Reclaiming the Faith: Unpacking Christian Hypocrisy with John Fugelsang
How can a religion of peace and love be hijacked for political gain?
I just sat down with John Fugelsang.
He is a legendary SiriusXM broadcaster and comedian who grew up as the son of a nun and a monk.
In this episode you’ll learn:
Why the Bible defines a fetus as property rather than a person in Exodus 21.
How Rome rebranded Christianity 1,700 years ago to serve as a tool for imperial control.
The 0 commandments of Jesus that are actually supported by modern political movements.
We dive into the details later in the conversation.
If you like the episode, please subscribe.
Timestamps
00:00 Intro
1:25 Childhood and Family Background
7:36 The Hijacking of Christianity
12:21 Debating Christian Nationalism
21:26 Confronting Hate with Love
24:21 The Radical Reform of Jesus
26:42 The Role of Rome in Jesus’s Death
30:06 Abortion and Biblical Interpretations
32:52 The Contradiction of Jesus and Paul
39:52 Jesus’s Political Stance Today
46:34 The Impact of Fundamentalism
Listen
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Here’s the full transcript:
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John Fuglsang is a legendary broadcaster and comedian but more importantly, he’s a theological whistleblower. Born from a secret decade-long love affair between a nun and a monk, John was raised on the inside of the faith and now he’s exposing exactly how it’s been weaponised for political gain.
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the MAGA movement fights for. In this episode, we perform an autopsy on modern Christian hypocrisy, exploring what the Bible actually says about the death penalty, homosexuality, and how the Christian political agenda you see on the news is often the exact opposite of the original scripture. You think if Jesus was to come back today, they’d probably kill him all over again. That’s the point of the story. He would threaten the establishment, but would propagandise against him. John is here to reclaim the narrative from those who exploit Christian faith for political gain. But first,
I asked a man who literally exists because his parents broke their religious vow. If you wanted to hijack a religion to serve a political or personal agenda, what would you do? I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Today I’m speaking to John Fuglsang. John is a comedian, actor, legendary broadcaster and the host of Tell Me Everything on SiriusXM. This episode may get little controversial, but bear with us.
We’re talking about the hypocrisy of modern politics and his new book, Separation of Church and Hate. John. Thank you, Adam. Thanks for coming on. I want to start simple. Walk us through your childhood. What was that like? Because I’ve heard of probably one of the greatest love stories ever. And it actually gave me goosebumps.
Genuinely, when I was learning a little bit about you, it was fascinating. So how does a Franciscan brother who lives by the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience to God above all else, and a nun who lives in a convent under silent solitude, undertakes daily Eucharist, two hours of prayer and takes a vow of poverty, chastity and obedience to God, okay, your parents end up meeting, end up falling in love. This is fascinating, interesting I’m not supposed to be here. I mean, I’m here because two people...
broke a promise to God. That’s the first line of the book. My mother grew up in the South and during segregation and she entered the convent right after high school. Her prom date proposed and she said, no, I have plans to marry someone else. And my mother went into the Daughters of Wisdom order. They put her through nursing school. Her name ceased to be Peggy and she became Sister Damien. And this is before the omen. So there weren’t too many jokes. And eventually they sent her off to work in Africa.
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with lepers in Malawi. But before they sent her off as a nurse, they briefly stationed her here in New York City in Brooklyn at Holy Family Hospital. My father had grown up in Brooklyn during the Great Depression and he was an altar boy. And one day the priest said to him, you’re too tall to be an altar boy. I can’t have an altar boy who’s taller than me. And my dad got fired from his altar boy job. And the priest felt so bad about it, he said, I’ll tell you what I’ll do.
I’m gonna get you an education. And the priest pulled some strings and got my father who was very poor. My grandfather was a cab driver and a house painter. My dad got to go to St. Francis Prep School named after St. Francis of Assisi. And my father began learning the kind of Christianity that St. Francis taught when he quit the crusades, renounced all violence, gave up his family fortune, hug lepers and devoted himself to poverty and an end to violence.
And the family all became kind of concerned. Jack was supposed to become a priest and get them all a ticket to heaven. And now suddenly he’s like, became a Franciscan brother, got his degree, first person in my family to go to college. He did it because of his ordination. And soon my dad was like talking about Gandhi and talking about the civil rights movement and writing conscientious objector letters for students who didn’t want to go fight in Vietnam on moral reasons. And my father, the brother, met my mother, the sister.
when he had to go to Holy Family Hospital for tuberculosis. And that was while my mother was briefly stationed on her way to Africa. He had sworn to never know love. He dressed like the Jedi and he promised like the Jedi to never fall in love. But he fell instantly, madly, desperately, passionately in love with this quiet Southern girl in a nun’s habit that he knew he could never have and had promised God he would never want.
They became very close friends. She went off to Africa and he chastely wrote her letters all the time, letting her know what was going on back in the States with the Vietnam and the civil rights movement. Eventually the convent sent my mom back to the States briefly. My dad borrowed a car and drove to Virginia Beach where she was working at overnight in a hospital, found her, talked with her till the sun came up and then told her he was in love and always had been.
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and she threw him out of the hospital saying, you have no right. Look how I’m dressed. You can’t talk to me this way. But he had gotten through to her and eventually she went back to Africa and he kept after her. And at one point he told his superior, you know, I think I’m thinking about maybe leaving the brothers. And without asking any questions, his superior just said, if you love her, her. Like he knew it was the sixties. And eventually my mom came back. My dad proposed.
And two months later, after leaving the convents, they married in a little army base down south. It was a first love and a second marriage for them both. And it was scandalous at the time. Some family boycotted. They thought they were going to heaven because they had a nun and a Franciscan brother in the family. But they settled on Long Island and raised us and tried to raise us to be progressive, free-thinking Catholics, which is why I’m a comedian because I can’t afford the therapy I require. It was like all the social justice, but with the sex hangups.
And I was raised, I never knew what my parents had been until one day I was down south for the summer and my staying with my grandma and I was half Brooklyn, half Southern, which is a very strange way to grow up as it is. mean, normally that’s a weird way to grow up in this country, but I found these pictures under my grandma’s bed in a shoe box, old black and whites of the family. And I noticed my mother was dressed very differently in all of them. My mother looked like an angel in all of them. And I knew my parents were already,
By age seven, I knew my parents were older than the other parents. I didn’t really understand why. My grandmother saw me with these photos all splayed out like it was a CSI crime scene. And she explained what my mother had been, what my father had been. When my parents got down south to pick me up, end of the summer, I proudly announced, I knew you were a sister and you were a brother and I know what those things are. My parents were horrified and they made me promise that I would never tell anyone.
I was not allowed to ever tell anybody what they had been. They just didn’t want people to know. It was their choice. So growing up, I wasn’t allowed to tell my friends or classmates or anyone about my parents’ previous life. But I was raised to believe that Christianity was about the stuff Jesus talked about in the Bible. Humility, servant leadership, going to the margins and helping the less fortunate, put down your sword. He who lives by the sword dies by the sword. Don’t execute people. Pay your taxes. The last shall be first.
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Jesus says in Matthew 25, the parable of the ghosts and the sheep. He’s going to judge individuals and nations by how they care for the poor, care for the sick, welcome the stranger, and are kind to those in prison. And then like millions of Americans, I grew up and it seems like this religion of peace and love was hijacked by this mean little white supremacist tax-free clique. And it took me a number of years of confusion to understand how the version of Christianity I saw on TV
the televangelists and all that had really nothing to do with the Jesus I had been raised with. And when I eventually became a comedian, because I couldn’t afford the therapy, I wound up being really, really drawn to talking about religion, talking about the disconnect between what Jesus says and what his followers allegedly is unauthorized fan clubs talk about. And eventually I debated.
Jerry Falwell Senior on Bill Marshow. Can you explain who that is? Yeah, sure. For those who don’t know, he was one of the architects of the religious right, the moral majority. Jerry Falwell was a white supremacist who opened up whites-only schools and fought for segregation. When segregation ended, he still fought for segregation in universities and he supported apartheid in South Africa. He was a revoltingly false Christian who made lots and lots and lots of money on TV and the radio with the old time Gospel Hour, preaching a gospel of
Nothing to do with Jesus, nothing about humility. Was he on like late night TV? He was on morning TV and afternoon TV. And his whole thing was what is always been the curse on American Christianity, not humility. I’m better than you. That you’re better. That’s OK. God likes us more. And this is the history of Christianity in this country. Not fighting for what Jesus says, but fighting for conservative Christian power, fighting for conservative Christian control over society.
And that’s the whole history of the religion from the time Rome took over Jesus’s operation 1700 years ago. It’s always been this imperial minded authoritarian Christianity that puts itself first. That’s how we got slavery. That’s how we got the Holocaust versus the actual Jesus followers who call these authoritarians out like Martin Luther King, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, like Columbus’s priest Bartolomeo de Las Casas who protested how they were treating the indigenous people. There’s a long history.
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of Christians who are activists, but it’s almost always in response to Christian authoritarianism and douchebag Christian nationalists. Let’s talk about Jerry Falwell’s senior for a second. Because juniors are who too. I don’t know. I don’t know either of them very well. Junior is a very funny story, but look at Dawes senior. How did you go about finding common ground with a guy like that? Very badly. I was very young and I went on to the show and I was just determined to beat this guy up. Did you beat him up?
I tried to. I was very young and this was, know, Bill’s producers wanted to go in there and mix it up. And I’ll always give Bill Mark credit. He had me on TV to talk about religion before anyone, but I still wasn’t allowed to say what my mother and father had done. Like I was in my twenties by now. What’s wrong with that though? Well, didn’t want to, my parents didn’t want me mentioning anyone. So like I told Bill’s producers, like, you know, this is my background. This is why I’m so into Christianity, but I’m not really allowed to say why I’m into it. And with Falwell,
and this was gonna be in the book and I cut it out. But with Falwell, I went out there just for the kill. He was bragging about how pro-life he was. And I was like, well, you have support the death penalty. And that’s something unlike abortion Jesus actually talked about. So you’re really pro some life. And the crowd cheered and he looked at me with hatred in his eyes. And I was like, look at me, I’m beating up a bully. And as it went on, it got worse and worse. I just kind of like, I kind of tried to humiliate him.
And when it was done, I got a lot of laughs. I played the role of comic and got the crowd on my side, but I don’t think I changed anybody’s mind about anything. I was just mean to a mean person. And I flew to New York and called my mother and she was like, yeah, I wasn’t crazy about how you treated him. He’s a bad guy, but you could have quoted scripture. You could have done other things. And I said, well, I think as a comedian, I want to talk about this more, but I need to explain why I’m this weird and where I come from. And so it was my...
Bad attempt to debate Jerry Fall that led my mother to give me permission to tell her story. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So I think about this a lot because there’s a lot of division in America and it’s spreading across the Western world pretty significantly. So if you could go back to that experience again, how could you have found common ground with a guy like that? I would have said, let’s talk about Jesus, who allegedly is the guy that Christians follow.
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And I would have said to him, tell me one teaching of Jesus that the Republican party fights for. I’ve learned since that that’s how I approach it with our Donald Trump Christian friends. Give me one teaching of Christ, an actual commandment of Jesus from the gospel, something Jesus said that the MAGA movement fights for or Donald Trump fights for. And when you ask questions instead of attacking, when you ask questions and say, look, let’s talk about the Jesus we believe in here. And my book is not just for Christians, it’s for anybody, atheist.
any religion, agnostic, Christian, anyone who’s gonna have to deal with a right-wing fundamentalist Christian nationalist, the haters, not the nice conservative people who are wrong about everything, they’re lovely, the haters, the brutal homophobes and woman haters and the people who who’ve always been destroying this country. And if I had just engaged Falwell and said, where does your Bible justify this? You support the death penalty. Jesus overturns that and says only sinless people are allowed to carry it out. Homophobia, where does...
Where does Jesus commands you to treat gay people the way you treat him? He doesn’t say much about, he doesn’t say anything about it specifically, right? Well, I go deep on that in the book. I would argue, and I do argue, there are two areas where Jesus shows he was quite pro-gay. He doesn’t say it in as many words, but when he heals the Roman centurion slave. Was he gay? Well, the word in the original Greek was paeis, beloved boy. And we know the Romans brought their boys on the road and left their wives at home. And if it was just a slave, why would a Roman?
occupying generals seek out a local Jewish faith healer who’s homeless to say, come to my house to heal a common slave. was Enimos Dulos, it was his beloved boy and which the apostles must’ve been thrilled about this one. And then a lot of right-wing folks like to use Matthew 19 where Jesus says, male and female he made them, a man will leave his parents and marry his wife to say no gay marriage. When you actually read Matthew 19, which I didn’t do till years later, it’s Jesus coming out against straight divorce.
They don’t teach us this, back then divorce was a death sentence for women. If a husband got tired, if a husband no longer delighted in his wife, according to Deuteronomy, he kicks her out. That’s it, no lawyers, no divorce, no nothing. If a woman didn’t have family to live with, it was prostitution or begging. So divorce was a death sentence for women. When Jesus came out and says, he overturns the divorce laws of Moses in Matthew 19, he says, your hearts were hardened under Moses. He goes, if you divorce your wife for any reason other than she cheated on you.
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you’ve committed adultery, you’ve made yourself an adulterer, made her an adulterer. The apostles are like, really? Maybe it’s better not to get married at all. And then Jesus says, there’s three kinds of guys that this doesn’t apply to. And he calls them all eunuchs. I’m getting really deep here. But he says, those who were born eunuchs, those who were made eunuchs by men, and those who became eunuchs for the glory of God. There’s a payoff, I promise. Became eunuchs for the glory of God, he means celibates. Jesus is talking about guys who gave up on sex to be divine, to be holy. Made eunuchs by men, he’s talking about castrated people.
Born eunuchs? He’s not talking about babies born with no genitalia. He’s talking about babies that are born and from the time you meet them, you know that boy’s not gonna be marrying a woman. Interesting. didn’t know that. They don’t teach us that. They teach us Sodom and Gomorrah, which isn’t about consensual gay people either. Well, I’m reading the Bible from start to finish right now. So I’ll come back to Oh, man. I’m about a third of way through. Well, the whole thing is Jesus... I’ve gone through the Old Testament. Wow. It’s really feminine. a lot of beautiful stuff, but Jesus’ whole thing with his new covenant is don’t be a dick.
And homophobia is in no way covered under the Sermon on the Mount. want to put a pin in that for a second and explore that further. But before we wrap up on the extreme debates you’ve been involved in, I wanted to touch on the debate you had with a KKK grand wizard. Did you try and change his mind or again, you purely trying to expose? young and just tried to humiliate him and it was easier because this was David Duke, who was also a former member of the Nazi party.
and a former Klansman. And he had almost been elected governor of Louisiana in 1990. And he’s a very bad guy and a fraud. And they asked me to come on with him because nobody, no real celebrities would to debate politics and religion. And that was great. I was like, I was so set to tear this guy apart. And my dad warned me. My dad was like, if you hate this man, you’re gonna sink down to his level. But I didn’t care. was a Nazi Klansman. I was gonna wail on this guy. And I...
and I offered him hot gay sex if he would stop and I took my coat off and I’m like, come on, you and me, I’ll make you bite the pillow, bitch. I was like, I was, I was a very young, hot-headed comic and the crowd went crazy, same as Falwell. And again, I beat up a bully. I didn’t change anybody’s mind. I was mean to a mean person and it was good for five minutes of entertainment and then was forgotten. And I knew that that was a load of bullshit on my part and that there’s better ways to do it.
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If they’re going to claim to be Christian and they’re fighting for cruelty, you don’t need to hate them back. You can just use that book they wave around over their head so bombastically because the point of separation of church and hate is if you’re debating with a right-wing Christian nationalist on any issue that divides us, chances are, even if you don’t believe in Jesus as a literal thing, he’s probably on your side. Could you steel man any parts of their arguments? Steel man?
if you were to put yourself in their shoes with their talking points, do you have any way to come to their conclusions? Sure. If you keep Jesus out of it. Okay. If you believe it’s in the Bible somewhere. they don’t though, right? Like surely at the core of this, they kind of would believe the same thing that you believe when it comes to Jesus. assuming that’s like the common ground, you’re trying to reach, right? I find Americans like to worship Jesus. They like to fight for Jesus.
They don’t like to listen to him. They don’t like to follow his actual teachings. His actual teachings are very inconvenient, the kind of America authoritarians want. But hey, this part of the Bible says slaves obey your masters. That’s just as good, right? St. Paul, who’s not Jesus, says women should be submissive to men. So that’s just as good. Jesus is a feminist. Jesus treats women as equals throughout. He breaks the laws of his own religion to teach women, which was illegal. But it’s like the anything but Jesus church. If you want to find oppression, if you want to find cruelty,
You’ll find it in the Bible. You won’t find it in the teachings of Jesus. And that’s why there’s Christians and there’s Christ followers. And Christians seem to think that the hangups of Paul and Leviticus are just as valid as the love of Jesus and they’re full of crap. So if you were to put a percentage of value on the teachings of Jesus and the rest of the Bible, what would you weigh that? I would say that Christians aren’t supposed to follow the Bible at all.
They’re supposed to follow Christ. Okay, so 100 % word of Christ and zero for the rest of it? No, I mean, you should read and study and understand all of it. Well, what’s the point if all you need to do is focus on what he had to say? Well, because I think putting it in context helps it make more sense. Jesus brought a new covenant and that’s where it gets different. know, a lot of people want to believe that you can follow the anti-gay laws of Leviticus because shall not lie with the man is with the man. That’s abomination, right? But of course that’s...
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Leviticus 2010 says you have to stone adulterers to death. I don’t see too many of these people carrying rocks over to Mar-a-Lago, you? I mean, Jesus comes out against adultery and cheating on your wife and dumping your wife. He never comes out against gay people, but the folks who hate gay people worship a man who cheats on his wives and dumps his wives. They don’t follow Jesus. Everyone picks and chooses the parts of their holy books that they want to follow, right? Some of us do it to justify kindness and some of us do it to justify being a selfish shithead. So when you debated
the former KKK Graham Wizard, did he say anything off camera that shocked you? He shoved me at the end. fuck. Had to pose for our group photo. I went over to, no one wanted to stand next to him. It’s like the boxing lineup. Well, he was next to CCH Pounder, who’s a great character actor. And she’s black. And they placed her standing next to him for the group photo. And she wouldn’t do it. So I went over to his side. And this was like a minute after it Off Room Gay Sex on the air. And he shoved me. And the whole crowd saw it. And it was a badge of honor. Wow.
But, looking back on it, I’m torn. On the one hand, I wish I had been more constructive and actually talked about how he was full of crap as a Christian. On the other hand, it was my only chance to beat the crap out of America’s most famous Nazi Klansman. So it was a tough moral struggle. mean, it’s not the right context of a conversation to allow an actual conversation to occur. Yeah, you’re on a TV show and there’s like audience and self-enclad. It’s literally the older equivalent of short form content.
It was. And back then I was much more about setting the house on fire and getting an applause line and getting out rather than actually. viral. Yeah. And now I’m much more focused on, no, let’s actually talk about what your holy book says. Because nine times out of 10, they’re not following it. How would you prepare to go against somebody? So I don’t want to say, again, I don’t say go against because I don’t think that’s useful. That’s what my book’s about.
Yeah, a useful way of approaching it. How do you mentally prepare to go, say, toe to toe with someone who represents everything you stand against? Well, don’t hate them, for one. Can’t hate them. Jesus says, turn the other cheek, He sure does. Yeah. And I just had that recently. I was on Piers Morgan and this one guy couldn’t couldn’t stop insulting me. This Christian nationalist dude. What was he Viper, you viper, you viper. Why would he be calling you that? Because I was talking about the fact that right wing Christianity doesn’t fight for any of the teachings of Christ.
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They fight for- And he didn’t believe that? No, he called me a viper and called me names. And finally, like I just said, you know, in front of Piers, I just said, hit the other cheek, bro. I can take it. Hit the other cheek. What did say to that? He knew what I was doing and he backed down. Yeah. Because again, they claim to follow this book and they fight for power for their own group. They don’t fight for the teachings of Christ. They fight for conservative Christian power. And this has been the blight on Christianity for 1700 years. And it’s-
the story of America because we are the only country on earth where our history of Christianity is completely tied up with a history of white supremacy. America is the only nation on earth that we’re the only nation where our history began in both Christianity and white supremacy at the same time. And it’s been a struggle ever since. Interesting. So it was the same Christians that pushed against the other Christians to break
slavery always and and their and their allies. Yeah, but it was led by the Christians, right? was led by Christians. Christians backed up slavery, supported slavery, said the Bible has slavery, so it’s OK. And it was Christians like Frederick Douglass, the Quakers, Harriet Tubman, who led the abolition movement. Just quickly, though, I love doing this podcast. If it’s positively impacted you in some way and you would like to support us, please subscribe. By subscribing, it allows us to build.
a much bigger base of listeners, which results in better guests, better production, and a better show overall. Alternatively, please take a look at the affiliate links of the products that I use and love in the comments below and consider purchasing using those links. They’ll give you a discount and they’ll also provide the podcast a small kickback. These are two very easy ways for you to support us as we continue to grow the podcast that we absolutely love doing.
Thank you for your support and I’m back to the episode. In the same piece of philosophy is the darkness and the light. Always. Right. Now I’ve been thinking about this because you focused on Jesus’s teachings at expense of everything else. Right. And then I mean I want to be caught not expensive. mean Jesus never stopped being Jewish. He never renounced the Torah.
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He was not a Christian, he died a You wouldn’t be a Christian if came back today? He didn’t say, I’m quitting Judaism to start my own religion. He never said it. was a radical reform Jewish leader. he really, really made enemies of some of the extreme conservative religious bosses of his day. He grew up under European military occupation. He grew up, the only white people in the Bible are the Romans who killed Jesus.
The only people we would describe as white in modern terms were the Romans. Supported and spoken to by the Pharisees who were impacting. The Pharisees were the local bosses of religion in Judea. They were given a tiny amount of power by the occupying Roman imperial military. And some of the Pharisees were friends with Jesus. Nicodemus hangs with Jesus. You see all the time Jesus is going to Pharisee’s houses for dinner. They think Jesus may have been a Pharisee as well. But there was a few of them who were extreme conservative, orthodox.
who are all about manmade rules. They did not like that Jesus was making them look like fools, usually in front of a crowd. He knew how to debate trolls without getting caught the Talmud in little ways, right? Well, Jesus’ radical thing was he was saying, I am fulfilling the law. He says, I didn’t come to end the law, but to fulfill it. When Jesus does the sermon on the mount and he’s saying, you’ve heard it said, eye for an eye, but I say to you, turn the other cheek. You’ve heard it said, you shall not hate a brother or sister, but I say to you,
love your enemies. You’ve heard it said, don’t commit adultery. I say to you, if you look on a woman with lustful ogling looks, you’ve already committed adultery. He’s taking upon himself the power to change Jewish law, which might’ve led to his death. But it was him. Seems like it led to his death. He overturned Old Testament law on the divorce, on the death penalty. He challenged Old Testament law on food purity, Sabbath observance. just to clarify, is in this conversation, the Talmud.
Yes, the Hebrew law. Because the Old Testament and the Talmud are different in ways. just want to clarify. Yes. OK. Which made him hated by the ruling class of the Pharisees at the time. Some of them. Some of. And then they got in the ears of the Romans to kill him. Is that kind of way? Correct me if I’m wrong. Well, see, Rome.
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And then he became a martyr and he blew up even more than he would have probably if he stayed alive for the rest of his life. Exactly. Well, you know, here’s the thing. When Rome took over, they rewrote the whole story and made themselves the good guys who felt just awful about torturing this poor fella. Classic. But Jesus, let’s look at the facts, right? Jesus was put in a Roman jail, tried by a Roman governor. He was scourged and tortured by Roman soldiers. He was made to carry his Roman cross to the Rome picked site of the Roman executions at Golgotha.
They didn’t execute people with crucifixion because they had ideological differences. They executed you because you were a threat. And Jesus’s movement was a spark. A threat to the Romans? Yeah. How? Or more of a threat to the Pharisees? Both. Okay. Both, but the Romans drove the nails in his hands. Romans pierced his side. The Romans hung a sign over his head mocking his Judaism. And then 300 years later, the Romans took over his operation.
made his religion a state religion. And then the Romans said, by the way, the Jews killed him. And for 1700 years, we’ve been taught the Jews killed him when the point of the story is that everyone killed him. The cops, the soldiers, the clergy, his friends, everyone sells him out. Well, do you blame if someone’s in a firing squad, do you blame the gun, the guy that shot the gun or do you blame the system that hired the guy who shot the gun? the system. Okay. But Jesus was
emphatically against the death penalty and said that only he says it when he stops an execution he says only people who’ve never sinned are allowed to execute you try selling that to one of our right-wing friends who loved the death penalty they’re all about criminalizing abortion which jesus never gets around to mentioning which the bible never gets around to forbidding for 45 years this is america for 45 years in this country they have gotten the christians to vote against everything christ talked about i see
by talking about abortion, which Christ never talked about. That is a whole other, I don’t even, we won’t have time to go through I know, but that’s how Donald Trump got elected. That’s how all these guys, do the opposite of Jesus. come back to that another time. Anytime. Because we can sit here and talk for a long time about all of abortions are very funny. We can have a lot of laughs, yes. Well, yeah, mean, yeah, it’s, I haven’t had any fun experiences talking about abortion in America, to be honest. No, nor I, but I think it’s really very interesting to know what the Bible actually says. Yeah, well, I mean,
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Because when I, when when I ask- If we quickly touch on this, I’d be very curious to understand what your interpretation of what the Bible says on this. Cause this is something I’ve also been wrestling with. These are all ideas I’m wrestling with all the time now, as I begin to understand America’s culture and the underpinning of America’s culture through religion. Maybe you can explain it to me then. Well, I don’t know. Let me get, I’m a third the way through the Bible. Let me start there. All I’m going to read the Bible. I’m going to read the Talmud. I’m going to read the Quran.
And then maybe I’ll have something to say. until then, I’ll just ask questions. Try and catch some Dianetics and catch up on the Scientologist too while you’re at it. I want to hit a few big ones and then call it a day. I could go down the rabbit hole for the rest of my life and I want to be productive. But what is your interpretation about what the Bible says around abortion? Because you’ve read a lot more, you’ve explored this much more than I have, so I’d love to get your understanding. Well, abortion is legal and free in Israel right now. To when?
I don’t know if people are, I think that the challenge with this conversation in America as an outsider is when is a life a life? That’s kind of the core premise. have been trying to decide this for women for many years. a life a life? Yes, men keep deciding when this for women. Early Pope said it was the quickening back in the Revolutionary War time in colonial era. The quickening, which is when the fetus begins to move inside the woman. They think that’s it’s ensouled. About three or four months in.
According to the Bible, fetus is property. In Exodus 21, God makes it clear where he stands on this. And he says, if two men are fighting and they strike a pregnant woman, if the woman dies, they pay with their life. If the fetus dies, if her fruit shall go out from her, some Bibles use the word miscarriage. If the fetus dies, you pay a fine to her husband. So what this says is God of the Old Testament is asserting that
a fetus’s property, a man’s property, and that a woman’s life has more value in God’s eye than a fetus. I didn’t write it, folks. And then in Numbers chapter five, God gives rather detailed, gruesome abortion tips for women who are pregnant through adultery. And then if you look at Passover, you’ll see God’s not the most pro-life figure when it comes to little kids. Jesus opposes the death penalty more than once, never mentions abortion.
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God never saw fit to have any of the prophets mention abortion. Elijah, Moses, no one ever brings it up. They like to say, well, thou shalt not kill. That covers it. again, Exodus 21 makes it clear that God doesn’t consider a fetus to be a person. And ancient Jewish law considered a fetus to be a thing that could become a person. ancient Jewish law Jesus lived under believed.
that life begins with first breath. This is repeated throughout the Bible. The breath of life, the breath of God gives me ask you, is the, because we just established that the Old Testament is probably not the priority in your decision making. So if we go to the New Testament, go to Jesus, first breath. Now, what would first breath be? The baby comes, the baby is delivered. Would you, is there a reasonable argument to say that first breath would be the point where the lungs inside the...
mother’s body begin to operate in some form, even with the like, I don’t know exactly how the lung capacity develops. I don’t get where I’m going with that. Yeah, but I don’t recognize my right as a man to force a woman to be pregnant against her will. And the Bible never says that men or governments should force women to be pregnant against their will, just as the Bible never says you must force rape victims, 15 year old girls raped by their stepdad to be pregnant against their will. None of that’s in the Bible. So I would, I would, I think it’s a big leap, like the male in the
with the going from a rape victim to a consensuous, that’s a big leap. But I don’t want to put them both. I don’t want to put them together. The law puts them both together. The American law, you mean? the full abortion bans. Yeah, that I understand. Are men deciding that women should be forced to be raped, women who are raped must be pregnant against their will. Rapists can pick out the mother of their children in some states in this country.
rapists can pick out the mother of their children. They can try. Yeah. And again, if you’re against abortion because you think it’s a civil rights issue, if you’re against abortion rights because you think that the fetus deserves those kinds of civil rights, then I completely support your right to fight for that and try to legislate that and use democracy to try to criminalize the procedure. Which is what’s happening. No, they’re using Jesus to do it.
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They’re using Christianity to do it. They’re all tools in the toolbox for these people around. Jesus is against the death penalty and they love the death penalty. He doesn’t mention abortion and they use his name to ban that. These folks don’t follow Jesus. if we’re being liberal on it, it’s a point of birth. If we’re being conservative on it, don’t know, when does... Conservative would be what the Bible says. Yeah,
First breath. That’s what the Bible says. It’s like super conservatively, maybe 10 to 12 weeks, which is very early. I don’t know where it’s out in Australia. It’s like 20 weeks or something. All I know is that men don’t have a right to tell women what they can do with I don’t have a right to tell anybody’s woman what she can do with her body. And I don’t like it when men try to tell mine what she can do with hers. It’s a team effort to get there though. So it probably needs to be a team effort to get out of it. To get out of what? To get out of, like you get into it together. Yeah.
aside from abortion. yeah, you get into, you get into the use. mean, men, men should have the right. If men get a woman pregnant, she wants to end the pregnancy and men should have a right to contribute to that. I don’t know. This is just me. A woman to say, you can’t do it. That’s, that’s his right to sue. don’t know. We just got nothing to do with Jesus. In fact, when Roe v. Wade was decided, the most controversial thing about it was how not controversial it was. That was only something the Catholic scared about. Like the Southern Baptist convention voted to, to affirm
women’s abortion rights a year after Roe v. Wade. Reverend Falwell never mentioned abortion in a sermon until five years after Roe v. Wade. wasn’t until they realized in the end of the 70s that maybe this thing we didn’t care about could help us get elected. And overnight, Ronald Reagan, who had signed the most liberal abortion law in California’s history as governor, became staunchly anti-abortion. And then George H.W. Bush, his running mate, the day Reagan asked him to be vice president, overnight.
Bush renounced his support for abortion rights and supported criminalizing abortion. And today we have women bleeding out in their cars in emergency room parking lots. Hectic. Women bleeding out in emergency room bathrooms. The infant mortality rate went up 8 % in Texas in the first year after Roe v. was taken because this law is forcing
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women to give birth to babies that have no chance of surviving outside the womb. It’s insanely hostile. Everyone re-voted, right? All the states re-voted. Is that how it works? No, the states had trigger laws where as soon as Roe v. Wade was overturned, the procedure became banned in their states. But then every state’s gone back to the ballot again to determine the... No? Not every state. Some states have. Which states haven’t? Most of the Confederate states haven’t. Texas sure hasn’t. I think Kansas might have had a referendum on it, but no, this is why
you’re seeing women dying. And this is what I cover deeply in the book because if you want to try to ban abortion, go ahead. Don’t claim it has anything to do with Christ. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. Christ is against the death penalty. He does not mention this and, you know, and these folks don’t follow him. So if you think if Jesus was to come back today, how would modern Christians actually treat him? They’d probably kill him all over again. That’s the point of the story. That’s the point. He’d come back. He would come back. would, he would,
do great acts of wonder, he would threaten the establishment, the establishment would propagandize against him and they would turn people against him and kill him. And then he would come back and forgive people all over again. That’s the whole point of the story. know, Jesus was anti-authoritarianism. I mean, the Romans would come in on their chariots, right? When the Romans came to Jerusalem, they were on their chariots with their horses and their armies. When Jesus shows up on Palm Sunday, he’s like doing satire. He’s sitting on a donkey.
and the crowds are going crazy for him and he’s doing the most nonviolent interview. You know, they were made to cheer for the Romans when they came to town. When Jesus comes, he’s sitting on a donkey and they’re waving palm fronds at him, not weapons. It’s all about nonviolence and he’s worshiped and the Romans see this. And then Monday is when he has the freak out in the temple where they were having the exchange rate on when you exchange your currency for the temple currency and they were ripping off poor people. It was like surge pricing.
Jesus has his frantic, his freak out in the temple. What’s this? don’t know this part. I haven’t to this bit yet. This is usually the best part in all the Jesus movies they make from the beginning. So Jesus, when he gets to Jerusalem after Palm Sunday, he’s loved on Palm Sunday. By Monday, Tuesday, he’s going to the temple and he’s screaming, have turned my father’s house into a den of thieves. It was like surge pricing. The poor people would come and they would give their currency to the temple to get the temple currency. And you use the temple money.
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like game tokens at an arcade to go and buy animals to sacrifice. know, like we always used to do with grandma at Christmas to sacrifice animals. So have killed a goat once. They were having surge pricing on this and it was hurting the poor as it always does. And Jesus flipped the tables over, chased the money changers out of the temple. Rome noticed by Thursday, these Pharisees who hated him and had it with them and they come and got him. And when they came to get him, he knew they were coming and he would not let his supporters fight back. He said, he who lives by the sword will die by the sword.
They took him away and the Romans killed him. And he always stood against authoritarian power, always. When Jesus says, if someone asks you to carry their stuff for a mile, go the extra mile. The law was, if a Roman soldier said to a Jew, hey Jew, pick up my armor and carry it for a mile, you had to do it. So when Jesus is saying, go the extra mile, it sounds like he’s saying being friendly. What he’s really saying is, if these guys ask you to do this, you go a second mile, because fuck you.
Yeah, I’ll carry it for a mile. I’ll carry it for another mile as well for you because fuck you. That was his whole thing. And he was a great threat to Rome and his teachings are as much a threat to imperial power now as they were 2000 years ago. What would happen if Jesus was in America today? Where do you think he would be politically? At the margins, he’d be going to whoever’s the most despised. Whoever’s the lowest, the poor, the illegals, the undocumented, the transgender kids, refugees.
Drug addicts, whoever is being shit on the most is who Jesus goes to. That was his whole thing. He didn’t come for the righteous. He said, I came for the sinners. And look at his whole ministry and it was all about whoever’s getting shit on the hardest, the lepers, the prostitutes, the despised minorities from over, the foreign minorities were allowed to hate. Back then it was the Samaritans. You were allowed to hate those guys. And Jesus went to them. Modern right-wing Christianity shits on the marginalized, the refugees, the immigrants, the trans kid, whoever’s, know, people without healthcare.
It’s the exact opposite. Yeah. Do I’ve been thinking about this more as well. Like there’s a contradiction between Jesus and Paul, right? And there’s a lot of, focus on what Paul says, and has written in the Bible in the new Testament. folks quote Paul a lot more than they quote Jesus. So could there be an argument that Jesus is like Steve jobs.
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And Paul is like Steve Wozniak. You’ve got your pioneer and you’ve got your operator. You’ve got your guy who blazes the field. And then you’ve got the guy who follows along and creates order and structure. the reality of what you’ve been saying this whole time is there is an at odds between conservative and liberal ideology. And it has been happening since the Bible, since the Old Testament. Yeah. Since Rome at least took over.
I mean, but yeah, before that, I don’t know what was going on. mean, mean, Jesus gets killed, right? And Paul was a persecutor of Christ. Saul. Yeah. was there for the first ever martyring of a Christian, St. Stephen. He was down with murder, down with hunting these people. And then he met Jesus and he repented and he became born again as Paul. Yeah. Remember is he was also, he was a Roman citizen and a Pharisee. That’s important because he was a Roman citizen. He could travel all through the Roman empire.
and preach about Jesus. The apostles who actually knew Jesus were all busy getting murdered by Paul’s old buddies back home. So Paul, being a Roman, gets to travel around and set up his church. you know, Jesus was about love, helping the poor. Paul, who was a very beautiful writer, was all about hierarchy and setting up a church. And Paul’s hangups couldn’t help but bleed into the writing. Yeah, I understand that. And then again, it’s like the pioneer and the operator. It’s the creative and the person who
builds a structure. And I think they’re both necessary in a successful society. And they’re always going to have, they’re always going to butt heads in one or another. Have ever tried to work with a creative or you, or maybe you are the creative. Have you ever tried to work with an organizer? How much do you want to kill him? mean, Jesus is impossible to live up to, but I think the difference here is that Paul’s version lived because the apostles all got killed. So Paul’s version was the one version of Christianity that lasted. And Paul had hangups about women that Jesus didn’t have.
Paul had hangups about men with men that Jesus didn’t have. Paul poured all of his hangups into his work and he was just doing his best to start an early church, right? He’s just writing letters. Rome put Paul in a cell, cut off his head and killed him. So he didn’t have a much better outcome as Jesus? 300 years later, under Constantine, Rome takes over Christianity. It becomes the state religion and the Council of Nicaea tries to decide what books are going to be in the actual Bible. One creed to rule them all.
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and they put Paul’s letters about Jesus after Jesus. So now if you’re reading a book, Paul’s letters about scripture are scripture. Now Paul’s not talking about God, Paul’s speaking for God, he’s in the Bible. And he’s Jesus’s PR guy. So like for millions of people, that means Paul’s hangups are just as valid as Jesus’s love. So when Paul says, women submit to your husbands and you cannot be an authority over a man and you can’t teach a man,
a lot of Christians for 2000 years like that a lot more than Jesus treating them as equals. And so it’s in the Bible. Yeah, it’s definitely a fine line to toe that there is no right answer because again, go to the, I think, you know, let’s look at like maybe a food pyramid. You’ve got Jesus at the bottom and then there’s still validity in the rest of it, but maybe it goes to like how, how effective or how close were you to the, to, to Jesus and the teaching of Jesus. That’s what it’s still about.
And yeah, and maybe you can like, it’s valid to take a few pieces that are relevant in context and then get rid of the rest. The problem is what has evolved happens to so many religions where it’s not about walking a spiritual path of following a great leader’s teachings. It’s about my club being on top because God likes my club best. And that’s fundamentalism. And that’s what’s ruining Islam, ruining Judaism, ruining Christianity. It’s the human experience. It’s the fundamentalists of all the world, like the overwhelming majority of liberal and moderate.
Christian Jews and Muslims, you know this, they’re being groovy right now, getting along just fine, not causing any problems. All the violence, all the oppression of women, all the homophobia. So Antifa, they seem to be a little aggressive. Who’s that? The guys anti-fascists. Yeah, who’s that? Who are they? I don’t know, they’re always wearing masks. I hear about them a lot, I don’t know who they are. They’re not really an organized group. They’re a distributed group, mean, except for the... I’m anti-fascist and anti-violence, right? I think most people are if you ask them.
Yeah. But again, they’re pro-fascist and they can’t say that so they have to demonize anti-fascism, but they can’t point to where their headquarters are, who the members are. Anyway, they seem to be able to do it. It’s government propaganda to distract from what they do. my point is- So they’re run by the government? No, Antifa’s a few jackoffs wearing masks. Everywhere. They’re all over the world though.
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Well, that was the US Army in World War II. I’m anti-fascist. You could be a distributed network of people who still can rally and cause trouble. There’s not a network. There’s not a phone number. There’s not a website for them. Unless you’re in it. I don’t know. This is just me guessing from the outside. but it’s not as organized as fundamentalist religion. again, my whole point is because they’re conservative and they like structure. There’s douchebags at the fringes on the left, too. And I’m not a Democrat. But this is the extreme conservative right wing, Christians, Jews, and Muslims.
are always the ones causing all the problems, oppressing all the women, creating all the violence, saying it’s okay if we do this violence because God likes us better. It’s the liberal and moderate Christians, Muslims and Jews are never the ones causing the violence. Yeah. And unfortunately it only takes two to 5 % of a population to swing the rest of the population. Ideas can germinate and change societies. If you have one third of population you can do it. Less. Honestly, I think it’s even less. 5 % of a very vocal minority
that are very well organized can impact the rest of a country or a this country, it’s the top 1 % does that this Everywhere. They’re everywhere. It’s the same thing everywhere. But look, we’re almost out of time. So wrapping up, just wanted to, that was great, by the way. Thank you. That was sick. I want to keep talking I did a lot of history here. I thought I was going to do more dirty jokes. So thank you very much for your No, all good. I love this stuff. And they’re important ideas to kind of understand. Very, very important, especially now.
Well, I love is always, I mean, just love and don’t be a dick. That’s essentially, you know, the core of Jesus’s message. It’s very hard to do. But we can strive for it, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, so wrapping up, if this was your ever, your last ever media appearance and you had 60 seconds to leave a message for the world, what would you say? Buy my books.
I got a kid. My last ever media appearance, please, it’s called Separation of Church and Hate, a sane person’s guide to taking back the Bible from fundamentalist fascists and flock fleecing frauds. Please pay for college in my absence. And my next book is coming out next year as well. The last thing I would say to people, mean, I would just thank the ones who have followed my curious career because I’ve done a lot of wacky things from, I was a VH1 VJ. I hosted America’s Funniest Home Videos. I’ve played for the troops overseas. I’ve done documentaries for PBS.
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I mean, I always wanted a career where I did a lot of very different things. And I would thank the people who have supported my work at all the versions of my life. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please go to YouTube search that one time with Adam Metwally, click subscribe and I’ll see you next week. What’s wrong with you? Go to YouTube, Adam Metwally. It’s not hard to, my name’s Fugle saying that’s hard. Metwally is easy. Come on, why are you still listening to me? This is easy. Subscribe, you bastard. Thanks my man. Love it. Thank you. Appreciate it.
