Autistic Experiences of Christianity with Jon from 'Christianity on the Spectrum'

In this episode, Ian talks with Jon Machnee from the Christianity on the Spectrum podcast about his insights into autistic experiences of Christianity from over 600 interviews and looking at thousands of social media posts from autistic people who are or were Christian or are Christian-curious.

The transcript of the episode is available here: https://share.transistor.fm/s/aab2606b/transcript.txt

Listen to Christianity on the Spectrum: https://www.youtube.com/@ChristianityOnTheSpectrum-k1y/videos

If you have any questions, or just want to say hi, email us at [e-mail] or find us on social media @autismtheology.

This podcast is brought to you by The University of Aberdeen's Centre for Autism and Theology.

Website: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/sdhp/cat

The artwork for this podcast uses the Centre for Autism and Theology Logo, created by Holly Russell.

Creators and Guests

Host

Ian Lasch

PhD candidate at the university of Aberdeen researching autism and the Imago Dei

What is Autism and Theology Podcast?

The Autism and Theology Podcast is a space where we engage with the latest conversations in the field of autism and theology, share relevant resources, and promote ways in which both faith and non-faith communities can enable autistic people to flourish.

Our episodes are released on the first Wednesday of every month. We have a variety of guests who are related in some way to the field of autism and theology. Some are academics, others are people with life stories to share, and some are both!

We also release CATChat every third Wednesday of the month. These are shorter and more informal episodes where your hosts will share news and give you as listeners an opportunity to ask questions and share your stories.

Zoe: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Autism and Theology Podcast, brought to you by the Center for Autism and Theology at the University of Aberdeen.
Ian: Hello and welcome to this episode of the Autism and Theology podcast. I'm Ian, and I'm so happy that you joined us this week. This podcast is a space where we engage with the latest conversations in the field of autism and theology, sharing relevant resources and promoting ways that help faith and non-faith communities enable autistic people to flourish.
This podcast is run from the University of Aberdeen's Center for Autism and Theology, which we've [00:01:00] shortened to Kat. If you would like to access the transcript for this episode, it can be found via the link in the show notes. Today we have with us Jon Machnee, an Anglican autistic computer engineer, an autistic researcher from Canada who is behind the Christianity on the Spectrum Podcast.
A podcast about the intersection between autism and Christianity. For this work, Jon has conducted over 500 interviews with Christian, ex Christian and Christian Curious autistics and analyzed social media posts of over 26,000 other autistics on the internet to explore that intersection of autism and Christianity.
Jon, thank you so much for being with us.
Jon: Yeah. Glad to be here. And exciting, exciting announcement as of, uh, three days ago. We, we hit over 600 now, so There you go.
Ian: Nice. That is, uh, quite the data set you're dealing with. Yes, yes. Um, so to start with, can you tell us just a little bit about yourself [00:02:00] and a little bit about your research?
Jon: Yeah, so my name is Jon Machnee. I am autistic. I was diagnosed with Asperger's at age 16. I was, uh, it, it was not put on my medical records because at the time I was diagnosed by a family friend who said, look, you are very obviously autistic. We did the evaluation. You check every box. You are one of the most stereotypical cases of Asperger's I've ever seen, were his exact words.
And, uh, and then. He said, look, but you, you want to join the military, you want to become an army officer. This might hamper your ability to get into the Royal Military College of Canada. Which was sort of my dream at the time. And I thought, alright, cool, so I'll just go forth knowing that I have this. And then when I was leaving the military, I got diagnosed, uh, by, by the psychiatric evaluators on, on the way out, and they gave [00:03:00] me ASD-1.
I was also raised in a conservative evangelical household. I say conservative evangelical, it was actually Mennonite brethren, but no one knows what that means. So I mean, the joke is MB stands for Mostly Baptist and that that pretty much gets the whole point across.
I obviously wasn't a very good Mennonite because I joined the Army at age 18. So yeah. And then I, uh, I deconstructed and left Christianity between like ages of 19 and 20. I can't remember exactly how old I was when I truly left, but I basically. Left Christianity altogether. And then I started to find other autistic people like me who also left Christianity.
There was a meetup for autistic students at the University of Queens, and the Royal Military College was invited because we're just across the peninsula. And I met a whole bunch of people like me and I thought, wow, this is really [00:04:00] weird that all of us have almost the exact same story and trajectory. Is this just a sort of glitch in my little microcosm, or is this indicative of larger trends?
And I thought, I know peer reviewed research has probably asked this question many times and successfully and decisively answered it accurately, and with no issues. I was wrong. Uh, so I, I looked at the research that existed and found myself deeply unsatisfied with the answers they were getting and I was really interested in the sociology of religion, that was sort of my, other than, other than computers, that was, that was my interest and I was doing computer engineering at the time, so I thought, how about I combine my two passions of autism research and, uh, Christianity together and, and so I basically just started data scraping autistic people online.
Anyone that identified themselves as [00:05:00] autistic and or even hinted at Christian, I just took all their posts on social media that they made public, put them in a large database and then started reading them. Eventually I, uh, I felt like I had sort of tapped out of that market and got all the data I was going to get, and I wanted to get deeper.
So I started reaching out to people with surveys. And then started reaching out to do long form interviews. And I have basically done this for the last 10 years. Um, and yeah, that's, that's, that's the, the short answer of, of that, um, I, I made the podcast because I really had no intention of publishing my research ever.
I was in the military in Sig Cyber where, uh, you don't publish stuff basically is, is what the rules are. If people know your name and, and they don't know you personally, that's not a good situation to be in. So I was just never planning on publishing my work. And then I [00:06:00] left the military. And when I left the military, I realized I actually have a lot of good data that could be used to help people.
And then I converted back to Christianity at around the same time and I thought I have a lot of good data that I can use to help Christians and to, to help the church and, uh, to explain what's going on with, with autistic people and what's going on with Christianity and why.
For so many of us, it feels like we're trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. And yeah, that's, that's sort of my podcast and the podcasting project and who I am and what I'm doing.
Ian: Yeah. And, um, I mean, it, it makes sense that there's such an extensive background because it is, as, as we joked about such an extensive data set, you know, you're dealing with a huge amount of data.
Um, it makes sense that a podcast would roll out because there's no, um. I don't want to say there's no way, but it's really difficult in a [00:07:00] lot of ways to boil that much data down to just a few bullet points or just a few sort of summary points. Yeah. So with that in mind…
Jon: I tried writing a book a few times?
Ian: Yeah.
Jon: Shelved it. Shelved it. We have three drafts, three full drafts so far. Shelled every one of them. But
Ian: Uh huh
Jon: maybe, maybe one day. Sure. Maybe one day I'll join CAT and it'll be my PhD thesis.
Ian: There you go. Uh,
Jon: but yeah, who knows?
Ian: Um, yeah. So it, it is, I mean, I know that it's hard to boil down. So this is in some ways asking you an impossible question, but, um, if you, if forced to summarize or to, to sort of come up with some common themes, are there any, are there common themes that you've noticed among autistic people when it comes to their attitudes toward Christianity, their practice of Christianity?
Um, any of that that, that might be helpful for, for. Um, people in, in Christian communities to know.
Jon: Yeah. So the first thing I pretty much always say [00:08:00] is autism is a complex heterogeneous condition with a wide variety of expressions. And Christianity is a complex heterogeneous religion with a wide range of expressions.
And so no matter what you say, you always need to take in those caveats that things are actually quite complicated and there are layers and layers of social abstraction that go into there, and intricate, complex nuances that, that get combined when you, you take a condition like autism, which largely affects the way that you think about social situations, and then a religion that is heavily mediated through social situations and differently mediated through social situations in different contexts.
So, um, that being said, there are, there are a lot of trends. The, the first trend that I found, and I, I should also clarify: My data is only on the anglosphere, it's only on the English speaking world. I, I, like, I haven't [00:09:00] collected data on autistic Chris—Orthodox Christians in Russia, unless they're speaking English.
Um, you know, there, so there, there are limitations to this. So this is mostly scoped to the English speaking world. But the, the overall, the overall thing I found is that Christianity for most autistic people is very difficult. It is difficult to practice. It is difficult to be in and it is difficult to participate in and it's for a wide variety of reasons.
You, there's never any single monocausal thing when you're, when you're talking about this type of stuff, but it's a combination of a whole bunch of other factors that sort of boil down to a phrase that, that you will see a lot online, especially for deconstructing autistic Christians, which is, I mean, this is, this is reductive, but they'll, they'll say Christianity is a religion by [00:10:00] neurotypicals for neurotypicals.
And what they're expressing when they say that is, it feels like this wasn't designed with me in mind. It feels like I was not the target audience for this. The way we practice things, the way we do things. Whenever you—like, if you, if you make, um, evangelism material like, like the Alpha Course or something like that, you need to have a target audience in mind, and that target audience is never autistic, right?
You, you, when you're preaching a sermon, the, the pastor needs to think about the, the people in the pews and he's probably not thinking about autistic people when he is, when he is preaching, and this problem sort of perpetuates itself and perpetuates itself to the point where a lot of autistic people feel like they're on the outside looking in, trying to participate, but unable to.
And there are many exceptions to this of course, but the overall trend is, is sort of that. [00:11:00] And, and then, you know, there, but there are some of us who do participate and those of us who do participate, participate in ways that are often, uh, I, I use a term, ‘orthodox, but on the fringes of orthodoxy,’ where, where, uh, you know, you, you get some pretty interesting ideas and you know, you, you get lots of, lots of interesting quirks that come up with when you, when you combine like many of the, the cognitive tendencies in autism, like bottom up thinking or black and white thinking or, um, like strong moral views and things like that.
All, all combine to, to create some unique expressions of Christianity that end up, uh, looking maybe different than other people. Another, another really big trend is a lot of autistic people struggle with relational aspects of Christianity. That's almost a common through [00:12:00] line through most people.
It's like 85% of people that I've surveyed when I ask them the question, “Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus?” Will say some variation of, “No, not really.” Um, you know how they'll say, “No, not really,” will really depend, but you know, 85%, that's a lot of us. When you compare it to the, the general milieu of English-speaking Christianity, it's sort of probably inverted, uh, where you'd have 85% saying yes and 50% saying no. But yeah, that, so those, those are some of the trends I found.
Ian: It's, uh, it's interesting thinking about some of those. I, I, I can't remember if the exact turn of phrase you used was socially mediated, but, but there is a, a, a high degree to which that's the case, right?
Um, that a lot of, even the language of orthodoxy or the language of our faith communities. Is, um, I don't want to say socially constructed necessarily, because that sounds like such a negative but socially mediated. In [00:13:00] other words,
Jon: I'd say it's socially constructed.
Ian: Sure.
Jon: I'm fine with that term.
Ian: Fair. Okay. But, but it is, I mean, there is a sense, I, I, I mean it's true. It's just true. I. That the way that you talk about things or the way that the community talks about things, for the most part, um, as a neurotypical, right? Because you pick up on those socially maintained ideas of what's acceptable discourse and what are, what is, what are the ways I'm supposed to frame my own particular religious expression?
And I think for a lot of people, not that, um, I don't mean to point any fingers here, but I think that a lot of that idea of personal relationship with Jesus, is that, right?
Jon: Yes.
Ian: It's that we have laid the bounds of this is the, this is language that we use for it or way that we express it. And autistic people, um, generally don't either don't pick up on or don't have any use for.The going along to get along and saying what [00:14:00] we've said we should say, if it's, if it's not true for us or if it doesn't, if it doesn't sound right.
Jon: Yeah, I, I think that's, that's a hundred percent true. And, and just the fact that like a lot of autistic people, uh, just naturally don't pick up on the cues that you're supposed to get, uh, stops a lot of that from happening at initial stages.
And because it stops a lot of that from happening at initial stages, a lot of the, you know, spirituality is something that, that develops. It's like a muscle that you train and a muscle that you build, and if you aren't receptive to it at those first initial stages, you probably won't, won't build that muscle, but you'll build different ones.
And so autistic Christians are also, generally speaking, very heavily intellectual. Uh, so when you, when you ask them like, how do you, how do you engage with Christianity? They're like, I read books, I listen to podcasts. I, you know, do all these sorts of things. Or I memorize the Psalms, or I [00:15:00] read the Book of Common Prayer or whatever, you know, like things where it's like intellectual engagement primarily is, is the main method through which we access.
Christianity and I, I don't think that's because that's something inherent to autism. I think that's mostly because the way that we practice Christianity, you know, you can think of it as, as c the Christian tradition offers you all of these different ways to interact with it. And the one that makes sense to us is the intellectualization route and, and a lot of pastoral work in the church isn't really built around trying to accommodate all these other ways to interact with the Christian faith.
And so, you know, and when all you have is a hammer, everything's a nail. And, and, and they only give you the hammer and they, they don't give you the other things. It, it tends to sort of track you to one side of Christian expression.
And then people also [00:16:00] encourage you in that because they think, oh, you're taking your faith really seriously. Great. And so it, it sort of develops along those pathways. And if you don't develop along those pathways, you probably just leave the church altogether.
Ian: Yeah. And I think there's, you know, one of the things that can be, um. Uh, insidious may be a strong word, but one of the things that you do see in the church is, is almost a stigmatization of sometimes of intellectual pursuit of theology or of, or, or a, a sort of cognitive-based approach to Christianity because we, we sometimes act as though mysticism or experiential Christianity or Christian practice including like contemplative prayer and stuff like that is somehow better or holier or more the domain of the Holy Spirit.
And so sometimes, in some traditions, at least, you're actively discouraged from being too intellectual about your faith. Not that—I, I, I don't mean to sound as though anti-intellectualism wins the day [00:17:00] necessarily, but there is, um, there can be a sort of skepticism around theological pursuit, right? Like you're,
Jon: yeah, absolutely.
Ian: um, you're debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, right?
Jon: Like, yeah. And like, I, I start off the podcast, like the first ever episode of the podcast. The very first thing that that happens is I ask my co-host if she's ever heard the, the term, uh, heart knowledge and head knowledge and, and that's something that gets thrown in a lot of autistic people's faces all the time because a lot of us, when you, when you look at the way that we practice Christianity, a lot of it is head knowledge. Or what other people would classify as head knowledge. I, I dispute that whole dichotomy. I don't, I don't think it's valid dichotomy.
I, I think there are, for a lot of autistic people, head knowledge is heart knowledge. Um, and, and to, to denigrate one and elevate the other, I think is a [00:18:00] serious categorical mistake. But it is definitely one that we do a lot, um, in, in some Christian traditions. You know, like, like I said at the beginning, Christianity's complicated.
There, there are lots of different forms, but certainly in the way that it's practiced in the Anglosphere, um, the sort of, especially in, in like America, the, the sort of experiential. Um, hyper emotional feelings of it all is, is heavily emphasized, and that's something that a lot of autistic Christians find very alienating.
And one phenomenon that I have documented pretty extensively is what I call high church drift. Which is the tendency for autistic people as they age to end up in high traditions. So I, I've basically been been able to look at people over the last 10 years and just document where they go and if they switch denominations, what do they switch to?
And, and it is almost all, uh, switching to high church traditions from low church [00:19:00] traditions if they do switch or from high church traditions to other high church traditions, it's very rare for you to get a, a high church to low church switch. You, you do get it sometimes often through like the occasion of marriage or something like that.
Um, but most of the time autistic people will gravitate to the more, um, high church. Traditions that emphasize sacraments over emotional engagement. Um, and, and so yeah, I see a lot of that.
Ian: Um, talking about your research, we, is there anything that you found particularly surprising when you were talking to autistic people about their faith?
Anything you wouldn't have predicted, but, um, but was, but was a common response perhaps.
Jon: Yeah. So there, there are a lot of surprising things that that would've really surprised me when I first started out. I mean, at, at this point I say nothing surprises me. So, you know, it's, it's hard to go back in time and think what would've surprised me, but actually, I actually made some [00:20:00] loose predictions when I first started the research and all of them were wrong.
Uh, so I, I predicted that most autistic Christians would not be theologically orthodox. I predicted most of them wouldn't care about orthodoxy and that the dominant theological mode of thought would be like a theological liberalism. And I found that is absolutely not the case. Like I, I could not have been more wrong about that.
Uh, autistic people tend to be very concerned with orthodoxy. They tend to be theologically conservative on most issues with exceptions for issues related to gender and sexuality. So often the, uh, the term that's used is inclusive orthodox. I know some people don't like that term, but, you know, it's close enough for describing what, what the, the phenomena is where you will have autistic people who, you know, very, very committed to, to a sort of credal orthodoxy.
Um, and, and a upholding the traditions of the [00:21:00] church with exceptions for, for questions related to gender and sexuality. I would not have predicted that when I started. Um, I like throughout, throughout the trend, like throughout the research, I, I predicted trends like, you know, autistic women will be more socially progressive than autistic men on most issues.
And, and that trend is true on almost all issues except one that started in 2017, like during my research I watched it happen is that autistic women became significantly less socially inclusive on trans issues than autistic Christian men. Um, and, and that is. A localized phenomenon to Christianity. I haven't found that in any other online autistic subgroup.
Um, especially prominent in like UK Christians, uh, and in UK autistic Christians. But now it's like all over the anglosphere, where, where if you meet an autistic Christian man, they are actually more likely to be trans-inclusive than an autistic Christian woman, just on average. I would never have predicted that one.
Um, [00:22:00] there, yeah. So, so there're, there're like. Lots of, lots of small things like that. Where, where it's like, yeah, didn't, didn't really, didn't really see that coming, but, oh boy, it's coming. So,
Ian: uh, yeah, definitely, I mean it, even the, the maxim that you'll hear sometimes is if you've met one chri—one autistic person, you've met one autistic person, um, that's common to hear in autistic circles.
And yet, um, I think your research not only bears that out, but also highlights the fact that there are trends, there are overall, um, there are. Regularities, which is not to say that they are, uh, ironclad or that every autistic Christian, um, is it has to follow this set of rules or follows this exact pattern.
But you can observe trends like that. You can notice.
Jon: Yeah, absolutely. Like the, it, the phrase, if you've met one autistic. Person you've met. One autistic [00:23:00] person is true in the sense that autistic people are a heterogeneous broad group of people with a wide range of expressions. But within those, within that large group, there are subgroups and clusters, and within those clusters, there are very easily noticeable and discernible trends.
Ian: Based on that, based on all that you're, all that you've done in, in sort of looking at autistic Christians and in talking to autistic Christians, if there were one piece of advice or of insight that you might offer to our listeners based on your research and listeners from faith communities, non-faith communities, people who are looking, looking to be more inclusive and more accepting of autistic Christians, what would that piece of advice or, or pieces of advice, if you've got more than one, what would that be?
Jon: Yeah, so the first thing that I pretty much always heavily emphasize is education, education, education. Uh, right now, not a whole [00:24:00] lot of people know about autism. I mean, the listeners of this podcast will probably be more informed than the average person, but just generally speaking, I find churches do not have a particularly good grasp on what autism is or the sort of full spectrum of autism.
They will either, you know, they'll know, they'll know about some parts of it, but not other parts of it. Or they, they'll be like, “I'm autistic, so I know what autism is like.” And that might be true. You might know what autism is like for you and your autistic friends, however, you know, you should not try to extrapolate this trend broadly onto all autistic people.
So I would say, I would say, I would say the, the biggest, the biggest thing is, is education. Like the, the thing, the thing that we. Need right now is for more people to know what's going on. There's that Sun Tzu quote about knowing yourself and knowing your enemy. And at this point, I don't think we know either, uh, particularly well.
And so [00:25:00] addressing the problems and concerns that come up are often very difficult to do if you don't actually know what you're facing. And so I say that should probably be the first step. Uh, I mean, the second step is usually. Understand that in your local context, the autistic people that you are dealing with are just statistically speaking, not going to be having a great time, and they're going to be really struggling.
Uh, it is very rare to find autistic Christians who are having a good time and who, who aren't dealing with a lot of, with a lot of stuff that, that they need to be addressed. So, um, yeah, having, having. A level of compassion and concern for, for the difficulties they're facing, I would certainly say is, is something, you know, you, you might need to pay some extra attention or extra care to them.
And, uh, yeah. The, the third one is, is [00:26:00] just like, talk to them, right? Like at, at the end of the day, uh, talk to them or, or if you can't talk to them, talk to their parents or their caregivers. To, to figure out like what is, what can we actually do to accommodate you specifically? Like some, some people talk about, you know, we, we should have a sensory room in every church.
And it's like, cool, that's great. But some autistic people will not like your sensory room. And, and, and you know, you can have sometimes when you have more than one autistic person in the sensory room, they both start. Getting at each other. And now, now no one likes the sensory room. Uh, and so, so just like being flexible, talk to them, figure out what's going on.
That's, I, I guess that's my, that's my best advice.
Ian: Yeah, I, I think that's solid advice. There's, um, you know, one of the things that, that keeps coming up in this podcast is the idea that what people are really [00:27:00] looking for is a checklist of things that they can do to be autism friendly or autistic friendly.
And unfortunately, the reality is there is no one size fits all approach. Yep. There is no singular checklist. What it means is navigating this process.
Jon: I'm always saying, uh, the phrase, there are no silver bullets. Um, there is, there is no, there is no solution to autism in the church. It is, yeah. It is a complex problem for a complex religion.
Ian: Yeah. And, and I mean, it's in that respect, it's just like anybody else, right? You can create a pipeline to membership, but it's not going to be one size fits all. And you have to be able to be flexible. You have to be able to take into account the individuals that you're actually dealing with. Um, so yeah, good advice.
I think. Uh, any parting wisdom? Uh, we are more or less at time, but uh, we have a chance for any last thoughts you might have.
Jon: Uh, [00:28:00] yeah. If you would like to learn about autistic Christians in a sort of impartial. Tone from a very monotone, autistic man. Uh, you can check out my podcast, Christianity on the Spectrum, uh, wherever you get your, your fine podcasts.
Um, yeah, I think that's it. Uh, we, the, I I would say, uh, the tone of my podcast is, is probably different from most autism podcasts. At least I've been told that by, by autistic people. So just be warned that, uh, we, we talk about all the autism spectrum. And that, that it will include, uh, even, even the parts that most people would like not to be there.
Sure. Uh, so, so, you know, we, there, there is a necessity to talk about the. Uh, race eugenicist artists and because they, they, they exist. Yeah. And they have influence in the church and, you know, [00:29:00] the trans exclusionary artists and everything like that. Uh, so we, that, those discussions happen on the podcast in a, in a way that often people go, oh, I had no idea this was a thing.
Yeah. Um, so yeah. When you, when you spend, when you spend your life, um. Surveying a very heterogeneous group. You, you come away with a, a look at autism that is, that is perhaps, uh, slightly different from, from what most places will get. So just a fair warning for you.
Ian: Yeah, no, I, I, I appreciate that. And one of the things that I have seen in your podcast is, is really talking about, you know, um.
I I think the last time that we talked, you had mentioned there's this, this idea that, um, that artists are, have a, have a more developed sense of justice, right? Yeah. Um, that you'll see a lot of times in online autistic spaces, and maybe that's true. Justice is defined a lot of different [00:30:00] ways, and there are people working for justice, uh, autistic people working for justice who, who have a very different concept of what is just than we might.
Jon: Yes. The, the phrase that I'm always saying is, is the same, the same impulse that gets autistic people to be on the front Lines of, um, LGBT inclusion are the exact same impulses that lead an autistic person to pray the rosary outside an abortion clinic. And those, those typically are aligned with very different parts of the political spectrum.
And, and so we, we talk about all the parts of the political spectrum and why they are the way they are. So yeah, that's, uh, that's, that's what we do on the podcast. It's, uh, very, you can, I, I've, I've been told, uh. You can tell it's a podcast for autistic people, by autistic people, because every episode is three hours long.
Uh, that's not true. Not everyone is three hours long. Some of them are though. We, we, we [00:31:00] sometimes, we sometimes take a lot of time to explain what's going on. Uh, sure. Yeah. So if you're looking for that, you can, you can find it there.
Ian: Right on. Well, because this podcast is not three hours long, that's about us for time. Uh, so Jon, thank you so much again for being with us today. And, uh, for our listeners, if you have any questions, you can message us @autismtheology.bsky.social on BlueSky, or @autismtheology on Instagram. Or you can send us an [e-mail]. Even if it's just to say hi, we'd love to hear from you. Thanks so much for listening.
Zoe: Thank you for listening to the Autism and Theology podcast. [00:32:00] If you have any questions for us or just want to say hi, please email us at [e-mail] or find us on Twitter @autismtheology.