Deconversion Therapy

Danny McBride, Adam Devine, Edi Patterson, John Goodman, and a guy playing a keytar. The Righteous Gemstones is heaven.  This week we discuss the HBO show and how familiar Bonnie and Karen are with the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker-type family that drives two-hundred thousand dollar SUVs, has a shooting range on their compound, and a Christian project named Keefe living with them.   There are celibacy promises! Bible heroes wax museum. Chicken references. Mullets. Pants with pleats. Tee shirts with youth group graphics. Youth group!! Youth group meeting as a cover. I wonder if any of our friends ever did that? (Yes, they did.)  “These feats of strength are all to glorify God.”   Adam Devine's youth minister character is typical of what we see in the south. Is he gay or just trying to be hip? Does he look like Hermy the elf or Jimmy Neutron?   Bonnie talks about how Adam Devine received the late-season add-in blessing from Modern Family like other stars have experienced.   And damn if Edi Patterson's role as the daughter Judy isn't painfully accurate. She never gets to do anything in the patriarchal church family.   Watch it with us and tag us with your insights. We love this show.   Announcement: We have a SHOP. Please check it out and give us some support. Thanks!        

Joshua Harris, Marty Sampson, and Mckrae Game. They've done some thinking and the church is not happy about it. We say "welcome to the beginning of feeling okay about looking for answers." Y'all ballers. Joshua Harris renounced Christianity close to the time the author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye announced his separation from his wife. Since then, he looks like he's living life and staying away from doing much other than concentrating on his kids, work, and loving those he no longer judges. Marty Sampson was a singer and writer with Hillsong, a blockbuster Christian singing group. His deconversion has been more public due to his Instagram account.  Lastly, there's the most recent story from McKrae Game, the head of a conversion therapy program who has come out as gay. No judgement here. We've been through what they have. And we look forward to more people simply asking the questions that are down deep.

A full episode of kooky letters. We've got ones from Fredzo, Racheal, David, and Bethany. Plus, a surprise one up top. When you're deep into the church, or being homeschooled, you learn a lot of things too important for your basic historians. They're saved for God's chosen people to know. Like...who really shot JFK or why slavery was fantastic. For the musicians out there, we hear from a bloody singer as well as Queen. These episodes are our favorites. Please send us your letters!

Once you build a 73 million dollar sanctuary, what could go wrong? Willow Creek church in Chicago was the first mainstream mega-church.From keytars and dry ice machines in the 80s to megatrons and coffee shops now, Willow Creek has been rocked by a...wait for it...sex scandal.  Bill Hybels founded the church in 1975. The church has 7 locations and averages 24,000 attendees. Yes, we get most of this from Wikipedia. So do people like to go to large churches to hide and blend in?  In 2018 the whole leadership resigned because they mishandles allegations against Hybels for sexual misconduct. Hybels was big in with James Dobson and they were anti-porn. So Hybels said it was his job to "research" porn by watching it WITH his hand-picked secretary while he wore only a robe. More things happened through the years, but...gross. Karen and Bonnie then reminisce about their big church and it's biggest time of the year--The Singing Christmas tree. Weeks upon weeks of strict rehearsals, a huge scaffolded tree you stood in, and most recently livestock that comes in for authenticity and then falls on the ticket-holders. Send in your funny, true stories for us to read on the podcast. Also, please subscribe, rate, and review. Sign up for your free Audible Trial HERE for a free 30 days and free book. Our recommendations for the week are Educated by Tara Westover and A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle.  

  Son of Sam, David Berkowitz, is now the self-proclaimed Son of Hope.   Karen tries to get David to come to the studio, but he’s too shy. And imprisoned. We should have gotten the actor who portrays him on Mindhunter on Netflix. He's amazing!   Bonnie joins the rank of 22 year-old guys who live on Reddit by putting a Bible in the Historical Fiction category at a Barnes and Noble. And Karen admits to saving up her money one year to buy her husband a Zune for allll his music. Holds 50 songs!   We were thrilled to receive a letter from a listener saying they had been to the Young Life camp that used to be the Rajneesh compound in Oregon. Thanks for the letter. We love these insights.   Bonnie describes the 70s. Disco. Bell bottoms. Leisure suits. Not a lot of bras. Lots of rainbows on things before the gays appropriated them.   Karen gives the run-down of David Berkowitz’s crimes. He randomly shot people, mostly couples while they were in their car. It scared New York and the nation.   When Berkowitz was a kid, his birthmother gave him up for adoption. He was adopted and was a bad, bad kid. When he was caught after all the killings, people were upset at his last name and Jewish people were happy to find out he was adopted but then it was revealed his birthmother was also Jewish. Then Karen tells an old reverse racist Jewish joke.   Berkowitz might or might not have been involved in the occult. It depends if you ask, Bonnie or Karen. Karen goes by the story that he’d been getting into the idea of demons from the Kentucky church he got initially saved in. Then he parlayed this into a story once he was arrested.   Berkowitz got a lot of attention when he converted in the clink and was interviewed by Larry King and anyone else who wanted to nab a juicy subject but got Berkowitz's testimony instead. David even wrote a book! And you can find it somewhere online. He isn't supposed to make money off it, but it will definitely help build his ministry.     Berkowitz also has an organization. Ok, he doesn't, but his "friends" have made on for him. You can read his journals and see all the people who visit him. He has more of a reach from prison than most people on the outside.       If you were in prison, why wouldn't you want to become a Christian? You get forgiveness, a community, meaning, something to do away from other prisoners. Bonnie and Karen discuss how disproportionate Christian chaplains are to other religions in prison. Plus, Bonnie tells Prison Jesus, which is an actual psychological disorder.   We'll give it to Berkowitz, although we do feel he sincerely believes, he has carved out a pretty successful life since slaughtering 6 people.   Our sources were Wikipedia and Berkowitz's website. Books we recommend to listen to on Audible: Ricky Gervais' podcast and Born a Crime by Trevor Noah. Support us by getting a free book and 30-day trial when you sign up at www.audibletrial.com/Deconversion   Stitcher   Spotify   iTunes   iHeart  

Letters and letters! Thanks for writing in. You can send us yours via our website www.deconversiontherapypodcast.com. Our first one is from Heather, a kick-ass deconvert who’s been through it. She’s still healing from losing sword drills. Then she tells us about the universal kids’ musical/dancing controversies we all lived through growing up. We read a letter from a Christian college “bad boy,” as well as hear about a JW vs Mormon turf war. Come laugh at yourselves with us. As always, we really would love your ratings and reviews, as that helps us get seen by other listeners. iTunes is the best place to do one, even if you listen on another pod place thingy. The audio books we talk about this week are The Complete Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live and Stay Sexy and Don’t Get Murdered. Use our code at www.audibletrial.com/deconversion to get a 30-day free trial plus one book.    

Karen and Bonnie discuss the book, and soon-to be-released Netflix documentary “The Family: An enigmatic conservative Christian group known as the Family wields enormous influence in Washington, D.C., in pursuit of its global ambitions.” The secret group in DC laid low for a long time and only insiders knew of them. Until the shtooping. Always the shtooping. In 2008, when senator Mark Sanford disappeared to go “hiking” but was found out to be hiking on his mistress, people learned he lived in a house in DC on C Street. But it wasn’t/isn’t just a house, it’s a group. And boy, do you need to learn about this group. Read Jeff Sharlett’s The Family or “Jesus Plus Nothing” in Harper’s Magazine. We're proud to be sponsored by Audible. Go to www.audibletrial.com/deconversion for a free book and free 30 day subscription.            

That's right, it's time for your favorite group of pumped guys who've been traveling from church to church for over 40 years doing feats of strength, The Power Team! Bonnie missed the huge event at church where they came and blew. us. tweens. away. The ripping of phone books, the lifting of heavy weights, the bending of fry pans. And then a testimony of how they serve Christ? These were our super heroes. They're still around 40 years later with dozens of break-off groups. Vice does it again with a great article covering some of the scandals and mishaps. Patheos does another great one. This is an episode we've wanted to do for a long time. We feel sorry for people who didn't grow up in the church and get to partake in this beefcake parade. See pics on our website. 

Karen and Bonnie go through the lives and miracle healing powers of Kathrine Kuhlman and Benny Hill, no, Hinn. Are people really getting cured of cancer and broken backs and whatnot and various sundries? Why are all the people falling backwards when they get healed? And how in the world are these wheeler healers getting their own television shows when we don't have one? Karen starts out with one of the best-known faith healers, Katherine Kuhlman. You might have never heard of her, but she birthed a whole litter of these guys. She was elegant and magnetic and also talked in a creepy voice. She had her share of scandals, but we must say, being a divorced woman evangelist in the 60s with your own show isn't bad.  Bonnie gets in to someone who followed Kuhlman, idolized her, studied her--Benny Hinn. You've seen him on television. He's the one people roll their eyes at when he makes a swath of people fall out on stage.  Hinn got caught with televangelist Paula White a few years ago while in Italy. They denied it. Then they didn't. Then they downplayed it. We don't care. At least the Kardashians admit their vice. Hinn's nephew, Costi Hinn, has come out with a book. It's mainly for Christians, but it says all the things most people know. This is about money and power. Mentioned on podcast: Josiah Hesse's Vice article about Jim Bakker. Do you have 3 minutes? Please rate us and even review us on iTunes. It's how we get in front of more people. Thanks.  

Bonnie and Karen talk about the sex cult called the Rajneesh this week. If you haven’t watched the Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country, Bonnie goes over it while trying to capture the insanity. Bagwan Shree Rajneesh, the guru, gathers up well-educated Western followers in Pune, India. They then all move, with his Rolls Royces, to Antelope, Oregon. That’s when they take over the small town and things go to hell. This story has orgies, robes, beavers in blenders and on women, bombs, poison, salad bars. It seems like a fictitious story, but it’s very real. Karen tells her own story of being a missionary in India and visiting the Rajneesh ashram with hopes that her presence and under-her-breath prayers will slay the devil and they’ll all repent.