EP: 469 Rat Temples, Mormon Gods, and a Death Cult on the Ganges with Jeremy Jenkins

Here is the uncomfortable thing nobody in church wants to say out loud. The spells work. The witch doctor heals. The rituals deliver. Jeremy Jenkins has spent years studying the world's religions and standing inside their holiest places, and he is done pretending the power is not real. A world religions expert, pastor, and professor, he sits down with Luke and Nate to explain why everything that works is not good, and why that single idea changes how you read every faith on earth.
From the Hindu death cult of Varanasi, where bodies burn on the Ganges around the clock, to the rat temples, to what Mormons truly believe about a man becoming a god, Jeremy traces the same pattern through all of it. Every system runs on a transaction, a treadmill of works and offerings to something on the other side that wants to be worshiped. He ties it to the divine council, the principalities and powers, and a night in India when something holds him down and chants over him until he calls on Jesus. If you have ever wondered what the church is actually fighting, this is the map.

Jeremy Jenkins is a regular contributor to Stranger Theology, the theological project from Blurry Creatures and Dr. Joel Muddamalle that digs into the deep end of the Bible the church tends to avoid. If this conversation scratched an itch, that is where the itch gets scratched every week. Subscribe to the Stranger Theology Substack for essays, deeper dives, and more from voices like Jeremy, and join the community thinking seriously about the supernatural world Scripture actually describes.

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