He's the guy who

goes and does the dirty work. Um, um lucor brazzi sleeps with the fishes um so um and so that's kind of how a lot of them do it but and you almost kind of have to wonder if there's a narcissist tendencies within them uh of themselves the whole pressure to push religion on people i mean i've met some people that you're like hey man i'm not buying this this week and and they won't let it go, man. They've got to force it on you. They've got to whip you. They've got to beat you.

But, you know, I – Can I say something about that? Go ahead. Yeah, because, I mean, I think narcissism is the energy behind white supremacy. I think it's the energy behind colonialism. I think the whole push of, you know, the conquistadors who came out of Spain and they went to South America with forced conversions, rapes, there's a narcissistic energy to that. It's grandiosity. You know, we are better than you. And so we will force you to convert to our religion. You know, here again, to me, it's like so antithetical to who Jesus was.

And Christianity is so far removed from the person and life of Jesus that I don't even know if the two belong in the same conversation anymore. Like people, when they ask, are you a Christian, Chuck? I won't answer that question. I'll say I follow Jesus. But it's hard for me nowadays to even call myself a Christian because of what that means, if you know what I mean. Yeah. I mean, if you, if you tell me you're a normal person, I'll leave my wallet in this position. But if you tell me you're Christian, I'll move my wallet to

the opposite thing. And I, I love my Christian friends, trying to get along with them. I'm learning a whole lot more by having you guys on the show. But still you know i worry a little bit especially nowadays um you know we're we're we're doing forced hysterectomy on on people and yeah in the thing uh we're seeing fascism rise and we're really we're you know the the thing that's concerning is the rise of fascism everything we're seeing i mean he's celebrating violence bill barr is starting to do some stuff and the christians are still supporting him you're seeing at least the far right white ones um but yeah it's i think it's really important that you're calling this out because people need to see this people need to see this in their leaders that their leaders are not infallible you can you can get away with saying okay jesus was perfect

he's infallible but uh look what they did to him. But, you know, a lot of these leaders, like you see these guys in these mega churches, and they can do no wrong. And, you know, they're telling people, hey, you know, just skip a meal today and send me money. You know, you see them on the old televangelists that would just be soaking little little ladies to send in money and stuff. I guess, what are some other things in your book that can really help empower Christians to

kind of get a better understanding and grip? And maybe, I mean, what do you do if you find out that your leader's a narcissist? Do you try to vote to oust him? Yeah, right. I mean, there are certain things like that that you can do, but a lot of these leaders kind of set up life, set up shops so that they can't be ousted, right? I mean, part of it is, so if someone goes to therapy and starts to do work on their life, they're eventually going to have to wrestle with some of the things that happened in their life and their family that were hard, that were messy, right? And so if you grew up in a world where all you knew was American exceptionalism, and you start to learn some

things about your family history, maybe you'll start to say, hey, maybe my country, maybe my leadership isn't as perfect as I thought. And I think that goes with the church too. I think maybe our hands are not as clean as we thought they were. You know, Christians were, by and large, really good citizens, really helpful, really kind, really self-giving. And then this Emperor Constantine comes along. And this is simplifying the story, but Constantine looks up in the sky and sees a symbol. And the symbol is a cross. And the words next to it are, this sign conquer and he decided a man these christians would be good allies if i you know if i got the bishops to work with me and the

the priests and the popes that would make for a really fantastic infrastructure and since the time of constantine i think christian dumay i think is pretty wise on this too there's been a pretty um enmeshed relationship between the church and power and empire, right? And it serves Christians pretty well. Like if we're on the upside of power, we've got resources, we've got influence, we've got infrastructure, we've got institutions. I'm saying more and more, Chris, to be honest, we need to go through, Christianity needs to go through a season of massive disorientation and deconstruction for us to maybe find something of the seed that's left in there of life. Otherwise, what good are we, you know?

Yeah. I mean, because like I say, from the outside, we look at it and go, there's a lot of hypocrisy going on like yeah like you know i've if i was like anti-jesus or and i read the bible or had no idea what that concept was i i wouldn't be able to probably identify it but yeah i'm just like who are you people and what have you done with jesus uh but uh no you're right question that's the question and i i think maybe the christian church almost needs to like try and somehow identify who these white nationalists are and like break away from them, like basically ban them or exercise them in some way.

The power of Christ compels you. Uh, you know, we have the same problem. I kind of look at the same way that I do with just plain white people. Like we have the KKK. Yeah. They call themselves white nationalists and that new PR spin they have, but they are basically the KKK. And we were in that, the same sort of thing that you guys are in with Christianity, where we got to somehow get rid of this group and do something with them. I'm hoping that if, if Biden does get elected and we do get him put installed in office, we don't go to a fascist, uh seize of power um that they will become a terrorist group they

should have been i mean we we've we've made uh was it the proud boys for terrorist group the kkk is not a terrorist group at this point give me a break um but i and i think black lives matter amplifies that you know what we're seeing now uh but yeah you talk a lot of the historical context and that's kind of some of the discussions we've had on the show with kristen and other people is the shining city on the hill they're on the reagan abuse of it uh with immigrants uh manifest destiny uh what we did to the indians we just had a great author on recently who talked about andrew jackson the mountaintop and how they used it they used this uh sort of formulation of excuse where white people must have been here before the um before the uh native americans and the native

americans was to kill them the native you know the white people must have made these beautiful structures and so then we must kill the heathens and and they use that as a as a reasoning for it and yeah there's been this just this horrific thing um you know like even i'll meet people a catholic and i'm like do you know do you have any idea what those priests do over there sometimes they get i get crap for doing jokes or or yeah giving little pushes at it and it's it's hard like me i'd walk like i'd just be like no man i'm not i'm not throwing a dime at this i'm not not going to be seen hanging out with you um but but it's interesting to me how they stick with it yeah i mean you what you're saying is is what like that's our conversation internally you know

when we're out at the bar at night having a couple of drinks saying so what of the structures will last can last even you even? The interesting thing is there are people like me, like Kristen and others who are really engaged in movements of justice and who believe in science, who actually believe the world has evolved. It isn't 13,000 years old, but we're a part of a larger evolutionary story that actually believe in climate change, that believe Black Lives Matter, et cetera, et cetera, right? There are actually folks like us who, in the name of Jesus, we kind of want to get back to the Sermon on the Mount, you know, and Jesus meeting people who are the least of these. And I think what it means is dismantling and deconstructing some of the relationships between, you know, the church and these institutions.

So you talk about Christians just kind of separating from white nationalism. And I'd say even more broadly, like, Christians' relationship to power in general. Like, we just love, we've got a lust for power, you know. And the thing about Jesus is that there wasn't this, like, let's build a tank. I'm miraculously going to make a tank, and we're going to take on Rome. There wasn't this lust for power. There was like, no, actually, the real power is in powerlessness. They'll know you for your love, for your self-giving love.

There are some of us who are kind of pushing for a different way of being Christian in the world, but it's a minority at this point, right? But we're kind of orienting around the life of Jesus as best we can. And we probably, Chris, have more in common, you and kind of your atheism, us in our kind of different way of Christianity, we have more in common than some of the folks who would, you know, attend the churches that I've attended in the past and believe some of the things that I believed. Yeah.

It's crazy. I think so. And I think it's great you guys are speaking out. I mean, I'm seeing all these, like all of a sudden there's like all these books, at least in my opinion. Of course, we just get all the new stuff um but uh uh you know one thing i think another thing that would be good for you guys is uh and i talked to robert p jones about this at pri he was on with his book white too long the legacy of white supremacy in american christianity he talked about how uh you know we talked about the separate what caused the separation of

of blacks forming their own churches and there's white churches. And I never knew a lot of this stuff because I never got into, you know, I left the church and went my own way and started businesses. But there's one of the biggest problems, and we've talked about this with the James Baldwin experience and everything else. Yeah. And we talked about this yesterday in something that's kind of published on inclusion, inclusivity, is that i think i think the churches need to get meshed back together i think black churches and white churches

somehow need to get mixed back together so they get to know everything and everybody and and i think that would really help because then there's not this this whole narrative of of like there's people that are not white they're going to take over the thing yeah yeah and yeah so i think there's a real narcissism not only in the community but also in the in the in the pastorship and these people that lead like i remember there was a commission against uh what was her name paula white yeah a bunch of her people and they were seeing these guys that they have like 10 jets and, and, you know, multiple Rolls Royces. And you're just like, come on. I mean, at that point you can look at the dude and be like, that's a narcissist. But yeah, like I say, it was, I think it's good. You're having this conversation with the community, but maybe they need to form your own breakout religion. I don't know. But then you lose power and there's like you know that whole thing but uh maybe maybe the thing needs to be they need to try and if once they identify leaders they need to try and either vote them out or move them or i think actually the black church

you mentioned the black church is probably they're probably watching a conversation like this saying hey we've been doing this for like the last 100 years. Just pay attention to what we've been doing. I know a lot of my black friends who are pastors and pastors of black churches, they're now being accused of being Marxists. And they're like, actually, we've been talking about justice for a long, long time. I actually haven't never read Marx. This is just what we do. So I think more and more, maybe it's people like me who need to race toward the black community, to the black churches and say, hey, teach me, because I've been so enmeshed with the crazy white power-hungry church that I need you to help me rediscover faith. Yeah. Growing up in Mormon churches,

I remember early on in my early years, I met, I visited his church. I think it's First Calvary Church or First Baptist Church here in Salt Lake City, Utah. And I went to his church and it was over some business stuff and met with him and spent about two hours with him. He walked in Selma and Birmingham with Martin Luther King. And so then he took me into his church. He was showing his church off to me. And I was like, man, you got a drum set. He's like, yeah, we have fun.

And we get up, sing and chant and stuff. And I'm like, man, black people got great churches, man. This sounds like a lot of fun. I mean, my church used to be like a funeral. So I don't know if they'll mix together because black people have a lot of fun in their churches. I got to go to a black church have a lot of fun in their churches. I'd go to a black church if I went to church. They do.

I mean, they've tapped into kind of a bigger wisdom, a larger wisdom. I mean, look at these white churches like the one you went to and the one I grew up in. It's very legalistic. You know, we want to keep you in the box. And so that's not across the board, but by and large, we kind of want to keep you in the box. And I think what we're saying is, you know, like we want to expand our conversation here fear, Chris, that you, an atheist, you're trying to take over. You're trying to take our voices away. You're trying to take our churches away from us. You're trying to take our beliefs away from us, that you see us as crazy. And we live in this kind of bubble where we're constantly persecuted when we have so much power.

Yeah. It's like, that was a situation I got into with YouTube recently. They marked a couple of the religious books that guys like you are making, and they're like, that's a persecuted class. And I'm like, do you know who runs this country right now? Yeah. They're not a persecuted class. And the thing is, here's the deal. Me being an atheist, we're not looking to turn

everyone atheist uh the only crazy that i see is the hypocrisy and that's when i go these people are kind of nuts and not everyone's like that um but or or when the crazy goes crazy like we're not wearing masks because jesus it's against god you know that sort of stuff but no i don't want like i i joke about this on the show no i don't want like i i joke about this on the show like i don't want to be banging on your door going have you heard about nothing would you like to know more um you know i don't i don't want like i don't need an erect i don't need erected statue of the blackness that happens after you die on the on the steps of the thing but i don't want to see... I would be cool, dude,

if Christians were like, hey, we want to put up a Ten Commandments. And I'm like, well, great, as long as the occult can put up one and the Jews can put up one and everybody else. It's called pluralism. Yeah.

I love my Jewish friends. And part of the reason I love my Jewish friends is they don't give a crap if you join their religion or not. They don't even give a crap if you believe... religion or not like they don't they don't even care crap if you belong if you believe they like they just do their own thing they're just like man we're doing our own thing man and you're just like what's that thing i'm like i don't know man just call us we'll let you know um that's about my jewish people man they just they just stay out of my face and so for me i'm all about fairness you know um but yeah i don't want to convert everybody

to yeah there might be some atheists running around you know they're trying to do what they do um but to me i don't i don't and the only crazy i see like i i what's really been great about having a lot of christian people on the show and talking about the books and stuff is i've been able to friend them on facebook and yeah watching their conversations i'm seeing what they're talking about i know it's important to i grew up i grew up with religion so i kind of get it like i see a lot of young me in that when i was going through and what i'm struggling with and uh so yeah i don't i don't want to do any of that i i don't want to put you all in mind camps like in china and yeah yeah doing shit you can have your churches you can have your

your tax-free stuff, uh, you know, just stay out of government. That's all. Yeah. Like I said, it's called pluralism. I mean, this is what we're supposed to be. We're supposed to be living like this, but I think, I think that the, I think that what we've discovered particularly over the last 50 years is that a lot of folks in my camp were never comfortable with that arrangement there always needed to be someone on top and this was sort of even maybe baked in at the very beginning too if you look carefully but there's always got to be someone on top and usually it's someone who looks like me 50 year old middle-aged white male christian yeah you know maybe and maybe

the and and that's really i I mean, I understand power and leadership and running things and having a following and part of that, part of that responsibility or part of that challenge is you've always got to keep everybody moving. You got to keep everybody on edge. You got to keep things going. You can't just sit back and go, okay, well, I'm running things now. And, uh, yeah, just don't pay me. You know, you've always got to keep going to the next level. And maybe it's a part of the persecution, but maybe it's some of the narcissistic leadership that's in these different groups that go, hey, we should be able to do whatever we want,

and we want to force our stuff on you guys. And, yeah, like I say, I'm not really interested in forcing anybody to believe what I don't care if anybody believes what I believe. You know, in my religion, if I get to the end of it and God's like, hey, you picked the wrong religion, dude. It wasn't atheism. It was Buddhism was the key word, was the trick word. But guess what? You get attorney.

Okay, bonus round cool man like it's like finding free money on the on the payment right but uh yeah but i i part of what you have to do to keep people cold in an organization is to make them fear the organization like if i had a business i'd be like yeah that company, we're competing with them. Screw those guys. So we're going to try and outdo them. You know, Sprint, T-Mobile, AT&T, you know, they compete. And so you have to make that straw man where you're like, we got to beat them and be better

than them and stuff. And so I think that's maybe some of the issue. I don't know. Yeah, I think so. Fear the God, right? Trump's the God right now. And so if you say something against him, you're going to get called out on Twitter. And what I fear is that the Christian God has been made in the image of this narcissistic male, this angry, I'm going to get you.

I'm waiting. I'm watching. I see everything that you do, and I'm waiting to strike you down. And that God doesn't look a whole lot like Jesus, I don't think. Not even close. And what's scary is Christianity and other religions have been used by fascists and authoritarians to seize power, to destroy democracy, to seize power, and to take it. And usually Christians or people of religion are right there with them.

Stalin, Hitler, and everything else. And we're seeing a lot of scary stuff come out of what Trump is doing. He's already inciting violence. He's already used the military against the American people to put down stuff. At this point, as far as what I'm seeing in the signaling from Barr and things, they're either trying to incite a bit of an insurrection where they can take a moment to step in. Because usually what fascists do is they look for a moment

where there's a huge amount of violence that takes place, and they step in and they go, I'm going to solve this, but because of that, I have to seize all power and enact martial law and settle everything but they're usually the ones who seed it and cause it and then and then like hey we're going to fix it um and then you know everything disappears from there i think there's going to be something uh during this election or after this election if there's riots or people are angry i think he's going to take it all the way to Supreme Court, no matter how bad he loses.

And there's probably going to be people angry. There's going to be people protesting. And then he'll use that to seize power. There's even people in your community that are talking about, well, we're going to get guns and militias. And most likely it's the white nationalist folks. But so what are some other things in your book? Do you mostly stick to identifying this and talking about it and stuff? Or what are some more things that people can do? I mean, whether it's going to your website or... Yeah. I think probably the last thing I say is it's important to act on this. It's one thing to write a book. It's another thing to actually begin to name these things in the context of church. And that takes immense courage. Oftentimes, women are implicated in this, women who've been abused, women who've had religion sort of framed in such a way that they're lower in the hierarchy. And so I realize it takes a lot of courage. It's easy for me to say that as someone

with a role and some power and titles and stuff like that. But it's up to us to begin to name these dynamics and say no more, right? And with that comes a lot of what I'm seeing in these larger churches that I've consulted with where, you know, say the leader has to step down. There's a slow kind of then reckoning with how they've done hierarchy and power and control from like the very beginning. And that's the reckoning that I want to see. I want to see whole systems sort of implicated in this, not just a bad apple every now and then step down, but I want to see sort of Christianity incorporated, dismantled. And that probably sounds a little hyperbolic, but I think it's a massive reckoning that we're in for.

But for us to recover some semblance of what I think Christianity was supposed to be in the vision of Jesus, I think we've got to get there through a kind of dismantling. I don't talk about that in that depth in the book, but I start to talk about the how-tos around beginning to do the work of healing. So to my knowledge, as far as I know, and you may know more, narcissism, someone who has a narcissistic personality disorder, there's really not much cure for that. 20 years of psychology, maybe, I don don't know but they're a lobotomy yeah right no you're talking about a personality disorder so there's really no cure there's just kind of like mitigating the damage at that point isolating them and getting them out of the system i i think

that's really important and and and like i say i mean i we don't we don't think christians are crazy until they go against their own beliefs. And then we're like, well, you said this, but here's this, and this makes no sense. So it's a little weird right now. But yeah, it's something that I'd like to see. Anything more we need to know about your book and what's in it and why people should pick it up? Man, I think we've covered a lot of ground. I think if people are curious about this conversation,

I know it feels like for some it might feel like kind of, well, that's an insider conversation for Christians. I can tell you that I know a lot of folks. I lived in the Bay Area for a while, and a lot of my friends don't profess Christianity, but they're really fascinated by the conversations that we're having. Just like sociologically, they're really intrigued by what's happening with the Christian faith. And even some of the polarization and divisions they're seeing among Christians, you know, like Chuck, you seem to be a very different kind of follower of Jesus than some of these others,

right? And so if you're intrigued by that, if you want to kind of listen in on some of the reckoning that's happening in the church, but also see dynamics that are more broadly applicable to institutions, organizations, businesses, etc., I think it could be a really helpful book. Definitely, definitely. And I think narcissists are part of the problem with the demonization of those people are trying to take away your rights and your churches and your, you know, I love the tweets from Trump. Who's like, Biden's gonna destroy God. And you're like, wow, Biden has a lot of power. Yeah.

Yeah. Create the universe. Yeah. So anyway, I encourage my audience to take a listen. This is why we're having people on the show that are speaking about this, to educate our audience. If you don't understand what narcissism is, please go look it up and get a deeper understanding.

And if you feel you're a victim of it, reach out to a psychologist, get outside the box, and get some help. I think I'd probably recommend that. I think I should apply a helpline here at this point. But you can reach out to Mr. DeGroote and find out more about what he does as well. Go to his websites. You can go to Amazon.com, music, and see the podcast. You can also go to Goodreads.com, follow me on Chris Voss and our new thing there.

Of course, you can go to the CBPN and subscribe to our online podcast, YouTube.com, 4S Chris Voss. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. Thanks for my audience for tuning in and we'll see you guys next time.