Separating Church from Hate: A Conversation With John Fugelsang

REV. PAUL BRANDEIS RAUSHENBUSH, HOST:

John Fugelsang is a one-man media machine: an actor, comedian, writer and radio host with a wide-ranging career and a passion for faith-driven, progressive values. He's been in music. His movies include Coyote Ugly and Somewhere In The City. John has been a host on Sirius XM for ten years, now, with a popular daily show called Tell Me Everything With John Fuglsang, and he's got a new book coming out very soon, September 9th. The title is Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person's Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds.

I think I got that right. Did I, John?

JOHN FUGELSANG:

You got it. You got it, Rev. You got it.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

John, thank you so much for being on The State of Belief!

JOHN FUGELSANG:

Thank you for that gorgeous introduction. I'm not worthy. It's an honor to be here. Thank you so much.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Listen, you are entirely worthy. I have, of course, been a fan and just appreciated the way you come correct: you come truthful, you come with some humor and heart. But also, you're not afraid to say the thing. And I want to just start by saying this book - this book Separation of Church and Hate - is way smarter than it needed to be. It is smart. As someone who has gone through the whole seminary - and you said you're not going to use the word “exegesis” at the beginning, which I thought was so funny.

JOHN FUGELSANG:

I used the word “exegesis” in one sentence only to say, I promise I won't use it anymore. I love those books. But this is not a smart man's book.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

“Exegesis” just means interpretation. But it's such a smart book, and it gets into kind of everything you want a book like this to get into with intelligence – again, with a sense of mission for caring for people. And also what surprised me and - this is confession time - you know, the Reverend confesses - more of a caring for the faith of Christianity than I thought you might care about. This is a book that cares about Christianity and how it shows up in the world, and wanted to, in some ways, correct the record. Am I getting that in some way?

JOHN FUGELSANG:

Yeah, we can wrap. You got it. I mean, you nailed it. Thank you. You can write all the reviews. That's it. And I wanted it to be a book for believers of all faiths, and for atheists and for agnostic brothers and sisters. I wanted it to be a book even for conservatives, for anyone who's ever going to have to deal with a right-wing Christian Nationalist or Christian fundamentalist.

Because, as you all well know, for the whole history of our country, the history of our lives, the history of the faith these people have… I like to say, they hide behind a big gold cross to crap all over the New Testament; and it's a guide to actually showing that the most pompous, pious, obnoxious ones among us don't really follow Jesus all that much.

And if you are even an atheist on most of the issues that divide us, if you're opposing the Christian right, chances are Jesus has your back.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

I was really impressed by the way that flavor and that sentiment and that emotion and spiritual heft came through. And I also was really gratified to learn a little bit more about you, and even perhaps more than you about your parents, who were incredible people. Can you tell the story of your parents? I'm sure some people may know this, but it was new to me, and so tell us who your parents were and why this is such an important book. And in part, you're you dedicated it in part to that.

JOHN FUGELSANG:

Yeah. Well, it's it's all dedicated to them, they're the reason I wrote it. My mother was a nun, a Catholic nun from the South. She went into the convent right after high school. The sisters of the Daughters of Wisdom order put her through nursing school and eventually sent her off to work in Africa, with lepers, in Malawi.

My father was a Franciscan brother. He taught history to Catholic boys in Brooklyn and wore the Jedi robes. before they shipped my mother off to Africa, she was briefly assigned to Holy Family Hospital in Brooklyn. My father was her patient. And even though he had sworn like the Jedi to never know love, he fell madly, passionately over-the-edge-and-never-coming-back in love with this quiet southern nun that he knew he couldn't have. And they became close friends and pen pals.

He wrote her all the time while she was in Africa about the news back in the States, and very innocently, after about ten years of hiding his feelings, he finally convinced her to… The short version is, he finally convinced her to leave the convent and go on a date. It's quite a long story, but they were married two months later, and they settled on Long Island and tried to - half Brooklyn, half southern - so already it was going to be crazy. But, we were raised to be progressive, free thinking, sexually repressed Catholics.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

I love those three things in tension with one another.

JOHN FUGELSANG:

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

And sexually repressed! We've got it all.

JOHN FUGELSANG:

You know, my dad's home was like a shrine to Martin Luther King and Gandhi and Dorothy Day, who founded the Catholic Charities. They were the other Holy Trinity in my house. I think I say in the book my dad's plan, his dream, was to make sure that we were too Christian for the liberals and way too liberal for the Christians. And most therapists I've been able to afford have said his plan worked beautifully.

But you know, like many, I was raised in a Christianity that was about service, that was about love, that was about forgiveness, that guided us to the margins. What are you doing for the least among us? Are you welcoming the stranger? Are you caring for the poor? Are you trying to help those who are hated and despised on the lowest rungs? Because that was Jesus's whole ministry. You reach out to the marginalized.

And like many, I grew up watching TV news all the time and seeing these blow-dried televangelists, these Jerry Falwells and Jimmy Swaggarts and Pat Robertsons that were always on the news, always introduced as Christian leaders. But they didn't talk about anything that Jesus talked about. These were the men, as you know, who talked about AIDS patients or welfare moms or the illegals. These are the people who are more angry about protests against racism than actual racism. As a kid, it was very...

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

And it continues. But it's you know, it is one of those things where, at that time, the Rolodex of media was really thin. You know, these people were claiming, we speak for Christianity and therefore we speak for the religious morality of the country. And they didn't. And it was a real shame and it gave them so much power. The Ralph Reeds… And in fact Interfaith Alliance was specifically founded to counteract this idea that they could speak for religion in America, and bringing more and different voices.

I think what you said is so important about, like, I was raised with within this tradition. I've been really struck lately thinking about how I was raised, in a Christian tradition that never condemned me for being gay. Every church I ever went to was okay with it. In the 70s, we had a woman pastor. I never heard anything bad about gay people. Every church I've been in has been pro-LGBTQ.

JOHN FUGELSANG:

That's awesome.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

For me, it's my tradition. Now, I totally get it that other people have been traumatized in other churches. But you can't say that that's THE tradition, because it's not the tradition. You have a tradition which is represented in this book, Separation of Church And Hate. In some ways, for you, it's like an articulation of a tradition that you were raised in that should be taking its rightful place in the conversation we're having today about religion in America.

JOHN FUGELSANG:

Well, so many folks think that the religion they were raised in has been hijacked. And it's easy to see why. I was always feeling very awkward to be told I was the same religion as Jerry Falwell. And when I got to college, when you told people you were Christian, in the 90s, they assumed, oh, so you hate gay people. Oh, so you think the government should force rape victims to be pregnant against their will by their attacker? Like, this is this is what everyone assumed about Christianity.

And I don't think the media - and the media is quite a villain; my first draft of this book was much more harsh on the media - they didn't book these Falwells and Robertsons because they were there to talk about the ministry of Jesus. They booked them because they were great villains. I've come to really believe they were great for the eyeballs. They were good TV. They were just so awful and vicious. And I grew up watching Jerry Falwell, hearing him called a Christian leader. I debated him on Bill Maher years later; that story had to be cut from the book, but it wasn't until years later I found out he had been a segregationist and had built Whites-only schools.

And I knew as a kid he defended apartheid. And I was always like, how? How does this person get to get to be that voice? And I think that's why today, when they talk about what's the largest growing religious group in America - some will say it's Mormons, some say it's Islam, some will say it's the nones, none of the above - I've come to believe, Reverend, based on my journeys and shows I've done and people I've met all over the country, the largest growing religious group are people who were raised religious and now consider themselves spiritual because they're turned off by all this hypocrisy of right wing religion.

When I was in college and I went to the NYU Catholic Center, I couldn't believe I was in a church that openly welcomed gay brothers and sisters, and I brought my parents to a service so they could see. My parents couldn't believe it. And then I'd go down south and it'd be all the homosexual, homosexuality - none of which comes from Jesus. And these people don't follow Leviticus one bit. I mean, I say to all of them, if you believe this abomination talk, Leviticus 20:10 says, you gotta kill adulterers. So I'll let you work that out with Mr. Trump, Okay?

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

All the stuff that you're saying, you say so well in your book. And so tell me a little bit about the journey to writing this book. When did you decide, I’ve got to get this out? Because it's a substantial book. This is a book that goes pretty deep on a lot of issues. Again, it's very readable. It's funny. But it gets to the point in so many ways. So tell me a little bit about the genesis of this book, why you felt you had to write it, and how long did it take you?

JOHN FUGELSANG:

Well, I first pitched this book about 15 years ago. I pitched it a few times, and it was a real tough sell. People wanted me to write a - the last time I pitched it, a few years back - they wanted me to write a love story about my parents; which I want to write, but I kept saying, there's so many great books by great theologians. You know, Bishop John Shelby Spong of the Diocese of Newark was a huge figure for me, and so many people like yourself who are such articulate messengers of the faith.

And, of course, as you know, the nice Christians don't get the airtime. You don't see the Christians on cable news talking about how war is bad or how homophobia is bad. You see the other kind - because villains make for better TV than nice people. And so I really wanted to try and do a version of this, with d**k jokes. You know, a comedian. Something that was dense and light. Something that had the right amount of piety and inflammatory blasphemy. And a book that was not an atheist manifesto at all, but atheist-friendly; a book that was about what Jesus actually stood for versus what his mean, unauthorized fan clubs and politicians fight for.

So it was actually like a dozen years of working on it, of pitching it, of doing different book proposals. I finally sold it on a pitch. I sold it verbally. And then I sat down and spent about a year and a half writing it. And I was on tour all last year. I sold it in 2023, wrote most of it last year in hotel rooms, I was on tour doing a political comedy tour. My draft was twice this length. I had a lot more history, had a lot more of anecdotes about me, had a lot about Donald Trump and this Christianity nowadays. And my editor was like, let's just keep it about how to debate right wing Christians using the Bible.

And so I took a bunch of issues that divide us. I had to cut out - I had a whole thing in there about the Founding fathers and a Christian nation. I had to cut, I had a whole thing about the apocalypse and the rapture I had to cut. I went for the biggest issues that divide us: abortion, LGBTQ rights, poverty, healthcare, guns, feminism. The death penalty, which was the issue that radicalized me as a teenager. And I wanted to just go through the most common right wing arguments our fundamentalist brothers and sisters use to get around Jesus. You know, we call them small-c Christians. I call them anything-but-Jesus Christians. The Trump kind. I call - if you'll forgive my language – grab-‘em-by-the-pussy-vangelicals. There's a lot of names, and I apologize for the vulgarity, but I wanted to assert that you didn't…

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

You didn't start it.

JOHN FUGELSANG:

I wanted people to know it's a comedian's book. I'm not a theologian. I'm not clergy. I have no real credentials beyond being a comedian. And my curious heritage.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Just reading it, and people who have been on this show - you know, Anthea Butler, Kristin Du Mez, all these people.

JOHN FUGELSANG:

They're both quoted in my book.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Exactly. That's what I'm saying. I would never want to argue against you because anyone would lose, but I would say, this book is more than a refutation and a way to argue. This book, I would like for a church to have a book group with it. I really do think it is really important in that way. And it gets into some really beautiful, beautiful things. And I feel like in some ways it's meant to, you know, Separation of Church and Hate, you strip away and get to the source of it all. And to recognize - and I really liked even subtle things like - I'm going to mispronounce her name, Sse's a rabbi, Dana…

JOHN FUGELSANG:

Yes. Ruttenberg.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Yes. she's amazing. And the way she talks about, let's be careful about the way we talk about Pharisees, you know?

JOHN FUGELSANG:

I learned a lot from her about that. That was one of the big things I learned.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

So that's why I'm saying, those kind of things are not going to come up if you're debating a right wing Christian, but it will help you as a Christian. It will help you as a spiritual person. It will help you as an atheist just to really understand…

I spoke at a commencement at a seminary, actually a seminary that my great grandfather taught at, Colgate Rochester. Everybody was lamenting, oh, the decline of Christianity. All the people leaving the Church. I said, I don't really care if people are Christians, honestly. I don't feel like that's my job, even though I know some people say that's my only job.

But I hate the idea that people are leaving the Church because they've heard the wrong thing about Jesus. You don't have to be a Christian - many of the people in my family and my friends… But don't hear the wrong thing about Jesus and have that be the reason that you leave. And I think that's what your book is doing, and I really appreciate it. I do think this is a love letter to your parents. And I do think this is just a deeply respectful book. I mean, yeah, there's all kinds of vulgarity, but you know what? Who cares.

JOHN FUGELSANG:

By the way, I point out Saint Paul makes a d**k joke in the Bible, and I include that in here. So he started it.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

He started it.

JOHN FUGELSANG:

He's talking about circumcision. And Paul says, look, they should go all the way and emasculate themselves. I'm like, oh my God, there's a joke about cutting off your d**k in the Bible. Thank you, Paul, you don't get enough credit for that.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

You know what? I see an entire tour just on bible jokes. Let's go.

JOHN FUGELSANG:

I'm up for it, sir.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

I do think if people are listening and they see John coming to your city, go listen and learn about this book and buy this book. Because I really, obviously, appreciate it.

Why don't I ask you just a couple more questions about the book, which is, as you said, a 15 year old project. What was one of those “aha!” moments? I think sometimes you go into a book and say, okay, I know exactly what I'm going to do. I know exactly what I'm going to saym and no one's saying it. And I'm going to say it, gosh darn it. But what was a moment where you're like, oh, I didn't even know that. And I've learned something through the process, because writing is revelation. And so what did what did you discover that was fun?

JOHN FUGELSANG:

That's a great question. Thank you. Look, I wanted to write this book for people who have to live with or work with a Christian Nationalist or fundamentalist in their job, in their family, in their social media feed, if you must. And my belief is that we can't hate these people. You know, we just can't. They’re our families, in many cases. But in a democracy, we have to beat them.

And so I wanted it to be a book with the arguments that you'll hear from them, because I do believe that you're never going to change their minds, but you can sway the people who are bystanders. If you're debating them at the cookout, at the Thanksgiving dinner, you probably won't reach a fundamentalist. But if you model it right, you'll reach their wives. You'll reach their kids.

And in many cases, I find if we try to engage these fundamentalists on what's actually in the Bible, they won't like it. But they may appreciate that you took the time to engage them on their own terms. And for me, it's all about, well, where where is Jesus in this? Where does Jesus say, you know, cutting USAID or being mean to trans kids or saying, no room at the inn for asylum seekers? Show me the Scripture that's guiding you in all of this. Because, as you know, they haven't read the Bible.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

That's so good. At the beginning of it, you said all of what you just said: you've got to love trans people, you've got to love the immigrant. And then this is a quote that I actually lifted up, and you said, “But only if you believe what is actually in the Bible.”That's the writing.

JOHN FUGELSANG:

Welcome the stranger, man. I mean, that's about it. Jesus is not ambiguous. Jesus says, individuals and nations will be judged by it. And I've come to believe that you'll get a lot farther explaining to your racist uncle that Jesus was not an anti-immigrant homophobe than if you call your uncle an anti-immigrant homophobe.

So I thought I knew everything. I've been working on this book for years, and writing it and outlining it and doing material about it. I've interviewed so many theologians and authors over the years. Actually, a lot surprised me. I think what surprised me the most was the chapter I did on feminism, which went from being one of the last chapters to, I moved it up to be one of the first chapters. And my editor wanted me to, as well, because there's so much we're taught about Jesus as kids before we can appreciate what it all means.

We get religious education when we're 6 or 7 years old, before you understand what military occupation by the Roman Empire means before we can understand that Jesus lived in a society where women were property. And for me, I always knew, yeah, Jesus is a feminist, but I didn't know how much. I didn't know how deeply. That whole famous story of Mary and Martha, where Martha's cleaning the house and Jesus and the guys are over, and Mary is sitting at Jesus feet getting educated and Martha's mad. And Jesus tells her, Martha, chill out. She's getting the real food.

It's a nice story. I always thought, I feel bad for Martha. She's doing all the work and her sister’s, just, you know, getting schooled. what I didn't know at the time was that Jesus was breaking the law by teaching a woman. Breaking the law by teaching. And throughout the entire Gospels, you see so many instances where - the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus was not allowed to talk to her. As a rabbi, he was not allowed to speak to a woman at all. And yet he did. The bleeding woman.

I love the Sam Cooke song “Touch the Hem of His Garment”, where she's been bleeding for 12 years, creeps up behind him, touched his cloak and she's healed. But when you go into the context of it, she was ritually unclean in the eyes of God. Any woman who's bleeding is, because women are icky. That's sort of what they believed. So this woman broke the law by venturing into a crowd. She violated every law of purity. She endangered the souls of every one of those people in that crowd by being there. She wasn't supposed to be in public. She had spent all of her money trying to find a cure for her bleeding. And she made Jesus unclean in the eyes of God, according to the law, by touching him.

And Jesus feels the power go out of him. Says, who touched me? It's a famous story. We all learn that as kids. And then he tells her, “Daughter, you're healed.” It's the only time in the Bible Jesus calls anyone “daughter”, and he says it to this ritually unclean woman who is not legally allowed to touch him. She violated the taboo, and Jesus destroys the taboo.

And time and again, when it comes to the revolutionary ethic of Jesus's teachings, they teach us this stuff when we're too young to understand why it's revolutionary. And so I think that Jesus is still a radical threat to power. And I wanted to write a book to remind people that authoritarian government aligning with right wing religious figures is literally what killed Jesus.

So the feminism was one area where it just opened my eyes in so many areas. And Pharisees is another. You know, Pharisees has become a shorthand in liberal circles for intolerant conservatives. And it never occurred to me how deeply offensive that is, because these were the original rabbis. And the reality is we've been sold this image. We've come a long way. You know, “The Jews killed Jesus”, we know better than that now.

But we still associate Pharisees with evil conservatives. And in reality, Jesus hung out with a lot of Pharisees. He was friends with Pharisees. Nicodemus was his pal. You see Jesus at Simon the Pharisee’s house. Jesus may have been a Pharisee. It was a small number of them. Who were these archconservatives who wanted Jesus dead? But the movies have shown us, oh, all the Pharisees wanted him gone, because we've had this narrative where the Jews killed him.

And in all the Jesus movies, the Pharisees tend to be the only ones who even look Jewish. Jesus is always like a British guy with blue eyes. and the Romans always feel so bad they have to torture and crucify this poor fellow. We feel awful about driving the nails into him on our Roman crucifix and our Roman execution at the Roman execution ground. We're taught that Jews had the power to force an empire to off a guy. Like the residual antisemitism we're raised with is so great. And that's something that Rabbi Ruttenberg really helped me get beyond.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

I'm very interested in when you're going to get a church. I feel like you're ready. You're preaching. You are ready to preach. And it's just a matter of time before you get credentialed. And pretty soon you're going to have a flock. And then what's going to happen is you're going to become a televangelist, and start getting corrupted…

JOHN FUGELSANG:

That’s right, I can't wait.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

…And it's going to be, all of a sudden, all of this is going to turn into Prosperity Gospel.

JOHN FUGELSANG:

You got it. Yes. I want to be so rich…

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Send in the money!

You know, when I went to seminary, because I have big teeth and I'm a big White guy, they were like, televangelism, man. I was like, that's it. I'm going to be a televangelist. This is all a joke, but anyway, if it happens for you, I'll be very happy and you'll have five Rolls-Royces and you'll…

JOHN FUGELSANG:

Yes, I can't wait. I want to be a tax-free, mean little clique. I'm already investing in robes for my followers. When we're done here, I'm going to Costco to get bulk Kool-Aid. So you've already figured out my whole plan.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

I thought I sensed it. No, but you you you preach beautifully. I do hope that churches invite you, because I understand that you would be a risk guest, but I actually think that it would be very gratifying and spiritually enriching.

Interfaith Alliance has been so engaged in, we’ve been mobilizing around kind of counteracting this administration that we have been calling the most anti-religious administration in recent memory. They have attacked the Catholic bishops; they have attacked the Lutherans…

JOHN FUGELSANG:

They attacked the Muslims, the Muslim ban, the entire religion, before he took office. They were the most anti-religious administration. You're right.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Yeah, but I mean, with the immigration work: you know, JD Vance went after the Catholic bishops saying they were padding their bottom line…

JOHN FUGELSANG:

They made the Catholic bishops the good guys again. Can you believe it?

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Isn’t that wold? And you know, Pope Leo is kind of like, oh, okay, you want to play? And now it's awesome, because you have these bishops who are showing up at immigration offices saying, we're not, you know... And so I think it's really important to recognize them when they turn around and say, well, we're going to have an anti-Christian Bias Task Force and we're going to have a Religious Freedom Commission. And everyone on the Religious Freedom Commission, by the way, is a right wing Christian.  And so what they mean when they talk about anti-Christian bias is anyone who's not in lockstep with absolutely everything that they want to accomplish politically.

And anyone who questions whether or not maybe you should treat LGBTQ people as humans and as citizens or as neighbors, as part of the American democracy - that's an anti-Christian bias right there, you know? Women who want to have an abortion? anti-Christian bias.

JOHN FUGELSANG:

If you won’t let me be an anti-gay bigot, you're an anti-Christian bigot.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

100%.

JOHN FUGELSANG:

Persecution narrative. Victimhood, victimhood, victimhood. And again, nothing done that threatens Christian practice or worship in any way. They get upset about things that threaten conservative Christian domination - because that is their religion. It is power. Their true creed is power, and believing that God likes me better than you. And that's it.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

And that this nation is meant for me more than you.

JOHN FUGELSANG:

Exactly right. So with these folks I do a very simple quiz with them, Rev. I say to them, okay, please give me one actual teaching of Jesus that Donald Trump and the MAGA movement have fought for. Chapter and verse. Just one.

This is a fun thing that your listeners can do at the holidays with Uncle Racist and Aunt Dead Inside: one actual Gospel teaching of Christ that this movement fights for.

And this is how you'll know how little they know this book they wave around so brazenly as a prop. The number one answer you'll get is: “Blah blah blah abortion!” And that's when you have to calmly point out - and I do a long chapter in this book - Bible's not against it. God asserts a fetus is property of a man in Exodus 21. God gives detailed abortion tips for unfaithful pregnant wives in Numbers 5. As your listeners probably already know, the Bible never has any penalty for abortion. Judaism doesn't ban it. That's why abortions are legal and free in Israel right now. And you know, these right wingers don't know any of that, any of that. Jesus was against the death penalty, never mentioned abortion.

So the next thing they'll say is, “Well, strong border!” And that's when you have to say the God of the Hebrew Scriptures commands us to welcome the stranger and treat them like one of our own. And he doesn't ask politely. Jesus says in Matthew 25: individuals and nations will be judged by how we welcome the stranger. I don't call these people illegals. I call them Christian refugees. So why should I listen to Donald Trump instead of God and Jesus?

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Just on that last point, it's, you know, the the kind of amazing line that Jesus says in Matthew 25: the way you treated them is the way you treat me. That's powerful stuff. So every one of those people who ICE is attacking, abducting, disappearing - that's Jesus right there. According to Jesus. Now, only if you care what Jesus said.

JOHN FUGELSANG:

And if you care about the Bible. Yeah, only. Oh God too. Don't leave out God. God is unambiguous about this throughout the entire Old Testament. And again, of course, every nation should have standards on who enters the country. We're not saying that there shouldn't be, but it's the criminalization of migrants. It's this vulgar slur “illegals” which they have never used in their lives to describe a White lawbreaker. Donald Trump has 34 felony convictions. They will never call a White criminal an illegal. That's exclusively for the Brown folks crossing our border.

So I say, stop calling them illegals. Call them Christian refugees. It'll infuriate the right bigots. Again, you're either a refugee or an undocumented immigrant, which means you're either here legally seeking asylum, which Christians have to welcome, or you're here seeking work because a White guy like Donald Trump offered you a job. And they will never go after the Help Wanted sign at our border. They can't build a wall large enough to hide the Help Wanted sign. When they raid a meatpacking plant and arrest 400 “illegals”, they never arrest the White guys in the back room counting all the money. Donald Trump is the only president to hire illegal aliens to avoid paying a living wage to an American-born worker, and he has done it in two different centuries.

So there's no Christian argument for Repel the Stranger. These no-room-at-the-inn Christians. Look, every decade, they have to have a marginalized group they're allowed to hate. When I was a kid, it was the gays. It was the feminists. 20 years ago, it was the Muslims. The last ten years, it's been undocumented immigrants and transgender people. You know, they're the ones that it's acceptable to beat up on.

And the third most common thing they'll say is, “Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem!” And I’ve got to explain, Jesus never mentions America or where our embassy should be in the year 33 A.D.. They haven't read the Bible. I tell the atheist, you don't need to believe in the Bible as literal fact to use it when debating these folks respectfully. It's time to thump Bible thumpers with the Bible and take this religion back from the creeps.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Well, you know what I like to say? If if English and America was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me. I mean, I didn't come up with that, as you know, that's an old thing, but it's good.

JOHN FUGELSANG:

You’re right. English, the language God speaks. Yeah.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Yeah. Of course. It's the only one that we really trust. Now tell me, one of the things that was interesting that you've already referenced - and I think this is really important as far as strategy goes, because we really have to win this, and some of the work on Project 2025, Christian nationalism is the backbone of pProject 2025.

JOHN FUGELSANG:

Yes, it is.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

We cannot neglect religion in this, but I think what you said earlier is the way I'm viewing it, too, which is: we're not going to convert these folks who are really hardcore MAGA Christians. You're just not. But there's all kinds of people around them that are beginning to feel uncomfortable, and are just like, ehh, I don't really like this. And I do think that this is where your approach of love - and I'm sorry to use that four letter word here…

JOHN FUGELSANG:

Please don't be. We’ve got to use it more.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

And one of the things you mentioned and just referenced is, you grew up in a family where disagreement could happen and not everybody was the same. Not everybody agreed on everything. And yet there was a way of talking to one another that stitched together a family. And unfortunately, we're in a moment now where there is this insane animosity that is happening. And I'm just wondering, when we think about preserving democracy and a lot of… The way I understand the work of Interfaith Alliance and all of my work is geared towards how faith can be positive in developing the fabric of society.

How do you - through this book, but then more broadly in your life and your sense of personal mission - how do you understand the exercise of love, the application of love in how we work through our democracy right now?

JOHN FUGELSANG:

Wow, that's the whole path, isn't it? I mean, are we going to be a nation that cares about the least of us or not? Are we going to be a nation that prioritizes worship of those with material success and rewarding them with tax breaks and acclaim, and create slurs and cut funding for those who are the least of us? I mean, look. The greatest argument for Christian - true Christian - ethics is that Jesus’ teachings are good economics. I think Franklin Roosevelt proved it. You know, starving poor people and not having a very strong safety net, making uninsured people have to show up at the emergency room when they need care so local taxpayers foot the bill. It's not good economics. Hasn't made us a stronger nation.

On health care alone, this culture of middlemen, these insurance agencies that don't improve care, that don't make the economy better, that don't help anyone but rich businessmen. If people are going to claim that they're Christian because they put up a tree in their house once a year and they think they're better than you, then we have a right to ask them where your holy book says all this. And I really feel the whole history of this country comes down to this struggle of love versus power.

And there's a long, long history of Christians doing unholy and saying toxic behaviors and atrocities, and Christ-followers resisting them. And that's the whole history, right? Like, I mean, go back to the Crusades. You know, that was violence in the name of Jesus. They finally went from being an oppressed sect to being an imperial religion that oppressed others. Saint Francis, who fought in the Crusades, left and opposed war.

The doctrine of discovery led to Columbus massacring and mutilating people in the shadow of the cross. And it was the Catholic priests who opposed it. The first act of protest by a White person in this hemisphere was Bartolomeo de las Casas, the priest on Columbus's boat. Christians gave us slavery. Christianity upheld and strengthened slavery. Christ-followers like Harriet Tubman, like the Quakers, like Frederick Douglass, opposed it. Christianity gave us segregation. Christ-followers, like Baptist minister Rev. Martin Luther King and his allies opposed it. Christianity fought for the suppression of women and homophobia. Christ-followers have fought against that. And how many people we know of talked their parents and grandparents out of a lot of homophobia over the dinner table over the last 30 years.

The whole history of the faith has been Christ-followers, liberal Christians and their non-Christian, atheist, other religious allies fighting to beat back the bats**t crazy Christians. That's how it's always been, and it's always been in service of love over meanness and selfishness and this kind of MAGA Christianity that is just cruelty and selfishness masquerading as piety. It's not hard to call out. They don't follow Jesus. And you don't need to believe in the Bible as literal fact to call them out on it.

So, you know, I wanted to write the book because, yeah, it is all about love. And I end the book on that, rather dramatically, and go very deep into it. And the kind of love we're talking about is not some passive hippie Jesus love. It's an action verb love, with all the discipline, all the strength, all the challenges that come from that. I'm not saying let them into the border, let have an open border and have no regulations at all. I'm saying, if your church isn't telling you to love your enemies, but they're telling you who your enemies are, you're not really in a Christian church. And I think that the reason why we see so many people leaving religion is not because they don't like God or Jesus or the Bible or Santa Claus; it's that we have so many good people and they're outgrowing these mean little clubs.

And if your spirituality leads you beyond the religion you were raised with, that's profoundly Christian to me, because Jesus's whole mission was about a new Covenant and transformation. He didn't renounce Judaism. He was saying, go beyond what your religion tells you, deeper into the faith, deeper into the love. That's what – “You have heard it said; But I tell you”, “you have heard it said, but I tell you” - he's throwing out the old rules and replacing Law 1.0 with Love 1.0. That's his software update. And, being a Christian means you accept the terms and conditions you don't get to hate.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Oh, wow. Very, very nicely put. Talk about the end of your book and talk about, what does it mean to you?

JOHN FUGELSANG:

Oh, well, originally I was ending the book telling the story of how I debated Jerry Falwell, but that got cut for time. I end the book by talking about this, about the Christians versus the Christ followers. And it sounds like a stupid semantic argument, but…

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Oh, but it's not. It's actually not. But I guess what I'm getting at is, for you personally, you've talked a lot about atheism - did you go through an atheist phase?

JOHN FUGELSANG:

No. No. You’ve got to blame somebody, Reverend. You’ve got to blame somebody. Come on. No, I never had an atheist phase. But I do think that doubt is an essential part of anyone's real faith journey. The opposite of faith isn’t doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty. And that's fundamentalism. That's our Muslim fundamentalist friends, our Jewish fundamentalist friends, our Christian fundamentalist friends. They have more in common with each other than they do with their holy books.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

You know, we want our listeners to feel at this time like there is something to be done. And one of the things I'm talking a lot about is courage, which is getting at where you ended the book. How do we show up in this time? Because actually, people of faith, not just Christians, but people of faith are showing up. And you could argue that in some ways, religious folks have showed up with more courage than universities have, than some law firms have.

JOHN FUGELSANG:

I agree.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

People are showing up. What is one thing that you would love for all the listeners to consider; one thing to do, one action, in addition to buying your book and reading it. What is one thing that people can do?

JOHN FUGELSANG:

You know, one thing is everything. All of the above, right? Do it online – great. Protest. Make your voice heard, but also get out of the house. Your church, if your church is a mean little club that uses Jesus as a mascot, then working in a soup kitchen on Sunday can be your church, then going and cleaning up a public park can be your church. You don't have to stay in the mean little club that you were born into out of obedience to your parents.

Your faith journey can lead you beyond and deeper if it is into love. And what would make me happy is if a lot of folks, especially older folks, who got more into volunteering and getting out there and create community, there's probably all kinds of people in your zip code who feel the same way about Jesus and kindness as you do, and it's hard to connect. Facebook groups are great, but for me, if a more progressive Christian community could find each other, that would be one of the loveliest dividends of a book like this. Because I'd be really happy if this book could make people feel less lonely.

You know, George Carlin was the first comedian to ever make me feel less lonely as an audience member. And there's a lot of folks out there who are easily gaslit. When you've been raised in a culture where, God, if I'm nice to gay people, God and Jesus will be mad at me - and they really believe it, in spite of what the Bible says.

So the greatest gift for me would be if this book could help some people take those shackles off their heart. Because I grew up a homophobic teenager and I was saved at age 13 from that awful, nasty fate. So that would be a gift for my heart. Definitely.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Jon Fuglsang is an actor, comedian, writer, and radio host. His new book is coming September 9th, titled Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person's Guide to Taking Back the Bible from fundamentalists, fascists and Flock Fleecing Frauds.

John, thank you so much for joining me on The State of Belief.

JOHN FUGELSANG:

I can't tell you what an honor it is to meet you in person and to talk to your listeners. You do such a beautiful job. You're one of the people who's been a guiding light for a long time in this field, and there's so many great leaders like yourself out there. And, you know, I would never claim to be of the same spiritual mettle as you, but it's a real thrill to be on your show, and I thank you for letting me talk a bit about this book to your wonderful audience.

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