Separating Church and Hate with John Fugelsang

Welcome to Phil and Ted's Sexy Boomer Show. I'm Ted Bonnitt.

I'm Phil Proctor.

Hey, Phil. Nice to see you.

I know I'm physically here. I've been remote for quite a while. And we actually have a physical guest in our studio today. This is so exciting. Thank you, John. Fugal.Is it fugal or fugal?

Fugal sang fugle.

Which means bird song.

Yes, it does.

Yes. Mr.

Crowd, do you think of yourself as a songbird, perhaps?

No, I just say that too. I try to tell gullible Danish women that Twitt was named after me. That's what I did there.

Yeah, very good. Anyway, John has a new book out. Your first book, right?

My first book, yes.

And it's called the Separation of Church and Hate.

Hate.

A Sane Person's Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists and Flock Fleecing Frauds.

Yep. Great read.

This is a guidebook for today.

It is.

How many years have we been saying, how do these people come off holier than thou? We're now talking about the ultra conservative Christians.

Yeah.

And they're happily trampling the church and state border line. There's nothing new there, but they're making real headway and have over the last few years.

And as always for 1700 years, they are fighting for 0 of the actual things the guy Jesus in the book talked about. That's something that has to be remembered from the Crusades, through Columbus, through Hitler.Christian nationalists, these right wing folks, they use Jesus to get power and. And then with that power, they do the opposite of everything Jesus says. How we're supposed to treat each other.

What you've done in your book is not only is it very funny because you are a standup comic.

Yes. There's lots of books about progressive theology. Not a lot written by a comedian.Better laugh out loud for as many penis jokes as this book manages to cram in for a book about.

Course you also, you're a sit down comic because you do three hours. When you told me this, it blew my mind. You do three hours a night?

I'm the primetime anchor on Sirius XM's progress channel. So, yes, it's all of the ads. Agitated liberals who can't sleep until midnight on the east coast are calling me.

Count me in. That show is an interview show. You don't do musical breaks or anything like that.

We play a lot of music on it, but they do. SiriusXM lets me book whoever I want.It's a political channel, but we have lots of comedians and movie Stars and rappers and rock stars and filmmakers and activists and artists and politicians and journalists. But we've had everyone from Willie Nelson to Ashanti to Brian Wilson. We have lots of fun.

Your show is called Tell Me Everything.

Yes, sir.

And it's on SiriusXM progress.

Yes.

And you also.

It's also a free podcast called the John Fegelsong Podcast.

The next day, Firestein Theater was responsible for helping to create the XM Satellite Radio Comedy Channel way back.

So can I talk to you about royalties? Is that. Who are you the one I talked to about that? Yeah. Good luck with that. I got some angry comics.

I don't believe in kings.

I'm on it every night. And I've always.In any television or standup or radio I've done, I always talk a lot about the Bible and about Christianity and what Jesus says versus what his unauthorized fan clubs fight for. I had many managers and agents for years beg me to stop this.It's not the most commercially viable subject matter for a comic to engage in, but this was my passion. I have an abnormally Christian childhood and my mother was a nun.

Let's just absorb that.

Wait a minute. Your mother was a nun?

My mother was a nun.

My mother was a nun with the Daughters of Wisdom Order. She was a nurse. She went to Malawi, Africa to minister to lepers and then in a hospital in Malawi.And my father was a Franciscan brother who wore the Jedi robes and rope belt and taught history to Catholic boys in Brooklyn. My mother was from the segregated South. It's a long story of their romance.But eventually, after 10 years of chaste friendship, they left the church and went on a date and tried to raise us to be progressive, free thinking, sexually repressed Catholics. And I realized I could never afford the therapy I actually required. And stand up comed seemed like a cheaper way to try to navigate that.And this is a book that I was asked to write for a long time and I pitched for about 13 years and was always told no.It was rejected so many times over the years, I was told, wait, it's a book about believers and atheists together, how to deal with right wing Christians. What it's for believers and atheists.And I'm like, yeah, this book's for anyone of any background or belief system who has to deal with a right wing Christian and your job and your school and your government and your family, your school board, and how even if you don't believe in Jesus, if you're debating any of the issues that divide us with a right wing Christian Jesus, whether he exists or not, is on your side.And we have to stop letting these people use their very narrow Jesus free right wing interpretation of this Bible because they are trying to impose their narrow anti Jesus version of this book onto every level of our civic and cultural life.

And ironically, Jesus was a radical who basically fought against occupation.

Yeah.

By a foreign government of his land.

He had his way of resisting and those are the ones who killed him. The occupiers killed him. It wasn't the Pharisees, it was the occupying your.

So you're in this unique position because you were raised on Long island. Not to brag and you were raised in a religious household, but one that you wouldn't necessarily recognize today, at least in the press.This was a compassionate. You were, as you say, Jesus followers. Not so much Bible followers.

I was raised too. Cause I'm Amish and Irish and from Goshen, Indiana. And we were I guess Presbyterian or Protestant.And it was a church within walking distance of our house and we knew everybody pretty much there. And to me, Christianity was community. Looking out for one another, helping one another. All of the values of Jesus.

That's what I was taught without any.

Yeah, the father.

I was a kid, I was taught Christianity is about the stuff Jesus talked about, which is humility, love your enemies, servant leadership. The last shall be first. Wash the feet of your own followers. Go to the margins.How you treat the lowest member of your society is exactly how you treat Jesus. Matthew 25. God gives his marching orders. The judgment of nations. He says individuals and nations, that's very important, are going to be judged.And Jesus gives four criteria.You don't really hear this too much because our conservative Christian friends don't put Matthew 25 on the side of courthouse walls or classroom walls. But Jesus says how to tell the difference between his true followers and his fake followers. And it's four things.You take care of the poor, you take care of the sick, you welcome the stranger, and you're kind to those in prison. That's it. Nothing about screaming at women outside clinics or being mean to the trans kid and.

Or denying health care?

Yes. My dad had over his bed a collage of Gandhi, Dorothy Day from Catholic Charities and Dr. King. That was the Holy Trinity in my house.Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Dr. King.

Well, conservative Republicanism. Back in the Eisenhower days there was. It was an entirely different world in terms of faith.

Now, are you segregationist? Yeah.

It wasn't.

So were the Democrats.

It wasn't the Garden of Eden.

The conservative ones were of both Parties.

It was not religion, wasn't used as a tool for political division.

Sure. They put in God We Trust on our coins. Just as a screw you to the Soviets. Put God's name on our money. How creepy is that?

What I was getting at was that there was a turning point.

Oh yes.

Where it really became extreme.

You're very right.

Jerry Falwell. You know the Reagan years where Reagan, even George Bush Sr. They were pro choice.

They both were.

That's right. The abortion issue is what really changed everything.

The abortion issue is what completely change the course of American Christianity in our lifetime. Used it as a only American Christianity because Falwell was a segregationist. No one ever told me that. Growing up.I debated the guy on Bill Maher when I was a kid. I didn't know he'd been a segregationist. He built whites only schools. I knew he supported apartheid.

Wait a minute, you actually were on television.

I was on Bill Maher debating Jerry falwell in my 20s.

How long have you been doing this?

A while.

You look like a young man.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that.

So you have a pact with the devil?

No, I was raised in such a way that I don't think Christians are supposed to follow the Bible. I think Christians are supposed to follow Christ. Jesus is inconveniently woke for most of these people.And so he works as a mascot more than a savior. But in the 70s, after civil rights and the Voting Rights act and after Nixon blew up the thing, these guys were cast adrift.You know what right wing Christianity was fighting for, what their big issue was in the 70s, that Jimmy Carter's IRS was trying to take tax status away, tax exempt status away from colleges that still practice racial segregation. In the 1970s, Ronald Reagan talked about Jimmy Carter's IRS as much as he talked about abortion.In the 1980 campaign, Reagan had signed the most liberal abortion law in California's history. As governor, Bush Sr. Was always in favor of women's reproductive rights until the day Reagan asked him to be his running mate.And overnight he became anti abortion. And after the Reagan election, they did something incredible in American Christianity.We already have a troublesome history with the Christianity in this country. We're the only nation on earth, only nation on earth where our history of Christianity is completely intertwined with white supremacy.No other country began with Christianity and white supremacy and slavery at the same time.

Well, the image of Jesus had changed to European, Caucasian, blue eyed white man.

Oh, like everybody else in the Middle East. But the thing with abortion, once they Made that their issue. Everything changed.And within a generation, within 10 years, if you told someone you were Christian, they assumed you thought government should force citizens to be pregnant against their will. Government should force teenaged rape victims to be pregnant by their stepdad against their will. And you hated gay people.By the 90s, if you said you were Christian, people assumed you. That's right. And again, the wacky thing about it is the Bible's not against abortion. God never bans it.There's no penalty for terminating a pregnancy. Paul, Moses, the prophets, Elijah, Christ, no one ever mentions it. In the Jewish faith. Life begins with first breath.And God makes it very clear in Exodus, chapter 21 that a fetus is property, a man's property, and that a woman's life has more value in his eye if two men are fighting and they hit a pregnant woman. If the fetus dies, you pay a fine. If the woman dies, you pay with your life. This is why abortion is not banned in Judaism.They thought that a fetus was a thing that could become a person, but was not a person. And this is why abortion is legal and free in Israel right now. Because Jesus religion never banned it. That doesn't come up in this country too much.Democrats don't talk about it. But the reality was after they made this their issue, the entire landscape of Christianity changed.And they got the followers of Christ to vote against everything Christ talked about. By talking about abortion, which Christ never talked about, Jesus was against the death penalty.

These forward steps we took as a society created a backlash. For example, Roe v. Wade always. And then a black man, African American becoming president always just erupted racism in this country.

But there's always a racist backlash in America. Slavery ended and we got Jim Crow, we got apartheid, and then you have civil rights and Voting Rights Act.But then you get Nixon and you get the drug war and the Southern Strategy. So then you get the first black president and then you get this racist reality show clown who can't stop spreading really evil racist lies.Be it about Haitians eating pets or the first black president's not one of us. And a whole lot of white Christians think thou shalt bear false witness if it's racist enough and we don't mind it.

Calling that African American woman garbage.

Yeah, calling Somalis, calling Somalis, calling Somalis hard working immigrants. The whole thing with the Haitians last year, where were the Christian voices saying the Republican governor said it's a lie.The Republican mayor, the chief of police, the lady who first made the accusation later found her own cat in her house in the basement.

That's right.

And yet J.D. vance and Donald Trump spread this racist, deliberate, knowing lie. Knowingly, Knowingly.Again, if you were against abortion because you think it's a civil rights issue for a fetus, I'll respect that argument. I'll have it. But don't come at me saying that it's because of Jesus. Jesus was against the death penalty. More than once.He was against the death penalty. Jesus overturns the very concept of retributive justice in the Sermon on the Mount, where he changes all the rules. You have heard it said.But I say to you. You have heard it said, but I say to you, that's Jesus bringing about a new covenant. That's him saying, screw what you heard.This is not the old Judaism. This is my brand. And he says, turn the other cheek.

He was your radical.

And then he stops an execution and says, only sinless people can execute. So all I'm saying is, and I get very pious death threats for this.But if you're telling me that you want to criminalize abortion, which Jesus never mentioned because you're so Christlike, but you support murdering prisoners, which Jesus directly opposed, I don't think we're obliged to take your claims of piety seriously anymore. Homophobia is an insult to the New Testament. Homophobia is a rejection of the Sermon on the Mount. That's right.Transphobia is a rejection of the commandments of Christ. And the Democrats aren't going to call him out. The media's not going to call him out.No media will ever say to Mike Pence, where exactly does Jesus drive the gay wedding cakes from the temple? They don't. It's going to be up to the rest of us to convince everyone that hate is not a Christian value.

You're listening to Phil and Ted's Sexy Boomer Show.Our guest today is John Fugelsang, who wrote Separation Church and Hate, A Sane Person's Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists and Flock Fleecing Frauds.

You say it so well. I gotta tell you something. A lot of hosts can't handle that alliteration.

And it's an audiobook as well.

Now this book, absolutely delightful and laugh out loud funny.

Thank you.

And yet you're taking on something that I can't think is. There's nothing more relevant and timely right now than knowledgeably taking down these falsehoods we have to about the Bible.How somehow haters have taken control of the Bible's narrative.

Always have slavery for 400 years. It's not new.

So right now, the cruelty of this administration is unlike anything. I think it's fair to say Trump is decompensating by the day. He's really losing it.

But I love you. Talking about his comparison to Caligula.

I call him Combo Ver Caligula, which.

By the way, if you people don't know who Caligula was, he was a wonderfully insane ruler in.

He was our guest last year.

Real quality film with Malcolm McDowell as well. I can't recommend highly enough for the whole family, really, if you can get it.

I saw the play, too, back when I was at Yale, which is very bizarre. And the last line of which was, I'm still alive.

I've been calling him Come over Caligula since 2015, and it's still my favorite. I have many nicknames for him, but that's still my favorite.

You're actually doing Stand up now and you're doing your religious material.

Yes.

And what's that?

It's been pretty surreal so far, doing a book tour for something that's about Jesus and about how the loudest Christians are actually the blasphemers. But I always thought that there was an audience for this for years. I pitched it, and I had this book turned down for so many years.Gentlemen, you said 13 years.

Because it's the third rail. Too high?

Yeah, because the third rail. And this is how it is.

How long ago did you write in?

First pitched it in 2010.

2010.

And I finally sold it on a verbal pitch in 2023.

Wow. Wow.

My dad was in hospice. He, like, hit send on the email. So it's very.And to finally have it, I said for a long time that I believe the largest growing religious group in our country, they say it's Mormons. Some say it's Islam. Some say it's none of the above.I've really come to believe the largest growing religious demographic in America are people who were raised religious but now consider themselves spiritual because they're so disgusted by the hangups.

That's right.

Like spiritual people use religion to become better people. Fundamentalists use religion to prove their better people than you.And so it was very gratifying to finally have this book come out and to make the New York Times bestseller list. Three months ago today, we were released the day before Mr. Kirk was shot. Oh, my God.And so I write a book about how to take down Christian nationalism with nonviolence and humor and scripture. And the very next day, the most famous Christian nationalist in America is Taken out with violence. Another young white Republican kid with a gun.I thought our friends on the right might. Now that someone you love has been killed, can we have this conversation? No, but.So all of my media appearances were canceled the first couple weeks of release, obviously, because Charlie Kirk, they can't talk about how these fundamentalists are bad guys when we're pretending. One of these guys. And I wanna say Charlie didn't like me. He came after me several times. I spent time on the Turning Point usa.I don't see anything on their website about helping the poor. I've never seen anything about how to help the sick.

Who was Charlie Kirk?

Charlie Kirk is a very young man who did not know the Bible that well and was PA substantial amounts of money to normalize white supremacy to college students and people in their 20s.

He did quite well financially.

He was very well compensated for normalizing white supremacy, normalizing misogyny, normalizing hatred for Muslims and non Christians. But again, nothing that Christ talked about that I always say. Tell me the Jesus teaching that MAGA fights for and I recommend your listeners do this.Give me chapter and verse a gospel teaching of Jesus that Donald Trump or the MAGA movement or the Republican Party have fought for in the last 10 years. Just one, gentlemen. The first thing you'll hear is abortion. That's true. The Bible's not against abortion.Then the second thing you'll hear is a strong border. And this is what we hear all the time.

Oh, yes.

And I gotta say no. The only commandment in the Bible about borders or immigration is the commandment to welcome the stranger.God is unambiguous throughout the Old Testament about welcoming the. Treat the alien as one of your own. Do not mistreat the alien.Jesus goes one step farther in Matthew 25, as I said, and says, individuals and nations are gonna be judged heaven or hell by how you welcome the stranger. They don't follow this guy.I was on CNN with our pal Scott Jennings a couple weeks back and I said to him, why should I listen to you and Donald Trump and reject God and Jesus? See, we don't need to fight these people. If they're in your family, your job, you can ask the right questions and let them fight with the Bible.Let them fight with God and Jesus.

I co authored a book with Samuel Joseph called How to Talk to youo Crazy Right Wing Uncle.

Right on.

And this was about five years ago.

4.

And the same thing we had to confront how to get through to. And in your book you made it very clear, very clear what we need to do.

John Fugelsang, our guest today, author of the best selling Separation of Church and Hate. A Sane Person's Guide to Taking Back the Bible from the Fundamentalists, Fascists and Flock Fleecing Frauds.I don't know how many times I got to say that, but it's worth it.

It's a great title.

And you can also.

Joe Scarborough couldn't say it that fast, man.

How did the conservative movement co opt the Bible in the way it did?I know we've made it clear that this is not nothing new, but let's talk about contemporarily what's happening right now with people who are embracing the anti abortion movement. Is this because they're representing a constituency that can't speak for itself? Is that a convenience there? Is it a power play?

No, they did it for power again. Yeah, but it's a.

Because they. For their own power. But they're representing constituents that can't speak for themselves.

That's what they'll say. But if they cared about. Look, we don't have an abortion problem in this country. We have an unwanted pregnancy problem.

Right.

And an abortion symptom. If they wanted to reduce the numbers of abortions, they'd be fighting to have greater access to birth control.They'd be fighting to have sex set in the schools. They don't care. They use the issue to get power.

Exactly.

If they wanted to. Look, the majority of undocumented immigrants are people who overstay their visas. You don't hear that too much on our news.They go after the brown folks at the border. I don't see them going after the, what is it, 25,000 undocumented Irish in this country. You see any Irish or Russians being sent out? Cadaver rapidly.

In fact, they're expediting Southwest Africana.

Exactly right. So if they wanted to stop border crossings, you don't need to have these coward thugs chasing brown kids around church picnics.You want to stop the border crossers? You start locking up the white people who do the hiring. Like Donald Trump has done in two different centuries.There's a gigantic help wanted sign at our border. There's no wall you can build big enough. Hide the help wanted sign. No Republicans have ever called to take down the help wanted sign.Find a Republican who says we've gotta lock up these people who do the hiring. No, those people are their donors.Donald Trump has hired undocumented workers in two different centuries because he doesn't wanna pay a living wage to American workers. What I'm Saying is if they really cared about the border crossings, they'd say, hey, you're in a federal pen for hiring a nanny.And then people would stop and then a salad would cost $75, but nobody would ever cross the border again. And not that many Trump fans like salads. So, you know, that's what look like. They don't care. They use immigration like they use abortion for power.They're not interested in solutions. They're not interested in Jesus. They don't care about religious freedom. They don't care about fighting Satan or serving God. They care about power.They believe as fundamentalists, that God likes them better than you. They're better than you are. You know these folks? Muslims, same thing. Jews, same thing.The fundamentalists are the ones ruining all the great religions. The liberal and moderate Christians, Muslims and Jews getting along just fine around the world right now.Not causing problems, not being violent, not getting shown on the news because it's only the lunatics and bigots that the media uses for clicks, the nice Christians, Jews and Muslims, who cares? So this is the racket. They're interested in power. They don't care about what the Bible actually says beyond how much it can help them be on top.And Jesus warns us about these people. Jesus warns us not to trust anybody who prays in public to be seen. He says, Matthew 6, 5, you prayed in private.Don't trust the ones in public trying to be seen by you. And when he gives the words to the Our Father, he says, pray to your father in secret as your father is in secret.So you got these coaches trying to make everyone, including the Muslim kid, come on the field for their Christian high school. Public funded prayer. That's anti Jesus as much as it's anti Founding Fathers. And that's what Christian nationalism is.It's taking the Bill of Rights and the New Testament, marching them both into the woods at gunpoint and making them dig two holes.

Yeah, but when the Rapture happens, you're going to be left behind. You'll probably be the only one.

The funny thing about that, that's what's driving a lot of this. And the Rapture doesn't appear in the Bible. The word doesn't show up. No. It was created in the 1850s by a British clergyman.Book of Revelation is not John who wrote the Gospel, it's another guy named John tripping his face off on shrooms in a cave and writing down his NyQuil seizures. It's beautiful writing, it's fascinating.It's deeply metaphorical about the struggles of the early church, it's got nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus. Except revelation is the part that describes Jesus as looking like a black man. He had hair like wool, feet the color of burned bronze.They don't quote that part too much.

Is that part of the cop out?What I was getting at with the abortion issue is they're representing a constituency that can't speak for itself because it's convenient to them and their narrative not necessarily defending them. Yeah.

And again, if you want to go ahead and make a civil rights case that I am here to fight for the rights of the unborn on civil rights grounds, then I will sit down with you and have that conversation. I don't think I, as a man, have a right to say what another woman has to do with her body.

How many people die because of these laws?

Here's the facts. Abortion is safer for a woman's health than pregnancy. Abortion is safer for a woman's health than childbirth.So knowing that, who the hell are we with our Y chromosomes to tell a woman? We're gonna force you to take the more dangerous to your life option. I don't get to do it.I understand if you want to have the baby, but I don't get to impose that on you. And if they're trying to use religion to do it, you gotta find another one. Because there's no argument for that in Christianity.In Numbers, chapter 5, God gives rather specific instructions on how to cause an abortion for unfaithful pregnant wives. I'll say it again. God gives tips on how to induce a miscarriage. If you think your wife is pregnant by another man. I didn't write it.

Numbers, chapter four goes back to ancient cultures.

They always quote Jeremiah, before you were formed in the womb, I knew you. And it's very beautiful. But as I go through that in the book, I go through every argument the right wing uses on every point that divides us. Right.And in abortion, they quote Jeremiah. But that's God telling Jeremiah that I always knew you before you were conceived, and you were always destined to be a prophet.At nowhere does it say governments should force rape victims to be pregnant against their will.

So how long did it take? Go ahead.

By the way, later in Jeremiah's lament, when he's having a tough time of it, at one point he wishes that his father had killed him in the womb. Which tells us, again, this was a thing people did in biblical times and they talked about it.The Egyptians have extensive records of talking about it. We know that people terminated pregnancies back then. But God, Jesus, Moses, Elijah, the prophets, they never got around to mentioning it.They never thought it was worth bringing up. Over 2,000 references about how you have to help the poor. But what do our right wing Christians fight for?

One of your chapters is called Thou Shalt not Hate on poor people.

Yeah.

And that is something. That's an inconvenient truth right now, isn't it?

Oh, yeah.

The SNAP benefits being cut off.

20 million disabled and low income folks thrown off Medicaid after the mentors.

You see all these people wearing their crosses? Oh, yeah, Shiny crosses. The cruelest things.

Big, shiny, blingy crosses.

Yeah.

Because if you hide behind a shiny cross, no one will watch you take a dump on the New Testament. That's Caroline Levitt. Hide behind a shiny cross to defecate on the Gospels of Jesus.These are the people Jesus warned us about and these are the people that killed him. We can never forget that A few extreme conservative religious folks aligned with imperial power is literally what killed Jesus.

Authoritarian government folks, authoritarian Christians, as you say, the opposite of faith. Faith is certainty. Yeah.

Doubt is a part of faith. Doubt's an essential part of faith. But certainty, you can't have faith and.

Be certain when they're laying hands on Trump in the Oval Office.

On camera.

On camera.

If you did it in private, it'd be goofy, but it wouldn't be blasphemous. But the fact that again, Matthew 6. Five, Jesus tells us don't trust people who pray in public to be seen.Look at Mike Johnson in these clowns kneeling on their knees in the well of the house. They could have had their group prayer in an office. They could have gone in private like Jesus said and asked God for. No, they want to be seen.It's a campaign movement. They're blaspheming bubbas. They don't follow the book.And you don't need to believe in the book as literal fact to call these frauds out because they are trying to wreck our democracy. We can't hate them, but we gotta beat them.And I think you get a lot farther if you're debating your right wing loved ones by showing them where Jesus was not an immigrant hating homophobe than if you just haul off and call your uncle an immigrant hating homophobe.

If they read your book, you're gonna supply them.

They won't read it. It's for people who live with them.

Well, people who live with them.

Please don't buy this book for conservatives. They will not like you.

No, they won't like you.But if you want to have a cogent discussion with these people, even though that's like talking to a brick wall, this book that you wrote really empowers people to articulate.

You're right. That it's not talking to a brick wall, but it's not. Because if you can familiarize yourself with.With just a few issues, who said what, What's Jesus and what's Paul? Or what's Jesus and what's Old Testament? If you can just familiarize yourself with a couple of the arguments, Right?No, you're not gonna win over a zealot. You're not gonna make your uncle racist suddenly realize that the Confederacy was wrong. Okay?But what you will do, if you model patience, if you don't try to win, if you try to ask questions respectfully, you may have to model turning the other cheek. Because a lot of these folks have never been questioned on their faith before.And nobody hates like a Christian who's just been told their hate isn't Christian. They may lash out at you, and you gotta take it. You will not sway them. But you'll reach their wives, you'll reach their kids.You'll reach the other people at the Thanksgiving dinner or the cookout who know this meanness just isn't Christian, who know this just isn't right.

So many Christians believe that they are victims. They are under attack.

Oh, that's the persecution. That's how Donald Trump got him. I didn't promise to do anything. Jesus said, you're under siege.Christianity's been under siege, big league for a long time.

And.

And I'm gonna put you on top. He promised them the illusion of I'm gonna put you on top. Satan offers Jesus the kingdom. You can rule the earth. Jesus says no.After Jesus says, the loaves and the fishes, they offer him to be king. He says no. Jesus was no kings before it was trendy. His whole thing's about humility. Their thing's all about power.Trump is saying, I will put you on top. He's not promising to do what our Lord asks us to do to help the least among us. He's appealing to the club. That's all it is.And saying that you guys are better than others.

And now he's wielding a club and killing innocent people.

Yes, he is murdering people in boats. No due process, no evidence.

He's a mad emperor.

Oh, he's got helpers.

Yeah. It's humiliating to watch this man do what he does as the president is humiliating to see the stupidity, the Buffoonery of it all.But the scary part is the, the huge concentration of navy ships off of Venice.

Oh, they're trying to do. Yeah, but this is where it brings it to bush. Because oil, 22 years ago they used religion to justify invading a country that never attacked us.Bush said God will not be neutral. Yep. Bush said that God told him to invade. This is nothing new.

Rubio, our Secretary of State is referring to these boats that they're blowing out of the water as weapons of mass destruction.

But that's the thing. So now fentanyl is the new wmd. Right. We had war for oil to get rid of non existent WMDs.

And the part of fentanyl is being being played by cocaine.

Exactly. Because there is no fentanyl coming from Venezuela. So they've already changed.

And it's also not coming to America.

Also, this boat didn't have enough fuel in it to make it to America. And Donald Trump just pardoned the President of Honduras who brought in 400 tons of cocaine. Make sure they don't care.And the military, by the way, knows it's not about the drugs. It's about the strategic oil reserves. 17% of the world's oil supply. It is exactly, exactly what happened in Iraq all over again.Except now fentanyl is the new WMDs.

Or cocaine, I think as though these oligarchs are thinking post democracy, post nation state. And what they're doing is divvying up the planet.

I'll take the hemisphere, Greenland, you can.

Have Ukraine, China, you can have Taiwan.

Putin and China, and we're gonna take America are in the process of doing that right now. And Donald Trump is trying to assert his eminence, his personal eminence over the Western hemisphere.That's why we're abandoning our allies in Ukraine and NATO, violating the Budapest Memorandum treaty.

But Trump said as much when he was running for reelection that he's for sale. We know everything is for sale. He actually said give me a billion dollars to the oil companies.

Yeah.

And I'll do whatever you want.

That's exactly right.

He's probably got that billion dollars in crypto or whatever. They however they slipped it to him. And now we're gonna get an invasion of an oil field.

Maybe, maybe. Can I do the flip side of all this, please?I've been puzzling about for the last month or so we keep saying, when are these hard working MAGA guys gonna really realize they've been fooled? Liberals have been spending 10 years.When are these hard working guys gonna Realize this aristocrat who had cops beaten for a lie is just playing them.

Yes.

They're not going to. It's a cult. The only way that Donald Trump's gonna lose his MAGA people is if he starts wearing a shirt that says Black Lives Matter.What I've been thinking about is when's he gonna lose the oligarchs? The people who own this country, our landlords, they don't need this tariff nonsense.They don't need you tracking down and stalking their exploitable low wage workforce. The guys who own this country don't need all this mishiggas drama. So look what happened. They got their tax cut right.They got the largest transfer of wealth to the 1% in the history of the country. They got their deregulation to pollute as much as they want, and then a week later, they got their crypto loophole.And as soon as the crypto bill was signed, you know what Rupert Murdoch did? Like within 48 hours, he released in the Wall Street Journal the article that Donald Trump released, wrote the Epstein birthday card.After the billionaires got what they wanted. Rupert Murdoch didn't do it. On Fox News, we're still keeping them. Those people were keeping those serfs in love with the feudal lord.But the Wall Street Journal, he released the Epstein birthday card. So Trump turns around, sues Rupert Murdoch, the man who made him president. Arguably, Trump sues Rupert Murdoch for $22 billion with a B.We've already forgotten this, but Donald Trump sued the guy from Fox News a couple of months ago for 22 billion. And you know what Uncle Rupert did the next day?The next day the Wall Street Journal announced that Pam Bondi told Trump in May that he was in the Epstein files. That's how seriously Rupert Murdoch took Donald Trump's $22 billion. Oh, I'll see you at the discovery phase.Rupert Murdoch is not playing with this clown anymore. And Fox News is gradually beginning to share the poll number. Donald Trump keeps complaining and getting angry about it.I think the people who own this country, the people who, you know, you know, Donald Trump just, he guards the velvet rope at their parties. That's what he's no poor's allowed, but he's never been one of them. He hopes they go play at his golf courses.I think they're gonna start cutting him loose because they can take his little eyeliner model Babyman and have a Peter Thiels. They can have Peter Thiel's little prop and have a much more obedient fascist.

But he doesn't have the same twisted charisma.

He'll never get elected. It's gonna be beautiful. Can you imagine? J.D. vance is gonna be like doing an impression of Ron DeSantis trying to an impression of Trump. MAGA's gonna.

The one hopefully have is that the midterms will go back Democratic.

And they're already trying to cheat in Texas a year and a half early. That's how scared they are. They're trying to cheat in Texas.

But if it does happen, then we can neutralize this as early as next year.

Hey, look, it's not all bad. They just put in chinning bars in major airports so that if our flight is canceled, we can at least do pull ups. Hundred pull ups.

Oh, that's much better than healthcare.

Oh, don't you think? Because it keeps you healthy.

You like, make America healthy again. And we're gonna throw 20 million off of health insurance.

No more for us.

The media doesn't really connect those dots quite yet, do they?

Not at all. So, John, when you do your standup now, what kind of do you have? Dialogue.

Oh, like talking tabernacles. Yeah. Well, it's been a strange book tour, let me tell you. I'm only playing cities where the National Guard is there for no reason.It seems they were in Chicago and then they were all over the place and that crowd was lit. They were like. They were. These people have been protesting all day. Oh. And it's mostly people who've read the book and know the book.It's not like I'm going up on the cruise ship and they don't know what they're in for.

Good. It's a favorable audience.

It's nice to be able to, like, not have to win them over first with impressions and then I can go to the serious stuff and. And I keep it funny.

You don't have to front load with dick jokes is what you're saying.

I didn't know you could say that word on Twitter.

Why not? A dick tracer.

Richard's a good friend.

Ah, God bless Richard. A lot of those. A lot of Richards in our government.So we were in D.C. a couple of weeks ago and they're all wearing camouflage to blend in with the architecture of D.C. and the crowds have been great because they get it. And I think that there's a lot of.I knew for a long time I always believed there was an audience out there of people who remember a Christianity that was about love and empathy and kindness. And they look around and they see what these people fight for and the cruelty and the racism and the lies and the.And the things that they pretend Jesus talked about, but when it comes to the actual commandments of the Nazarene, then they just say woke, which is their new. Every generation of Christians finds a new way to slur basic empathy. When I was a kid, it was bleeding heart, like Jesus.They mock that bleeding hard liberal. That's what Jesus. Then it was politically correct. Oh, I don't want to use racist language that hurts people because Jesus says to be nice.No, that was a smear social justice war. I was like, oh, like Dr. King. Nope, that was a smear virtue signaling. Like the virtue signaling on the mount.Like, anytime you try to act like Jesus, they'll find a new way to smear it. And that's what woke is.Woke used to be a word that anti racists use to describe awareness of racism, and now it's a word that racists use to smear anti racist.

So it's been weaponized.

I mean, if someone says woke, your job is to ask them, what does that mean? Whoever they are, just ask them what it means. You won't hear the same thing twice.And it's generally because we're in this time of Christians who are. Are more offended by protests against racism and injustice than they are against racism and justice.We're talking about the people who were a lot more mad about Colin Kaepernick's knee than they were mad about Derek Chauvin.

The only person who needs to be really woke today is President Trump because he keeps nodding off during important meetings.

Maybe it's better that way.

And of course, hatred towards homosexuals now.

Trans people, powerless minority. Every decade you find who has the least amount of power and let's beat up on them.

Yeah, Hitler did that too.

Hitler sure did. And used the same language.

What's the Bible's take on homosexuality?

The Bible's or Christ's?

Good question. Let's talk about Paul.

All right, the apostle Paul. So let me start with. Everyone always says, oh, Leviticus, you shall not lie with a man as with a woman. That's an abomination.We all grew up hearing that one shall not lie with nothing about. Can one of the guys be standing? Could he be on all fours? Could he be leaning against a men's room stall while a Republican senator plays lookout?Like, but they don't follow it. They don't follow Leviticus.Or instructions given to the Hebrews after escaping captivity when they didn't know they were going to be stuck in the wilderness for 40 years with no wi fi or antibiotics or air conditioning. And a lot of Leviticus is very beautiful. A lot of it's barbaric and doesn't apply to our century.But a lot of these rules were about keeping the tribes numbers up, which is why they have no bestiality, no sex on your period, no incest, no guys with guys. It's all about keep making babies. Keep making babies.If you want to cling to that, then you got to follow everything Leviticus says, which means you have to stone people to death for working on Saturday by NASCAR. Leviticus 20:10. And everyone listening should remember this next time you're dealing with one of these homophobe biblical people.Leviticus 20:10, that's all you got to know. It's where God commands you to stone adulterers to death. So just ask your uncle.Should I tell the secret Service at Mar a Lago you and your rocks are on the way over?If you don't want to stone Donald Trump to death for adultery and you should not want to do that, then you don't get to weaponize parts of the Bible you don't believe in. You don't follow to hurt a minority that Jesus commands you to love.

So cherry picking, which we all do.

But when you cherry pick to justify hurting people, then it's a problem.

And this idea of taking the writings.

Of the Bible literal, they believe that when it's a talking snake, but when it's love your enemies. He's being metaphorical again.

Who wrote the Bible Distinctions.

Who wrote the Bible? Who wrote the Bible Over a whole lot of men, over a whole lot of years. The Bible is the work of men, not of God. It is a work by men about God.It is not infallible. Men are not without error. So the Bible is not without error. And I love the Jesus miracles.They're usually the best parts in the Jesus movies they make you watch as a kid. He's greatest Jewish magician of all time. Like of all the great Jew magic. Who did David Copperfield, David Blaine Teller, Amazing Randy.So many great Jew magicians. Jesus started that again. We can't prove the miracles were real and coerced.Belief in 2000 year old supernatural accounts is not a great way to spread a religion. But the teachings of Jesus are as revolutionary and as threatening to power now as they were 2000 years ago.

Imagine that.

And that's why conservatives never talk about his teachings ever.

We're speaking with our guest John Fugelsang, author of Separation of Church and Hate. A Sane Person's guide to Taking Taking Back the Bible. This is such a fun book to read and it's just funny. And your standup work comes through it.

Thank you.

And yet you know the Bible back and forth.

I tried to make it like a show.

You begin the book with this.

Beautiful.

In fact, why don't you read it?

Oh, this was a bit I did on my. In my stand up act. But I rewrote it for the book to make it look better.And it's a rant I do on stage and I used to sell posters of this, but I rewrote it for prose which was just. This comes before the table of contents in my book. It's just.Jesus was a peaceful, radically nonviolent revolutionary who wasn't American and never spoke English, who hung around lepers, hookers and crooks, never sought tax cuts for rich Nazarenes, was anti wealth and anti death penalty, anti public prayer, 2 Matthew 6:5, never asked lepers for a copay, never called poor people lazy, never even slightly anti gay, never mentioned abortion, supported paying taxes, and was a long haired community organizing authority. Question, anti slut, shaming, brown skinned Palestinian, unarmed homeless Jew. But that's only if you believe what's actually in the Bible. Well said.Well said.

You would think that this kind of thing could actually bring people back to the church. The ones that are living up to who Jesus was.

That's not why I did it. Do you go to church? Do you? Sometimes. Sometimes I go to church. I don't kiss the ring anymore for me and the Vatican.I don't belong to a political party and Catholicism is my asexual orientation. But I've had a big problem for a long time with the fact that Jesus treats women as equals and the church doesn't.And when I was about 15, I was like, wait, if the Virgin Mary came back, they wouldn't let her say Mass. This whole no knob, no job.And to me there's no basis in scripture for that or for the hangups or for the celibacy of clergy, which by the way, only began in 1139 A.D. popes could leave land and wealth to their kids for a thousand years.And then Pope Innocent II made celibacy the law because the church was greedy and wanted to keep the wealth, had nothing to do with sex or Jesus being a bachelor. Huh?

Really follow the tithing.

Yeah, it was all about. Way before Da Vinci Code, man. Way before Da Vinci Code. That's how it happened.Married priests are the conservative point of view, technically, historically.

Wow. If anyone's doing God's work, I think it's this book.

No, no, I'm doing the comedian's work.The people out there who are actually volunteering and working in soup kitchens and helping the less fortunate during this economy, they're the ones doing the Lord's work. I am a clown and I'd like to show you guys how rewarding it can be to call these frauds out the way Jesus does.

But you've written a good book.

Thank you.

I'm going to give you a copy of my book. Where's my fortune cookie? Profusely illustrated. As a token of my love for.

You, I get to meet Phil Proctor. I don't understand. I feel like Ringo. I'm just glad to be here.

John Fugal saying, our guest author of Separation, Church and Hate. I highly recommend this New York Times best selling book.

Thank you.

It will arm you with knowledge to counter the hate that's going on in the name of religion.

And hopefully it'll remind you that you're not crazy. And this is not what Christianity was supposed to be.

Not insane.

This is a book about what Christianity started out as, what it turned into, and why the best parts are worth fighting for.

Keep hope alive, Phil. Thank you, John. Take care.

Happy holidays, everybody.

It.