43 - Jesus Camp (feat. Dara Swisher)

There is a special place in Hell for people who hurt and torment children.

One day, we will get an interstitial that doesn't evoke cosmic dread in me. But it is not this day.

In this adult store I worked for 7 years has this bright red carpeting everywhere and it's a big frigging store. Also the walls are red and the ceiling pink. A 10 hour work shift made me kind of nauseous of all the redness. It was probably because deep down inside I know I'm filthy sinner, I just haven't figure it out yet.

Yet again my experiences with mild Lutheran religiousness did not prepare me for this episode. Nothing in my life has ever been affected by religion. Except when my dad as a complete joke invited a couple of Jehova's witnesses for a coffee and after that they started to just come in the house when ever they felt like it until my mom literally chased them away...

i went to the church camp that was built on top of the rajneeshi compount yall should talk about that cuz holy shit

14 minutes in and absolutely incensed by the accusation that Minnesota and wisconsin are the same. wisconsin should not be recognized. Split it between Minnesota and Michigan and free the people of the yoke of wisconsin's illegitimate state government.

There are two Bible camps in northern Maine my parents used to send me too in the summer. Living Waters Bible Camp in Danforth, Maine. It was the fancy one, $100-300 ! Week depending on which package you paid for. Got to do paintball one year and it was located in on a large lake bordering New Brunswick. Kayaks and cool events. The cheaper option was River of Life Bible camp which ran about $60 a week. More bare bones, with an unswimmable river next to it. Church services 3 times a day in the Tabernacle, almost worked at one for a summer.

When you said Bellamy, I thought- wait, the same guy who invented the salute the Nazis loved so much? And- no, it wasn't created by him- but for his pledge by someone else. I am screaming

As someone who has been to Midwest adult store, I would describe it as the aesthetic of a strip mall battery store, or a unbranded cell phone retailer

We need a full JC Rap now Also, I assume AJ's referring to a different one but I nearly went to Cathedral High School in Indianapolis

I go to a music festival in Waynesville Missouri, and it's a regional burning man event so you get a whole bunch of hippies running around "gods country"

I'm just disappointed that you didn't have a guest who grew up with this kind of Christianity and then left. This documentary doesn't need yet another hot take from people viewing it like audience members at a freak show. It's the insider perspective that makes the odyssey content interesting instead of petty, and you didn't get the insider perspective on this. There were any number of ways you could have addressed the very real political entanglements of evangelicalism without just ridiculing a form of Christianity you don't understand because you never had to live it.

I would like to formally request a shirt that simply says "ONE THIRD OF YOUR FRIENDS ARE CRUST IN A SOCK SOMEWHERE" accompanied by whatever graphic y'all see fit.

The episode also reminds me that my eighth-grade science teacher (who of course taught creationism but somehow managed to be good at everything else) was very obviously a bitter repressed lesbian. I specifically remember her randomly saying something along the lines of "I know I'm not supposed to hate the gays, but I just can't help it." The weird thing was that other than that one comment she was actually super nice! Like I actually have really positive memories of my grade school experience for some inexplicable reason. 🤷🏻‍♀️ (In retrospect I probably remember school more fondly because it was calmer and less of a shit-show than my home life, if that makes sense.) Anyway since this isn't a public post, I'm going to dox her lol: https://christianheritage.org/team/miss-robin-russell/ https://christianheritage.org/honoring-miss-russell/ (The other reason I think the Evangelical bubble I grew up in was less toxic than it otherwise could have been is that most of the people in it were extremely posh Swedish Americans who were just too nice—and too rich—to do all that bullshit, though that didn't prevent a very weird church split largely involving a single extended family. Oh and also they cared about preparing their kids to be similarly bourgeois, so they didn't slack on the education front.)

This article is somewhat topical to the whole thing of leaving Evangelicalism: https://itself.blog/2022/06/29/the-evangelical-mind/ The author actually seems pretty cool (I subscribe to his blog, obviously): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Kotsko

Soooo I decided last night to watch this with my wife, having heard a bit less than half of the pod, before you got to the pivot. I remembered it as being quaint too. And lemme tell you: being a cis white guy next to your partner who has just had a painful contraceptive procedure done because we live in Wisconsin and she felt like she no longer had a choice while the worst people you've ever seen engineer their current victory and she's telling you "you know this isn't just a podcast thing to some people" really makes you feel some profound and terrible things!

Really missed "Lover's Lanes" as a name for the bowling alley/adult emporium.

Regarding making an exception for "shove boats" in one's hatred of boats: a better reason than the fact that they're small and kind of cute might be the fact that they bully other boats, as evidenced by the fact that they shove them. (If you hate boats, the best type of boat would be a boat that also hates boats.)

This episode reminds me: my brother got sent to a "tough love" boarding school that was featured in a documentary titled "Kidnapped for Christ" that is somewhat comparable to "Jesus Camp". The documentary is on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapped_for_Christ My brother wasn't featured in the documentary (and he left the school long before the documentary was filmed), but he runs the alumni association for the school (and his website *was* featured): https://www.nhym-alumni.org/ The school was also featured in the NYT best-selling 2005 memoir titled "Jesus Land" written by the journalist Julia Scheeres: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Scheeres#Jesus_Land The school in question was somewhat unusual for the "troubled teen" industry in that it was around long enough for the founder to retire, and a significant portion of the staff were "true believers" in the school's mission, which for many similar school is not actually the case! Anyway, if you wanted to cover the school's history in an episode at some point, you could try contacting my brother through his website, and if he isn't interested in being a guest, he would almost certainly be able to suggest other members of the alumni community who probably would be. (Julia Scheeres in particular may or may not be interested, considering she has been somewhat more successful than most other alumni at moving on with her life.)