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We are Alyssa and Bri, two sisters who believe God wants more for women than we've been taught. Join us as we dive into the intersection of faith and feminism, learning together as we go.
To the We Are More Pod cast. My name is Alyssa. And my
Speaker 2:name is Bree. We're two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism. We believe
Speaker 1:that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach his word. And apparently, that's controversial. Get comfy.
Speaker 2:We had an accident. That's just never a good way
Speaker 1:to start a conversation. There's no good end to that sentence. I poop my pants. Again Yeah.
Speaker 2:For Hannah. It's only on Tuesdays. So
Speaker 1:if you listened to the episode last week within, like, the first twenty four hours ish, It turns out we posted the unedited version, which you're welcome. Frankly, first of all, it pisses me off because it takes so long. And it's my own like, it was my error. But it takes so long to sit and edit it and whatever. And we put time and effort into that.
Speaker 1:And then I posted the wrong link. And that angers me. And it is my fault, but I'm just angry at the world.
Speaker 2:You know what? It gave us something to talk about today that's not, like, garbage. You know? Usually, we start off this podcast, and who knows what we're gonna be talking about?
Speaker 1:The random thoughts in our heads.
Speaker 2:It could literally be anything. It could be the fact that the words that are stuck in my head today are piss pot. I don't know if this happens to anybody else, but sometimes, like how a song gets stuck in your head, words get stuck in my head. And they just go on and on and on.
Speaker 1:And, like, do I have a problem?
Speaker 2:Should I get tested? Maybe. Is that a sign that I, you know, need help?
Speaker 1:Well, many things are a sign that you need help. That's really one of the just one of them. And I could say that word over and over and over again. Never get bored. Circling back.
Speaker 1:We posted the wrong And frankly, I never would have known except our mom texted us and was like, oh, You said this. And I was like, I'm a 100% sure I took that out. And so if you listened to it, I'm sorry. However, it could have been so much worse. It could have been way worse.
Speaker 1:We usually cut out a lot of garbage,
Speaker 2:but every once in a while, we stay on track
Speaker 1:for the most part. For the most part.
Speaker 2:But a lot of times, like, I'm saying stuff that needs to be cut.
Speaker 1:Or the dog jumps on us. Or a train goes by. Or Alyssa burps really loudly. You gotta do what you gotta do. There are many things that we cut.
Speaker 2:And if you were one of those lucky few who listened to the unedited, reach out to us, and maybe we'll send you a sticker.
Speaker 1:Yay for you. Won't that be fun? We're generous. We are generous. But today, we will do our best to post the edited version
Speaker 2:because, otherwise, heaven knows what will happen. We're gonna quit the podcast.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah. We're done. Frankly, it's late at night, so anything could happen on tonight's podcast.
Speaker 2:We're recording on a Tuesday night. I just got back from work not that long ago. Alyssa has been done with work, and she I have to take a kid to the doctor today. Her other job, and, like, existing is difficult. Existing is difficult.
Speaker 2:But But we're gonna do our very best for
Speaker 1:you because I feel like this is important content tonight, but maybe a little bit no. It's still as heavy, but maybe we can make fun
Speaker 2:of some more people. It's heavy, but in the same vein as, like, okay. Oh, here's a good one. Oh, I'm ready. Bridgerton just came out.
Speaker 1:Right? That is a good one.
Speaker 2:Fairly recently. The first four episodes, and then another four episodes come out soon. Very invested.
Speaker 1:We are. Bray woke up at 3AM and watched them.
Speaker 2:Yes. But previously, before the new season came out, I went back and watched through season one and most of season two. Season two isn't my favorite. No. But they were saying how Lady Whistledown, the gossip columnist, was very popular because she named people.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. She called them out by name. They did say that.
Speaker 1:I forgot
Speaker 2:So about we're whistledowning today, and we're calling people out by name. What is it called? Doxing? I think that's what
Speaker 1:that's what the youths say. No. It absolutely is. Doxing is when you, like, reveal someone's identity. It's a thing.
Speaker 2:I had to look it up for work. I didn't know because I
Speaker 1:am old, and I didn't know. But today, we're gonna talk about some of the people that you should be able to trust, and it turns out you can't. And I think it's important that we talk about this not just for the sake of, like, gossip and naming names, but the fact that this is a pattern, this is a trend. And when we keep it quiet, when we keep things in the dark, that infection starts to spread and grow. I was explaining infections to my child today and how if you don't treat them, if you don't say, I'm gonna take care of this problem, the infection spreads to somewhere else, and now you have a bigger problem.
Speaker 1:Or sometimes you die. Or sometimes you die.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So we're gonna talk about people from many different sort of walks of life and just just explore kind of their stories and why it's important that the world knows who they
Speaker 2:are and what they
Speaker 1:did. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:We're not in the business of keeping secrets.
Speaker 1:No. I think they've caught that at this point.
Speaker 2:You could come up to Alyssa or myself, and you could probably ask us anything.
Speaker 1:I was just thinking about that the other day. I don't know how to be anything but thoroughly myself. Like, you know, everybody sort of has a work persona, but I just like I am myself. I will say anything. I will tell you anything.
Speaker 1:I'm not a very private person.
Speaker 2:No. You're not. But neither am I. That's very true. There you go.
Speaker 1:Alright. So the first person that I wanna talk about is he was in the news, I wanna say, like, a year ago was when this hit. But that's Michael Tate, who was really like, he was the lead singer for the Newsboys. Not the original lead singer when we were kids, but the current lead singer.
Speaker 2:I have one of their songs running through my head.
Speaker 1:Is it piss pot?
Speaker 2:In the belly of the whale, which I think is Newsboys.
Speaker 1:I couldn't tell you. I think it is, though. Maybe. I don't know. That's old.
Speaker 1:I know. But the Newsboys, if you're not familiar with them, are, like, the Christian boy band of our era.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. It's like Christian kind of. Mhmm. It's like Christian, but the kind of Christian that people listen to when they weren't allowed to listen to secular music. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's close enough. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's like Christian pop. And they I feel like they kind of helped introduce that genre.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:It definitely would have been too rocky for us as kids. That was not something that was, like, in our CD collection as children. Children.
Speaker 2:But as we got into high school age.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And so Michael Tate was not the lead singer when we were listening to the Newsboys, but he currently well, not currently. He was. And about a year ago, it started to come out that a lot of men were accusing him of assault, grooming, and abuse. Like, a lot.
Speaker 1:Okay? Now this man got up on stage because the Newsboys tour quite literally all the time. Mhmm. Would get up on stage and sing about God. Sing about the love of God to a room full of people who are worshiping God, in theory.
Speaker 1:Meanwhile, in the background, abusing countless young men. I often find that the people who are
Speaker 2:speaking out against certain things, for example, like, calling themselves the biggest Christian. I feel like they're often hiding something, and they're trying to make up for the fact that they know that they're not living their life the way that they should.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Yeah. Like performative Christianity. Yeah. I think that's totally valid because you see these people and I mean, this man, he later admitted to years of substance abuse and all kinds of other stuff in addition to what he had done to all of these people.
Speaker 1:And nobody knew? You're telling me nobody knew that? But we, as listeners, obviously didn't. But, like, his bandmates didn't know? It's just so strange to me.
Speaker 2:Right. Everything has a way of coming to the surface eventually. Anything that you think, oh, I'm a master of manipulating Mhmm. The truth or I'm really great at hiding these things. It it's just a matter of time Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Before these things do bubble up. And what are you gonna do when they do? Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And I think there's a big accountability question here too. Because and there's an accountability question, frankly, for every single one of the people that we're about to talk about. But Michael Zait was part of a group. Right? He's part of a group of singers.
Speaker 1:He's not just, like, a lone wolf or whatever. Yeah. He should have the accountability of all of these people who had to know. Right? I mean, there's just no way like, you cannot convince me for one moment that no one had any idea anything was going on.
Speaker 2:More often than not, it's about I feel like in that situation, people around them are weighing out, like, what is the benefit for me? Mhmm. Does benefit me to call this person out?
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:No. Because they're tied to my career directly.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:If this guy goes down, what happens to me? Mhmm. So, okay. I'll just keep
Speaker 1:it quiet. I heard a quote one time, and it said something along the lines of, like, it's very hard to get a man to believe something if his income depends on him not believing that thing.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And, yeah, if if your whole career depends on this dude because he's the lead singer. You're not talking about, like, the backup dancer or something like that. He's the lead singer. So what happens to the newsboys if this gets out?
Speaker 2:And I think the biggest thing that we maybe not the biggest thing. We have to mention is that these people were part of a Christian band.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:So it's not just any band. These are people who are supposed to
Speaker 1:be sharing God's love. Mhmm. They're supposed to be better. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And they're clearly not. I think the reason that a
Speaker 1:lot of these do hit the hardest from from someone like this, from someone who is standing on stage being a a beacon of Christianity, is because you're standing there feeling like you're worshiping God. And I'm not saying that you're not. Like, your motivations are your own Mhmm. Regardless of what this person did. But it's a betrayal.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. It's a betrayal in a whole different way. Because they're supposed
Speaker 2:to be reflecting Jesus. Mhmm. Jesus wouldn't have stood by and allowed this to happen. Right. They would have called out the wrong.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:But we're not gonna do that. And it's clear from our culture. And you'll see from a lot of these people that we're gonna talk about that we are not committed to calling out wrong in any way. The Epstein files have just been released, and Trump's name is in there. Our president, his name is in the Epstein files more times than Jesus's name is in the bible by, like, an insane amount.
Speaker 1:Okay? I think it's I there are so many differing numbers out there, but
Speaker 2:it's, like, a crazy amount of numbers. More times than Harry Potter is mentioned throughout all seven books. The Harry Potter series.
Speaker 1:Yes. So should we call this the Donald Trump series?
Speaker 2:How do you think he'd feel about that? Good. I think he'd love it.
Speaker 1:We've gotta be on some lists somewhere. Good. But that's the thing is despite that, the Christian church has has not backed down, has not said, maybe this isn't a person we should be supporting. They've said, let's keep the systems of power. Because exactly what you said, what does it gain us to take him down?
Speaker 2:He is spreading around this idea of Christian nationalism. Mhmm. And they think this is great, in theory, if you're saying like, we're pushing forward the kingdom of God. Mhmm. But you know that's not what it's about.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. It's about power at the end of the day, and Christians have power in the White House. So that benefits them. So even though he's a horrible, horrible person, and he's done horrible, horrible things,
Speaker 1:Maybe we can just pretend that that didn't happen.
Speaker 2:Like, it's impossible at this point to turn a blind eye to it. It's impossible. I I wanna say that too. I would
Speaker 1:love to sit here and say it's impossible, and yet I'm watching people do
Speaker 2:it. I know.
Speaker 1:It's wild. And I think you have to be in such a state of denial and and, you know, your own echo chambers. I know we talk about echo chambers all the time, but you really just have to be like, Fox News is on all the time, and that's all you get your news from. And even then even then,
Speaker 2:I think it's a struggle. I mean, the fact is that he's the first US president to be a convicted felon.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Yay. Freedom. Yay. Christianity.
Speaker 1:I think that leads really well, though, into our next person who is also interestingly in the Epstein files, and that is James Dobson.
Speaker 2:A familiar name we've heard before.
Speaker 1:We have. We did a whole episode on James Dobson after he passed away. On my birthday. On your birth that's right. I was like, I know it's an important day.
Speaker 1:On my birthday. On her birthday. So James Dobson was mentioned in the Epstein files. Now he was not mentioned in the same context that, like, Donald Trump has mentioned. I just wanna make that very clear.
Speaker 1:He's not of anything in these files. I don't know if he's accused of anything anywhere else. But in these files in particular, that's not what we're talking about. However, his name does appear in one of these 5,000 some odd documents. And it appears in the context of Jeffrey Epstein, who is a notorious assaulter Sex trafficker
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Sex offender. Had an island. The whole thing. I mean, you all know who I'm talking about. Right?
Speaker 1:And he was emailing back and forth with a woman who I believe was a victim. It you know, it's a little unclear with all the redactions and things like that. But she was talking about how angry she was with her father who severely abused her. And he responded back and basically said, I don't know why you're so mad at him, and then forwarded her an article that James Dobson had written about abuse and things like that. And, basically, what he's trying to do is tell her, you don't have any right to be angry at the person who abused you.
Speaker 1:Self serving. Right? I mean, it it's totally self serving. But the fact that James Dobson's teachings and I would recommend going back and listening to that episode as well. I think it has his name in the title.
Speaker 1:Shouldn't be hard to find. The fact that his work can be used to tell an abuse victim sucks to be you, but accept the abuse because this is what you deserve.
Speaker 2:Well, also, he was the spiritual adviser to Donald Trump, I believe, in his at one point.
Speaker 1:Yeah. In part of his first term.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Presidency. I don't know what the heck he was advising. Bad things. Bad bad things.
Speaker 1:That's again, we circle back to power because Dobson created Focus on the Family, which if you're from our generation, I feel like we're very familiar with. There was a radio show, books, all kinds of stuff. And, essentially, it was like how to raise your children in a Christian way and how to be a conservative Christian family. But he jumped from there. And like I said, you can watch the other episode if you want or listen to it.
Speaker 1:You can't watch it. We're not videoed. But you can listen to it if you want to to hear, like, the in-depth version of what he was teaching. But he was basically teaching what Christian parents of that generation thought was, like, the ideal Christian family. Right?
Speaker 1:Two and a half kids, white pig events.
Speaker 2:There was a really strong focus on keeping Christianity in the home. And that very, like, you're right, traditional mom, dad, 2.5 kids. And you really don't have to go out and spread the good news about the gospel because that's none of your business. You just have to keep it in your home
Speaker 1:to your family. Which is not what God ever said. I always find the name of that organization so bizarre because it's like The opposite of the Bible? Exactly. The Bible doesn't talk about the nuclear family a lot.
Speaker 1:Like, Jesus really hardly talks about it at all. That's the word I was looking for. Nuclear. But we have decided and I've heard many, many pastors say this, not just James Dobson, but I've heard many pastors say, well, if we just all focused on our own families, our own homes, as women, we are supposed to only focus on our children, only focus on, like, the people we're supposed to nurture, then that's somehow how the church moves forward. But Jesus very specifically said, go out into the world and make disciples of all nations.
Speaker 1:Love God. Love others. You can't do that from your living room. You just can't.
Speaker 2:You can't.
Speaker 1:And you can't do it from your church sanctuary either. And neither did Jesus. No. He didn't stay in Bethlehem his whole life. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:He got around. Well, that was uncomfortable. But if you listen to the teachings of people like James Dobson, then you only focus on essentially yourself. Mhmm. And I will say that's easier.
Speaker 1:That's, like, the easier route. Of course. But Jesus didn't ask us to do the easy thing. He asked us to do the hard thing, and the hard thing is to go out and love the world even when the world
Speaker 2:Doesn't love you. Doesn't love you back.
Speaker 1:And it is important that James Dobson's teachings are in The Epstein Files. It is. Because it shows that his teachings can be used for spiritual manipulation by the worst of the worst of humanity.
Speaker 2:The worst of the worst are using his teachings, you're right, for the power of bad. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:I would hope that nothing I ever say in my life could be used like that. And it's not even like Epstein was taking things out of context. He didn't send her, you know, a tiny little blurb. He sent her the whole article. You mean he didn't redact it?
Speaker 1:He didn't redact it. It's odd. To be fair, he didn't redact anything. Well, he redacted himself. Supposedly?
Speaker 2:Allegedly. Allegedly. Wow. That was good. That was pretty good.
Speaker 2:But
Speaker 1:as we're talking about politics, look how well these transition into each other. We're amazing today. Tonight. It's late. So the next person that I wanna talk about just so that we can get through like, there's guys I have a few as well.
Speaker 1:I had to winnow this down in such a horrifying way. Winnow. I did research, and I asked ChatGPT, and I googled. And I was like, okay. Who are people in this category?
Speaker 2:You have to have a bad arm and throw a pebble, and you'll hit someone.
Speaker 1:That can't be what you meant to say. What I meant is that you don't have to look very far.
Speaker 2:You can and the the stone in the head. Throw only a stone's throw away. Oh, boy. The
Speaker 1:metaphors are not metaphoring tonight. Anyway so we had to winnow is what I'm saying. The list was so absurdly long. Like, I we could do we could just give up, and the whole podcast could be people that you should be able to trust and you can't. I don't just mean today's podcast.
Speaker 1:I mean all the podcasts we've ever done from the beginning of time. But the next person that I wanna talk about is RJ May, who was a politician from South Carolina. I think he was part of the South Carolina State Congress. I'm not sure if he was a state senator or a state house representative.
Speaker 2:Political man.
Speaker 1:Yeah. He was a political man. And his big platform was always like, protect the children. Protect the children. Right?
Speaker 1:Doesn't sound so bad until you realize that his platform in order to protect the children was very anti LGBTQ, anti trans. He was very against drag queens for some reason.
Speaker 2:I'm not really
Speaker 1:sure why the war on drag queens. I'm confused. He was like, drag shows are ruining our families. Well, you have the option to not go.
Speaker 2:Yes. And the reason that there's, like, drag queen story time now is because of that. I know. Because they were like, well, now I guess we have to.
Speaker 1:We have to go into schools.
Speaker 2:Have to go into In
Speaker 1:our civic duty. But let's make a point. He's worried about the drag shows ruining families. Right? He didn't crusade against, like, strip clubs.
Speaker 1:No. It was a crusade against human beings just living their lives.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Not not anything that you would normally associate with damaging children. But then this person who's supposed to be family values
Speaker 2:Again, speaking out the most about very specific topics.
Speaker 1:Yep. He's protecting kids. Right? Well, over the summer, he was arrested, charged, and convicted for distributing child sexual abuse material. He was sentenced to over seventeen years in federal prison, and he did not resign his position in the state congress until he was actually convicted.
Speaker 1:So the whole time now he knows what he's done. They got his computers. They got everything. Not just having it. He was arrested for distributing it.
Speaker 1:And so he knows what's coming. He knows what he's done. This family values man who wants to protect your kids. And he didn't even bother to resign. Like, at least have some level of decency to
Speaker 2:be like, okay, let me hide in the shadows. Nope. Stayed right there. What's frustrating is that he was pushing forward the agenda of protecting certain children Mhmm. From himself.
Speaker 2:Right. Because he knows what he's doing. Mhmm. He knows that he's damaging these children, not protecting the children, being a horrible person. And he's pretty much saying, protect your kids from me.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:But that line gives him power is the thing. And that's what it all funnels back to. He it's it's just like how Trump had said that he if he ever ran for president, he was gonna run Republican because they were the most easily manipulated voters. Mhmm. He's on record saying that.
Speaker 1:Yes. It's the same thing. He is manipulating the people who are voting for him. Well, if I talk about family values in Trump era politics, and if I talk about protecting the kids
Speaker 2:And if I find an enemy that I can get everybody behind. Yep. Somebody who doesn't quite look like me. Let's let me focus on the drag queens.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Why? They're really not doing anything. Know.
Speaker 1:It's so strange. And, like, he was very against the trans community and things like that. Well, they're they're indoctrinating your children. All these different things. Right?
Speaker 1:The percentage of trans people in The United States is incredibly low. Like, one percent. Yeah. It's, like, insanely low. They're not indoctrinating your children.
Speaker 1:They're really just trying to live their lives.
Speaker 2:If anything, they're pushing forward the agenda of, like, hey, love each other. Mhmm. Be kind to one another. But that's not the agenda that gets you power and control.
Speaker 1:It's so sad to me. And we're seeing in our world today so much hate that comes from the church and so much division and so much hierarchy. White Christian men are at the top, and pretty much everybody else is screwed. White straight Christian men. Let's go with that.
Speaker 1:And That we know of. Well, true. White straight seeming Christian men Christian seeming men. There's there's many an adjective that needs to be thrown in there. But they're really the only ones that win at the end of the day.
Speaker 1:They're the only ones that get power because if they can consolidate it and if they can lie to you enough to vote for them, then they'll keep that power. But you can't trust them because we've got this guy who has all kinds of child abuse materials on his computer. We have our president who is mentioned more times than anyone could have imagined in the Epstein files.
Speaker 2:With photo evidence. Right. Like, it doesn't take a genius to realize that this is not okay.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And these aren't the only there's not this is an isolated incident. Okay? Pete Hegseth has been accused of all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2:Pete Hegseth is our current US secretary of defense. He works under president Donald Trump. You've probably seen him all over the news and the TikToks of just the crazy things that he said. He used to be a member of the National Guard, he was recognized for his military contributions. But he also is really known for being a Christian nationalist.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And really pushing forward that agenda of like, everywhere should be Christian. But it's only because it gets him specifically unprecedented power.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And because he's aligned himself with super rich billionaires who think they can get away with absolutely anything Because they can at this point. So can he. So he's been accused of all kinds of stuff. He's a violent man. He's been documented talking to the military saying he doesn't want a woke military.
Speaker 2:He wants brute force, pretty much, at any cost, which I think is why Alyssa Slotkin spoke out and said, hey, if he's giving you illegal orders, maybe don't follow those. And then she got death threats. But he's been accused of lots of different things.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Faith shouldn't align itself with power. We've been talking about that for the last few weeks.
Speaker 2:We should rename our podcast.
Speaker 1:Anytime it does, you wind up with this. Jesus so specifically in the bible, Satan tempted him with political power. He said, I will make you the ruler of everything. Look at all this everywhere the light touches. I will make you Simba.
Speaker 1:But Jesus said no. Additionally, God could have done that. God the father could have said, you know what, Jesus? Being a carpenter is really just not gonna do it for us. I need you to be the king.
Speaker 2:And he didn't do that. Or better yet, God could have said, at the point of creation Mhmm. There are gonna be no other religions. Right. You're not gonna get free will.
Speaker 2:Everybody on this earth, all you little ants, are gonna bow down and worship me.
Speaker 1:But he didn't. And yet, here we are as a broader Christian church saying political power is the only way for Christians to move forward. The way, the truth, and the life. Right? I just I don't know how we got here in just the total opposite of what Jesus has asked us to do.
Speaker 1:And I'm I talk to people, and I just I I wanna smack my head against the wall because You should stop talking to people. Because the logic just isn't there. I've been going back and forth on TikTok, and I try you know, they say don't read the comments, and I shouldn't. But I do sometimes. And you try and talk to people.
Speaker 1:And someone commented the other day and gave me the verse that says, like, you're supposed to follow the laws of the land or whatever in reference to things that are going on with ICE in Minneapolis. And I said, okay. I hear you. There is that one verse that you've ripped out of context in Romans. But Jesus said to love others, like, 500 times.
Speaker 1:So if I'm gonna focus on anything, I'm gonna focus, a, on the teachings of Jesus, not the teachings of Paul. And b, I'm gonna focus on the thing that's mentioned 500 times as opposed to the thing that's mentioned once. Well, that's a
Speaker 2:thing that you learn in any sort of school. They say, write down if you're if you're working on taking notes, if something is mentioned more than once, it's probably important. Well, if it's mentioned 500 times, one could one could deduce that it's probably pretty important. Trump and the Epstein files.
Speaker 1:We have mentioned that distinctly more than once today. Mhmm. Alright. So I think we should talk about some pastors. Yeah?
Speaker 1:Sure. Because goodness,
Speaker 2:you can't have this conversation without a plethora. A plethora of pastors. A couple times a day, I scroll through my social medias. And it's, hey, this pastor accused of you know what. Yep.
Speaker 2:This pastor accused of you know what. You're not even surprised anymore. Like, barely makes the news. It literally it says, like, everybody knows already.
Speaker 1:Yep. There you go. Yeah. So we're gonna talk about a few, and we'll go through them fast because I have a many. And then we have other people, and it's fun times over here.
Speaker 1:The first one I wanna talk about is Robert Morris. He was the founder of Gateway Church, one of the biggest megachurches in The United States. He was also a spiritual adviser to a lot of political figures. He had a huge influence, huge platform, and he wound up submitting a guilty plea for sexually abusing a 12 year old girl. Now this was in theory decades prior, but usually these behaviors don't just stop.
Speaker 1:He did admit guilt. He received jail time. But he never went forward with the story. She eventually went forward with the story. And one of the quotes from her and I'm I'm not familiar with what he said to prompt this, but just imagine in your head what could have been said to prompt the victim to say this.
Speaker 1:She said, there is no such thing as consent from a 12 year old child. So at some point in his testimony, did he imply that this 12 year old child had consented? I don't know. Hopefully. But that would be the assumption there.
Speaker 1:And that's just the one we know about. Right? Next is Sean Boltz. This is a very recent one. He is a very charismatic pastor.
Speaker 1:He was at Bethel Church, which is in California. Problematic. Yeah. Very problematic church. But basically so his story he's got a couple of facets to his story.
Speaker 1:This one just came out a couple weeks ago. And the first one is so they're they're charismatic. They believe in prophecy. Right? Now I don't not believe in prophecy, but I don't believe in someone, like, staring into my soul and telling me my whole future.
Speaker 1:Right? That's basically what he was doing.
Speaker 2:One time I went to a palm reader. But did she tell you your future? It was at my senior all night party in high school. I'm sure it was
Speaker 1:very accurate.
Speaker 2:You seem like you're gonna stay up all night.
Speaker 1:Very accurate. Yeah. Very meaningful. Yeah. Anyway, so he was trying to tell people's future.
Speaker 1:But what he would do so he's he's acting like this is from God. Right? Like, nice little bean comes down from God and gives him all the information that he requires. But what he was really doing was researching people on the Internet before they came to him. And Cheap psychic.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And finding out, like, their parents' names and their favorite color and whatever, like stupidness. And the church leaders knew that he was doing this. And also that there were accusations because he worked with the youth group quite a bit of sexual harassment, of misconduct, of all kinds of different stuff. They were aware of this.
Speaker 1:The pastors that are currently leading Bethel Church, one of the biggest churches in the world, knew. And instead of saying, hey, maybe we should report this.
Speaker 2:Or, hey, guy. Maybe stop.
Speaker 1:No. Any of those things. They quietly let him go. He stepped down. They quietly allowed him to step down.
Speaker 1:Let's go with that. And didn't report this to the authorities. Didn't do anything. And their response because the only way that this came out was, like, a big expose came Someone posted it on YouTube. And the main pastors basically were like, oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:You know what? We we were friends with him, and we just we should have reported it. We didn't do enough. We should have warned people sooner. You think?
Speaker 2:I think that's just a polite way of saying, I'm sorry you feel that way. Yep. I think what often happens in these situations, especially in regards to religion, they will say they don't want to bring these situations to light because they worry about the reputation of the church. And we've talked about this before. They're really concerned about protecting the church Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And not the people within it. Mhmm. They wanna protect the institution and the power and their own butts. Mhmm. But all the people that it's affecting,
Speaker 1:they don't care. No. And here's the bottom line. God doesn't need your protection. If God is the church, the church doesn't need your protection either.
Speaker 1:And if you think you can protect God, I would really love to have that conversation with you.
Speaker 2:Well, you gain trust by being honest Mhmm. With each other and saying, this is a problem that we had, but we addressed it. Yep. And we're on your side, and you're learning about this the same time we are. That's how you gain trust.
Speaker 2:Not hiding things and then letting them come
Speaker 1:to light accidentally. Right. One of the things that I hear all the time as we've moved in and out of many a church is the church is full of broken people. I have had this said to me probably more times than Trump is in the Epstein files. But while that remains true, the church is full of broken people because people are broken.
Speaker 1:We know that. The sin entered the world, and people broke a little bit. But the question is not, are there broken people in the church? The question is, do the broken people stand up for the other broken people? Are we loving God and loving others?
Speaker 1:I feel like a broken record.
Speaker 2:Or is the church full of broken people because we're breaking them? Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That was really good of me. That was really good. That should put put on
Speaker 1:a sticker. Hey. We'll work on it. Okay. Timu is probably listening right now.
Speaker 1:They'll put it on a sticker for us.
Speaker 2:Did you know it's pronounced? Timu? No. It's not.
Speaker 1:That's terrible. Two of the other pastors that we wanted to talk about are very close to home for us Because we attended this church. And we have decided that we are throwing caution to the wind
Speaker 2:at this point. We're whistle downing. We're naming the names. And so there.
Speaker 1:Frankly, all of this stuff is in the news. Like, I'm not saying neither of us are saying anything that's not really easily accessible to you.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:We're just sticking it all in one place. So there are two pastors from a church that we attended for a very long time. It's called two forty two Community Church. It's a multi campus mega church. And I think it's, like, seven campuses, something like that.
Speaker 2:I started attending when I was in high school.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I started, I think, after I got married, like, when I came home Mhmm. When we moved back from where we were
Speaker 2:living before. Like, twelve plus years Yeah.
Speaker 1:We were there and
Speaker 2:out of there.
Speaker 1:We were there a long time and and got heavily involved. This is the church that I've talked about before in my story. Got heavily involved in this church. And two of the main pastors it's really bad allegations have now come out about them, so we're gonna talk about that. Obviously, these aren't, like, the main stories out in the nation, but they're big for us.
Speaker 1:And it's important to say, yeah, there's these big stories, but everybody who's been to church for a long time has these stories too. Mhmm. So the first person is Will Johnson, who was not just a worship pastor, because it's a seven campus church. He was the worship director over all seven campuses. I worked with this person.
Speaker 1:My husband served on a team with this person. Brianna served on a team with this person. And he was a big deal. He got up on stage at the main campus every single week and led worship, and people were moved.
Speaker 2:I think especially in those mega churches, those nondenominational mega churches, there is a strong push to make you feel emotionally connected. Mhmm. So he is pulling at your heartstrings
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:To try to get in the wallet. You know what I'm saying? But it it is. It's emotional Mhmm. When you're there.
Speaker 2:You feel like you're and again, you don't have to maybe it was for people, but, like, you feel like you're really in a space where God is present.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And then stuff happened. This was after we left the church. But I would say, what, maybe a couple years oh, 2024. So in September 2024, it came out into the news that a camera was found in the bathroom behind behind the stage.
Speaker 1:So it's like the bathroom where the worship team got ready, where if you're being baptized, you're going in there If you have to go to the bathroom or something like that, where the pastors are going in and out of it's the green room.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And a camera was found in the green room by one of the one of the staff. And it turned out that Will was the one that put it there, that it had been there for about two years. And he was turning it on and off when certain people would go into the bathroom, and he had all of this footage. And he ended up pleading guilty in 2025 to multiple felony charges, including child sexually abusive activity, possession of child sexually abusive material, seven counts of using a computer to commit a crime, four counts of surveilling an unclothed person, and tampering with evidence, which I'm not clear on what sort of evidence was tampered with. He faced a potential sentence of up to twenty years in prison and was held on a quarter of $1,000,000 bond.
Speaker 1:So this is a big deal. This was a big deal in our community for this to come out because this was someone who's everybody knew his face.
Speaker 2:Well, also, that church is also advertised as, like, a community center, somewhere that's safe for anybody to walk in. Right. For kids to have birthday parties, for sporting events, for art schools. You know, there's all kinds of stuff that's wrapped into this church package. Right.
Speaker 2:And for someone that influential in the community to be charged like that, that's a huge blow Mhmm.
Speaker 1:To Christianity. And you have to ask the question, who knew? Maybe not who knew that there was a camera, but who knew that something wasn't right? Because this was there for two years.
Speaker 2:I have my suspicions on who might I know
Speaker 1:you do also. Based on my experience with this space, I have a lot of questions about who knew that something was wrong. Maybe you don't know exactly what's wrong, but you know something's wrong and didn't bother to report it. Now, obviously, children use that bathroom. They have a school for the arts at this church.
Speaker 1:And so that means that they do ballet class. They do piano lessons, whatever. And they all perform on that stage. They all use that bathroom. And now you've got countless parents who are like, was he videoing my kid?
Speaker 1:Right. And it wasn't reported until someone that they couldn't keep quiet found a camera.
Speaker 2:What disgusts me in a lot of ways too, my personal story is I was part of the tech team. Mhmm. And we would go back behind the stage before each service and have like a circle up, talk about prayer requests. And then most of the time, Will would lead us in prayer. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:How do you trust someone anymore that's supposed to be leading you in prayer and worship? And behind the scenes, he knows exactly what he's doing two feet away from us. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:It just calls a lot of things into question. And it's important to call out these stories even when they are about our local churches because I have a lot of friends on social media that still attend to this church. And anytime it's brought up, they violently jump on. On public pages and stuff, when people talk about it, it'll be like, well, you know, it's just one person, and the church dealt with it. And blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 2:The church dealt with it because they didn't have a choice Mhmm. Not to. It's not because they did it of their own free will.
Speaker 1:Right. And you certainly can't jump down people's throats for being upset. Mhmm. Now there is another pastor, and I think this speaks to the way that church culture shapes, the way that when you allow one bad thing to go on, that means you're allowing other bad things to go on. There's another pastor at this church, and this literally just came out.
Speaker 1:Our mom sent us this article maybe, like, a week ago. His name was Joel Firebaugh, and it's a hilarious last name.
Speaker 2:Really good last name.
Speaker 1:Now he was a teaching pastor at that church back in the day. He left long before we did and was in Cincinnati at Crossroads Church since then. He was, like, their next generation pastor, so, like, your young adults kind of pastor. Right? He had been there for quite a while.
Speaker 1:He was, in theory, training younger generations to go out into the world and preach the gospel. He's teaching you how to teach others about God. Now the police contacted the church and said, you probably should know that this individual has been filming women at the gym without their consent and that we're taking him in. We know he's a pastor at your church.
Speaker 2:We just thought you should
Speaker 1:know casually. This is not the only individual that I am aware of that does stuff like this and thinks it's totally fine. So I'm sure he probably thought this is totally fine. But the fact that you don't respect other humans enough to not film them. Not sexualize them all
Speaker 2:Not the take images of them without their consent. And also, poor people don't know what's gonna happen to them. Exactly.
Speaker 1:And with AI now as well, for women especially, it's very easy to throw things in AI right now and come out with some very scary images. So he's taking these images, and we don't know what he's doing with it. You're right. And so in response, the church emailed the entire congregation. They did tell them about it.
Speaker 1:I will say this response does seem a little bit better. I'm not part of this church, so I don't know. But it does seem a little bit better. They immediately emailed the entire congregation. They were like, look.
Speaker 1:This is what we just heard. We had no idea. He has been terminated. We're done. But you all should know.
Speaker 1:So I do think that their response was on the better side of things if we assume that they didn't know anything. That's up to you. You get to decide what you want to believe. But these are two pastors that I listened to all the time, whether it was for worship music or for the actual sermon. He was a teaching pastor at our church, and I loved him.
Speaker 1:Like, I loved sitting and listening to him. He was my favorite teaching pastor. And you just have to wonder what's in someone's heart, and where did we go off the rails? Part of it, I think, is accountability. Part of it is power.
Speaker 1:And part of it is forgetting our mission. I think the church does
Speaker 2:a really good job at creating, in general, just like from an outside perspective here, but does a good job at turning their pastors into absolute celebrities. Mhmm. And that does something to a person who is supposed to be a representation of Christ. Mhmm. Right?
Speaker 2:So we give these people celebrity treatment. Wow. I I got to talk to the pastor today.
Speaker 1:He looked at me. I you know, it's just a really weird culture
Speaker 2:for someone who's supposed to be leading you and teaching you about Christ. Right. And I think that goes to your head. I think that power can inflate your marbles. Your marbles, Mhmm.
Speaker 1:I don't think you want those inflated. But like I said, we are all so used to these stories that we barely notice them as they pass by anymore. But it is important to notice them,
Speaker 2:to call them out, and to say no more. Someone I wanted to talk about just briefly because it's very on trend right now is Kid Rock. Kid Rock versus Bad Bunny. So the Super Bowl just happened, if you weren't aware. And there was a big controversy because Bad Bunny, who is the singer from Puerto Rico, was scheduled to do the halftime show all in Spanish.
Speaker 2:And people were all up in arms about that because he speaks out against ICE and against Trump and all of that. So Turning Point, which is Charlie Kirk's foundation, decided they're gonna create their own halftime show. Ho ho ho. And they asked Kid Rock to perform, who is actually from Michigan, unfortunately. I did know that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Along with Madonna and Tim Allen. And Eminem. Eminem. And now we know.
Speaker 2:And now we know. Oh, and Kristen Bell. And Dax Shepard. Yep. So I could just go on.
Speaker 2:Keep going, Brie. But Kid Rock, lately, it's been coming to light that there was a lyric in one of his songs that is super questionable. And I will read it to you because I found it. So it's a lyric from one of his songs. It's called Cool Daddy Cool from 2001.
Speaker 2:And the exact lyric is, Young ladies, young ladies, I like them underage. See, some say that statutory, but I say it's mandatory. Mhmm. And this was a song that was featured in a family movie called Osmosis Jones. It was rated PG.
Speaker 2:I remember that movie. So I'm not sure why this song with this specific lyric was in it. Mhmm. But people are posting it all over online because all of the stuff that's happening with Epstein Mhmm. How Kid Rock has aligned himself with Trump and with Turning Point, and now this lyric and this song is coming out.
Speaker 2:It's not so good. People who are supposed to be Christian are turning to people like that Right. And saying, no, this is the Christian halftime show. The Christian way, really. The Christian halftime show.
Speaker 2:And I'm not saying anybody's perfect, but Bad Bunny has never been arrested. He has had some issues with people saying that he's used imagery of their house without their consent in his music videos and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But Kid Rock has been arrested multiple times, mostly for violence Right. And alcohol issues.
Speaker 1:You have to ask yourself, in this day and age, what are you willing to turn a blind eye to for power? And the list is long if we're looking at what the general Protestant Christian church is willing to turn a blind eye to. But you shouldn't. You should call it out. You should say, this is not the church that god wanted us to have.
Speaker 1:This is not my church, and I will not associate anymore with that type of church, with that type of Christian. If you're doing it in the name of god, now I've got standards for you. And the standard is love god, love others. Like, that's it's not hard. Okay?
Speaker 1:I'm not, like, expecting you to be Jesus. But love god, love others. It's a low bar. But it is the bar. If you can't do that and you're doing it in the name of God, I have a much bigger issue with you as a person.
Speaker 1:And I always will. So don't turn a blind eye to this stuff. Call it out. Say that it's important. Say that you don't support it.
Speaker 1:Tell your family and friends. With smoke signals. You know
Speaker 2:how seniors have those little wallet sized pictures? You can share that
Speaker 1:with people. Put it on your business card.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So next week, as we jump off of this very depressing topic, I wanna talk about sex, baby. Let's talk about you and me. So next week, I wanna talk a little bit about some of the things that like, the memes and stuff that we've saved from the Internet and also a lot of our TikTok comments. I wanna go through some of them because I do comment back a lot of times on TikTok. Brie comments back a lot of times.
Speaker 1:But I wanna talk about some of them because there are some really important points in there. Some people that have shared their stories that I wanna talk about and also just some points that are being made that are kind of ridiculous that I'm sure you're hearing too. Like, I'm sure you're hearing some of these arguments too as I've posted about the halftime show. And we've talked about church, and we've talked about the standards for women, stuff like that. I wanna talk about those things.
Speaker 1:And so it'll be a little bit lighter because my gosh, do we need it. Yeah. So join us for that. It is past our bedtime, so we're gonna go do that now. And that's all I have to say on this matter.
Speaker 1:There isn't anymore. There isn't
Speaker 2:anymore. I'm sure there is. Well, there is, but
Speaker 1:not for tonight. Tonight, we're done. Go be The way, the truth, and life.
Speaker 2:I skipped the church where you live, work, and play.
Speaker 1:Oh gosh. No. No one would get it but us.
Speaker 2:Go be a good person. Go be a better person than anybody on
Speaker 1:the news. Anybody in the government, really. Alright. We love you. Bye.
Speaker 1:Goodbye, peasants.