Let's Talk About: The New American Theocracy

What if the rise of Christian nationalism in the U.S. isn’t just political—but the fruit of a long, coordinated theological strategy?

In this episode of Freestyle Theology, Dr. Bradley Melle sits down with Margaret Bronson, the force behind Deconstruction Doulas, to uncover the disturbing roots of America’s new religious extremism. From growing up in a high-control cult to witnessing those same ideas go mainstream, Margaret brings both lived experience and prophetic insight into what’s really happening beneath the surface of today’s culture wars.

Together, we explore:

• What “theonomy” is—and how it’s reshaping American politics
• The disturbing return of Christendom logic and crusader theology
• Why high-control religion thrives in times of cultural insecurity
• How spiritual abuse warps the body, mind, and soul
• Why cult logic is quietly infiltrating churches, schools, and legislation
• What we can learn from people escaping these systems—and how to help

Whether you’re tracking Project 2025, rethinking your relationship with church, or trying to understand why so many Christians are choosing authoritarianism over compassion, this episode connects the theological dots behind today’s headlines—and reminds us why curiosity is the opposite of colonialism.

🎧 Listen now and join the conversation.
📬 Got thoughts? Email Brad at freestyletheology [at] gmail.com or DM @freestyletheology on Instagram.

🔗 Learn more about Margaret’s work or support her directly:
🌐 Website: www.deconstructiondoulas.com
❤️ Patreon: Deconstruction Doulas on Patreon
🙏 GoFundMe: Build a Survivor Care Network
📰 Article on Moscow, Idaho church community: Read here

Transcript

Speaker 03 0:00

Hey guys, welcome to a new episode of Freestyle Theology. I'm your host, Dr. Bradley Melle, historian of Christianity and culture. And today I am joined by my new friend, Margaret Bronson, who you might know better online as Deconstruction Doulas. And we had a chance to Connect this week and just realized we have a lot to talk about. We were aligned on a lot of things. And so I wanted to get her on and just talk through some of the big issues surrounding Christianity right now. So we are in very different places. You are coming from Missouri. Is that right?

Speaker 01 0:51

Yeah, Kansas City.

Speaker 03 0:53

And where did you where'd you grow up?

Speaker 01 0:55

I grew up outside of Philadelphia.

Speaker 04 0:58

Okay.

Unknown 0:58

All right.

Speaker 03 0:59

So we are, I'm, if you don't know, I'm in Hamilton, I'm near Toronto. So this is a cross-border conversation, even though it's very uncomfortable to cross literal borders right now. So why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are, what kind of stuff you're into, and we'll go from there.

Speaker 01 1:20

So I live in Kansas City with my husband and our four kids, and deconstruction is was never something anyone, I don't think anyone ever plans to do it, but it has ended up being like the story of my life. I, when I was like seven or eight years old, um, my family started going to what was a cult. Um, and so I was there until I was about. until I was a teenager and got married and then married into being an SBC pastor's wife. And that was like a really nice respite for a little while where I healed from a lot of the excesses of the cult that I grew up in, a lot of the lies and abuses. But then the cult that I grew up in showed up in the SBC and books that were written by Doug Wilson, who was the leader of our loose affiliation of churches, started showing up in our seminary and at the church. Anyway, it led to what has been pretty much my entire adult life has been trying to warn people and educate people away from theonomy.

Speaker 03 2:32

And what is theonomy, just for anyone who doesn't know?

Speaker 01 2:36

Yeah, so theonomy has got a couple of things going on, but the biggest thing is that they believe, they're post-millennial, so they believe that it is the Christian's job to essentially take Old Testament law and apply it to our country's And when I say Old Testament law, it's their very specific interpretation of Old Testament law, like stoning people for taking the Lord's name in vain kind of craziness.

Speaker 03 3:04

That one makes it?

Speaker 01 3:06

That one makes it.

Speaker 03 3:07

Usually people, you know, it's the like not wearing clothing of two types. I don't remember exactly what

Speaker 01 3:14

it is. Yeah, they don't care about that or the dietary stuff. Basically anything, their rule is, what they say their rule is that anything that wasn't like specifically addressed in the New Testament stays, but even that doesn't hold up. They're not very consistent. They just like to say that they are.

Speaker 03 3:31

Is it mostly, is it mostly sexual?

Speaker 01 3:33

It's yeah. It's like lots of sexual stuff. It's lots of very, see, this is where it's like, it's their interpretation. So gender like roles stuff. They're really big into like women not being in the military, like that kind of stuff. Stoning disobedient children, you know, lots of fun things, lots of high control. But they're doing this in an effort to usher in the millennium, usher in like Jesus's reign on earth.

Speaker 03 4:00

When Jesus can come and save everyone from these people.

Speaker 01 4:04

Yeah. And fun facts for those of us living in the US, our secretary of defense is part of this cult. And there's quite a few people who are higher up in this administration who are. So it's been this really bizarre situation where like, I grew up in this really niche, bizarre little community. And now it's just kind of,

Speaker 03 4:22

everywhere that's got to be in some ways like a living nightmare to you

Speaker 01 4:27

I've been quite triggered the last several months

Speaker 03 4:30

like to see those arguments that those books those figures on this national scale must just be yeah honestly like it must feel surreal

Speaker 01 4:40

it's it's been like yeah it's been a lot it's been a lot I don't know how else to say it it's been brutal

Speaker 03 4:50

yeah So when we are talking about faith, you know, deconstruction, you have lived sort of the worst that the evangelical tradition has to offer.

Speaker 01 5:04

Yeah, I mean, to be fair, the theonomists have always hated the evangelicals and... planned to essentially infiltrate them and turn them into theonomists and not evangelicals. And they've been largely successful in that. Like evangelicalism has always had its issues. But I think that the reason so many of us have this, like, wait a second, why are things different than how they were when I was growing up is because of the infiltration of my cult into evangelicalism. You know, we used to like believe that Jesus loved everybody, but a big piece of the theonomist belief is that the lost people, those who don't believe in Jesus are not lost. They are active enemies of God who have already been given every chance to believe in God and are like actively his enemies. And so it's actually wrong for us to engage with them because it's actually giving them too much credit for their position.

Speaker 03 5:59

Wow. Okay. So this actually is making a lot of sense then about, because when you say the theonomists are sort of against Jesus, evangelicals, you mean like against the premillennial dispensationalist tradition

Speaker 04 6:14

that

Speaker 03 6:15

we associate with like left behind and 90s, 2000s evangelicalism. Okay. But that's actually super helpful for me about when you said, if you're wondering why things are different now than they were even, let's say 20 years ago, that's the influence of this theonomist, is post-millennial. Is this like a form of restorationism?

Speaker 01 6:43

Yeah, yeah. Basically, they want to see Christians being, and again, their specific brand of Christian, as the only people who really get a say. They're the only moral people. They're the only people who get a vote.

Speaker 03 6:58

That is extremely terrifying. This actually dovetails with a lot of the stuff that I, a lot of the work that I do, which is there's a lot of people talking about Christian nationalism right now, obviously because it's wreaking such havoc in the U.S. and it's so everywhere all the time. Arguments and ideas that would have just been completely laughed out of public spaces and ignored are now having to be engaged with. which is, but you know, I talk about, I try to help people understand the ancient roots of Christian nationalism. So not it's more contemporary manifestations, but the pattern that exists in Western Christianity of Christians seeking power and control.

Speaker 00 7:52

Yeah.

Speaker 03 7:53

And a lot of that, you know, there's, there's very sort of stereotyped arguments that tend to come from You know, thinking about the Catholic Church in power, just kind of wanting to enrich itself and more like just a political corruption.

Speaker 00 8:10

Yeah.

Speaker 03 8:11

The scarier part isn't the political corruption, the overindulgence in wealth. And that's not the really scary part. The scary part is the ideologically driven need for control over society. And that, I argue, has ancient roots. But what you're saying is making... the specific kind of moment we're in way more clear to me.

Speaker 01 8:34

Yeah. And I think it has a lot of roots. I mean, it's a very American roots in the revolutionary war and the civil war. These tensions go way back in our, I know you're in Canada, but in our American history, um, the first, the 13 colonies, all of them had their own kind of religious, um, start. They were basically 13 different religious organizations at first. And what happens with the Revolutionary War and then the Constitutional Convention is that they decide that they're going to put the religion part over here and join civically for the betterment of all people. And there was this clash, this really, really stark clash between people who wanted to hold on to those religious underpinnings and didn't want to joined together as much. They wanted more states' rights, right? Like this is the buzzword. States' rights is really like, we want more control. We want to be able to say who's in and who's out for ourselves. And then in the Civil War, it happens again. And you have whole families being ripped apart at that point. People siding with the South and siding with the North. But it's really religious wars all along. It's this, you know, are we going to have the church married to the state? Or are we going to work really hard to put boundaries between that? And we're in another moment of that deciding factor. Separation between church and state has won historically in the end, but it's been bloody. It's been bloody. And so we'll have to see what happens now, but that's what's happening.

Speaker 03 10:14

Are you sort of thinking of the book, American Nations? Have you read that?

Speaker 01 10:20

I haven't read that. what I'm thinking of is two books in particular. One written by Doug Wilson himself. I think it's called On Slavery. And he basically makes a defense of the South of how they're the Christians. Listen, there's Christians on both sides. This is, I know you say this a lot in your work, but there's always Christians on both sides, like the civil rights movement, Christians on both sides, using the Bible to fight with each other, you know, civil war, same thing. And so he has this whole book about how the slavery that existed in the American South was the most beautiful picture of interracial relationships that have ever existed. And so it's this very like lost cause narrative, glorified, whitewashed version of the story And then the theonomists see themselves pretty much as like the successors to the Confederate movement. The second book that I think about is written by Gary North. It's called Conspiracy in Philadelphia. Probably very few people have ever read it. It's not well known, but it is a like seminal work for theonomists. And it's essentially saying that the constitution was a conspiracy to steal the like authority from God and give it to people, right? So that they see democracy as a sin because that's taking, instead of having a theocracy where God is the authority, now people are the authority. They're very anti-humanism, very anti-philanthropy and all that kind of stuff. And I think that's why people don't take it seriously because it seems insane because we're like, who would want that? That sounds terrible. Who wants to like destroy their neighbor's lives? But they have religious reasons that they feel justified in that.

Speaker 03 12:04

Yeah, I guess that's why so many people feel such a concern with religion and politics mixing at the highest level, at the levels of power and in the mechanisms of power, right? Yeah. ultimacy and urgency to battles and fights and conflicts that might be about things like resources and land and, you know, even pride and ego, all of that kind of thing, or vengeance sometimes. But it adds this absolute, urgent intensity to everything that can kind of make people I feel like it can it can push them into groupthink more easily. and into the mob mentality a little more easily. And it's weird. For a long time, I struggled against arguments that talked about how religion sort of fuels hatred. And I said, no, that's just human nature. It's not religion. But I'm starting to see it in a more complex way where the type of emotional states that religious fervor can put us into

Speaker 04 13:26

really

Speaker 03 13:27

can lead to It can lead to dehumanizing other people because you can claim the authority of God or the divine making that so. And so it's like it is it has to be really kept in check. Right.

Speaker 01 13:44

Yeah. Yeah. And oh, so many thoughts. One is like, I work a lot with abuse victims and you can say the same thing about how spiritual abuse works, right? Because spiritual abuse can be financial abuse, verbal abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, right? It can be any of those kinds of abuse, but then you add that spiritual layer and it's like, it just sends it into the stratosphere as far as like how it affects your, not just your body and your mind, but also like your soul, your psyche. Theonomy is like this perfect trap. I'm gonna try and flesh it out even more because it's very systematic. It is like a systematic cage that it puts around people. So first of all, it kind of grooms you with Calvinism and there are good Calvinists out there. I'm not saying, I'm not like here to poop on everyone who's reformed, but there's the very specific us versus them, like those who are Christians versus those who aren't mentality that happens, right? Like I said before, the lost are the enemies of God. They're not just people who are hurting in need of help and a savior. They're people who are actively aggressive towards God and choosing to hate him. But not just that, most other Christians are too. So if you don't believe Tulip or if you don't believe, you know, whatever the doctrines are, they're also not real Christians and they're actually worse than, people who are unbelievers because they're lying, right? So if you start out believing that people can be created to be vessels of wrath, that's like inherently dehumanizing, right? They never had the love of God. They weren't even like at their creation created with the love of God. They were created for destruction. And there's a degree of like numbing and dehumanization that happens.

Speaker 03 15:33

Like in the minds of a child in that hyper-Calvinist cult looking out at the world around them. Like they become numb to their neighbor.

Speaker 01 15:45

especially since apologetics are so deeply deeply like you need to be able to give an answer and so as kids in the cult we're like having to defend why it's loving for god to save some and not others well you know none of us deserve to be saved and so isn't it so loving that god saves some of us and loves some of us he doesn't like owe us that at all and so you just kind of like disciple yourself into not believing everyone's human you know and they say that um women weren't created in the image of God, they created an image of man, which is another layer of dehumanization. They do the same thing for people of color, right? They have a whole theology about why they are lesser human and have less of the image of God in them, Noah and Ham and all that stuff, right? It's disgusting, but they're teaching and discipling people into seeing different intersectionalities of people as not human.

Speaker 03 16:39

Creating a hierarchy that a child grows up believing is supported by the sacred book.

Speaker 00 16:47

Yeah.

Speaker 03 16:47

Right? And is deemed, whether you like it or not, this is just the way it is. Your emotions about it are just going to get in the way. Listen to the word, right?

Speaker 01 16:57

Yep. Yeah. And then like another layer of it is they're all very into classical education. Doug Wilson is a big part of why classical education is a thing again. And classical education's goal is to preserve Western civilization, to enshrine Western civilization and to pass it on to future generations. Well, what is Western civilization? Colonialism? Colonization? Yeah. And the theonomists have mastered religious colonization. So it's not just the going in and the political colonization or the cultural colonization. It's also taking, like you've talked about, I've seen you talk about this multiple times, but like whether it's India or the Celts or whoever, these different expressions of Christianity that Western Christianity came in and wiped out and colonized religiously. And they still do it today. Like, they take C.S. Lewis and they're trying to colonize C.S. Lewis and make him, you know, support all the things that they believe as theonomists. And it's like, he would, no.

Speaker 03 17:58

You know what the most ironic part about all of this is that when, and back in the 90s and 2000s, when, you know, evangelical Christians, especially were really losing their minds about postmodernism, which is really where the word deconstruction comes from, right? Like deconstruction comes from philosophers like Jacques Derrida about the breakdown of metanarratives and sort of spinning text into playing with text and you can make text mean what you want. And the ironic part about this is that approach to the Bible is the truly deconstructed approach where it's like playing with verses, paying, like making, like spinning new webs around tying things together to make things say what you want it to say, that's the true abandonment and ignoring of scripture. Those scholars out there who are more in the biblical critical mode, I find them to be more, they're much more honest. They're saying, you know what, this just didn't mean what it means today. It meant something different. And that might make us uncomfortable because it challenges how we, our assumptions, but Taking the text of the Bible, these words in this book, and kind of creating this mutant out of it that, again, resembles nothing of Jesus and how he moved through the world. Yeah, I just find that ironic. That's the real deconstruction.

Speaker 01 19:32

Yeah, that touches on, I think one of the biggest shifts early on in my deconstruction was understanding what it meant for the Bible to be meditation literature. The entire way that we're taught to interact with the Bible, whether you're in a theonomist cult or in evangelicalism, is memorize it. And it's like this, figure out what the assertions it's making are, and then without question, accept and live in light of them.

Speaker 03 20:03

Which also often means, say you believe these things and don't challenge them, even if you don't really believe it, that doesn't matter. What matters is what you officially sign your name to.

Speaker 01 20:14

And you're not even allowed to actually start to understand them because you can't ask the curious questions needed to get to a place of real understanding. That's

Speaker 03 20:25

right. Curiosity is very dangerous because it can lead you into the unknown, which is what it's supposed to do.

Speaker 01 20:31

Yeah. This is a part of why C.S. Lewis was like, my saving grace in a lot of ways because all of his like nonfiction books are like, what if it's like this? And then the next chapter would be like, well, what if it's like this? And it's a completely different thing. And to see him and be able to like, kind of like journey through that with him and come to a greater understanding of, you know, the different concepts and ideas, like the problem of pain or something like that, um, has been so, so, eye-opening and has transformed how I interact with not just the Bible, but like faith in general. I

Speaker 03 21:07

think there's a reason like looking at CS Lewis, because I know exactly what you mean. I had a similar experience with CS Lewis where it was like refreshingly alternative to the typical things I was hearing, you know, in youth group or at like the youth conferences. CS Lewis didn't sound anything like them. you know, like something like the great divorce. I now I'm seeing the great divorce is actually really bringing back an earlier sort of ambiguity around beliefs about the afterlife that marked Christianity for its first four centuries, where there was like debate and discussion and poetry. And it wasn't, no one claimed like certainty about anything. But I also noticed because in, you know, with the classical movement, I've had some exposure to it. And because I think it's because I study colonialism and like you mentioned, it always rubbed me the wrong way, even though I didn't know why. I was like, I get it. Classical schools, the ones that kind of we were around, you know, they talked about like wonder and stuff like that. And I loved that kind of language. But classical movement in general, when you study colonialism, it's like, I don't want Western civilization to continue as it has or to resurrect it. The reason I'm sitting in the forests of the Mississauga people is because of Western civilization conquering and eliminating people. And so before we can resurrect it and try to restore it, we need to reckon with why it has this tendency to keep doing this. Why, since the Romans, has there been a tendency to take, plunder, and, you know, completely replace culture? Like, why? Where does that come from?

Speaker 01 22:58

Yeah, and again, like the classical education stuff is discipling the students coming up through it in using the Bible to justify colonization over and over and over again. And then writing this mythos into, for us, American culture, history like for example the jamestown settlement the big myth from there is like if you don't work you don't eat and this is considered like some beautiful like american ideal that was enshrined and in my classical education was held up as like a value like a virtue you don't work you don't eat the american you know work ethic and whatever

Speaker 03 23:34

like that's how they how they reinterpret all the death that happened at jamestown

Speaker 01 23:40

they talk about it being like this is one of the principles that is in our early American history that starts us on this path of American excellence because we all work hard. And because we know if we don't work hard, we don't eat. And so we incentivize people to work hard. So we have this great American work ethic and we've been so successful. And I mean, now it's hard to keep with that lie because the economy is completely collapsing and everything. But for a long time, that was how they justified or said why we were so successful was because of this. And they said it was, you know, our religion. It was a Christian principle. And they denied anywhere in the Bible that says like, they just ignored all the parts where it was feed the poor and all the things.

Speaker 03 24:25

And I mean, that's also just really bad history. Like I taught a course on early North America and the idea that Jamestown represents hard work is like actually kind of funny because it's almost the opposite of its story. where they swept up all these beggars from England and shipped them over, and they didn't want to farm because they weren't farmers. And so everyone suffered for many years until they found tobacco, right? I just find that absurd.

Speaker 01 24:54

It's absurd.

Speaker 03 24:55

Yeah.

Speaker 01 24:56

Which is why they don't want anyone to read any other books. They ban everything.

Speaker 03 25:00

Man. I want to keep talking about this because this is blowing my mind.

Speaker 01 25:07

I think everyone's aware of the Christian nationalism, but like, that's like the populist version. That's like the, we didn't take, like, we didn't really educate ourselves on it. We're just kind of getting swept up in it. Theonomy sits underneath it and is the intellectual academic backbone of it. And if you don't understand theonomy, you're never going to understand Christian nationalism. You're going to keep being surprised and disappointed. not taking them seriously enough and ending up you know where we're at which is like we all thought it was a joke for a long time we didn't take it seriously and here we are

Speaker 03 25:39

but for you personally you've always had to take it seriously like this is the that's the intellectual environment you were raised in now as a woman i'm assuming you weren't they weren't like getting involved in the debates and you know you were just learning is that kind of accurate

Speaker 01 25:56

So it's a caste system, like all good high control religions. And so the only way to potentially elevate your status, not that that's what I was thinking. I was just neurodivergent and didn't know how to keep my mouth shut. But I did put myself on a higher caste level because I was so good at articulating the rhetoric and engaging with it and talking about it and bringing more, like connecting dots. And then I started connecting dots they didn't want me to connect. And then I went like way off the caste system. But... There's another intersectionality here, which is the misogyny that is such a big part of this Christian nationalist movement. And so for me, that was the first part that I experienced and saw. There was many situations within my church and people that I knew within the broader community, father on daughter, pastor on girl in the congregation or boy in the congregation, sibling against sibling sexual abuse. And you know, you would, you would bring it forward. You go, we follow the appropriate Matthew 18 and, you know, go to the elders and all the things. And every single time nothing would happen. The, um, the culprits would be lionized. They would actually be like treated better and given more respect. And the victims would be absolutely villainized, shamed, shunned, almost the point of erasure um and as i've gotten older and i've started to like really dig into the material it took a long time to be able to read their books um but they first of all um don't believe that men can hold each other accountable that's one of the things they hate about evangelicalism they hate accountability partners they think it's ridiculous that um they actually think it's sinful for a man to hold another man accountable because he's replacing the holy spirit

Speaker 03 27:52

So it's kind of like each man is the king of his little world and no one but God can tell him what to do.

Speaker 01 28:01

Unless it's a public sin. But how do you define a public sin? If it happens at home, that's not public. If it happens in the church, that's not public. They're all business owners. So if it happens in their own Christian business, that's not public. So what's a public sin?

Speaker 03 28:14

And the public is the place where you would hide your sins the most.

Speaker 01 28:20

Exactly, exactly. And so you have, oh, also they're very much anti-teetotalers, right? So they love alcohol. They're all into the beer and the cigars and stuff, which is whatever. But the alcoholism that runs through these men is insane. You can see it again in our Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, who's drinking during press conferences at like four o'clock in the afternoon. And we know what, you know, alcoholism does to family life. And so that doesn't get checked. Pastors can't speak to

Speaker 03 28:54

that. You mix alcoholism and sort of the breakdown of inhibitions with a subculture where you're allowed to basically abuse your wife and children. And that is kind of like the worst possible combo I can think of.

Speaker 01 29:11

so this like probably will be like, oh my gosh, that's so extreme, but I don't know how it's anything other than an abuser support club at a certain point, you know, because it's this perfect little insulated. They've, it's a perfect trap. That's what I keep calling it. It's the perfect trap. You fall into it. There's really no getting out of it. If you're, especially if you're a woman, if you're married to these men, the children are not well.

Speaker 03 29:36

So you see the trajectory of, of Christian nationalism where it's headed, you see it headed like, are these theonomists? Is that how they would identify?

Speaker 01 29:49

Yeah, theonomy.

Speaker 03 29:52

So that means like rule of God, right? Or law of God. Do you see them, like, are these the architects of Project 2025? Are these the people like that you see really pulling the strings?

Speaker 01 30:11

Yeah. So Project 2025 is a collaboration between a couple religious fanatical groups. One is the Theonomists. One is Opus Dei, the Catholics. So that's the alt-right Catholics. And then there's also a charismatic reformed movement called the New Apostolic something. They're in it. So I think it's several different religious groups. But the Theonomists are like, yeah, Chalcedon Foundation, is pretty in the heritage foundation those two are really big in the theonomy movement and or the actual like names attached with the project 2025

Speaker 03 30:47

wow so this is like a lot more this is not a fringe thing now

Speaker 01 30:53

okay listen it's never been fringe because billy graham is part of it Like, he was never a theonomist. He never would have called himself a theonomist, but he was friends with them. And John Piper is friends with them. Like, if you think two of the biggest Christian names in the last hundred years for Protestants, John Piper and Billy Graham have got to be it. And they're, like, collaborating with. Francis Schaeffer took one of the theonomist books and basically plagiarized the whole thing. Like, it's been hugely, deeply part of American Christianity for a long time.

Speaker 03 31:26

See, I've... Okay, this is interesting because I've wondered... you know, in the reformed world, especially the neo-Calvinist world, less like the John Piper and that neo-Calvinism, but more the Dutch neo-Calvinism. People like John Piper, Bavink, Ritterbos, figures like that were really influential in kind of the circles I was in. I would talk a lot about, or even someone like a Leslie Newbigin, they would talk about the public square and the need to like that faith isn't just private. It's for all of life, et cetera. And I really liked that because I was coming out of a dualism where Christianity was just about, this is, this is me. How many years ago, you know, like 20, 15, 20 years ago, coming out of that evangelical narrow dualism and starting to you know, get excited about the fact that God was about restoring creation. But there were certain elements that have always made me feel kind of like uncomfortable. Like, so wait, are we supposed to like try to acquire power in order to make like the gospel come to bear on culture? Because I never was interested in that. That seemed like a recipe for disaster. I liked the idea of, you know, what does it mean to follow Christ and own a business, right? I liked that. I liked thinking about that and wondering like, how would you do that differently in a way that blesses your neighbor, et cetera. But now, now I'm hearing sort of some of the figures you're talking about. I'm wondering if some of the people who are, who become interested in this all of life paradigm of Christianity, which has a lot of good in it could easily hold over into this theonomy and sort of resurrecting this old paradigm. the old Christendom idea, that what Christians need to do is kind of defeat the infidel and reclaim society, which deepens our bones as Western Christians.

Speaker 01 33:36

They talk about Christendom all the time.

Speaker 03 33:38

They

Speaker 01 33:40

don't believe in birth control, so they talk about outbreeding the infidel all the time.

Speaker 03 33:43

Actually use that word? Infidel? Mm-hmm.

Unknown 33:48

Whoa.

Speaker 01 33:49

I mean, they also use crusader crosses and stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 03 33:52

That's the code word of the crusades. Yep. What did you say there?

Speaker 01 33:56

They use crusader crosses in their arts and on their book covers and stuff like that. They want to bring back the knights, but specifically the crusader knights. At first, they'll think it's just like bringing back chivalry. They'll sell you on that. See, this is the thing. You're exactly right. They are really good at identifying actual problems, but that's how they get you, right? There are actual problems. Like, so for example, a lot of the people that I grew up with got sucked into the cult because they didn't feel confident in how to parent, how to be a good husband or wife, you know, World War II broke down the family structure, industrialization, whatever, urbanization, everything breaks down the family structure. Everyone's kind of feeling ill-equipped to do this thing. And this cult's like, hey, we're going to help you have like a really, really strong godly family, create generational wealth, have like good safety and thriving for your whole extended family. And you'll actually be able to bring more people into it. and create this safe place. And in theory, that's amazing. That's beautiful. But what comes with it is things like there's no such thing as marital rape. You can't use birth control. Daughters cannot leave their father's home until they get married. And so we have not just stay-at-home wives, but stay-at-home daughters. You're in your late 20s, early 30s, 40s, and you're still... Operating under your father's authority as a daughter, ironing his shirts, not allowed to get a job, not really much of a social life outside of your church.

Speaker 03 35:29

Wow. And that's what you knew growing up?

Speaker 01 35:35

No college. I mean, a lot of these women aren't allowed to have bank accounts or, you know, they're just very controlled.

Speaker 03 35:45

So what is... If you have to spell it out explicitly, what is the actual vision? Not the marketed messaging, but what is the actual vision of these architects, these theonomists? What is it that they imagine that they want to see come into fruition? What does society look like?

Speaker 01 36:09

So they are trying to create a new Eden that operates by... See, even this is hard to say because I don't think it's honest, but I'm going to be generous and say their understanding of what the Bible says, I think that's generous. I don't think it's a good faith attempt at interpreting the Bible at this point. But basically, they want to see the civil government run as a theocracy under the authority of God and delegated to a few... chosen men who you know whatever God speaks to more clearly or whatever and what they say is that that's going to bring about the blessings that you know are available if we follow the Old Testament law and so there will be flourishing and you know wealth and everything for everyone within it and the thing is that they've actually been kind of doing their own social experiment of this up in Moscow Idaho for the last 30, 40 years. That's like a really fun thing if you want to hyper fixate on and read into. They've taken over the city of Moscow, Idaho. They've like businesses that aren't part of the cults get fined out of existence. Can't buy a house in the town, really, if you're not part of a cult. Moscow, Idaho? Yeah. And

Speaker 03 37:36

I'm assuming that would be a scary place to visit.

Speaker 01 37:39

It is. And the story is coming out of like people trying to leave. All the realtors are cult realtors. And so they just won't sell your house. And so I had a friend who had like one of the nicest houses in Moscow, Idaho, and she just couldn't move. She couldn't leave. It took a very long time to get someone to buy. She finally had to do a private sale. and lost a lot of money on it. But like, that's the kind of situation. And so they've been perfecting their tactics up in Moscow, Idaho, that they are now bringing to bear in DC. They're actually church planting right now in Annapolis because there are so many lawmakers who are part of the cult that they're ready to plant a branch of this cult in Annapolis, right outside of DC.

Speaker 03 38:20

See, I saw stuff going around about like Doug Wilson's, whatever church planting in DC. And I wondered like, why is that? What's different about that? That seemed like business as usual, but now I see that it's different than I expected. That's helpful.

Speaker 01 38:39

If you do some research into Moscow, maybe we can put some links in the show notes or something because you can get an idea of like what the end goal for DC slash the country slash the world is.

Speaker 03 38:50

So why do you think that there's, why are these theonomists succeeding? Where is the rejection of this and just moving in a different direction?

Speaker 01 39:04

They have mastered the art of finding the thing that people are mad about that they can twist and use for their benefit. So there are legitimate issues with the border that we should have adult rational conversations about. But instead of doing that, we're just going to say, this group of people here, all of your concerns are fully valid. And we're also going to now spend 15 years spiritualizing those and grooming you to dehumanize these people and not just look at the crime or the whatever, but actually just now you're just dehumanizing the people. And we've gotten to this point. And evangelicalism, and particularly, I would say like, I don't know, maybe this isn't even fair anymore because there's a lot of young people too, but like boomer evangelicals, they, I don't, I see, the thing is I keep thinking, oh, this will be too far. Now the cult will have shown their true colors too much and people will be like, wait a second, I'm not in this. But what I keep seeing is Christian nationalists just doubling down and accepting it more. And that's been hard to watch because I just keep thinking, surely they've shown enough of their evil and cruelty at this point

Speaker 03 40:16

that people will just say enough.

Speaker 01 40:19

Yeah. And there are people waking up, like there are for sure people waking up to it, but it's not enough. It needs to be a lot more.

Speaker 03 40:27

Yeah. Because now it's like, this isn't just an abusive private environment, right? Like America has tended to, you know, value for, for better or worse, like people being able to kind of privately, you know, form the associations they want, which is usually like, You know, it can lead to bad things, but it's also sort of the price of that free association, right? But now it's like, this isn't just a private matter of like a small community. That should be concerning enough. This is, I kind of am like imagining, like the image that's coming to my head is like a virus, right? a computer virus. Like I'm like seeing like one of those, you know, the robots from the matrix with their like tentacles. I'm imagining that like clicking into the American federal sort of machinations of power and mechanisms of power. And so I think it is a lot more serious now than it was.

Speaker 01 41:28

Yeah, it is. I mean, it's crazy to see some of these laws that they're trying to pass the bills they're trying to pass. And it's like, That was a cult rule. That's literally how it was in the cults. And everyone in the normal churches thought that was crazy. But now it's just all very confusing and disorienting. I also think another big piece to understand about the theonomists is discipline. So one of their big things is the Christian family. The headship, you know, the dad calls all the shots, right? The wife's under him and the kids are under them. But I mean, there's even things like moms should stop teaching their sons at 13 or their sons will end up effeminate.

Speaker 03 42:10

If moms teach their sons what?

Speaker 01 42:13

Like anything. Like basically the moms should be hands off with their sons and not really like turn them over to their fathers to parent at age 13 or they're going to end up effeminate.

Speaker 03 42:22

Is there a sense that like a teenage boy has authority over his mom?

Speaker 01 42:29

Oh, for sure.

Speaker 03 42:30

Really?

Speaker 01 42:30

Yeah. I mean, here's the thing. Here's a big piece of theonomy because it's, you know, you've talked about complementarianism and egalitarianism. Theonomy believes that not just husbands are authorities over their wives, but that all men are authorities over all women.

Speaker 03 42:44

Right. That's the

Speaker 01 42:45

stuff. Boys become men at 13 because that's when they want to hold on to something Jewish. That's like the one time they're like, let's hold that Jewish custom. They also believe that the age women or girls should get married should be reduced down to 14. These

Speaker 03 43:00

are the villains. This

Speaker 01 43:01

is the villains in every story. I know. I know. I'm like, they need a Transylvanian accent. And like, you know what I mean? Like, it's so comical, but it's for real. Okay, so the Christian family. So a big piece of it is discipline. So spanking, but specifically, the theonomists are really big into blanket training, which is where you essentially treat people a child as young as six months old, like Pavlov's dog, put them on a blanket. If they move off, you hit them till they learn. Like you're basically not just teaching them obedience, you're disconnecting a child from its body and from its attachment to its parent at six months old. You're fracturing that child's psyche and ability to feel safe. And so, you know, after that, it's like all trauma responses and, you know, anxious attachment or avoidant attachment. The families within theonomy are so dysfunctional and so broken. Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 03 44:05

See, this is what makes me, you know, this kind of the new, this has been being sown for a long time, but the distrust of sort of any kind of official bodies of knowledge has had such a destructive impact. Because what's amazing is just how much we know now about the body, about our physiological responses to trauma, about our psychological, like how we respond to high control, to abuse. Like we know so much. There's so much hope now that we can actually like start to untangle and counter and sort of outgrow some of our like biggest dysfunctions, right? And it would just be so nice if the majority of Christians in the West were in a place to say, in a receptive, curious place. But instead, and this is another thing I talk about quite a bit is like, My argument is that secularism arose because of the religious wars, because it was the third option for Catholic Protestant countries who could not get along. Right. And so I argue that that's secularism initially wasn't some bad guy. It filled a void for people saying, how are we supposed to live? But ever since that moment. Because. the Western Christians' default position was Christendom, was being in a position of power. For the last 400 years, one of the main trajectories of many, not all Christians, but many, has been reacting to any new developments, sort of demonizing them, and trying to claw our way back to power to some nostalgic mythic way it used to be. And so that's why when evolution was first postulated, I am convinced if evolution had been postulated in the 1200s, the main Christian minds would have been like, fascinating, let's talk about this, because they would have been in a secure position. But because evolution was postulated in the 1850s and 60s, which is one of the things that really shocked fundamentalism into existence, right? Because it felt threatened. I often think if Christians hadn't have been so ready to just respond with the trauma response, with defensiveness, we could have had some amazing new theological growth with evolution, right? Because I personally find it very nourishing and exciting and love to think about the spiritual implications of it all. Me too. I find it theologically enriching, not threatening. I feel like we're on this elementary school playground where everyone's egos are just... Actually, that's not fair. Kids' egos are often much less than... But these ego-driven movements of trying to fill this vacuum inside, this thirst for power over others, what we know about projection would be so helpful for people if they could just humble themselves to learn what the honest science is saying.

Speaker 01 47:42

Absolutely. Something my husband and I talk about a lot is like, you know you're gone pretty far off the deep end when common grace is closer to Jesus than your theology. What you can learn just through your senses and through science or whatever is closer to the heart of God and the character of God than what is being taught in the churches. Things are really, really wrong.

Speaker 03 48:10

Yeah. There's so much more to talk about. I want just to ask, because I feel like we might need another episode. At some point.

Speaker 04 48:20

Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 03 48:21

But this was so helpful, but I just want to, you know, your, your own story. There's probably a lot more to say on that, which I'd love to explore, but you help people who are coming out of this world. So I wondered if you could talk about that a little bit and maybe if there's some way we can support you.

Speaker 01 48:43

Awesome. Yeah. So yeah, I run a nonprofit called Deconstruction Doulas. And essentially the doulas part is really important to me. If you think about the difference between like a midwife and a doula, a midwife helps you like, like, well, you know, help you actually get through and make decisions and make decisions for you in medical, in like moments of medical necessity. They're really like, they're kind of guiding you. your birth process, right? A doula is not. A doula is there to help make sure that if you have any questions, they're answered, to feed you, to nourish you, to rub your back, to basically just be with you and care for you while the midwife is kind of caring for the baby and you, but like in a more like emergent state. There's like a second person there. And for me, that speaks to what's really important to me is like, I'm not here to tell you what to believe. I'm not here to make decisions for you, to tell you how fast to go. It's actually my job to help you get in touch with what is right for you. So a lot of us have been cut off from our intuition, from our gut. We've been told that it was evil, that it was going to lead us into danger. And so I work to help people learn that they can trust me. that still small voice that the Bible tells us about is there to lead us, right? But also the people that I work with are coming out of evangelicalism, out of Christian nationalism, maybe coming out of theonomy. But regardless, at this point, that is a high cost choice a lot of times. A lot of times you're going to lose your family, you're going to lose your church, you might even lose your job, you lose your entire support system. And That's, I think, a big piece of what keeps people in it, even when they would like to be, to divest from Christian nationalism, etc. There's, it's, you know, if you're like raising a couple of kids and, you know, living just above the poverty line or something like that, it's really hard to exist today without some sort of social, like, safety net.

Speaker 03 50:56

And when your health care in the U.S. is tied to employment often, right?

Speaker 01 51:00

Exactly. And so we work to not just build a community where we can, you know, encourage one another online, but also show up for each other in practical ways and kind of lots of like little families have come out of this community, whether they're just celebrating holidays together or moving to live in the same city together so that they can be each other's support systems. But Yeah, another big piece of what we do is the women who are deeply trapped in these situations. The ones who got married super young to some guy their dad chose who have had many children in a short amount of time, who never went to college, who never had any job experience, might not have a driver's license, definitely don't have a bank account, have no one who will support them getting out. We come alongside them We don't make any decisions for them. You can't make decisions for people in those situations. But when they're ready to make the decisions, if they are overwhelmed and they need someone to look up, you know, what are the shelters in the area or, you know, what are the resources in the area who need resume help or a couch to crash on for a while or whatever it is, we, you know, pay the legal fees to file for divorce or whatever is needed. We just find resources. tangible, practical ways to help them with that process and be there for them and find a safe place for them to live and then help them get on their feet.

Speaker 03 52:31

So that's one of the key things that deconstruction doulas do?

Speaker 00 52:36

Yeah.

Speaker 03 52:36

Wow. So then what that makes me think, though, is in the context you're in with a lot of churches sort of even flirting with these new ideas, I can imagine that some of the work you do, churches don't want to support you.

Speaker 01 52:51

No.

Speaker 03 52:52

Legal fees for divorce and stuff like that. Number one, usually on a church's budget line. Right. So that's got to

Speaker 01 53:00

be. They don't like that. Yeah. They're like, yeah, the things the churches say, I know they're like trying to be well-meaning, but it's like. It's just. There's almost like it's so confusing to me because, you know, I grew up attending these churches when I go before we entered the cult or, you know, at my cousin's church and my grandparents church. And they would talk about, you know, every pastor had a dysfunctional family story. It's not like it's like unknown that there's abusive family situations, but then there's just not anymore. And so, like, we shouldn't help women try to get away. It's so confusing to me.

Speaker 03 53:34

Yeah. And I mean, so. you sound like the perfect person to do this work. You grew up in the trenches and people are in the trenches and you know what it's like to live there and possibly what it takes to get out. But then with churches not running to support you, you need the support of just like people around the world, right?

Speaker 00 53:59

Yeah.

Speaker 01 54:00

Yeah. I mean...

Speaker 03 54:01

How do you do that?

Speaker 01 54:03

So we have a Patreon, which... You know, there's some benefits that come to that. There's a discord that comes with that where you can have conversations with other people who are kind of processing and working through similar, both religious and then also like life things. Like how do you parent after this? How do you, you know, heal from the trauma and all of that? And then we also have a GoFundMe. But yeah, you know, I kind of feel like. I haven't really had safety ever in my life. And so I know what it feels like to be alone and to be just trying to scramble and create some sort of social safety or a place to belong. And that's what this is. But at the same time, like you're right, we haven't really had it ourselves yet because we're kind of like, this is probably triggering to some people, but we're kind of like missionaries with no sending church, no support, no like peer network or whatever. And so, yeah, any amount of support is just, we're so grateful for. Yeah.

Speaker 03 55:02

Right. So you, okay. I just want to make it like super clear. If someone's like hearing this and is like, this is the kind of thing I want to support deconstruction doulas on Patreon, deconstruction doulas on GoFundMe and just networking with you, like getting, becoming like forming some kind of like We'll network. So that would be the best way for that. Is that to follow you on Instagram?

Speaker 01 55:31

Yeah, probably.

Speaker 03 55:32

Yeah. Also, we

Speaker 01 55:33

also have an email, um, list you can sign up for on our website. We get updates. Um, we are, so right now our podcast is on Patreon, but we are, um, moving over to, um, all the podcasting platforms, Spotify, Apple, all of that as well. So that's coming in the next couple of weeks.

Speaker 03 55:54

Oh, that's great. And is that also called Deconstruction Doulos?

Speaker 00 55:56

Yeah.

Speaker 03 55:57

Awesome. No, that makes it easy. So we'll put all these links in the show notes. And I mean, this has just been really... I don't know, I'm resonating a lot because I talk about the history of trauma in Christianity and why Christians produce high control environments and why those patterns come from. And to get to talk to you and meet somebody who's doing something about a lot of the after effects of the worst of Christianity and someone who your own personal faith journey must would be fascinating. I'd love to talk about that on another time, like where you're at. But yeah, I feel really like glad to have met you feel honored to be having this conversation. And I hope that we can connect you with more people and more support because I think this is just critical. And I bet there's not many people doing it.

Speaker 01 56:52

Yeah, not really. Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate it. And likewise, I'm really, really honored to know you.

Speaker 03 56:58

Excellent. Thanks for joining me today. And I am sure we'll, we'll have you back. And once you get your podcast out there on Apple and stuff, feel free to give me a call.

Speaker 01 57:12

I will. I will for sure.