Your Therapist Needs Therapy
Everyone needs help with their mental health, even mental health professionals. Join us as we have your therapist take a seat on the couch to talk about their own mental health journey!
Your Therapist Needs Therapy
Your Therapist Needs Therapy 115 - Irreverent Devotionals and Sacred Rebellion with The Transvangelical
This week Jeremy talks with Alycea, aka the Transvangelical, about deconstruction, biblical translation, and the ways Christianity has been weaponized against marginalized people. They unpack how purity culture, evangelical teachings, and figures like James Dobson shaped harmful beliefs about sex, gender, and power, while Alycea highlights how context and translation reveal very different, often liberating, readings of scripture. The conversation also touches on systemic oppression, media literacy, and Alycea’s irreverent new book On Your Knees: The 69 Day Irreverent Devotional, which reclaims devotionals with humor, critique, and honesty.
To pre-order a copy of the book, go to transvangelical.com/on-your-knees. You can find all of Alycea’s work over at transvangelical.com, including OnlyFans, Substack, and Patreon. All socials are @transvangelical, so give her a follow on Threads, Instagram, and BlueSky.
As always, Jeremy has all his practice info at Wellness with Jer, and you can find him on Instagram and YouTube. To show your love for the show you can pick up some merch! We appreciate support from likes, follows, and shares as well! None of my online work would be possible without my media maven Kenny, so check out their work as well at kenlingdesign.com
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Podcasts about therapy do not replace actual therapy, and listening to a podcast about therapy does not signify a therapeutic relationship.
If you or someone you know is in crisis please call or text the nationwide crisis line at 988, or text HELLO to 741741. The Trevor Project has a crisis line for LGBTQ+ young people that can be reached by texting 678678.
Transcript
Jeremy Schumacher: Hello and welcome to another edition of Your Therapist Needs Therapy. I'm your host Jeremy Schumacher, licensed marriage and family therapist. Today I am with a awesome gues health professional, a special guest episode we have talking about lots of things that I talk about with mental health professionals. We talk about religious trauma. We're going to talk about taking care of yourself and what it's like to be a marginalized community in these crazy fascist times that we are living through. I am joined today by Alia the transvangelical online
Jeremy Schumacher: if you're looking for their work. Alia, thanks for joining me today.
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Kalie Hargrove: I'm excited to be here and…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, we Yeah,…
Kalie Hargrove: yeah, talk about all that stuff.
Jeremy Schumacher: I've been following you online for a while.
Jeremy Schumacher: It's one of those things that I think I work a lot with folks in the LGBTQ plus community and…
Kalie Hargrove: Mhm. Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: it's such a important thing that I think folks can find community online in a way that they never could before. I remember I'm old enough to remember in times and also it's a weird space where these things are not super safe right now in America.
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: Can you talk a little bit about sort of what space you occupy in the deconstruction space and sort of the work that you're doing?
Kalie Hargrove: I think I probably occupy a weird space in deconstructionism just cuz so I am trans. I have done activism. I've been in the military. but also I'm a theologian and a linguist and translate the Bible. So I do a lot of examining texts that have been weaponized quite a bit and looking at them and most of what I do is pointing out the really funny stuff that definitely is never going to make it into your normal Bible translation.
Kalie Hargrove: there is a way to read the second to last verse of Acts to have it say that Paul was a sex worker. and it's the most legitimate translation of that sentence that is never going to show up in your standard Bible translation. So, …
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah,…
Kalie Hargrove: yeah, I occupy kind of an interesting space where I do take biblical study serious, but I don't take Christianity serious, if that makes sense.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: That sort of reading the Bible as a historical document, not a holy scripture.
Kalie Hargrove: Or I guess more specifically, this is getting technical, it's an ancient wisdom,…
Kalie Hargrove: a piece of wisdom that you're not supposed to take as history or anything like that. You're supposed to read it and be like, I have questions. Let's see if this can help me think about it. It's not supposed to give you answers. it's supposed to be there to help you process. That's what wisdom is.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: And modern Christianity looks to the Bible for being an answer book. And That's just simply not what ancient texts are for.
Jeremy Schumacher: This is a really broad question. What's sort of some of the feedback you get in the deconstruction space? Are people happy to find your work and find it really enlightening? Do you get more hate than people following you? what sort of Because deconstruction spaces are weird.
Jeremy Schumacher: I think there's a lot of
Kalie Hargrove: Pretty Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: church folk…
Jeremy Schumacher: who leave the church but keep those structures at place. So somebody who's doing work like you're doing questions a lot of that stuff
Kalie Hargrove: I mean, so I definitely push what people who are early in deconstruction and sometimes late in deconstruction would see as acceptable. for instance, I have an only fans a lot of people haven't worked through their feelings on pornography on what consensual sex means in a broader aspect. And often so there are a handful of people within the deconstruction space that I'm sure find me incredibly annoying and harmful. but then there's also people especially more people who have left Christianity almost entirely or…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: still kind of hanging on but where I think they appreciate what I do probably more. yeah, cuz I think the just being taking things that are traditional and systemic in flipping them to make light of them or to point out harmful ideologies and things like that is going to step on people's toes.
00:05:00
Kalie Hargrove: And so I bring up having only fans and…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: and making adult content like this ultimately an issue of bodily autonomy. do you feel another person can do with their body? And at the end of the day, if sex work is in fact a question of do people have bodily autonomy? and if you say sex work is wrong and nobody should do it, then you're saying that bodily autonomy isn't actually a value that you hold. and those are very difficult conversations because we are the families that James Dobson focused on we have been taught from such an early age that something like that is wrong is going to mess up your marriage that it's cheating that all these terrible things and…
Kalie Hargrove: all that mostly comes from James Dobson doing his own research by watching p*** himself and reporting back on it. which isn't real research. but…
Jeremy Schumacher: Correct. Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: but that has shaped so much of the discussion because ultimately a lot of that discussion comes from evangelicalism. It's not necessarily coming from informed research behind it. and so to break free of some of those things, the things that we're taught to not think about can be really difficult. Yeah. Mhm.
Jeremy Schumacher: And I think we're seeing that now.
Jeremy Schumacher: Especially I don't want to get super political here, but Dobson died not that long ago. and definitely in following some of the stuff the fallout with Charlie Kirk being shot is people who are protecting white supremacy and want to maintain those structures that feel very safe and comfortable. Not everybody in the deconstruction space is ready to untangle white supremacy from Christianity.
Jeremy Schumacher: Not everybody in those deconstruction spaces wants to question cishat norm normativity and monogamy as a default good thing, but they are ready to deconstruct, their fundamentalist faith. And so I think there are people who are at a lot of different places in these journeys. It is frustrating. I think to see…
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah. Mhm.
Jeremy Schumacher: how some people sort of land in I'm not religious anymore, but then protect the structures that make religion harmful.
Kalie Hargrove: And we are really seeing that especially in the wake of Charlie Kirk I tweeted about this earlier today is the people…
Kalie Hargrove: who are arguing that Charlie Kirk wasn't racist, most of them are white people. you can find black people saying that he wasn't and ultimately we could have a discussion on internalized depression, which is a real thing. however, most white people who are trying to say that Charlie Kirk wasn't racist,…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yep.
Kalie Hargrove: are really not dealing with Charlie Kirk. They're dealing with recognizing just the idea that they themselves might be racist. and that's the real issue is that there is an understanding that racism is wrong and that's a popular opinion within the United States. Not as popular as it should be. but people do think racism is wrong. However, the majority of people don't actually want to examine they don't want to understand systems theory first of all and how systemic issues actually add to the issues of racism in the United States. The same is true with queer phobia.
Kalie Hargrove: And the truth of the matter is if you remove power dynamics, if you remove systemic structures, if you remove basically all the context, yeah, you can listen to those Charlie Kirk the clips and be like, "No, this isn't racist." but you have to remove so much of the context behind it. And so in order to really examine that Charlie Kirk was either incredibly ignorant to the world around him and was saying those things or he actually knew what he was doing and he was using power dynamics and working a system of oppression to follows and to get people riled up.
00:10:00
Kalie Hargrove: And so the issue of whether or…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: not he was racist really more comes down to whether or not a person themselves feels racist because they haven't addressed systemic issues. And we're really like that's really what I'm kind of seeing. It's really upsetting to see how many people are unwilling to start asking those questions. and at the same time the silencing of people who are trying to point that out that's not a good thing. but ultimately I think especially for those on the left Charlie Kirk is going to be immoralized as a person of free speech to the people on the right. Not but just because they needed a symbol.
Kalie Hargrove: and in all actuality, Charlie Kirk is more beneficial to the right-wing dead than he was alive. and I think for us who are trying to work through harm reduction, we have to actually understand the fact that we're dealing with people understanding how the world works. conservativism, fundamentalism really tries to break everything down to the individual level of good or bad. And that's just simply not how the world works. the easiest way to understand it is honestly to go watch The Good Place, like all four seasons, because they nail it at the end. nobody can get positive points because there's systems in place that no matter what you do, you're going to end up with negative points. Yeah, that is kind of the world that we live in.
Kalie Hargrove: there are systems in place that we have to be able to understand in order to actually fix some of the issues that are going on.
Kalie Hargrove: And it's really like this is a moment of…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Right.
Kalie Hargrove: where we got to see that a lot of people have not taken that step yet.
Jeremy Schumacher: And I think if you're looking from the outside, I was raised fundamentalist evangelical, and so a lot of this stuff looks very familiar to me.
Jeremy Schumacher: and the people who are still fundamentalists don't surprise me at all. I don't expect them to change. But it is I think frustrating to see some of the deconstruction spaces follow the manufactured consent that happens with authoritarian regimes and…
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah. Mhm.
Jeremy Schumacher: not have a lot of media literacy around propaganda.
Jeremy Schumacher: Charlie Kirk, his work looks a lot like apologetics when you understand the rhetorical devices that apologetics uses to take a u a stance that isn't based on anything and…
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah. Mhm.
Jeremy Schumacher: make it sound smart. that was his career. This is not an episode about Charlie Kirk, though. I did that already. yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: We're still not far enough out from it for it to be a non-issue, so it's gonna come up. But I think the apologetics analogy is perfect. because apologetics really fundamentally needs to have little pieces of information that are either true or sound like they could be true and then build off of that while removing extra context. And that's really what Charlie Kirk did quite often.
Kalie Hargrove: And I think it's kind of telling he died while trying to say that trans violence was a bigger issue than what it actually is. He was trying to say that white male violence wasn't as big of a deal.
Kalie Hargrove: And he was literally in the middle of manufacturing misinformation about the violence of trans people when he died by a cis male.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: Presumably at time of recording the person that they believe did it is a sis male, but you Mhm.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. which is, always good for us to highlight. I think by the time I recorded my Charlie Kirk episode, I spent a lot of time talking about the Griper culture because it's something that I know a lot about following how people join cults as a religious trauma specialist.
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah. I mean,…
Jeremy Schumacher: And it doesn't seem a week and a half later that maybe he was super involved in the griper community, but again, we just don't know and probably won't for several months, if ever, because the FBI seems not great.
Kalie Hargrove: when both It's telling that Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson both look at the text messages that they released and…
Kalie Hargrove: they're saying, "No, this is fake." it's not just people on the left going,…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: "No, we don't want to believe this." This is like people on the right that are Yeah.
00:15:00
Jeremy Schumacher: I couldn't make myself do it,…
Kalie Hargrove: It's Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: but I almost posted a Tucker Carlson clip because he was saying this should not be used to pass restrictive free speech laws.
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah. I can't poke post this,…
Jeremy Schumacher: I was like, I can't post Tucker Carlson.
Kalie Hargrove: but I actually agree with him once.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. What a…
Jeremy Schumacher: what a terrible time to be alive that I'm agreeing with Tucker Carlson. Fuentes.
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah, I mean I think even Nick …
Kalie Hargrove: how you pronounce his last name. Yeah, he actually was saying something about it too.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: This is such a weird timeline. I am not a fan of this timeline.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. I'm gonna just do a hard pivot here…
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah, hard pivot is probably good.
Jeremy Schumacher: because I know again I followed you on online for a while.
Kalie Hargrove: We got to get off this topic.
Jeremy Schumacher: I know some of your background but do you mind sort of sharing a brief overview of sort of your deconstruction? because I think that will help people understand…
Jeremy Schumacher: if they're not familiar with your work sort of the expertise you bring to this and also the framework that you're coming from.
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah, I mean pretty simple is I have always loved studying the Bible and…
Kalie Hargrove: I went to school to study the Bible in context and to translate the ancient languages how and was taught that I should read parallel myths from other cultures from the same time periods and understand just understanding historical context. And so I just studied my way out of evangelicalism and…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Heat.
Kalie Hargrove: you start to realize a lot of things you're taught aren't necessarily backed up by the Bible. I like for instance one of the things that people bring up to say trans people like Jesus upholds gender binaries is Matthew 19 whenever Jesus is he created them male and female quotes Genesis 1 when you are taught to study the Bible in context your application of a passage needs to be directly from the purpose of the passage and the purpose
Kalie Hargrove: of that passage is about divorce. And so if you're going into any form of application that is outside marriage divorce dynamics, then now you're taking a passage out of context. So from the very be like something that basic being taken out of context like it is things start to click. and so really I studied my way out of evangelicalism. started to understand the Old Testament never condemns sex work and…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yep.
Kalie Hargrove: basically every sex worker in the Old Testament has a positive spin. the words that are that gets translated as prostitute one might not even mean a sex worker, but also least them because there's two. At least one of them really does not mean sex worker.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Okay.
Kalie Hargrove: It means somebody who does something sexually outside of the norm. and that could be sex work if you can prove that that was the norm. However, in ancient societies, sex work was kind of accepted. And so, the argument breaks down. you would have to be able to prove that, the ancient Israelites didn't approve of sex work and stood out from the rest of culture and that just isn't seen.
Kalie Hargrove: The only thing that you can say is the Levites weren't supposed to marry sex workers cuz they're supposed to marry virgins.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: And I'm pretty sure they're the only people that are told to that they have to marry a virgin in the Old Testament. which has to do with their priestly issues. I think that's still messed up, but the context is specific to a group of people who are supposed to be like the tribe that are the priests. That's not everybody. so to use that as a means of condemning something, it's ex exogetically dishonest.
Kalie Hargrove: And it is literally twisting scripture to fit your own ideology. And so whenever I say that I studied my way out of it, that's what I mean. I took the time to study these topics, to translate passages,…
Kalie Hargrove: to read a lot of books on ancient history to come to these conclusions. I did more work deconstructing than most pastors do to become a pastor. So, …
00:20:00
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: part of that is Bible stuff is my autistic focus and I just have to study it. It Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. the number of people who deconstruct while studying theology at a high level is so much higher than people realize. I think it's a easy sort of handwaving tactic that religious folks use to say that people who deconstruct never really believed.
Jeremy Schumacher: And I probably probably have four or…
Jeremy Schumacher: five people on the podcast not a religious trauma podcast who deconstructed while studying at seminary or working on a theology degree of some sort. And it's again I think depending on…
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah. Mhm.
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: what version of fundamentalism or evangelicalism you are not given a lot of information. I was raised Lutheran. and so I had worlds history classes that were apologetics classes,…
Jeremy Schumacher: and it's one of those things where you talk about studying the ancient cultures, there's a whitewashing that certainly happens, at least in my world of evangelicalism where I was raised,…
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah. Mhm.
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: that we didn't study or…
Kalie Hargrove: Absolutely. Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: learn about any of the ancient culture. We just looked at what was in the Bible and had sort of this whitewashed through the King James version.
Jeremy Schumacher: I learned the NIV, but not studying where these translations come from or…
Jeremy Schumacher: how they came to be, right?
Kalie Hargrove: And just an FYI for people…
Kalie Hargrove: who still read the Bible, a translation, it's not the translator who has the final say on what's published. It's the editors and the theologians that are on the board. They have the final and so actual translators tend to hate translations. but to your point whenever it comes to whitewashing ancient history a lot of that actually goes into how western society views ancient history. there's a reason why we make fun of they were roommates whenever they're clearly in a samesex relationship.
Kalie Hargrove: But we've done that with ancient history and…
Jeremy Schumacher: Mhm.
Kalie Hargrove: we do that because it brings up very unpleasant theological views that you can't really ignore. So for instance the relationship between David and Jonathan, people have called that samesex relationship for a long time and evangelicals will always say no that wasn't it. the issue is the language of loving another man more than the love of a woman is a historical phrase for that time period of samesex relationships. the story of Gilgamesh is a love story between two men. it's more complicated than that, but the relationship there is a love story. And we have tried a lot of people have said, we can't say that because whatever reasons really comes down to…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Right.
Kalie Hargrove: because Christianity doesn't want that to be a norm." But the more that we're finding out is the more that we learn about ancient cultures is that homosexuality was practiced in the ancient world quite a bit and even celebrated in a lot of cultures. the issue is that we put so much emphasis on relationships in connection to marriage that we focus we miss the fact that marriage actually wasn't about love and relationship in for most of human history. It was about an agreement between two families.
Kalie Hargrove: And it was more about maintaining a genealogy and…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Great.
Kalie Hargrove: a legacy. And It wasn't about relationship. It was literally about combining two families and maintaining the lines of the male figures. So because of that, romantic relationships, especially between two men, would not have been recognized as a marriage because that's not what marriage is for. Marriage isn't about relationship. it's about propertyhood and it's about maintaining a lineage. And also relationships between women wouldn't have been viewed as anything really because the, lineage doesn't go through women.
00:25:00
Kalie Hargrove: property does not go through women. So it's not talked about in the same way. But because we in a modern society have such an emphasis on the relationship of marriage, we completely miss the fact that marriage back…
Kalie Hargrove: and marriage what we have today very different. We use the same words…
Jeremy Schumacher: Right. Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: but they mean very different things.
Jeremy Schumacher: And I think the church very specifically doesn't want to enter the realm of monogamy is a social construct and…
Jeremy Schumacher: wasn't really ever a norm in history. So, not only just different sexuality in the Bible,…
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah. No,…
Kalie Hargrove: it's and…
Jeremy Schumacher: but also monogamy is a pretty late construct that we've tacked on. Great.
Kalie Hargrove: and honestly that comes a lot more from Roman culture of monogamy that wasn't necessarily monogamous. It was more of legal monogamy. and Christianity became romanized very quickly and picked up on some of those things. And the thing is 2,000 years a basic idea can become a full theological point that people hold to very strongly. For instance, the only evidence against same-sex relationships from the first couple centuries are all about the predatory relationships of dominant men using that as a power power dynamic over other men to maintain a hierarchy through sexual violence.
Kalie Hargrove: And basically the church has taken,…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: hey, you shouldn't use sexual violence against people of the same sex. We've taken that to mean no homosexuality ever. And that's overstepping the theology back then and also very much reading into the text because the text really does not outright condemn same-sex relationships. And that understanding comes very late. and really the emphasis on that came from the later basically the emphasis on the sinful nature of homosexuality. Didn't grasp the church too much until we started colonizing other places and finding out that other cultures have different sexual and gender views.
Kalie Hargrove: And we needed a justification from our enlightenment to say that we're better. this is the way civilization is supposed to work. And so we started to highly emphasize the sinfulness and…
Kalie Hargrove: and you can't see it because this is just audio. I'm doing air quotes. The sinfulness of homosexuality.
Jeremy Schumacher: Right. Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: in order to justify eradicating culture and eradicating people and our theology against homosexuality is more connected to our need to justify genocide than it is to our need to understand the Bible.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. The part of organized religion is all about colonialism.
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: And yeah,…
Kalie Hargrove:
Kalie Hargrove: It really is. Yeah, that's okay. Mhm.
Jeremy Schumacher: and again, I think that's just deeply uncomfortable for folks who even are in the deconstruction spaces.
Jeremy Schumacher: I'm and I don't prep very much. So, you didn't get any of these questions ahead of time cuz I don't plan them out ahead of time. I always just sort of follow where my curiosity goes. what do you think of some of the big names who do Bart Airman comes to mind? That's in my A lot of folks who are deconstructing and want to tackle their religious trauma find his work pretty early in their deconstruction space and he has some work that talks about translations and forged comes to mind as talking about some of Paul's works were they authentic or forgeries. is this source material valid or is it focusing more on the actual translation
Jeremy Schumacher: what the words would mean if we look at the full context?
Kalie Hargrove: I don't necessarily get in so much to …
Kalie Hargrove: where does it come from? Is this authentic or not? in some ways that does interesting It does interest me, but at the same time, I view my work more as dealing with Christianity as kind of an industrial complex, the Christian industrial complex. and whether or not something was written by Paul or…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: not, the majority of Christianity who weaponizes scripture believes that the canon is canon. And so, at the end of the day, when you're dealing with deconstructing, theology and stuff like that, it doesn't necessarily matter too much where it came from, but it is here. to me, it does matter to other people and I appreciate that work, but also at the same time, I think we need to deal with the fact that this is the final form apparently that we have come up with.
00:30:00
Kalie Hargrove: it's only about 500 years old we had a different final form for about 1100 years but the 66 that we have to in Protestant churches is our current final form and so those of us who want to see scripture deweaponized we do have to deal with the fact that this is what people see as canon and that doesn't necessarily change I do think that not seeing it as inherent is kind of really important regardless…
Jeremy Schumacher: Okay.
Kalie Hargrove: because Paul' write if you believe in inherency it doesn't matter who wrote it because it's supposed to be there like that that is thinking behind it. so to me it's a lot more important to work through in an arency and really the first step is recognizing it really doesn't matter if the Bible was written to be an errant right because we are not and at the end of the day communication is always about interpretation. we make sounds and communicate to each other and we understand it through a form of interpretation.
Kalie Hargrove: However, there is no perfect form of interpretation when I'm saying words to you. you are interpreting it based on similar context, but there might be something behind me that in my context you don't have in yours where you might get 99% of what I'm saying and that's good enough, but you're never getting that full 100%. Now, we take that and use that for understanding scripture. And you're dealing with a minimum 2,000-y old writings in languages that are no longer spoken, that have been understood through multiple different cultures, have been translated.
Kalie Hargrove: And even if the originals are inherent, it doesn't matter because we are unable to get that 100% interpretation regardless.
Kalie Hargrove: Honestly, we're probably lucky if we're going to get 50% at that time. And that's when we spend our lives truly like studying scripture. You might come to 50%.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: And I think so much of apologetics is built to defend that,…
Kalie Hargrove: Mhm. Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: that inherency is very important for fundamentalism to exist. because it's so easy to poke holes in once you sort of let go of the inherency thing. So I think that is a big battle for a lot of folks. And I'm a marriage therapist.
Jeremy Schumacher: When I'm doing couples therapy, folks know this happens regularly and I think I'm good at my job where I say something and whoever's in the room with me takes something different from it.
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: And again, it within a week's time, we have much different recollections of what that conversation looked like, let alone what the meaning was just on what words were said because our brain fills in so many gaps that communication and…
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: understanding is relational. And I think again that introduces some nuance and some complexity that not everybody wants to work with. Inherency sounds nice because you have somebody telling you what to think. You don't have to do all that heavy lifting. Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah. Or also it does allow extra authority to an interpretation. which is also really problematic because then you have a pastor get up on Sunday morning who knows how to understand it, but they're preaching a theology that they've been backing it up with scripture.
Kalie Hargrove: And it's a matter of power dynamics and manipulation at that point because what is being brought is still an interpretation but it is meant to be understood by the congregation as authoritative. and there might be some good stuff in…
Jeremy Schumacher: right? Yeah. Yep.
Kalie Hargrove: what a sermon says. However, it is still an imperfect interpretation that honestly could be completely wrong. It could be mostly right, but it is a power grab for control at that point whenever a pastor is using that position to say this is how it is. And that's incredibly problematic because nobody can say that. Yeah.
00:35:00
Jeremy Schumacher: And I think that's on such like a micro level. And then on the macro level, we have things like the council of Nika and…
Jeremy Schumacher: we have the early church destroying all documentation of heretical stances. And I think there's all these layers to it. And again, that complexity can be really uncomfortable. I'm ADHD and autistic. My brain loves to dig into that stuff. But for a lot of folks,…
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah. Mhm.
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah. I mean I think a lot of people do point to the council of Nika and…
Jeremy Schumacher: I think that's really disconcerting.
Kalie Hargrove: Nikian creed as this is basic Christianity. The truth is it's not Christianity had a lot of different views. and the council of Nika was actually about unifying and there's arguments between how involved Constantine was with Nika, I don't necessarily believe that he was super involved. However, we have to put that in historical context. And this is where systems theory comes into play again, right? the council of Nika had an opportunity to to have Christianity become a more legitimized Roman religion because of the system that was put in place by Constantine.
Kalie Hargrove: And so the unifying of the Christian religion under the council of Nika still has that backdrop of we need to be something that Rome can accept and…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: that's really problematic because most of the New Testament is anti-Rome right and so the question is how much do you have to strip away from original Christianity to get to the council of Na where Rome is able to accept it and it's a lot actually when you start to look at it either downplaying things that are taught in scripture or reinterpreting them making basic views like making basic theology that we think of as having been universal like the trinity that wasn't
Jeremy Schumacher: Great. Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: a united theology, but it needed to be a theology that Rome could accept at the end of the day. And yeah, I think the council na has some basics of what the majority of Christianity believed at the time. I really do. However, it is still on the backdrop of Rome. And so yeah,…
Jeremy Schumacher: And the Trinity, if you can correct me, more about it than I do.
Jeremy Schumacher: The trinity was one of the big topics that needed to get hammered out because that was a big throughine where other paths of Christianity were sort of gaining ground was not having that triune trinity sort of teaching.
Kalie Hargrove: I haven't done too much into the development of the Trinity.
Jeremy Schumacher: That's off the top of my head from my own deconstruction process.
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: So someone can correct that. But right, it's one of those things that when you race evangelical, you repeat it every Sunday. I read either the Nian or the Apostles Creed every week for,…
Kalie Hargrove: Mhm. Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: 18 years of my life that it's really hammered in that this is a pretty basic building block that came about much later than whenever the Bible was written.
Kalie Hargrove: And what's interesting is the only time that we really have the son and holy spirit spoken of alto together is at the end of Matthew and that and of itself is super interesting. but I also find the issue of the trinity to need to be put into question of the Roman Empire because Rome itself had a almost trinity itself. It did one not three in one but Rome I believe it's the father, the daughter and wisdom and the three gods.
Kalie Hargrove: They had a three god system for Rome.
Kalie Hargrove: And so what part of the trinity is actually just taking that Roman idea and countering it with Christian ideas? yeah it gets complicated and…
00:40:00
Jeremy Schumacher: Right. Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: the truth is a lot of theology that we think that people were developing probably wasn't being developed. a lot of them were trying to figure out, hey, how do we live this counter empire type community without being genocided like that that was what they were going through and…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Right.
Kalie Hargrove: there was a couple times of severe persecution against the church because they were very anti-Rome. I don't think that developing a robust theology of sin and the Holy Spirit and hell because hell is not biblical like that had to come later. I don't think that the early church was really doing that much of theological development whenever they're also trying to stay alive.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah. Paul was like a weird anarchist commie. I'm grossly oversimplifying here,…
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: but again, it wasn't this evangelical mission trip that people think of it now.
Kalie Hargrove:
Kalie Hargrove: No. No.
Jeremy Schumacher: It was a much different time and…
Kalie Hargrove: And yeah,…
Jeremy Schumacher: place that he was writing about.
Kalie Hargrove: in the book of Romans that Christians love and it says I heard that Romans is the most theological book in the Bible. the book of Romans is about hey get along like you all are in Rome. You have different ethnicities. We need to get along like we all mess up. We all do bad things. but we are all here. that's the basis of it. and he goes on for quite a bit for that purpose. So the writer of Romans is not making this entire theological argument for everybody is sin because of original sin or something like that and…
Kalie Hargrove: we all deserve He's actually just being like hey we all mess up. let's try to get along as we try to figure out how to do this type of thing together. especially in a city…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: where you might get killed because you're practicing a non-sanctioned religion once we lose the context of why something is written we can make it about a lot of things and that's what we've done with the book of Romans.
Jeremy Schumacher: And I mean just the gospels in general generally accepted I think current biblical scholarship is those were written after Paul's works.
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah. Yeah,…
Jeremy Schumacher: And so those were all written for a specific audience as And I think again just to highlight four more times and circle and put asterisk next to your point that the context really changes how we read these things. Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: it really does.
Jeremy Schumacher: I want to talk about your book, but I also just want to put a quick plug in some of your writings because you have talked about squirtiness in the Bible. And I think, that would have made me pay attention in VBS much more…
Kalie Hargrove: That is in the book. Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: if I had been taught that version.
Kalie Hargrove: That is one of the days in my devotional is that but I have written on it. So if you're following my substacks, you are getting some of what is going to show what is in my devotional. yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Let's talk about the book.
Kalie Hargrove: So yeah, I wrote a book called On Your Knees, the 69-day irreverent devotional, and it is exactly, I think, what comes to mind when you think of a devotional called On Your Knees. it is very unapologetic about what I believe the Bible says because I did all of the translation work for this.
Jeremy Schumacher: for sure.
Kalie Hargrove: And it follows a very traditional devotional style. It like you have day one side of the page has a verse that's nice and it's italicized to look nice and things like that and then on the other page it has a thought for the very traditional devotional. but one verse I translated myself. and I have a translation note at the beginning of I am putting forth all translations are best guesses.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Mhm.
Kalie Hargrove: At the end of the day, they're best guesses. I think that there are reasons to think that certain translations could indicate things that wouldn't make it to a normal English translation. And so I'm going to put them here because I think that these are possible and I have reason behind I have 15 pages of endnotes for a devotional which devotionals don't have endotes just an FYI nobody's doing that but I have 15 pages of endnotes for these things to explain why I have things translated and so there's a lot of work that went into the one verse I didn't
00:45:00
Kalie Hargrove: translate myself is because I wanted to use the King James version because I have a day about how it's interesting that there's people who are King James only and that the King James translates the word that just means cattle with horns as unicorn. And so if you're King James only, you have to believe that unicorns exist. and how it's really interesting that theology like theologies force you to accept things that seem kind of weird to force people to believe that unicorns existed not that you can't believe that unicorns existed anyways…
Kalie Hargrove: so 60 68 of the days I translated the one that you're talking about is from Ezekiel and…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. it's donkey dicks and…
Kalie Hargrove: that is in It it is I think most people know she lusted after her lovers like Dang, I probably have to pull it up.
Jeremy Schumacher: horse emissions.
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: Every fourth grader…
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: who grew up evangelical knew this verse because it was very funny. Great.
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah. whose flesh is like that of donkeys and whose emissions are of horses. what's interesting is the word that is translated lovers.
Jeremy Schumacher: Mhm.
Kalie Hargrove: Sometimes as paramores, it is concubines. It is female lovers. It is intentionally in Hebrew if there is a plural word in Hebrew and it is of all men or if it's a combination of men and women it will take the masculine plural ending. However, if a word takes a feminine plural ending, it means only female of whatever that is.
Kalie Hargrove: The word in Hebrew is what we translate as concubines.
Kalie Hargrove: And it is in a feminine plural ending, meaning that the concubines are female. So she lusted after her female concubines. so that is samesex attraction.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: I'll be honest, I don't know whose flesh is like that of donkeys. because the word used for flesh isn't normally used as a euphemism in the Bible. it can be which is a little like I was kind of disappointed because I like finding euphemisms and I wanted this to be used euphemism.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: Means. I don't know what part is like that of a donkey. because it's literally just Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: It just means flesh like that their body is like that of donkeys. I don't know but whose emissions are like that of horses. the word that is used is not a normal word for ejaculation. and it is a word that means to overflow or flood. which in Hebrew that word is normally in masculine form but in this instance they take it and…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah. Right.
Kalie Hargrove: make it in a feminine form intentionally and so this is an intentional choice on the part of the author to use a feminine flood or a feminine overflowing. so it is possible to understand this as squirting as a female ejaculation that we would understand it today. which I think is awesome that scoring in the Bible but at the same time in the context of the passage like the thing because it's the personification of Israel and Judah within this passage the things that they lust about they are not negative connotations.
Kalie Hargrove: So things like being a horse rider is earlier or I guess like a warrior on horse calvaryy type thing. It's like something that a woman would normally find to be attractive, And there's nothing wrong with being attracted to a person who's good at riding horses. in the context the things that they attracted to is not what's being condemned. it's actually the nations that they're aligning themselves with that are being condemned. So, if the attraction itself is not the thing being condemned, then we do actually have the normalization of female same-sex attraction in the book of Ezekiel.
00:50:00
Kalie Hargrove: And I just think that's awesome.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: And so yeah, you said that gets covered in one of the days. I mean there's this real kind of deep intellectual side of this stuff on …
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: why this word could get translated this way.
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: And also then some actual real life takeaways. This't just let's make fun of the Bible. This is let's try and look at what message is being shared here. Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: I will say I did not necessarily find a real life takeaway for that verse other than now you have to deal with that now you have to live with that knowledge but there are other days with real life takeaways the very first day it starts very heavy which is actually about Hagar and how Hagar is actually a sex slave…
Jeremy Schumacher: Are Yeah, right.
Kalie Hargrove: who is raped by Abraham in order for Abraham and Sarah to take her child away from her and have that child be his heir. really not good story story. then Sarah ends up having her own kid and Hagar is sent away to die is really what happens. in a lot of times especially in liberation spaces there is this idea that God is always on the side of the oppressed. The story of Hagar does not agree with that. The story of Hagar is ing the oppressor, God blessing the rapist. and in the end you can make the argument that God helps Hagar live. Sure.
Kalie Hargrove: But the final verse about Hagar is she's not even named in it it says that she found a wife for her son in Egypt. which contextually speaking like it is not a woman who is able to get a wife for her son. It's normally a father that does that. a father with reputation. she is able to overcome her cultural context of being a single mother in a culture that does not give her honor in any way and is able to get enough honor for herself that she goes and is able to get a wife for her son.
Kalie Hargrove: And so in the face of God going and blessing Abraham and Sarah, she goes and makes her own blessings and turns her life around herself. And there to me that's incredibly encouraging positive things happen to the shittiest people and we are seeing that in today's day and age. and when we see other people getting blessing,…
Kalie Hargrove: when we see the oppressors getting blessings, then we need to go make our own. And that's day one. So yeah,…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: So it is irreverent but also there's usefulness there's utility in
Kalie Hargrove: yeah, it's useful it goes back and forth between really good things like that are in there. but I also have the story of the ark of the covenant where I did the first time I was on go home bible you're drunk we talked about this where David doesn't dance in front of the ark of the covenant covenant he masturbates in front of the ark of the covenant so there's some song stuff in there are things that challenge…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Mhm.
Kalie Hargrove: what we were taught about purity culture in there how one of the verses in Leviticus about it gets translated don't let your daughters become prostitutes and I translated that and the Hebrew word is to force and so it's don't let your children your daughters become prostitutes it's essentially do not cause you or
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: Basically, it's don't traffic your daughters into sex work is really what it's about. but then I use that to talk about how purity culture is in fact in essence a form of prostitution of forcing your children into a form of prostitution through giving promises about how your marriage is going to be if you follow this sexual ethic. is taking control of somebody else's sexuality and promising them a reward. That is a form of prostitution and it it's unethical. and so yeah, there's days like that. there's so much there's range.
00:55:00
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah,…
Kalie Hargrove: I think anybody yeah,…
Jeremy Schumacher: Where? Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: I think anybody who was raised with a very weaponized understanding of the Bible who is curious of how you can understand things a little differently. I think those people will like it. It's not defending the Bible. It's not telling anybody come back to being a Christian. It's like this was used to weaponize us, but let's take a little bit look at it, see what else might be there, and we can take what we want or leave it all. It doesn't really matter, but this is a book that has been weaponized. And let's have some fun with it.
Jeremy Schumacher: And take some of that back.
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah. yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: Very cool. If people want to pick up the book, where do they go? How do they find it?
Kalie Hargrove: So, you can order it. It comes out September,…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yay! Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: not October 11th, which is National Coming Out Day. So, that's fun. It ends up being a Saturday, which isn't necessarily ideal for books, but I really just wanted to have it come out on National Coming Out Day. but you can order which is everywhere. I highly recommend that you get a physical copy and not the ebook. I just think that the physical copy it's just so much better. I put a lot of work into the design…
Kalie Hargrove: which is very basic it in essence but I don't know. I think it's better as a physical copy.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: But yeah, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, book bookshop, Rift Books, it's there, it's on Coobo for or what, however that is for ebooks or…
Jeremy Schumacher: And Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: or but yeah, if you search on your knees transangelical, it's going to come up by going to my website.
Jeremy Schumacher: And people can get a signed copy by going to your website. Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: So, transangelical.com. there's a link right at the top of it. Or if you want to go straight to it, transangelical.comyounees. yeah, you can order a signed copy. I'm going to be honest, you're going to pay a little bit more because I have to ship it at that point. but you'll get a signed copy and…
Kalie Hargrove: it helps me out…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah,…
Kalie Hargrove: because I get a slightly better portion of the cut. which I think is cool because that will help me be able to do more things in the future like this. yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: for I don't think I said the phrase lateage capitalism, but yeah, that's great to buy directly from those people.
Kalie Hargrove: Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: Part of deconstruction hopefully is also class consciousness. So, Ray Yeah,…
Kalie Hargrove: So, if you're going to buy it from a corporation, I do recommend is it Bookshop? Dang it. I don't Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: it's bookshop.org.
Kalie Hargrove: Where you can select bookshop.org.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yes. Right. Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: You can and a portion of it will go to your local bookstore if you set it up to have it do that. which you should. the only reason I want there's a hole in me because I kind of want until people go to Amazon and buy it and have it go up high in the R rankings for,…
Kalie Hargrove: whatever. I'm under Christian Bible other and…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: Christian meditation and it'd be cool to break into the top 100, but I also don't want your money going to Amazon. So, …
Jeremy Schumacher: We are all born under the oppressive system of capitalism.
Kalie Hargrove: yeah. Yes.
Jeremy Schumacher: We're not participating in it…
Kalie Hargrove: So, we are Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: because we like it. f*** Jeff Bezos. and also go buy this book…
Kalie Hargrove: All that.
Jeremy Schumacher: if folks want to find out more about your work and see what else you've got transvangelical.com and…
Kalie Hargrove: Yep. Yeah,…
Jeremy Schumacher: that's your handle on most of the social medias. Correct. Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: I am pretty sure I have transvangelical on everything at least that I know of. even places I've gotten like I am not actually on.
01:00:00
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Kalie Hargrove: I think I've tried to go and take the handle just to make sure I'm worried that somebody will take my handle and then pretend to me be me elsewhere.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. What a weird place the internet has become.
Kalie Hargrove: But yeah, I am on Twitter, Blue Sky Threads for social media for my book. I am trying to force myself to do things on Instagram and I just haven't gotten there yet. revamped my Tik Tok…
Jeremy Schumacher: Okay.
Kalie Hargrove: because I thought, I should maybe use Tik Tok to try to promote this book, but I haven't done that yet either. So, you can find me places, but I'm most active probably on threads and on Twitter. Yeah, absolutely.
Jeremy Schumacher: And we'll have all those links in the show notes for folks to make it easy to find. Alicia, thanks for a writing the book and thanks for taking the time to come on and talk today.
Kalie Hargrove:
Kalie Hargrove: Thank you so much for having me. it's always fun to just be able to talk about I don't know everything that just goes on in our heads as we leave evangelicalism because there's so much I feel like you just got to get it out and talk about it. And yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, for sure.
Jeremy Schumacher: And to all our wonderful listeners, thanks for tuning in again this week. We'll be back next week with another new episode. Take care, everyone.
Meeting ended after 01:01:35 👋
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