Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1070: A Raw Conversation about Faith, Sexuality, and Kindness: Drew Harper

Episode Date: April 24, 2023

Drew is the co-author (with his Dad, Brad) of the book Space at the Table: Conversations Between an Evangelical Theologian and His Gay Son. Drew has been on a wild journey--a journey far from other. Raised as an evangelical Christian, came out as gay around 13, left the faith at 17, lived in New York, Egypt, Los Angeles, and Portland for a number of years. Fell into a severe drug addiction, lived homeless for a while, but has now been in recovery for a couple years and is now on a spiritual journey that has led him to idenitfying as a Christian again. 

Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is Drew Harper. Drew is the co-author of the book, Space at the Table, Conversations Between an Evangelical Theologian and His Gay Son. His dad, Brad Harper, is the evangelical theologian who is the other co-author of the book, and Drew is his gay son. So it's a fascinating book, very beautifully written. If you've not read this book, and especially if you're interested in the LGBTQ conversation, I would highly recommend Space at the Table. Drew, I met Drew a few years ago and just, yeah, we just really hit it off. I remember he came over to my house. We had talked on the phone and then he came over my house and was just instantly like jumping on the trampoline with my kids and was just diving into deep conversations. As you'll see, Drew is a extremely intelligent, creative, colorful, authentic individual. He is literally

one of the most favorite human beings that I love being around. So now if you need a neat and tidy podcast conversation, this is not that conversation. So I encourage you to change the channel. If you're uncomfortable with perspectives and maybe even language that goes outside the box of how evangelicals should think and or talk, this is going to be a very raw conversation. So I think most of you at least will enjoy it. Some of you, this might not be your cup of tea, but I am so excited for you to get to know the one and only Drew Harper. Drew Harper, good to see you, man. Good to see you, too.

Man, thanks so much. I've been wanting to have you on this podcast for many years now. So this is a long time coming. So thank you so much for sparing your time. Are you at a coffee shop? Where are you, by the way? I am at a coffee shop. It's san francisco chain that has just recently opened uh here in west hollywood and it's very it's very like hot bougie kind of like it feels like san

francisco it's big and full of light there's lots of like you know woke straight men with planned parenthood totes reading like bill bry books, you know, like it's very bad. So, um, Bill, wait, so Bill Bryson, is he a part of a woke, straight, white? No, no, no, no, no. Bill Bryson is just canon. That's all. He's just American canon. Yeah. He's a, he's a great, uh commentator on American culture with a good following among most people who also read The Atlantic. Okay. Okay. Okay.

I tried reading some of his stuff and it's good. It's just, it was information overload. It was just so much content, content, content. I feel like I was being smacked over the head with like wikipedia or something yeah that's why i don't read him yeah yeah no real no real art i didn't yeah he's not my he's not my guy but um but he's he's at home here in the coffee shop so okay all right well drew harper so you so you know I've talked about these, actually a few different video clips that I've shown in many different places that I've spoken on LGBTQ plus questions and conversations. And so it's fascinating, might be even more fascinating for you that you have probably helped shape the thinking of tens of thousands of Christians across the country.

shaped the thinking of tens of thousands of Christians across the country. And you have made whole rooms erupt in laughter because you probably don't remember the clip, but when you like talking about what being raised in this real, like pro-Semitic kind of like environment. And you said the Shema eight years old and a lot of Neil Diamond, a lot of Barbara Streisand. And then you imitate your best friend's mother's from tel aviv and then your other friends were from who are you know from

like egypt and stuff people were just rolling dying and and for some people i will say for some maybe older very conservative people it it may have been the first time they have thoroughly enjoyed the humanity of a gay man i don't know i'm assuming that i don't want to project but i mean yeah no i'm talking to people people were like you know all of the at least you put a dent in some of the fear and disdain that some some christians might have toward LGBTQ people. Anyway. That's amazing. I love to hear that.

Obviously, it warms my heart and it's also flattering. Interesting, to your point about whether or not these super conservative people have ever enjoyed the humanity of a queer person and had that make them laugh and feel good feelings. Probably they have many times, but they weren't aware of it. This is probably a time where they were like extremely conscious of it, at least because, you know, in the case of them viewing, you know, my portion of your content, the fact that I'm gay is like, what is, you know, that's what we lead with. Right. And so there's this sort of these walls and defenses already go up. And then I get to come in and like kind of subvert that in a way I'm sure that's really,

I hope, um, helpful for them or, you know, destabilizing a little bit, it makes them kind of think. Um, but the fact of the matter is, is that they've probably enjoyed many, many queer people's humanity vis-a-vis their years of exposure to American entertainment, because many songs that they've probably hummed, many quotes from sitcoms and various classic American shows or movies are written by, synthesized by, performed by, delivered by gay people. And they may not know that. They're probably not conscious of it. But it exists within the world of their own emotions. And they just don't know it yet.

So, yeah. That's brilliant. Yeah, yeah. Let's go back to maybe not the beginning, like your birth date, but let's go back. You were raised in the church. You have parents that were committed, solid evangelical believers. Your dad was a pastor for many years, is a respected evangelical theologian. Tell us about your childhood, especially as it pertains to your kind of discovering your sexuality and how that

interacted with your faith journey. Sure. So I'm going to call my dad today and tell him that he's a respected evangelical theologian. He may not know that, but I'll say that he's a very respected. He is respected. And I love that. And well, he should be because he does the work. And that's what I appreciate about my dad. I respect the hell out of my dad. So when I was growing up, let's see. So when I was growing up, long before there was any consciousness of my own sexuality, my own queerness, my own difference from what I would understand as the way things should be. There was before any of that, a profound kind of all permeating consciousness of the love of God and the particular centrality of Jesus in not only the universe and the material world around me as I experienced it, but within, as evangelicals love to say, my heart, my heart of hearts. I was a young kid who was captivated by the narrative of Christianity, the narrative of a God who was so profoundly achingly in love with human beings that he would go to the ultimate end of pain and sacrifice in order to make a way

for there to be the deepest connection possible between human beings and himself. That narrative was something that was powerful for me, not only in the ephemera of Christianity, the songs we would sing in big church or in, you know, Awanas or youth group or at summer camp, or in, you know, Awanas or youth group or at summer camp or in the art with which I was obsessed from the time I was a kid. Art of the church through the centuries, art of the Renaissance, art of, you know, the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, art that told these stories that I grew up with, you know, that took them from Felt Ford to the giant canvases and the ceilings of the Sistine Chapel. But also I was captivated by this story because it was mirrored for me in so many ways by the love I felt from my dad, from my parents, from my community, you know, and growing up a pastor's kid. one of the unique things about being a PK, right, is that there's this sort of like automatically provided one to one metaphor for like whatever parent is the is the pastor, you know, or the minister, the big cheese, so to speak, in the ecclesial community.

That person gets to be a stand in for God in, in, in a kid's mind and a kid's experience. And, you know, parents can do all they can to say, Hey, I'm just your parent. I'm not God. But like, you know, as a kid we experienced, I mean, you know, we, all of us in some Freudian sense experience our parents as these sort of like larger than life deities. But, but if you're a PK, But if you're a PK, there's a real kind of one-to-one simulacrum there. And for me, that was great. For a lot of kids, that fucking sucks because their parent's an asshole. You know, their pastor parent is like, it's not reflective of what they learn and hear about. Or maybe actually they are.

Maybe their pastor parent is angry and punitive, and that's how they understand the scriptures. And so it is reflective, and there's a parallel there that makes sense, but it's not a pleasant thing. For me, I would hear about this God, and then I would experience that same fatherly love in my own home. And that was a beautiful thing. You know, I grew up with my dad as my best friend and I was his first born son. I look a lot like him. Um, I do. I was, yeah, I look, and I always have. Um, and I, I, it's funny cause I'm now the age that like my dad was when I was like born in a young kid, you know, and I, I have, I don't know if I'll ever have kids. I really hope to, I, I, I would really,

really like to have a kid. And I just think about what it's like to have, what it must've been like to have this little human being who looked almost exactly like a copy of you, just like following you around, asking you questions, wanting to engage with you about the things that you were passionate about. I mean, it must be such a confidence booster, such a little ego trip. Like this little human being thinks I'm awesome. Then they get older and they make life more humble when they start not doing that. Yeah. Well, it's the old Mark Twain adage, right? I was amazed when I was young, I thought my father knew everything. You know, when I, when I was 20, I was amazed at how stupid

he was, you know, he had become. And then by the time I was 30, I was astounded at how much he'd learned. We see our parents differently, you know, as we as we age, and that's part of the natural course of life. And it is a natural humbling. I think it's probably humbling for a parent to see their kids say, fuck you. And then I think it's probably I know it's humbling for us for a child to as you you know, if you make, if you survive through your 20s into the hopefully slightly more right-sized decade of your 30s, you go, oh, wow, man, my parents weren't, they actually knew a thing or two, you know? But yeah, we speak different languages at different points, you know? So yeah, I grew up in the church. I grew up with a beautiful model of Christian love through my parents. And like I said, I grew up captivated beautiful model of Christian love through my parents.

And like I said, I grew up captivated by a lot of the trappings, right? The experience of church and of my religion. And I was never one of those kids who was forced to go to church. I always loved to go to church. I wanted to go to church in as many ways as possible, as many times as possible. It's funny, I think now, you know, and we'll get to this eventually, but one of the things I do now, focus of my study, something I meditate about and research a lot about in my life is like queer kids who grew up in the church and where we are now. Right. And I find that so many of us in various different religions,

not just Christianity, but across the sort of religious spectrum, many of us are like gung ho little church brats when we're kids, you know, we love, we love the ceremony. We love the pageantry. We love the storytelling. We love the drama of it. And, and that was definitely true for me growing up. And so ergo, when I was probably like, when you start to, when you come to the age of starting to feel feelings, right. Those feelings that you don't know what they are yet. They just feel weird and different than anything you've ever felt before. I became conscious of the fact that my attractions sexually were not really just exclusively within the realm and direction that I assumed they would exclusively be. You know, I had always fetishized and adored like great women of

the screen, you know, which again, it's a common thing for young gay boys, you know, the sort of great divas of 20th century cinema, you know, and I would watch movies, actually a lot of like sword and sandal epics, like Bible movies, like, you know, the 10 commandments

or Quo Vadis, oh my God, Deborah Kerr in Quo Vadis, queen, absolute queen, like red headed martyr queen, like early church serving. Like she's amazing. Like those lions come into the arena and ancient Roman, she just looks at them like, Oh, but, uh, I, I, so, so when I found out that like my feelings about women in that way were not necessarily the same as the feelings i felt about like other boys or men you know when i was

10 11 years old um i was consequently terrified and also angry i I think probably, and disappointed. Why would you say you're terrified? Why, why that's, I mean, I hear that a lot. Can you unpack why that word or why that emotion? Like, were you hearing negative already, kind of negative vibes about being gay or was it just so true? Oh, sure. I mean, that was, that was something it's, it's,

so that was something that had been around in my consciousness. I remember having to ask my dad what gay meant when I was probably eight, you know, because the boys on the block, you know, were circling me on their bicycles and calling me gay, you know, and I'm like, you know, asking, are you gay? Are you gay? Like, are you? And, and I think I probably heard the word faggot pretty soon thereafter as well. And I remember my dad, the way he explained it was like, it's a boy who wants to marry another boy. And I thought that that was ridiculous because who would wear the dress?

And that's just not fair because that's the only point. That's the reason you go to a wedding. And so I, uh, I knew that it was bad, but I think also beyond it was just the sort of like schoolyard, uh, taunts and, um, well, and I should say, I guess that like probably those taunts came from the fact that like, I was a very expressive femmy child, you know, I was a pretty like fabulous limp wristed over the top little, you know, seven, eight, nine year old. And, you know, and so the idea that I didn't fit, that I wasn't the way a boy should be, um, had been definitely demonstrated for me in a million different ways, death by a thousand cuts, you know, on the playground, playground um and in school and at church and in

bible you know study and or you know sunday school um all of the other boys let me know that i didn't do it right um but what what this thing meant right what this sudden awakening of things meant was it was like a a much more ominous rumbling of like oh shit they're right and and this means that i'm fucked because if i don't go the way i'm supposed to at this critical juncture you know you know enough at 10 or 11 years old to know that like all right i think after this things start to matter you know and you see it in your body. Your body starts to change. You look down. You're like, ah, this is different.

What's happening? And then you're like, if I make a mistake now, it's like I'm at the helm of the ship for the first time, you know. And, like, if I go off course, holy God, you know, what does that mean? God, you know, what does that mean? And it's funny, because like the terror, terrified was definitely the word, but like, I want to actually bring attention to something that I had forgotten for many, many years. And I've only recently in the last few years started to remember this. And I think, I guess it was probably in some therapy that I've done that I've like, been able to recall this, but like, so when I was in sixth grade, um, which is around the time that, you know, well that, yeah, that's when puberty hit. I was at a school in my hometown that was a really cool and unique place. It was called the Vancouver school of arts and academics. And it was

an arts magnet school that, um, was K or was sixth through 12th grade. And it was like, everyone was there for a particular art form. You had, you know, cinema and dance and music and instrumentalists. And it was so cool. And I was surrounded by all these weirdos and kind of unique kids who had come from all over the area to be in this place. And that was where I first discovered my attraction to other boys. And I had a friend who was like my good buddy that year. And it was really probably the first time I'd ever had a guy friend who was just kind of my buddy.

And I told him about it. And he was a straight guy. He was a very like, you know, a fat and funny and cynical and intellectual 11-year-old who played classical piano from the time he was three. You know, and he told me, he was like, oh, well, like oh well you know that's no problem like there's lots of people like you there's plenty in fact here let me make you a list of the other kids in school who are like this and i and i remembered that for a week i was giddy i was so excited that these feelings were

happening and it was new and it was different. And I felt like I was this beautiful, blossoming human being who was going to like experience things and kiss another boy. And, and that actually lasted for a week. And I'm sort of amazed in retrospect that I was able to be sort of like sheltered from the, you know, inevitable and impending sense of doom for that long. But that was like a precious moment before all of a sudden reality set back in. And I was like, holy fuck, there's no way this is going to work. So when, when did that set in? And like around the same time when you were like 11, 12 ish. Yeah. Like a week later, a week later, I like realized I was like, Oh no. And so at that point I did, and I've talked about this before in, in, in the book that I wrote with

my dad, it's one of my, uh, favorite little tidbits from my childhood because it displays not only the kind of kid I was, but the kind of home I grew up in, which was, I had a therapist at the time, which is another story as to why I had a therapist, but, uh, she was great Christian therapist, but I, I, I knew that I was going to have to talk to her about this, that she was great Christian therapist. But I, I, I knew that I was going to have to talk to her about this, that she was going to be able to be the, you know, masterful and, and, and, and, you know, competent middleman between me and my parents, you know, to get this figured out. So I figured that I needed to have a pretty good presentation. And so I did my research, right. And I, one day I faked an illness so that I could stay home from school.

And my mom was working at the time. So both parents were off doing their jobs and it was just me at the house. And I got out in the living room with these three texts. I had bringing up boys by Dr. James Dobson and focus on the family, right? His, his treatise on how to raise proper young men of God. And, and, and, uh, and then I had, um, Leviticus, of course, the Levitical law, right? Chapter 18. And I had done my contextual hermeneutic, you know, and read that. And then I had the collective works of Sigmund Freud from my father's great works in the Western world collection, right? How old are you at this moment again? I'm 11. So this little 11-year-old, this terrified 11-year-old calls his therapist. She doesn't pick up.

So I leave a voicemail that says, hi, Dr. Miller. It's me, Drew. And I was wondering if we could just talk some time at your leisure because I think that I'm experiencing some aggressive issues that are manifesting in same-sex attraction. And I'm wondering if we could nip this in the bud. If you could just give me a call. And it was like fully sincere. There was no sort of sense of irony.

I mean, my camp at that point was not exactly self-aware. So like, you know, I just, I called and I waited. And I waited and I waited and I waited. And I think like it was probably later that day that she called my house when I pick it up. She's like, hey, Drew. She's like, hey, Drew. She's like, hey, thank you. I got your message. Thank you.

And we've been expecting this, you know, so it's okay. It's not a big deal. We'll talk about this. You know, she was very encouraging and conciliatory, you know, like we, you know, and I felt better after that call, but I think I probably also felt worse, you know, because it meant that I knew that I was embarking on what would be a long and what was a long, long journey of giving everything I could to squelch and destroy and disassemble and root out this thing that for that brief shining moment that one week had made me feel like myself what what are the next few years look like including like when did you start talking to your parents i mean did they kind of suspect you were gay that was it i mean because this is this is a while ago too i mean this is yeah i mean this this was a while ago too. I mean, this is, yeah, I mean, this was still.

90, no, like probably 2000. 2000. So like, repair to therapy was still very much kind of the, only the default

for a Christian response or just, or just ignore or kick your kid out. Like there wasn't a whole lot of real nuanced options at that point. Like,

yeah, so what did your, your, your mid to late teenage years look like as you kept wrestling with your sexuality faith your place in the world and yeah so uh we had a conference with my therapist that week and uh my parents were incredibly loving and very kind in the response and they also told me hey like we've got a place you know my dad was good friends with through some other i don don't know, I assume through like

his connections at Maloma where he taught, but like he was, he was friendly with the guy who ran the Exodus ministry in Portland, the, the XK, um, ministry, you know, uh, XK conversion therapy, reparative therapy, you hear it called a lot of things. Um, it was, and, and also I think it's really important to, to say that, that there, they aren't all alike and there's places that are, I mean, like I happen to think that they're all really damaging and, and really, really problematic. Um, and I think that they are particularly damaging and like really absolutely should not have any uh ability to have sway over over kids you know kids who are still uh forming um because i think it's yeah i think it's him i think it's really wrong and damaging but but there are ones that are a

whole lot worse than others and the one that i went to was really as far as like, you know, it was not, it's not that it was innocuous by any stretch, but it was, it was a gentle way, right? It was a gentle path. It was me and a therapist in a room talking. Um, and actually I don't even know if he was a licensed therapist. He was a counselor at this place and, you know, sort of presented himself as a therapist. I have no idea what his qualifications are, but he was my ex-gay therapist from the time I was 12 to the time I was 17. And then during those later years, uh, of that time, I also went to group therapy, but like, I never went to camps. I never had electrodes attached to my junk and got shocked you know for while looking at pictures of gay porn like that's a real thing like they they do that that's pretty

you know common actually especially yeah the damage was was uh from a really like gentle kind of which in some ways is is almost a different and even potentially more insidious sort of like conditioning, in my opinion, just because it like, it can really get in there and seep in like a toxin instead of just being this, you know, very blunt instrument that's just poking at you. And, you know, if we're going to pray the gay away,

we're going to beat you into it. Like, obviously that's unthinkable and like really difficult as well to deal with, but the five years of just going in and out and in and out of this, like, you know, counseling, so to speak, um, left, uh, an impression that I still deal with the resonances of that to this day. And like, I don't know, everybody, we're all like deconstructing everything. I'm also, I'm a racist and I'm a misogynist and I'm a classist and I'm all kinds of things that I have to just sort of every day be like,

oh, yep, there I am. As well as being a homophobe or somebody who hates themselves for being gay. That's just my particular shade or flavor of conditioning. But I think we all get conditioned to think certain ways and have attitudes towards ourselves and others. But yeah, that was a big part of my growing up. I continued to be a leader at Church Youth Group.

I continued to be on the worship team of our mega church. I continued to visit my father's classes at his Christian evangelical university where he taught. God and Jesus could eradicate this illness and help to heal me so that I was what God wanted for me and designed me to be. So I thought, and that lasted until I was 17. When I was 17, two things happened. I fell in love for the first time and I went and lived in a non-Christian country for the summer. And I went and lived in a non-Christian country for the summer.

So I fell in love with my best friend and we started having sex and also like just being in love and having a secret relationship. And then I went and lived in Egypt for the summer as part of a study program with the State Department for young people. And both of those experiences combined to really shake me loose and explode my ideas and really crumble these things that have been cracking for a while. And when I came back from Egypt that summer, so the beginning of the fall of my senior year of high school, I very calmly and matter of factly walked into my parents' bedroom and I said, I don't believe this anymore. I'm not a Christian anymore. I'm not going to go to church anymore. I'm not going to conversion therapy anymore or to, you know, Exodus anymore. I'm, I'm done with this. What was their, what was their response? They were like, that's wonderful, honey. We're so glad you're individuating. They said there's a young agnostics conference in

Milwaukee this year. We were thinking about sending you, but we didn't know if it was the right move. Now we feel clearly that's where God is leading us to send you. No, they were like, are you kidding me? They were like, they were like, yes, you're still going to church. If you live in this house, what do you, I mean, I think it's interesting. That was probably the first thing was like the clamp down less than like the, and this is understandable. Remember I'm their first kid. They're still very, they're still young. Like, you know, and I come in and I say this and, and they're rather than, I think saying, asking more questions or trying to understand, it was more of like a knee jerk, not punitive, but like, we need to control this, right. Control this fire. Um, so yes, you will still go to church if you live in this house. Yes, you will still,

you know, and, um, you know, you don't have to go to youth or you don't have to be a leader in youth group anymore, but you're going to go to church. And, you know, uh, and that began a period of like just intense conflict and head butting that lasted all the way until I turned 18 in February of my senior year of high school. And as soon as I turned 18, I said, fuck you. And I got out of the house and went and lived in my friend's basement down the street, a few blocks. You and I both know this, but just for our audience, I mean, again, this is early 2000s. Your parents would do it probably extremely differently today. I mean, your parents are some of the most hospitable and gracious and nuanced when it comes to the LGBTQ conversation, right?

So, yeah, whatever image the people might have of your parents in that day and age is probably what every Christian parent would have done. And now I think they're one of the growing number of parents who look back and say, man, we would do it way, we would counsel other people today to do it way differently. But I think, so I think I want to qualify something you said there. I don't think it's what every Christian parent would have done. I think it's what a lot of Christian parents would have done. I think there are Christian parents who would have had a much more, um, uh, really hateful and damaging response than

my parents did. And I also think that there are Christian parents who would have said, Oh, great. Our kid's gay. Wonderful. We he's, there's no problem. Like I think that among let's, so let's qualify it to say that among American evangelicals, I would say that my parents had a relatively middle of the road, um, common response for, you know, just emerging from the nineties culture wars. And, and, and I would say also that, you know, one of the reasons I am so proud of my parents and respect the hell out of my parents today is because how impressive is it for somebody to become really nuanced and gracious in a particular difficult, intense issue? Such as the conflict between conservative religion and queer sexuality when they started there. How impressive is that? Not very. when they started there. How impressive is that? Not very. It's much more impressive,

nor is it actually to me impressive for someone to swing from a, you know, extremely orthodox and draconian point of view in one side and to come all the way to the other and to just flip and to become a mirror image of themselves. Like, while I would welcome that politically for myself, like, because I think that's great. Like the more like Christian parents, you know, who used to be like, you know, uh, you know, uh, Fred Phelps style homeschoolers who now show up at the pride parades, you know, with their, you know, signs of, we love our gay kid. We love our trans kids. Yay. All the more power to them. But like also what there isn't nearly enough of, and what I'm so fucking proud of my parents for becoming, is people who still struggle every day and yet also succeed more than they struggle to evince graciousness, love, nuance, thoughtfulness, restraint, self-restraint, and ideological

openness in the measure of their own integrity. We could spend the rest of the time unpacking that. I want to come back to that because you're opening a really interesting door there. I am curious, really curious, actually. So, I mean, you raised evangelical, you know, the evangelical culture. Then all of a sudden you had this kind of flip. You leave evangelicalism. Now you're surrounded by many other LGBTQ people.

I know you lived in New York for a number of years, so very kind of non-religious kind of environment. Can you help us understand, for those of us who are still part of the evangelical church, which is an overwhelming majority of probably people listening, and I would say of that number are also very interested in how can we as a church within the realm of our convictions, theologically or whatever, like do it much, much better. Like how can we change the church culture when it comes to this conversation? I'm interested in you helping us understand what is the de-churched, non-churched, unchurched, LGBTQ perception of evangelicals? Because you lived in the environment and in many ways are still kind of, well, I'll let you tell your own story. But yeah, what is the perception of the church? I would assume it's not very good.

Well, I would say that there are as many perspectives. I know this is a non-answer, but it's also, it's extremely true. I would say that there are as many perspectives of the church and Christianity among de-churched or ex-churched, formerly Christian, formerly evangelical queer people, as there are those people. I find that actually one of the things that I really get tired of is the, the invective and the sort of like imperative to tow the party line around having a perspective or a, a, you know, an opinion on religion, Christianity, evangelicals, you know, all of that, that, that is sort of like within the mainstream narrative of gay rhetoric and culture.

And I mean, even those, those, those, a word like that, the mainstream of gay rhetoric, that's too, it's too monolithic. I would have to complexify that a million different ways. But I would, I would say that like over, there's this overarching sense of like, it's us and them. And that to me is, is not only is it problematic politically, but it's, and like, it's us and them. And that to me is, is not only is it problematic politically, um, but it's, and, and morally, but it's problematic because it just isn't accurate as far as the data, the data to me, from what hyper-contingent and, um, evolving, shifting

feelings and opinions about all of this among gay kids who both like grew up in the church and left or grew up in the church and tried to stay or didn't grow up in the church. Um, now I would say that the opinion that's the harshest, probably, and the most untroubled or uncomplex is that of kids who didn't grow up in the church and who kind of just are like, man, those fucking Christians are like assholes and insane. And I'm just so glad

that all those old white Christian men are dying because eventually it'll be our world and not theirs. And, you know, so I just they can't die soon enough. And while I understand this view, I sort of like lament for it. But I don't lament too much for it because I think that mostly it's just born of ignorance. This episode is sponsored by World Concern. World Concern is a Christian humanitarian organization that is addressing some of the most significant needs in the world today. For instance, there's been a devastating drought that's hit Somalia.

I don't know if you've heard about this, but it's become one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world today. Four relentless years of drought have destroyed the country of Somalia. In 2022 alone, over 40,000 people have been killed from the drought and children and families continue to have ongoing needs and basic necessities of life, food, water, and of course, ultimately the love of Christ. So for instance, a young mom named Saifia had over 50 sheep prior to the drought. And now after the drought, she only has one sheep, which means she basically has no income and no way to feed her children.

And yet this is one of many stories we could tell about the horrific effects of the drought in Somalia. So through World Concern, you can provide urgently needed food, water, and emergency supplies to families in need. 12 bucks can feed a family for a whole month. That's crazy. 12 bucks feeds a family for a whole month. So I invite you to pray. We should always pray. And I invite you to take action.

Please consider giving a gift of 12 bucks. No, let's say 24 bucks. Let's help two families. Consider giving a gift of 12, 24 or more dollars to help families survive this hunger crisis. You can give today at worldconcern.org forward slash theology. That's worldconcern.org forward slash theology to embody the love of Christ

toward family and children in need. This episode is sponsored by Biola University. Biola is consistently ranked as one of the nation's leading Christian universities. Biola has over 300 academic programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, which are available both in Southern California and online. With leading academic programs like business, film, science, and more, Biola's biblically integrated curriculum helps students grow closer to God and gain a deeper understanding of scripture. In fact, I was just at the Biola

campus a few weeks ago. I toured the campus and talked with several deans and professors, and every single one I talked to was so passionate about making Christ first in all things. I mean, Biola's quality of academics is well-documented. There's no doubt about that. But I was most impressed with how utterly Christ-centered the school is. So at Biola, students become equipped for a thriving life and career. They'll learn how to articulate their Christian beliefs. And most of all, they'll be prepared to serve as God's instrument in their community and around the world. and around the world. Now, through June 1st, 2023,

you can use the promo code PRESTON to waive the application fee for any Biola program. Okay, the deadline used to be May 1st. They actually extended it for our audience to June 1st. So get your application in before June 1st, put in the code PRESTON and get your application fee waived. Some restrictions may apply. Just visit www.biola.edu for more information.

So you're talking people that actually weren't raised in the church. They just have absorbed a narrative about the church that you're saying isn't necessarily, at the very least, it's not monolithic at the very most there's there's many exceptions to that kind of like hyper oppressive hateful evangelical environment yeah i would say so what i'm saying is that these kids who a lot of people a lot of gay people queer people who grew up outside of any kind of formal religion especially you know outside of any american christian or american evangelical religion or religious culture, see American Christianity and evangelicals and probably even just religion in general

as being like a really oppressive, bad thing and particularly oppressive to, you know, women, queer people, racial minorities, the economically disenfranchised. That's what they see Christianity as. And I understand that view. I just think that, unfortunately, it's the result of a really polarizing and cherry-picked narrative that emerges out of the culture wars in the post-Reagan era. And I think it is also a result of just ignorance. They don't know a lot of Christian evangelical people. So in other words, as you get closer to the coastal elite areas and the secularized urban areas, you find that this view is more and more pervasive. right? Those queer kids and gay people who grew up within the church, there's a real diversity of opinions. And that's where I was saying the kind of complex, messy, contingent feelings. And I don't, you know, it's not clean. It's not clean. And that's why I get frustrated because, you know, I feel like there's not a lot of places. There's not nearly as many places as I want there

to be for people who grew up in the church who are gay and queer to like really wrestle with and explore like what parts of that different parts of that mean and which parts are great and which parts aren't. And and instead, there kind of tends to be this party line of like, if you're gay, like you need to speak out against the evil of religion and the evil of Christianity and these things. And I don't see it that way. Now, one of the things that was cool about going to rehab in Tennessee last year is that living in Nashville, I was exposed for the first time to the deconstruction movement. And I had no idea Preston before I went down there. And like, this makes sense, right? Because even though I'd been making my way back through kind of like queer radical spirituality, and we'll talk about that later, but like how I, I'd been making my way back to being a spiritual and sort of like person crafting my own religion. I had been pretty out of touch with like Gen Z, you know, American

evangelicals until I got down to Nashville. And of course in Nashville, it's everywhere. And the kids who I was going to rehab with were all – so many of them were from these – they'd gone to Oklahoma Baptist or they went to church in Dallas and grew up in the megachurches there. And they had these conversations and these words like deconstruction and all that they were bandying about. And I was like, this is so interesting. What's going on? And so I started visiting some of these churches in national churches. I specifically would seek out churches that, you know, build themselves as kind of like deconstruction spaces. And then I would find churches that like were less like overtly so, but it's sort of been on the fringes

of this, like mega churches that had like come out in favor of, okay, we will accept, you know, gay marriage, stuff like that. But we're still very heavily evangelical in there. Would not necessarily identify as deconstruction places. Anyways, I tried to get as much of a sampling as I could. And it was fascinating to me because I was like, oh shit, the West Coast elite urban areas and the East Coast elite urban areas, which is where I've spent most of my time, they have no idea that this is happening. And it's like, I actually got really excited. And it's the thing that made me like, want to go back to school for this, want to be like involved again in like a major way. And it's also the thing that made me feel like I could come home again in terms of like,

really owning and accepting my identity as an evangelical and an evangelical Christian, regardless of what my sort of dogma is, but because that thing is cultural. That thing is cultural. It's the music we are able to sing along to without ever having heard the music before. It's the words that we say and the lenses that we have for talking about culture and human relationships. It's the fact that, you know, we can say DTR and somebody knows that that's the defined the relationship talk, you know, it's these, it's these little pieces that make up, I grew up in this subculture and these languages make sense to me. And once I could accept that that was fine for me to be in a space like that with other people who were young and often younger than me and also wrestling with this and a lot of these people weren't even queer they weren't even queer but they were they were still deeply passionately moved by and like animated by this desire to

wrestle with the issues of like social justice of their time but they weren't ready to throw out the evangelical christian baby with the bathwater. And that was cool. That's fascinating. When you describe the elite coastal context, and I've only lived on the West Coast, so I know the West Coast, not so much the East Coast. absorb kind of their environment a little bit through conversations. But it does feel very binary. Like there's just two camps and they're really narrowly kind of defined and you got to check all these boxes. And that is the world. If you're not this, then you must be this. And that's just so...

It's fascinating how you... That natural context. Because I would say that's my normal world is where there's layers and layers and layers of complexity and diversity. And, you know, I meet very young, you know, Gen Z kids who, you know, dress like you and are off the chart, super conservative. And I meet people with gray hair, 80 years old, who are either affirming or just absolutely love their, you know, they have like six LGBTQ grandkids that they're loving, like, you know, so all these kinds of stereotypes of, of what somebody must believe, how they must act. They just, I've just always, well, I've met so many exceptions to this one size fits all monolithic view of this conversation, which I enjoy the complexity and the outliers, the people who just don't, maybe they're still

in a certain camp, but they just don't fit. They don't check all the boxes off of that camp. So that's how, I'm curious, Drew, because I actually don't even, how would you describe your, because you've been on, so you're, you know, raised evangelical, then left of faith, were agnostic atheists for a number of years is that without how would you just can you give us a i guess a quick summary of your faith journey all the way to a present day like where yeah where you been where you at yes i will i want to also just comment on what you just said about the the um the binary nature the sort of draconian two sides, no middle of a lot of, yeah, what I'm

sort of, and again, anytime we make categorical statements or categorical descriptions, we're obfuscating something or, you know, making something more simple than it actually is. But what I've been describing is these elite coastal secularized spaces and urban secularized spaces, the ferocity and unforgiving nature of that binary in those spaces is very real. And you describe it correctly. And there's reasons for that, right? There's reasons why that is existing. right? There's reasons why that is existing and like the fight against oppression and against like social, um, social evil, as I see it, um, in, in terms of the things that disenfranchise

certain people and that push certain people to the margins and take away the rights of other people like that, that is a profoundly important, uh, struggle and like the struggle to redefine public space and what it is to be a public citizen, um, is really, really important and really, really difficult too. And so like, I understand why that extremity, um, is, is, is in evidence right now in a lot of these areas that are compelled by, you know, uh, this discourse around how to take apart these oppressive systems. And yet, I'm so sick and tired. I'm so sick and tired of listening to people talking to echo chambers, of people who think exactly like them, and talking about it.

Because you know what? It's just as bad. And let me be clear about this. I have certain political convictions and cultural convictions that are way more aligned with what was so, you know, the so-called left. Right. But but the rhetoric, the tenor of the rhetoric on the left and on the right is just as hateful. And I'm so tired of it. I'm so bored of it. I'm so offended by how boring it is. And there's one thing that just makes me just angry. It's people being basic like that.

And because it's so easy to get applause for that, it's so easy to get adulation, thank you for saying what no one else will say. Yeah, fuck you. Everyone else is saying that. Whether it no one else will say yeah fuck you everyone else is saying that every whether it's in this flavor or that flavor everyone's saying the same goddamn thing what we don't have a lot of people saying is like is is what you just said which is like the profoundly perplexing and contradictory nuances and layers of people people not ideologies it's like how much courage does it take to stand up at the Oscars and rip on Trump?

It's like, it's just so boring. It's like, I may even agree with everything or something. It's like, again, it's like, you know, to go to like a, you know, a fundamentalist Christian conference and rip on the liberals or whatever. It's like, how? Right. Exactly. Talking about Trump, ripping about Trump at the Oscars or ripping about the libtards on

Fox News is the same level of intellectual powerness. I've said word for word with you because I was raised in fundamentalism and the tenor, the tone, the lack of nuance, the zero desire to want to take the best of an alternative argument and wrestle with that or humanize somebody you disagree with or just the broad brushing. And when I left that, when I deconstructed from fundamentalism and then I kind of maybe swung or opened the door of my more progressive, I'm like, oh, no, I kind of already been here, done that. I don't want to just do it again with different content. So I think there is a hungry middle.

I don't know. There's been some studies done on that. I think the loud voices on the extreme, extreme both sides maybe they represent a decent number of the population but i think that number is probably perceived as being higher than it really is i don't know i hope so at least that's interesting i believe so i have confidence um that it is i uh but i have no i don't have very much confidence that the tenor of the discourse is going to change anytime soon. I think it will have to change eventually. But I think I try to keep, again, this is like what I was saying at the beginning.

I'm learning to have low expectations or like low anthropology, if you will, from a Lutheran, almost a Lutheran theology. You've got a reformed anthropology. That's right, yeah. So all that to say that I think that the society crumbling and society sort of really falling apart and frankensteining into various factional

non-related or non-relating, they'll still be related but they will refuse to relate. They'll be related as ever but deny it uh vociferously uh factions and and um you know different camps will probably have to really kick us in the ass a lot before we get to a place of more nuanced and open and kind kind that's the thing that's really lacking from the discourse more than anything else president's kindness because real kindness real fruit of the spirit kindness

listens before it speaks it assumes good and has caritas charitable intent and charitable presumption of the other's humanity it's open to the fact that I might be wrong in ways that I'm not aware of, and you might be right in ways that I had not thought about, and that both of us are doing the best we can with the tools we have. And while it's hard, honestly, it's hard. It's hard to talk about this when I see my friends, my trans friends getting attacked in the streets. And I hear about it at the end of the day because I'm supposed to go and have an Arabic lesson with my friend, Habiba Layla. And she has to call me and say, you know what? I just got like I just got fucking, you know, hate crimed in the parking lot today.

So, you know, we're going to have to take it slow tonight at tonight's lesson, you know, like in, in that. And I mean, that's, I'm, that's the first example that comes to mind. I could go on and on and on. And like, it's hard in that, in moments of profound political violence, which is we are in that moment right now, we are in a moment of profound political violence and it's hard to say, can we, can we talk about kindness? Yeah.

And it's really hard for me to say that to like, and stand up here as somebody who's on the left and speaking as a, you know, as a, as a, whatever, a member of the LGBT community to say like, Hey, can we have kindness in our approach to other people who are, you know, who believe differently than us, who, who may hold beliefs that we find oppressive and deeply wrong. And yet, I believe to the core of my being that means are ends. Means are ends. And if we don't practice means that reflect the kind of world we want to be in and live in and be a part of, then our ends will be half ends. That, that dude, that, that preaches that

there's some pastors listening that are going to jack that for the next sermon. No, really. I mean, that's, that's, it's just, that's, you're just summarizing so much of a Christian approach. I mean, yeah. I mean, the, the, you know, the most quoted verse in the Bible by the first 300 years of early church writers, the most, the John 3, 16 of the early church was not John 3, 16. It was Matthew 5, love your enemies. It is what, it is what stood the church apart from the rest of society

once constantine once it became constantinian constantinized we kind of lost that as kind of the main heartbeat um yeah well and why did we lose that person why did we lose that we because we got powerful we got power and a little taste of that you get a little taste of power man it's hard to go back exactly and and here's the thing that's true for everybody that's true for everybody anytime any of us as a you know those of us who identify as a particular kind of collective whether it's a religious collective identitarian collective whatever it is like when we are oppressed and marginalized as the church was for many centuries and then when we receive power right that's why everybody who's in that's why everybody today who's trying to do any work here needs to read Paulo Freire's The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, right? of outsidership when we begin to experience holding the reins of power in any relationship,

be it personal or, or, or, or communal social, you know, and that's, that's a really hard thing to do. And right now as human beings, we're drunk with power. We have so much power. We hold in our hands, these little things that we hold in our hands, right? Like we hold so much power and, and yet we are impoverished in our relations. And, and that is reflective in the tone of the discourse. So, um, I want to answer your question, which, you know, from two hours ago, when we said that, um, you wanted to ask, like, how did I sort of come back and I'll real And I'll do it real quick. So basically, I went to New York. I lived in New York for five years, went to school, worked, and had a really wild and crazy life, which is, again, a completely different podcast. But I lived in the very sort of

center of the secularized, anti-rel intellectual community there and was very happy and proud of that and felt like thank god that i am not like them you know thank god i have somehow escaped you know and and that's you know i was listening to a pod i i listened i've started listening to podcasts for the first time in my life over the last like you know six months and there's this one that's very popular it's called my favorite murder i don't know if you've ever heard of it oh it's these two gals. Oh, it's amazing. These two women, they're amazing. And it's like a true crime podcast,

you know, where they tell the story of a murder or whatever to each other. But it's both incredibly like full of pathos and human feeling, but also like really hilarious. But they were talking about 24-year-olds being, they said, oh yeah, 24, the age when you're just loud and wrong, loud and wrong, you know, and it's true, like, you know, in your early 20s, you just, you're so

excited to first, you know, for the first time, finally feel like you know who you are, and you want to just like share it with the world and tell everyone else why they're totally wrong, you know, because you finally found the answer. It's that Mark Twain quote that we said earlier. But then what happened essentially is that my probably precedent, the one single thing that brought me back to a place of being able to practice, being privileged to practice profound faith and spirituality is my drug addiction and my years of dealing with a really lethal and debilitating crystal meth addiction. And,

and the way that that, that 600 pound gorilla that I have carried on my back, that I have carried on my back, tangoed with, arm wrestle with, been just fucked by and not in a fun way, has been the single thing that has brought me to my knees as far as having to find,

having been forced to come back to a place of, I don't have the answers, abject dependence on a higher power and daily ritual, boringly consistent practice of religious acts or religious principles in my life. Now I use the word are the R word, as I call it, like religion, religious. And a lot of my friends, a lot of people, a lot of people who I talk to generally, it really gets a bad reaction. People hate that word. It's such a dirty word right now. And it's a dirty word not only out in the world, so to speak, but also really in like post-millennial, post-modern Christian culture.

Like religion is what we're supposed to not be. We don't want to be religious. We want to be full of faith. You know, we want to have spirituality. But I, to me, I love all that. I get all that. And I also call bullshit because religion is what we do every single day.

Religion is what we do religiously. Religion is how we come together as people in the community and figure out how to do this thing called life. That's what, and the place where like our ideas and our graspings around ethics and morals and what does it mean to be a human being who's seeking to do good and to live with good intention, where those come together with like the structures and material

politics of the world that we live in and move in every day, that's religion. And again, this is another like separate tangent, but I can't really go on it now, although I'd love to talk to you about it again another time. But like, I think we actually need more religion in this world. I think we need more religion, not less. I think we need more different ways of experiencing the things that only religious practice can bring to us, which is a profound sense of faith in the midst of uncertainty and community in the midst of tension and hardship and daily praxis, daily praxis.

Whether that's reading your Bible or reading your Vedanta or doing your yoga, or having sex with someone who you're committed to in a beautiful, meaningful relationship that has boundaries. And all those things are religious acts. How we spend our money, and how we are accountable to each other, and how we spend our money both interpersonally and communally, socially. Credit Suisse receiving an infusion of cash from the Swiss National Bank. That's got religious overtones to it, right? We have to be asking these questions about what does religion mean now more than ever, because we live in a world, a capitalist world that tells us that religion is something over here, and it's bounded by these things that actually religion is everywhere

and so thankfully in the last several probably six years of my life through being in recovery communities studying my addiction and then also through really deeply being embraced by queer spiritual communities in particular a subculture called the radical fairies that's been around since the 1970s which is you know basically me going out to these land commune projects with a bunch of other weirdos who you know are men in dresses who can also fix your sink you know and like doing this sort of ad hoc religious sort of communal ceremony rituals in the woods you, all that kind of weird tangential stuff made me feel, uh, able to, to come back to religious language and 12 step and recovery groups made me feel, uh, that it

was not only possible, but necessary if I wanted to survive. So many questions. Uh, how long, how long you've been clean for? How long now can you say? I don't know that that's a personal question. Yeah. I mean, I've been in recovery again since August of 2021. So you're proceeding that Preston from July of 2020 through July through July of 2021. I was homeless for the most part, living often on the street in and out of trap houses and using meth almost every day. And that was during the pandemic. I had basically tanked all relationships in my family. And my, you know, my family still loved me and all of them,

in particular my mother. I mean, my mother was able to stay connected to me. I don't know how, because she, I think her faith and her, and her, her nature, just her, but she stayed connected to me through the really darkest, deepest times of my addiction and abjection. But yeah, that was the worst year of my life. It was also, and I keep saying this recently because I want to say it more, and it's really true, that year was also the year that I drew closer to God than I've ever been.

Wow. Golly And that was the year that like being out on the street and in homeless camps and among the absolute most dejected and rejected of society, the least of these and walking alone without support, without just being on my own among those people, I experienced God through them and also just within my own self in a deeper and more profound and more desperate and total way than I had ever experienced. And so I think like, yeah, that's, um, I, I, I, I came back to religious practice and to faith because I, God was gracious enough to make it a, um, a non-negotiable, something that I had to, had to embrace again.

Would you say you identify as specifically like Christian or evangelical or religious, or are you figuring that out or? That's a resounding yes now. And I think like what now the thing is, if we were going to if we were going to sit down and get into like minutiae, particular theological, you know, doctrine or whatever, you know, orthodoxy or like statements of faith, the things you kind of have to sign if you go to a conservative religious college and stuff like that. Like, you know, we would have all kinds of like, um, confusing, uh, points of agreement and points of disagreement. And like, I, and I think that that's the fact that I know that and I'm fully aware of that. And also still today, fully identify as a Christian and as an American evangelical. And the reason pressing is because that's how I was raised. That's the world that shaped me. And I now understand evangelical. And the reason, Preston, is because that's how I was raised. That's the world that shaped me. And I now understand today,

and I think this is probably the most power, one of the most powerful insights that I've been given in the last couple of years through watching other people do this and having to work through it myself, which is that I don't have to give any of that up in order to still believe whatever it is that God leads me to believe, like within my own theology.

And there are lots of points of theology that we would probably share and have overlap in. But that's not the most – that's not why I identify as a Christian or as an American evangelical. It's not doctrinal. It's cultural. Interesting. as a Christian or as an American evangelical, it's not doctrinal. It's cultural. Hmm. Interesting. I mean, evangelicalism is such a cultural thing. It's why so many, a growing number, at least of friends of mine who would on paper sign

off on many things that would be traditionally conceived of evangelical don't identify that way because of the cultural baggage, especially the way it's been politicized. And yeah, I'm on the fence whether the term should be redeemed or ditched. I don't know. It's not a huge, doesn't keep me up at night, but there definitely is a certain, yeah, you can't separate evangelicalism from all the cultural stuff that comes with that, you know, for good or for bad. Again, I appreciate that. Right. For good or for bad. Exactly. And that's the point, right? Is that like, okay, so I remember several years ago,

I was living in Portland. I was living at this fabulous communitarian, radical, you know, commune house. I was working as a stripper, having a great time. And my mom, this house was called the House of Butter, okay? And every Friday night, you know, we had a Shabbat dinner, Shabbutter. And so at Shabbutter, you know, all of these Butterites, you know, these various people who lived in the house and were connected to the house and sort of social caring network would come and everyone would bring a dish, you know, and they would have made the dish.

And we'd all lay them there at the table and we'd get there around sunset. And then we'd circle up, you know, around the table and we'd hold hands and everyone would share what they brought. Here's, you know, what we brought and here's what it's made of in case there's any allergies, whatever. And then we'd go around the circle and everyone would say if they had a prayer request or not, or if they needed to be uplifted in any particular kind of, you know, spiritual way. And we had a board in the back of the dining room with a map of the world on it. And we would put people's prayer requests and names up there on the world. So-and-so is in Africa right now fighting for, you know, fighting to help this particular watershed and this river community that needs to be saved from ecological damage. We want to really lift

them up, you know, right now. And I remember one Friday, my mom came to Shibata. I invited my mom to Shibata and my sweet, amazing mother, who is an evangelical pastor's daughter and an evangelical pastor's wife, came and stood in that circle around the potluck dinner on a Friday night and watched and listened as her son, her queer radical fairy son, who she had been quite sure had lost and left the faith forever in the way that I had been raised, stood in a circle with people who gave their prayer requests and then put them up on a prayer board and then prayed for each other and then sat down together for a potluck dinner and had conversation about the

things in life and our spiritual walks that were meaningful to us. It was a fucking Friday night Bible study. And my mom stood there and wept like she wept because she saw that the ways in which I had been raised and the things that were such sweet, sweet joy and such good medicine to us as a family and me as a kid were still alive in my life. I had found a way to come back to those things in my own way. And the thing is, that kind of an experience, that hands held around a potluck dinner with a prayer board, that's not going to be that meaningful to people who were raised in an environment outside of kind of like, I mean, it could be, it could be, but it's way more likely

that I'm able to connect to the divine and to my own best self through that experience because I was raised as an evangelical in the heart of American evangelicalism. That's the way I experienced religion. That's the way I experienced God. And so here I was in a circle full of a bunch of radical trans activists and Marxists and, you know, outsider sort of people, people who I never would have thought would be at my church or in my Bible study, doing the same format, the same sort of like aesthetic praxis. And for me, that was medicine. And that's because my culture. So yes, American evangelicalism is full of really ugly, ugly things. And yet, when I am sitting in a bourgeois coffeehouse in West Hollywood and a homeless person comes up and starts screaming and banging on the fence, it's not only the fact that I've lived on the streets that allows me to identify with him and have compassion. But it's the fact that I grew up hearing that it is to the least of these,

it is to the loss that I have come. Bro, thank you so much for coming on the show. You're, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, you're one of the most enjoyable, honest, authentic people I have in my life. And I know we've only hung out a few times. I appreciate you know, um, appreciate you. I have mad respect for your intelligence and especially your creativity. I just love, I just love hearing you talk, bro. Cause just your use of language. I know it's probably natural to you, but you've already said several words that I've never heard of before.

And I have to go Google right now. So, um, yeah, love you, bro. Thank you so much for, for coming on the podcast and uh yeah any final words for our audience well i want to say uh thank you preston for having me i want to say that you are also just one of my favorite people uh i love you i love that you and i are both committed to doing the messy work uh of standing in the middle and asking hard questions and showing love and kindness, openness, and pleasure in each other's company, even when we deeply disagree. I think that you're a good man

and I'm proud of you for the work that you're doing. And I'm just glad you're my friend. So thank you for having me on today. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network. Hey friends, have you been blessed or encouraged or challenged by Theology in the Raw? If so, would you consider joining Theology in the Raw's Patreon community? For as little as five bucks a month, you can gain access to a diverse group of Jesus followers who are committed to thinking deeply, loving widely, and having curious conversations with thoughtful people. We have several membership tiers where you can receive premium content.

For instance, silver level supporters get to ask and vote on the questions for our monthly Patreon-only podcast. They also get to see written drafts of various projects and books I'm working on, and there's other perks for that tier. Gold-level supporters get all of this and access to monthly Zoom chats where we basically blow the doors open on any topic they want to discuss. My patrons play a vital role in nurturing the mission of the Algenorah. And for me, just personally, interacting with my patron supporters has become one of the hidden blessings in this podcast ministry. So you can check out all of the info at patreon.com forward slash theology in a row. That's patreon.com forward slash theology in a row.