Star Spangled Christian Nationalism With April Ajoy

April Ajoy When I take a step back, I'm like, "No, y'all are demonizing me, and you're celebrating this man as someone that Jesus would choose to lead our Christian nation?" I'm like, "Are you reading the Gospels at all?"

Dan McClellan Hey, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And you are listening to the "Data Over Dogma" podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

Dan Beecher It's a star-spangled day here on the "Data Over Dogma" show.

Dan McClellan I notice you're wearing a red sweatshirt, and- Yeah ... my first impression was a Buffalo Bills jersey. And I was like, "It can't be that." No, it's not that.

Dan Beecher Because- You should be happy. These are Denver Bronco colors. Yes. Mostly. I'm just kind of an orange and- ... orangey red and blue. Anyway, let's get off of fashion because most of our listeners at least, our YouTubers can see, but our listeners can't see what I'm wearing. And let's get on to our guest this week. Do you want to introduce her, Dan?

Dan McClellan Yeah, absolutely. Today, we are very privileged to have with us April Ajoy. Welcome to the show, April. Hello.

April Ajoy Thank you for having me.

Dan McClellan Thank you for being here. We appreciate it very much. And April is the author of a new book, "Star-Spangled Jesus: Leaving Christian Nationalism and Finding a True Faith." April is another content creator, a podcaster who hosts the Friday shows of "The New Evangelicals," and has been working in journalism to one degree or another for quite some time. She has been featured on BuzzFeed, CNN, Newsweek, and more, and she's been married to Beecher for 10 years, and they have two daughters together, which is wonderful. I am a girl dad with three daughters, but some people might be a little more interested to hear about this Beecher connection, but- Well, I'm going to save it.

Dan Beecher We're going to save some of the Beecher talk for the after-party. There we go. So if you're really interested in some wacky- ... name talk about Beecher, make sure that you're a patron and come over on Patreon. Yeah.

April Ajoy It's not that common of a name.

Dan Beecher No, it isn't. Phew. No. No, it is not. It is not. And even less common, I think, as a first name, so- Yes ... so yes, your partner is in rarefied air, but I have met one other person with the first name Beecher, and I'll tell that- Interesting ... story later. Yeah. And April, you are a TikToker. You put a lot of content out into the world. I think a lot of our listeners probably follow you on TikTok and in other places.

April Ajoy Yeah, that's kind of where it all started, on TikTok. So I don't know what the future of TikTok- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher looks like, but- You two TikTok people are screwed, but- ... that's why we have a podcast, so. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan McClellan Well, and I know April mainly from a lot of thought-provoking content on social media, particularly TikTok and elsewhere, but also a lot of comedy. Yeah. You like to do some role-playing skits and use comedy to, I don't know, break down walls of defenses, but at least get some little bit of joy out of what you're doing, which is primarily combating Christian nationalism, combating a lot of the harm that is inherent in Christian nationalism and the kind of fundamentalist, conservative, evangelical Christianity that is so prominent these days. Can you talk a little bit about... We'll get to the content creation later, but can you get everybody up to speed on your background? Sure. All right. When- If that's not too big an ask.

April Ajoy How far back do I go?

Dan Beecher Let's set the scene, man. This book, "Star-Spangled Jesus," which by the way is a fun exploration of Christian nationalism and everything, starts with the confession that you were unknowingly a Christian nationalist yourself. Yes.

April Ajoy And I do think, as I've studied this topic and then reflected on my own time inside conservative white evangelicalism, I've realized that one reason why it can be so difficult to stop Christian nationalism is because it kind of hides in plain sight of just American evangelicalism, and that so many people, and I think even today, most people who perpetuate Christian nationalism don't realize that their faith has been co-opted by that ideology. They think they're just being good Christians. Right. And I thought I was just being a good Christian. Love God, love people, although exclusions did apply- ... and vote Republican. We elevated the GOP with God, GOP, GOD. They were pretty much- Yeah ... interconnected.

Dan Beecher So- You came into this pretty heavy. You basically came out swinging because you were a pastor's kid, right? I was.

April Ajoy I was a combo because I was a pastor's kid. My grandfather was a pastor of a large church in Dallas when I was growing up, and this was in the '90s, '80s, '90s, so pre-megachurches, really. They weren't really a thing back then, but my grandfather's church had 4,000 members at the time. Wow. So that was pretty big.

Dan Beecher That's pretty mega.

April Ajoy And my dad co-pastored with him when we were home, so I had the pastor's kid experience, but my dad was also an evangelist and kind of a missionary in different points. So, we traveled. I was homeschooled. By the time I was 18, I'd been to 31 countries And so, and then when we were stateside, we traveled in a motor home going to all these different churches, and my dad would preach. And then me and my two brothers and my mom, we would sing before he would preach. It was kind of like a family affair. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Very immersive.

Dan Beecher And almost none of your life was not about Christianity and Jesus. I mean, the motor home that you traveled in was plastered with the phrase, "America, say Jesus." Is that right? Yeah, that was our second motor home. Oh, okay.

April Ajoy That was post 9/11, when we really kind of amped up the nationalism part. Yeah. Wow. Oh, man.

Dan McClellan So, The Righteous Gemstones was probably just a slightly wealthier version of what you grew up with in some ways?

April Ajoy Yeah, I would say there's definitely similarities to Righteous Gemstones minus the cussing.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan And, yeah. I would say, I wish they would've tapped...

April Ajoy This is a total sidebar, but I wish HBO would've tapped someone from that world or had just- Yeah ... because there's so many ways to make that world genuinely funny that's a little more true. Because some of the stuff- Mm, okay ... that's in that show, I'm like, "Eh." Yeah. I don't think that's as realistic, but- Yeah.

Dan Beecher Are you listening, HBO? April is putting herself out there. Yes.

April Ajoy Yeah, hire me. I can be a writer.

Dan Beecher She's ready.

Dan McClellan And I don't want to even get into Netflix and their Mary show, which their only consultant was somebody with a BA. Oh. But anyway, the- Mr.

Dan Beecher PhD over here is really upset about it.

Dan McClellan It's not a big deal. But you mentioned that this is something a lot of Christians aren't even aware is co-opted evangelical Christianity, and something that a through line of a lot of these chapters was you talking kind of about how you felt intuitively about these things. And there was a slow shift as intuitively it began to make less and less sense to you, and intuitively it began to feel more and more natural to sympathize with the folks that were on the other side of the aisle from you in your childhood. And that's something that within the cognitive science of religion, there's a lot of research on how our intuitive cognition frames our experience of the world around us and our understanding of ourselves. Could you talk a little bit about what kind of experiences kind of let you know there's something intuitive going on here, there's something internal to this experience that contributed to this transition? Yeah.

April Ajoy I mean, gosh, where does one begin? I do think within this world, you have to hold so much cognitive dissonance. Mm. And so when you start to question one thing, it just kind of opens up, you're just more vulnerable to questioning so many things all at once. Which is why you're taught from childhood, especially people who are born into a fundamentalist religion, you're taught from an early age to not ask questions, and that questions are almost dangerous. They're the start to the slippery slope, and if you ask too many questions, then one day you're going to wake up and you're going to be an atheist, then you're going to burn in hell forever. Hellfire and where you spend eternity is a big component to the belief system. Right. But there were little things along the way. One thing that Christian nationalism relies on is American exceptionalism, because we were taught that God supernaturally blessed America, that God gave the land to George Washington, he was like a disciple 2.0. And that we were miraculously given victory in all of our wars, that even what happened with the indigenous people was really a blessing for them because we were able to convert them and save their souls. Yeah. You're not really taught the true history. I was taught Christopher Columbus was a good Christian missionary. And so there's this cog-- You are kind of shielded, especially if you are homeschooled or given Christian curriculum, a more conservative curriculum. You're shielded from a truer history of America. Mm-hmm. Because if you believe that God is good and that God basically gave America and founded America as a Christian nation, then you can't look at America as ever being the bad guy. And so once you're able... Because if America was ever bad, then you have to question in God's sovereignty and if God is good or not, because the two are so interconnected. Because you believe- Right ... America is a Christian nation, and we have to save America because God will only bless us if we continue to be Christian. And then that's why you see these culture wars of people fighting gay marriage or abortion or things that they would deem, that we deemed sin, and that because Hurricane Katrina. It's like, well, God allowed that to happen because we've let sin into our country, and the way to stop that, it's not climate change. Mm-hmm. It's God judging us because we are no longer righteous because we're starting to lose our Christian nation. Yeah. But once you learn the true history of like, well, we committed genocide against indigenous people, and that Christians were using the Bible to justify slavery in the Civil War, and that they used it to justify segregation and Jim Crow and all of these things that show Christians in a bad light, then suddenly you lose a good chunk of your foundation of your belief system. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so learning true history, those things kind of started shining a light. I remember during Post 9/11, when we were dropping bombs on Iraq, looking for weapons of mass destruction. Mm. I remember feeling conflicted about that. But the Christians around me were like, "No, this is a righteous holy war." Mm-hmm. "The Muslims deserve it because their religion is demonic and all these things. We're Christians. We're of God. We're of the one true God." But I remember, like, but we're bombing innocent people, and I was able to kind of squash those thoughts for a while and feel like I had to defend America, because if I didn't, then I'm going through an existential crisis that I was not prepared to go through. Mm. But it was little things like that along the way that just intuitively I kind of thought about introspectively, but I had enough people around me, and watching Fox News, and listening to conservative radio, and hearing a pastor every Sunday tell me the opposite, that it keeps people in the belief system because Christian nationalism and evangelicalism, especially the Seven Mountain Mandate, which is a dominion theology, which basically is the belief that Christians have to be in control and have dominion of the seven main influences in the world before Jesus can come back. And so that's why basically they want to have major influence in media. They want to have influence in entertainment. They want people inside their ideology to not have to go to anyone secular. They can get everything from this Christian conservative perspective. So you really are built in a giant echo chamber unless you intentionally seek out other things. But if you do that and you're still in it, you have all these people being like, "You can't trust that source." Yeah, right. Because anything not Christian is satanic. And so I think there's a new rise in satanic panic too, where anything not Jesusy is of the devil. Yeah. And the devil's coming after your children. There's that one pastor, Kent Crispis, from the pulpit, cursed the "Barbie" movie- Uh-huh ... because of wokeness or whatever. And then another pastor- Yeah ... said that the "Barbie" movie would unleash millions of demons onto your children. And so it's just silly stuff like that. But there's people that genuinely believe that, and so all this fear-mongering gives people a reason to doubt their own doubts. Yeah.

Dan Beecher Well, and also I think it primes people. When you are trained from birth, as you were, to believe in all of these demons, to believe that everyone that isn't with us is satanic, is awful, is bad. There's a whole section in your book about conspiracy theories, QAnon, all of that stuff. People have been primed to believe outrageous things. Mm-hmm. So then when they hear that Hillary Clinton has a bunch of children locked up in a pizza parlor, they buy it. Yeah. It feels acceptably real to them. Yeah.

April Ajoy The Rapture theology- Yeah ... is a huge belief in a lot of mainstream evangelicalism that doesn't get talked about too much. You don't hear about it unless you're inside as much. But I believed that until I was like 30. Yeah. As a grown woman, I believed that at any moment I'd hear a distant trumpet- Mm ... and that I'd get sucked up into the sky naked to meet Jesus in the air, because that's Left Behind canon. You left a pile of clothes behind. Which is weird because we're also purity culture, so I guess- Right ... once you're floating in the sky, the lust thing isn't a problem anymore. But yeah.

Dan Beecher Maybe magical fig leaves will appear for you or something.

April Ajoy Maybe, yeah. I don't know. But yeah, if you can believe that, which wasn't a mainstream belief in Christianity until the 1800s, and I was pissed when I learned that- ... because I was taught that this is basically Apostle Paul canon. Right. Yeah. But yeah, but if you can believe that, then it's not hard to believe that there's this evil secret society that's controlling everything, that sacrifices babies to Satan and drinks children's blood to stay young. You already believe in the big, bad Satan, so yeah, it's an easy jump to make.

Dan McClellan And all the heathens believe that the world was created out of nothing through magic anyway, or through the Big Bang, which they- Right.

April Ajoy It takes more faith to be an atheist. Yeah.

Dan McClellan And these are things that you're conditioned as a child to accept. And if that is the foundation of your worldview, if those are the logs that build the foundation of your worldview, then it's not difficult to interpret new information in light of that. That becomes the interpretive lens, that lenses through which you see all this new stuff, and naturally you're going to want to interpret it according to your worldview. Make it fit, find a place for it to fit, until suddenly it won't fit. And you shared a story in your book that I rather enjoyed about working. I don't know if you were with CBN, or you were doing journalism of some kind, and you were sent out to do an interview with a gay couple who- Oh, yeah.

April Ajoy I was interning at the Dallas NBC affiliate. Okay. The Dallas... Yeah, in grad school. Okay.

Dan McClellan I used to live just north of Frankfurt and the tollway. Oh. And that's where I actually became LDS, and I left to go live in Uruguay for a couple of years doing a proselytizing mission down there. Our church was right across the street from Prestonwood Baptist Church. Mm.

April Ajoy I've been to Prestonwood many times. Yeah.

Dan McClellan But so I know the area well. It was fun to hear some of those names again. But can you walk through this story briefly about this time something- Yeah ... didn't seem to fit the way you had been conditioned to structure your worldview? Yeah.

April Ajoy So I got my master's in journalism at Regent University, which is Pat Robertson's school. It's on the same campus as CBN, which is the Christian Broadcasting Network. So for my summer internship as part of that program, I got an internship at the NBC DFW affiliate. And my first day on the job, and you have to understand too, at Regent, their motto is Christian leadership to change the world. So there was this underlying message that no matter what job you have, even if it's in the secular world, you're still called to be a Christian first, and that wherever you are, that's your mission field. So you're kind of being trained- Man, that is so intense. Yeah. And that was nothing new. I had already believed that from a child, that there's no greater calling than trying to win souls for Jesus, and that you should do that wherever you are. Yeah. So keep that in mind. That's my mindset. My very first day at this internship, they assigned me to do an interview of this gay couple because they were getting some pushback for being featured in a JCPenney catalog for Father's Day because they were two gay dads together with their kids. And I remember the internal just conflict of, okay, this is my moment. I know that the media portrays homosexuality as good or normal. Because at this point, I believed that homosexuality was a sin, it was an abomination. It was a choice either by demonic influence or they were demon-possessed. And that's not an exaggeration. That is what I was taught. Right. And so I was like, "This is my chance." I had my official questions that my bosses saw, and then I had questions prepared too as kind of like gotchas, I guess. If I had the boldness and like, "Well, isn't it better for a child to have a mom and a dad?" Oh, man. Stupid stuff like that. But when I got there, which my heart was pounding, I felt like I was going into the lion's den, behind enemy lines. Here I am, a Christian, going to talk to gay people, married gay people, which this was before it was even legalized, so it was extra- Evil ... tragic, I guess, in my mind. Yeah. And so I walk in and they have pictures of them and their family on the wall that they had adopted, and they're smiling and their kids look happy and healthy and thriving. And I introduced myself and they were so kind to me, and I didn't know how to take that. And I was like, "Well, they must just think that I'm on their side." Yeah. So I literally remember thinking, "I need to sneak in something Christian and just see how they respond." So I remember being like, "Oh, yeah. Well, when I went to church," da da da. And then one of them was like, "Oh, yeah, I used to go to some Methodist church or something." I think they actually went to a Methodist school, and I was like inside just freaking out because I did not know how to process this information. Wait a minute, you're gay, but you've been to church. And me saying, "Jesus, you're not manifesting any demons, and I don't know how to deal with this." So I finished the interview. I had this gut instinct. My brain was telling me, "This is your chance to show what they're really like. You need to ask them these questions, be a good Christian," da da da. But my heart was saying, "These are two really kind, good people." And I didn't feel like I needed to do that, that I should do that. I felt like it would've been wrong.

Dan Beecher The demons got you. I know. The demons got you. I know.

April Ajoy So I didn't say anything at the end. I was like, "Well, God bless you guys." And they were so nice. I was just an intern and they were like, "You did such a good job. Best of luck in your career." And I was like, "Thank you." And I just remember walking away from that really confused, but I still was not ready to go down that path of questioning why were these guys so nice to me knowing I was this Christian person. And I just kind of shoved it down and be like, "Well, Satan can appear as an angel of light." And that was how I was able to not have to think about that for a while. But that interaction stuck with me for a long time. Yeah.

Dan McClellan I think that's a lot of folks who build up that kind of worldview, they have a lot of defensive walls that they put up. And something that a lot of research has suggested is that they don't let down their defenses unless there are significant personal experiences or close personal relationships that kind of compel them to let down their defenses and begin to think critically about these things. But at the same time, when you begin to think critically about these things, they often represent a significant threat to one's own worldview. Mm-hmm. Which means the defenses go right back up and they tend to get stuck on a shelf somewhere- Right ... where you're like, "I'm going to worry about that later. I'm just going to stick that on the shelf there, and we're going to go back to this worldview that we're comfortable in and we don't want to compromise." Yeah.

April Ajoy And I felt so much guilt afterwards that I wasn't a good Christian, that I had failed God. Oh. And literally had to ask God for forgiveness because I felt guilty even though I felt like in my heart is like, I did the right thing, but my brain is like- Yeah ... "No, you didn't. You dirty scum." Yeah.

Dan McClellan Oh, that is such a- You should have terrorized that loving couple who was- Right. What an odd way for your brain to kind of be mean to you about- Right.

April Ajoy Well, because you're taught tough love. ...

Dan McClellan the kind of person you are.

April Ajoy Love the sinner, hate the sin. The best way to love them is to tell them that they're going to hell- Yeah ... and be truthful because you can save their soul.

Dan Beecher You see so many- Turns out that's not very loving actually, but- Right. Yeah, no, it's not. Going back to how you were taught, I wanted you to tell us the story in the book about you as a kid, you and your siblings Being trained to witness to servers at restaurants. Oh, the cringe is hardcore on that. But talk to us a little bit about what that looked like and maybe give us a story or two from that era of your life. Yeah. Because and I imagine you went to restaurants a lot if you were traveling around so much. We did.

April Ajoy Literally, my brothers and I would argue about whose turn it was to witness, which witness was our word for proselytizing. Right. But to witness to the waitstaff, and usually that just meant we would just say, "Jesus loves you." If it was really successful, then my dad would get to pray with them and lead them in the sinner's prayer, and then my dad could talk about it in a sermon later, and then we would feel very proud of ourselves if we got a shout-out in the sermon. So yeah, it just became a thing. And then at some point, we started keeping tallies of, "Well, I saved so many people. I have more than you." And it was like sibling rivalry, but religious trauma. Mm-hmm. But yeah, I remember one time, and my dad told this story because he thought it was hilarious, but I was probably six or seven and my brother was five. So my two brothers, they're a year and a half younger than me. So they were around five and went to a restaurant, and it was my brother Matt's turn to witness to the waitstaff. We knew the order. So we would knew like, "Okay, it's Matt's turn. I'll be quiet." And the waitress came over and Matt was just like, "Hey, Jesus loves you." And she was like, "Great." And then he just goes, "Take my hand." Because whenever we would pray with someone, my dad would be like, "Take my hand" and then lead them in the sinner's prayer. And he just went straight for closing the deal, which is what we called- Yeah. ... when they could say the sinner's prayer. Right. And he was like, "Take my hand." So she did, because who's going to say no to a five-year-old kid with a bowl cut? And he was like, "All right, now repeat after me. Just say, 'Dear Jesus.'" She goes, "Dear Jesus, I am a very bad person." And she repeated it. She kind of looked and I looked at my parents and they kind of looked. Anyway, she goes, "I'm a very bad person." And my brother Matt's like, "Forgive me of my sins." And goes, "Forgive me of my sins. Amen." And then my parents kind of gave her an apologetic look, and we were not convinced of the efficiency of that conversion. Yeah. But my dad told it in stories everywhere we went. Okay.

Dan Beecher As the person on this show right now who has not had the experience of trying to make strangers believe in my beliefs, when you guys did that and one of the kids would say, "Jesus loves you," and if it went well, Dad would pray with them. Did you guys feel like that you had actually converted someone to Christianity in that moment? Is that the story that you told each other? Yeah.

April Ajoy We believed that once you said the sinner's prayer and you confessed Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and asked for forgiveness of sins, that you were a Christian. Which I do think that inherent theology is a reason why you see so many terrible people- ... in evangelicalism, because they don't really hold people accountable. As long as you say the prayer and ask for forgiveness, it's like, well, God forgave them, so we should forgive them too. Right. But yeah, we believed it was just like an instant thing.

Dan Beecher It's this one weird trick to turn everybody Christian. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dan McClellan This strikes me as a pretty interesting case of what within the cognitive sciences we call costly signaling, because it's a behavior that you would engage in in order to display to others within the in-group that you are willing to incur the costs associated with towing the party line, with showing that you are faithful to the group's standards. And I think the costly signaling can sit so close to the surface in a lot of groups like evangelicalism. In the Latter-day Saint tradition, the same is true, although, the proselytizing thing, it's usually limited to just these 18-month or two-year missions where we would have to go out and keep track of how many discussions, we called them, we had with folks, and how many times we would lead them in prayer or- Mm ... take them through these steps of conversion. And then you have groups like Jehovah's Witnesses, where that's a full-time responsibility. Yeah. They're supposed to keep track of those kinds of things for every week of their life. It's such an interesting example, I think, of how close to the surface that kind of boundary maintenance and those kinds of expectations sit, the more religious you get, where it's something you've got to do in front of your parents on a daily basis so that- Well, and for us, that was certainly, I'm sure, part of it, but we were also taught, and I believed, that if I didn't witness to whoever I came in contact with, and that person were to die that day or die shortly after, that their blood would be on my hands- Oof ...

April Ajoy because I didn't save their soul. Ah. Or I didn't at least plant a seed. As long as you could say, "Jesus loves you," or plant some sort of seed, you could wipe your hands of it and be clear. But if not... I had a good childhood. My parents were- ... really great parents. But the ideology, which wasn't really my parents' fault because they were indoctrinated, too. It's just a vicious cycle. But it was a really- Not fun in the mind to constantly, especially once I got to a certain age, like middle school or high school, and I started realizing that proselytizing isn't cool. So I started witnessing less. Mm-hmm. And then I would feel so guilty every time I didn't witness, and I would just pray like, "Oh, I hope that person doesn't die today, and then they go to hell and it's my fault." Oh, geez.

Dan Beecher It's such a mind-bending thing, and there's a cruelty to it, to put that much pressure on anyone, let alone a child. The cognitive dissonance of, Jesus is love, but these people might all have eternal consequences, and it would be my fault, and that just feels so opposite from each other.

April Ajoy Well, and that's part of the cognitive dissonance, that you can believe that God loves us unconditionally, and then also believe God will send you to hell for eternity if you don't believe the right things. Yeah. And in this world, in a Christian nationalist ideology, white evangelicalism, fundamentalist, whatever you want to call it, it's conditioned on having the right beliefs. They honestly could care less what you actually do- Mm ... as long as your beliefs line up, which I think is one reason why they can dismiss so many of Donald Trump's sins- Mm ... because he's giving them power and lining up with their beliefs, at least verbally. Yeah. And it's the same thing with, just look at what they're doing with Russell Brand right now. I don't know if you've seen, he has publicly converted to Christianity- Right ... while in an active, ongoing assault allegations against him. Right. But he went on Tucker Carlson, and the in-group of right-wing Christianity has welcomed him in despite his bad behaviors because he is now aligned theologically- Yeah ... and ideologically with them. Whereas someone like me, who, or y'all probably, too- Mm-hmm ... who are just progressive and ideologically we line up differently in beliefs, but we're squeaky clean. I've never assaulted anybody. I don't have any allegations against me. I still love Jesus. I still identify a Christian, just progressive, but in their minds, I'm a heretic. I'm a false prophet. Yeah. I'm under demonic influence, and I cannot be welcomed into those circles, and it's solely based on belief. Yeah.

Dan McClellan And that's something we see all over Christianity, at least public Christianity today, is it's all about structuring power and values and boundaries. Mm-hmm. It's not necessarily about following Jesus. It's not following the lamb slaughtered. It is trying to promote rather, the conquering, riding in on a white horse with a sword drenched in blood Jesus. Storm the Capitol Jesus- Mm-hmm ... rather than love your neighbor Jesus. Although, I noticed there was a story you also told toward the end of the book that reminded me of something that happened in my own life, and contributed to you saying you're still trying to work through your relationship with your father or your father's legacy. But you said you came to him one time when you were a child and said, "I get it now. Boys preach and girls sing, which is why you preach and Mommy and I sing." And in a shocking turn of events, your father did not say that a girl. What did your father say?

April Ajoy Yeah, I was young, maybe four or five, and he got down on his knee, eye level with me, and looked me in the eye, and he was like, "No, April, that's not right. Girls can preach." And he said, "If you want to be a preacher, you be a preacher and don't let any man tell you you can't do something just because you're a girl." Wow. It was a very interesting world to live in because I felt very empowered from my immediate family, and my dad always like, "You can do whatever you want. You can be president. You can do it." He was very much a feminist when it came to me, and he believed in female pastors. But at the same time, the church at large, I never saw a female pastor. Right. Except for maybe Joyce Meyer on TV. So I was getting one message at home and a different message from the church at large. But I do really believe, and another thing that my dad always taught me was to always stand up for what you believe is right, whatever consequences may come. And to my dad's credit, even though he perpetuated some harmful ideologies and then passed that down to me, he was a true believer, and really believed what he was doing and believed that he was doing the right thing, and he always stood up for what he believed was right. He even went against the church sometimes, and lost meetings, lost some different things because people didn't like what he was saying. And so without having that empowerment from my dad, I don't know if I would've had the courage to, once I realized things were wrong, to speak out against it. And that was one reason I dedicated my book to my dad, too, because I think he's passed now, so he hasn't gone through the last 12 or 13 years of life experience with us. That included a lot of huge things. One of my brothers came out as gay. So I think he'd be proud of me. But it's been a difficult journey just reconciling ... his legacy because when he died, we were on the same page. So I've never been in a relationship with my dad, where we disagreed. And I know him in 2011 when he passed, would disagree with me now. But I also know he was a good person. He meant well. Yeah. Which doesn't negate harm, but if anything, it just keeps me grounded to know that even the far-right people who are causing so much harm, and I'm not talking about the people at the top, but just your average everyday churchgoer who also believes that they're just doing the right thing because everyone around them is telling them- Right ... that this is biblical values and we've got to fight for God and all these things. I can hold some grace for them because I know where I came from and if anything, it just gives me hope. Well, they can change, too. I changed. They can change. And just to try to hold them in just more nuance than just pure evil. Because I think no one's really pure evil. We all have- Yeah ... nuance.

Dan Beecher So I think, one of the things that's going to be tricky about this conversation, because we do have to get to Christian nationalism as a concept, because that's a big part of the story of your book. One of the things that people often get very uncomfortable about is when shows that are dedicated to religion or religious ideas delve into the political. But you mentioned it earlier, you said there was no line to blur. Literally it was, if you're a good Christian, you are a Republican, and there's no median point that separates those in the worldview that you grew up with. So talk a little bit about what led you to question all of that, and what led you on that journey to start disagreeing with the theology that you were raised with. Sure. Also a big question.

April Ajoy I don't know how detailed to get.

Dan Beecher Well, if it's too detailed, people can buy the book. They can read it. It's fine.

Dan McClellan Here's a good segue, though. You talked about your dad passing in 2011, not knowing how he would respond maybe to seeing things now, but your mom was still there. Mm-hmm. And your mom changed somewhat. Yeah. And you have a story about your mom being confronted with problems with the church as a result of the financial arrangement that had been set up before your father passed, and then after he passed. That might be a good stepping stone into discussing how entrenched some of these Christian nationalism is within these worldviews. Sure.

April Ajoy Yeah, so before my dad had passed, there was a contract where a larger church that had multiple campuses basically bought the church building and the church from my parents. And as part of the deal, my dad would receive, as a pastor emeritus, a certain amount of money for the rest of his life, and then if he were to die, that would be passed to my mom until she died. So that contract was in place and my dad died, which honestly, my dad dying was also a huge part in my changing my beliefs. Mm. Because when you're in this world, your theology is so intertwined with your politics that when you start to question one, which for me was name it and claim it, faith healing, because we were Pentecostal- Mm ... that you just simultaneously start questioning the other because they're very conflated. So this pastor started paying my mom as usual, and it was fine for several years. And then Donald Trump gets elected president, and I'll say too, Donald Trump coming on the scene was a big wake-up call for me as well, because even though I was still very Republican at the time when he started running in the primary, I was like, "There's no way. There's no way we're going to elect this guy. He's so immoral." Obviously immoral. Because I remember what they said about Bill Clinton. If he would lie- Right ... to his wife, what- Yeah ... he'd do so much worse to the American people. He'll cheat- That character matters ... on the American people, yeah. If he cheats- Yeah ... on his wife, he'll cheat on the American people- Yes ... which is what the GOP was convinced of. Yes, character matters was ingrained. Yeah. Yeah. And so I'm like, "Okay, well, clearly we don't believe that anymore." Right. And not just, they're like, "Well, we're voting for a president, not a pastor." I'm like, "You've never said that before."

Dan McClellan That's-- Yeah. Yeah.

April Ajoy So anyway, so that was a wake-up call. I don't need to go into that. We all know that story. But in the process of Trump's presidency, my mom, her and I are very close and my brother came out and she went on a journey to becoming queer, accepting on behalf of her son, just like I did for my brother. And so she started questioning things, and she didn't understand the evangelical support of Trump either. She technically voted for him in 2016, but she held her nose because she was still like, "Well, I'm a Christian, I got to vote Republican." Which dies hard, that is hard to kill. Mm. But so over those next few years, the pastor that was over the church that was paying my mom, just started sending her very conspiracy-type videos, some QAnon related, some about Trump being God's chosen, Trump's this hero of the faith, that Christians are being persecuted. When Joe Biden came on the scene and ran, that he's... I don't know if he said he was the Antichrist, but he definitely ran in circles of people that said he was the Antichrist. And so, my mom was just like, "No." But she was nice, so she kind of would appease him and text back, like, "Oh, interesting." Because he's financially paying her. Right. And at one point, you could tell he was clearly wanting her and us, because he sent her a three-part DVD series about the end of the world that he wanted her to watch privately with her three adult children who lived in different states, and then wanted her to destroy the DVDs afterwards. Whoa! That's- I know.

Dan Beecher That feels a little red flaggy.

Dan McClellan I'm just going to say it. Yeah, I know.

April Ajoy It was odd. But yeah. So anyway, and then my mom actually went with me to a few Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020, and I made the cardinal sin where I admitted that I was going to vote for Joe Biden, a Democrat. And so he had text her and was like, "Can I have your daughter's number? I would love to tell her all the things that Trump's done for the Black people." And this pastor is white, by the way, if you couldn't tell. And I was like, "Mom, do not give him my number. I have no interest." So he's trying to get our whole family to vote for Trump. For whatever reason, it really mattered to him that we vote for Donald Trump. And, so the day of the election, after we all voted, literally the day of the election, later that day, he texts my mom and asked her who she voted for. And at this point, my mom was like, "I could not vote for Donald Trump," but she still couldn't vote for the Democrat. So she literally just, I think she wrote in John Kasich or something. So she writes this long... And my mom, if you meet her, she is the sweetest, kindest human on the planet. She would never hurt a fly. So she writes this long thing. She's like, "Well, I just felt I couldn't really vote for either candidate, so I wrote in someone, but I did vote for some local conservatives and blah, blah, blah. I just felt like after I really prayed about it, blah." She's being sweet. So then immediately he texts back and he's like, "Will you call me? We need to discuss your financial support." And we had kind of seen the writing on the wall. There had been some signs that he might be leaning that way. And so she had talked to her lawyer, and the lawyer's like, "Hey, if you ever discuss your contract, get it in writing. Don't talk on the phone." And so she asked him, "Well, can you just email it to me?" Blah, blah, blah. And he was like, "Well, since you won't talk to me on the phone, I think it's best that we end your financial support." And my mom was like, "Over who I voted?" And so technically, he never specified that that was the reason, but it literally context-wise, you can- So yeah. Anyway, so my mom was a widow, which is one of the classes that Jesus is like, "Take care of the poor, the orphaned, the widow." Right. And here's a pastor who literally was like, "Nah, I'm not going to take care of this widow anymore because she didn't vote for Donald Trump." Allegedly.

Dan Beecher That's crazy.

Dan McClellan That is- Yeah. Yikes ...

Dan Beecher and infuriating, too. So often we see with, and your book is riddled with stories of this, people who say they believe one thing, but they believe, like Dan said, the Jesus of storming the Capitol and not the Jesus of- Mm-hmm ... of the Beatitudes or whatever. Yeah.

Dan McClellan Well, when the foundation is structuring power, and this is a unique opportunity to have an awful lot of proximity to the most power on the planet. They've got to prioritize. Yeah. And so, yeah. The taking care of the poor and the orphan and the widow fades to the background when- Mm-hmm ... we need somebody who's going to get rid of Roe v. Wade. An identity marker entirely generated in the 1970s precisely for the sake of arrogating political power, and in the '70s, because they wanted to go back to being able to keep Black students out of universities like Bob Jones University and other universities like that. Yeah. Yeah, there's such a bizarre conflation of political power and religious ideologies there. One very clearly has priority over the other these days.

April Ajoy Well, and it was very eye-opening for me, in 2016, because I voted third party in 2016, because I also had not yet felt I could vote for a demon rat, as we like to call them. But just the amount of hate that I received from people I knew from church because I wouldn't vote for Trump, was very eye-opening for me because suddenly, just because I disagreed on this one thing, which was not even a theological issue, it was just, I don't think my own morals and integrity won't let me vote for a man like that. Yeah. And they were like, "No, you're thwarting the will of God." Someone literally said that to me. Someone said that I was disappointing my late father and that God would judge me. Oh my gosh. And I'm like, honestly, for the first Trump presidency, I felt like I was just being gaslit every day because we were still going to a white evangelical church, and I felt the Christianese dies hard, but I really felt in my spirit, I'm like, "This is wrong. We should not be celebrating this man and championing this man as some hero of the faith." But any time I would say something about it, I was the one that was demonized. Yeah. I was ousted so quickly. My lifelong achievements in the evangelical world, I was a producer for CBN. I wrote my own Christian nationalist song and sang it on The Jim Bakker Show. I had dedicated my entire life to making America a Christian nation and to spreading the gospel, and it was immediately completely discounted when I didn't vote for Donald Trump. And that was really eye-opening for me, just to realize how much of- My world, my version of Christianity had become about group think and not about actually following the teachings of Jesus. Yeah.