Leaving Christian Nationalism Behind: April Ajoy’s Journey of Faith and Resistance

What happens when your faith and your politics collide? In this powerful episode, content creator and author April Ajoy shares her journey from being a self-proclaimed Christian nationalist to becoming a progressive Christian voice calling out religious extremism. Raised in a family of traveling evangelists, April grew up believing America was a Christian nation blessed by God—until personal tragedy, political disillusionment, and her brother’s coming out shattered that worldview.

She opens up about her time working at the 700 Club, the pain of deconstructing toxic theology, and how humor became her tool for resistance. April’s story offers a deeply personal window into how faith can evolve without being abandoned—and why standing up to Christian nationalism is both necessary and hopeful.

👤 Guest Bio
April Ajoy is a content creator, author of Star Spangled Jesus: Leaving Christian Nationalism and Finding a True Faith, and co-host of The Tim and April Show. Raised in a Pentecostal family steeped in evangelical and nationalist ideology, April now uses satire, storytelling, and social media to challenge Christian nationalism and promote a more inclusive, justice-centered faith.

🔗 Resource Links
Star Spangled Jesus by April Ajoy: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9781546006688
The Tim and April Show:  @TimandAprilShow ​on YouTube

Transcript

0:17

Hey, welcome back, faithful politics listeners and watchers. If you're watching on our YouTube channel, we're so happy to have you. I'm your political host, Will Wright, and your faithful host, Pastor Josh Bertram, is off doing pastor things. So he won't be joining us. But today, our guest is April Adjoi, who is somebody I met at the Americans United for Separation of Church and State. They had a summit, religious freedom. uh You were a guest speaker there and I was just so moved by your speech that I wanted to have you on to our show. So thanks for being here at Faithful Politics. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited. Yeah, and I did a terrible job really kind of giving uh your background. So I'm going to actually pass the buck and have you explain to our audience a little bit about um who you are. You wrote a book called Star Spangled Jesus, Leaving Christian Nationalism and Finding a True Faith. So I'd love for you to just tell our audience who you are. and a little bit about your religious right, Christian nationalism, bona fides, that I think is going to set the stage for the rest of our conversation. Sure. Well, right now I'm an author and a content creator. I'm on TikTok. I do podcasts. I do all the things, mainly calling out Christian nationalism, but it's very personal for me because I like to say, I used to be a Christian nationalist, though I didn't know it. I thought I was just being a good Christian, love God, love people, vote Republican. It was just part of the essentials of the gospel. And so yeah, I grew up, my dad was a traveling evangelist, a preacher. My grandfather was a preacher. So I grew up between being a preacher's kid and a pastor's kid. I kind of had the whole shebang. And so I grew up traveling all around the world and around the nation. My dad would preach in all these different churches and I would sing a lot of the time before he'd preach. And I have two brothers and they would sing too. And my mom would sing. It was a family affair. Wait, just how were your harmonies? my mom and I could do some sick harmonies together. We had that, know, mother daughter, the blood was like coming through the harmony, you know. oh Yeah, so it was, mean, it's weird, because it was a fun pastime. Like there's some really good memories, but it was on this backdrop of Christian nationalism. But of course, we wouldn't have said we were Christian nationalists. I think most people today who perpetuate Christian nationalism would say that they're not, that they're just being good Christians. That's very much what we were as well. My dad was very much about saving souls and saving the lost uh because we believed that if you weren't a Christian and that if you didn't ask Jesus into your heart, that if you died, you would go to hell. We had this urgency of like we need to tell as many people about Jesus and the gospel as possible so we can save souls. Then that shifted a little more towards focusing on America. I noticed it especially after 9-11 when I think there was just kind of, I don't know what it was, but it was just like this push because there was this narrative when you grow up in this world and it's not necessarily, I don't know if it's intentional or if it's subtle, but everyone believed it, that America was founded as a Christian nation, that God has supernaturally blessed America through all of our wars, through its founding, through basically everything we've ever done. God had his hand on our nation. Because liberals came in and allowed abortion and allowed homosexuality and started allowing all these in our mind were just egregious things that God stopped blessing America. And so, you you saw after 9-11, you had Jerry Falwell went on 700 Club and blamed abortionists and the ACLU and a bunch of random liberal people ah for 9-11 and which, you know, he later apologized, but there was this idea that when bad things happen to America, it was because we had allowed sin. to come in. By we, we mean liberals. Then we kind had this push like, if we want God to bless our nation again, we need to put righteousness back in our laws and we need to put godly men in power, in positions of power, and we need to vote Christians into Congress, uh which was a synonym for Republican because we believe that Republicans were the Christian party. And at the time, that was mainly because of abortion and gay marriage. Those were like the two issues that they really pushed through, especially abortion. um So yeah, so I just grew up believing that America was a Christian nation, was slipping away, needed to remain a Christian nation. And in order to do that, I needed to make America as Christian as possible. And by doing that, that just meant making her as Republican as possible because the two were interchangeable. Yeah, you know, what's interesting is, um so I'm a liberal. I'm one of the ones destroying the country. uh I know. And, uh you know, my co-host is a conservative. And when we went to uh the Summit for Religious Freedom, uh him and I both wrote a sub stack kind of about our perspectives and what we saw. uh you know, mine was sort of overly I don't know, excited. It was our first one we went to. um Talking to Josh, he said it seemed pretty liberal. It seemed pretty progressive, especially considering the spaces that he normally uh finds himself in, which was good. I'm glad he provided that perspective because it gave me an opportunity to just talk to him a little bit about DEI and what that means about being inclusive and if he felt left out. um Anyways, all that to say, I know that some of your critics have, you know, painted you as some sort of like flaming progressive or whatnot. And I know nothing about your politics. So uh like you have not always been or are or, know, whatever politics you subscribe to, probably where you're at. My guess is that there was a time in your life where uh you were probably Republican. you were probably doing sort of these things that we would consider Christian Nationalists, ah if not Christian Nationalists adjacent. Can you talk about some of those specific things like your experience at the 700 Club ah and some of those other things on your Christian Nationalist resume? yeah, sure. So when I was in high school, I made a MySpace group that the name of it was I'm a Christian, therefore I'm a Republican. And I had all my friends join it. oh And then I, you know, I loved George Bush. I remember I would get in debates in high school on why we should all support the war in Iraq. And I didn't understand how these stupid liberal students around me could be against the war. I remember I lamented it in my journal. I had ambitions to be on Fox News, and so I had my old teenage journal that I was hoping to turn into a book one day. I had titled the journal, When Life Gives You Lemons, Throw Them At A Liberal. That's why it's so funny to me when you see the people today demonizing Democrats. It seems surprising if you're just getting into politics, but it's nothing new. It's nothing new at all. We were doing it way back then. Before there was Commie, Commie LaHarris, and Sleepy Joe, we had Scary Carey. I know if remember John Carey when he ran against George Bush. Fox News hated him too. It's not new. My senior year, my dad wrote a book called America Say Jesus. On the front of that book, he put a prophetic warning that said, unless America defines her God, which is Jesus Christ, God would lift the veil of protection on our nation and we would experience bloodshed like never before. Then in this book, we're just like, dozens and dozens of quotes from founding fathers to try to prove how America was a Christian nation. And then there was a lot of scripture verse and the names of the importance of saying the name of Jesus. And there was an open petition, an open letter to George Bush to get him to start saying Jesus. Because even though we did love George Bush, we were a little upset that he started to let a few Muslims pray every once in a while. And that was like no good, you know? um So from the book, He had a publisher and everything. We went on a two three month America Say Jesus bus tour across the nation. It was a 40 foot motor home and it had America Say Jesus on all four sides like in banners. We went to church to church all across the nation. I remember we didn't have a church in Las Vegas to speak at, but we still went up and down the Las Vegas strip a few extra times just for fun. one does. I know, as you do. And then towards the end of that whole campaign, I sang, I wrote a song, also called America Say Jesus, to go along with the book that I would sing in the churches too. And then I ended up singing it on the Jim Baker show, because my whole family went on there to talk about my dad's book. And then I sang my, it was a very Christian nationalist song too. Like it is super political. my goodness, that is uh phenomenal, to say the least. yeah, I just I love hearing you tell that story every time I hear it. you know, so when we talk about Christian nationalism, what's your definition of Christian nationalism? Because I do think it's a term that gets used a lot. um Some people will use it like I've got friends in a text group that will use it sort of. kind of sarcastically asking, oh, is this Christian nationalism, Will? So what definition are you working off of when you say Christian nationalism? Yeah. So there's a couple, I like to break it up between like small scale and then large scale. Christian nationalism is one of like a very basic understanding. Christian nationalism is the conflation of your political beliefs with your theology, where they become interchangeable, where you look at someone, like for me, I was Republican. If I saw a Christian who claimed to be Democrat, I suspected that they were not actually a Christian type of thing. uh On a large scale, It's basically the desire to make the nation Christian by establishing laws that promote a very narrow fundamentalist interpretation of scripture. em It's the difference between saying, I'm not going to do that because it goes against my beliefs and saying, you're not going to do that because it goes against my beliefs. So it legislates morality and It enforces American exceptionalism. I think it's important to also define the Christian within Christian nationalism because it's a political ideology. It's become about identity politics and it's evangelical. I think if you were to define, at least in America, if you were to define the Christian in Christian nationalism, I would say white evangelicalism. There's some Catholics in there and there's some Mormons in there, but generally speaking, it's a very uh conservative traditional interpretation of what the Bible says. It's very much, we have all the truth and nobody else has the truth and we have the access to God and nobody else has the access to God. uh I think it's important too that people who perpetuate this belief system, and I was one of them, is we believed that only good could come from our God who we believed in and that it was basically impossible for there to be any good outside of our faith. Even if something looked good, that was just Satan because there was pleasure in sin for a season and something could have the appearance of being good, but it was like this fake goodness. If you want a true goodness, you could only get that from our idea of who God was. So I'm not laughing at your definition. I'm laughing at what your definition reminded me of because you did a video. I wish I had clips. That would have been great. You did a short about giving money to the homeless, which makes me think about why is humor kind of the vehicle? that you've chosen to sort of utilize to talk about this topic that seems like very, very heavy and confusing probably to some people. Yeah, well, think for one, humor is a defense mechanism. It's kind of how I cope. uh It's a way to make light of some really heavy, traumatic things. And also, I think humor can disarm people. I think if my videos show up on a moderate or conservative page, they might be more willing to hear the message through a funny sketch than if I'm just yelling at them through the screen. Um, so yeah, and I think it's more fun because it's the life is really heavy right now. And as, as scary and dangerous as Christian nationalism is, it's also really stupid. Like there's, there's so many glaring hypocrisies and funny things that happen that are a part of the movement because it is so ridiculous. Um, and funny, it's like, well, Hey, if they're gonna If they're going to destroy my nation, I'm still just going to laugh about it. I'm going to fight them and I'm going to laugh at them. You know, I am kind of curious about like, how did you... I don't think... could be wrong, but I'd imagine you probably didn't wake up one day and become... I'm going to become this like viral content creator that's going to talk about Christian nationalism and about, you know, fundamentalism and evangelicalism. when like... What was that process like? I mean, was it just... You recorded a video, got a lot of likes or clicks and you're like, oh, that's weird. And then you make another one and you're like, okay, this is, this is something here. Yeah, so I had already been just on like my personal Facebook page since Trump had got elected in 2016. Like prior to that, I was very loudly Republican, like very publicly Republican. And when I started changing my mind, I just kind of realized I just need to be loudly authentic and try to undo some of that. I was already doing that on my private, like personal Facebook page and getting lots of negative comments from people I knew and cousins and aunts and people I actually knew. uh 2020 happened and so we were all stuck at home in quarantine and I had heard of what I thought was like this teen dancing app called TikTok. That was all the rage and all these millennials were downloading it because it was quarantine. So I downloaded it mainly just because I was bored in the house. uh I actually initially started doing mom videos, just kind of making fun of our experience in quarantine and how we were all just going crazy. And I started picking up some traction. I started understanding the app a little more and I was like, this is really fun. Now keep in mind, I have a background in, like I used to do theater and I've always made stupid videos with my brothers growing up. So I do like being in front of the camera. So that was already a thing that was there. Theater kids. I know. I made one video in May of 2020, and it was to a TikTok trend at the time, but basically the gist of it was when you're a Christian who doesn't like Trump, you get kicked out of the club. It went viral. It got almost a million views, which at the time was by far the most views I had had. I was surprised. I did get some hate, but I was surprised I got I don't know, a thousand, two thousand comments maybe, and most of them were saying, oh my gosh, I thought I was the only one. You're feeling this way too. And I realized that there were just thousands and thousands and thousands of Christians out there that were going to church still, were continuing to go into their evangelical church like I was at the time, right before COVID hit. And I, you know, and feeling angry. Cause I remember sitting like sitting in church, worshiping, singing the same worship songs as everyone around me. and thinking, we're not worshiping the same God. We can't be worshiping the same God because I saw what these people were posting in the middle of the week on Facebook and it was like the most hateful, nasty stuff about marginalized people. I just was angry every time I went to church. I was just so mad and I didn't know what to do with it because there's also like you don't know who to talk to and if you did talk to somebody, it was like, well, you know, what about the babies? uh But I just realized I'm not alone and it was just very powerful, of like an empowering moment of just realizing I'm not the crazy one. Because for so long, I felt like I'm just the crazy one because everyone else was all in on Trump and looked at me like I was the one that got it wrong. Literally, I'd had people tell me, my late dad who had passed in 2011, that he'd be disappointed in me for not voting for Trump and that I I literally, someone said I was going against the will of God for my life for not voting for Trump. that's kind of stuff was happening all of the time. I was getting comments like that all the time from people I knew and strangers, but anyway, so it was just a very freeing thing. And so then I was like, whoa, there's a need here. And I have a lot of pent up frustration. And so I just, kind of used it as a way to just kind of relieve my frustrations in the form of silly little TikTok sketches. I love that. I think that that is so true, which which is weird because I mean, I'm a Christian. Nobody ever gives me grief because I just think that they just naturally assume because I'm a progressive and I'm a Christian that I'm not I'm not I'm not a real I'm not a real Christian. My co-host, on the other hand, gets a ton of grief. He's a conservative. He's a pastor. Voted for Trump once in 2016 has very strong. negative opinions about about the man today. But even on our on our show, like like we've spoken to a lot of different people. mean, uh people sometimes ask, like, what's what's your audience range? And I'm like, I don't know. Like we've we've spoken to Kevin Roberts from Heritage Foundation and the co-founder of the Satanic Temple. So like there's your range, you know. So like when we had uh some mega type folks uh on the show, learn that Josh didn't vote for Trump. mean, you could almost see the visible anger and confusion like what? But you're okay, you're conservative. Okay, check that box. Okay, oh, you're a Christian and a pastor. Okay, check two boxes, you know? And they can't check the Trump box and it kind of throws them all off. So it is really weird. I do want to get into sort of like, what's the tipping point for you in your Christian nationalist walk, your faith journey, like what was the thing that really kind of opened your eyes where you're like, wait a minute, like I'm not in Kansas anymore. Yeah. So there were several things that led to it, probably over about a decade. The first really big thing, and I really do think this was kind of the moment where I started allowing myself to ask questions, was in 2011, I mentioned it earlier, my dad passed away. He was diagnosed with stage four non-smokers lung cancer and was given six months to live, but he died four months later. And we were Pentecostal, so we believed in faith healing and miracles and that as long as you had enough faith that God would give you whatever you wanted. And so my family and all of the members of our church and then churches all around the world too, because we were, you know, my dad had an international ministry. We're also praying and like none of us, it didn't even cross our minds that he could die from this. We just knew God was going to heal him. m God obviously did not. And so I knew that belief was wrong because I knew I could not have had more faith than I did. But instead of people around me get... There was just a lot of weird Christian things that were said to me that just really rubbed me the wrong way. And I started noticing some things like, I don't think this is good or kind. Yeah. you give us examples? There was a pastor friend who told us that it wasn't God's fault that my dad wasn't healed. It was probably because we had some unresolved sin in our family or because my dad was out of God's will because he became a pastor and stopped doing evangelism. Then honestly, probably the most annoying one, and I got this one all the time, was that, no, God did heal your dad. He just healed him in heaven. I'm like, that's not what I prayed for. It was just this, and then there was people immediately asking, is your mom gonna remarry? And there was this push to hurry up and be happy again because we're Christians. We have to be happy. If Christians are sad, that hurts our testimony. And there was a lot of toxic positivity and I felt like there wasn't really space for me to grieve. And it's not for everyone. There were some people that were genuinely very compassionate, but the general vibe was just... stop crying. He's in heaven, why are you sad type of thing. um That just made me go a little more introspective on a lot of things. I think I even became a little more introverted too because I was just like, I don't really like you all right now. That's on the back. That's just of happening. throughout because when Christian nationalism, your belief is so intertwined with your politics that even though it was not a political thing that happened, it left both opened. Like I was questioning my Pentecostal theology, but now I was also vulnerable to my politics because the two were so intertwined. And so the next big thing that happened was in 2015, I was working for the 700 Club. at CBN at the time, I was a producer for 700 Club Interactive. The day that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriage, I was sitting in my cubicle when the news broke and I heard the wailing and the lamenting before I saw the headline. I remember thinking, what on earth? Are we under attack? What has happened? Pretty sure I heard somebody crying and there's like, Jesus, this is the end times. So I pulled up CNN to see what happened and I saw it. At that point, it was 2015. I was a never-Trump-er. I was not going to vote for Trump, but I knew a lot of people around me were starting to like Trump because that was in the middle of the primaries. Or we might have been to the election at that point. So I already was feeling a little distant from my coworkers for that reason. I saw the live feed from Washington DC of all of these um gay and queer people so happy, like genuinely so happy. And seeing that compared to my environment around me of people so distraught, it just, it felt off and I couldn't, I could not figure out why I wasn't sad, like all the other Christians around me. And I also, it was the first moment where I felt different too. Like I couldn't relate. But I thought it was something wrong with me because my theology, I hadn't changed that yet. I still believed being gay was a sin because that was ingrained in me from childhood. ah But there was just something my heart was saying like, you should be happy for these people. And so then like a month later, one of my brothers, so I have two brothers, one of them flew out to visit me and my spouse in Virginia. He came out to me as gay. I was the first person he had told and he was 26. When he told me, I kind of had this flash in my brain of all the homophobic things that I had said to him or not to him, but just around him. I just felt so much shame. and guilt and I just, knew, and then it was another moment where I knew my theology was wrong because I was taught that being gay was a choice and that gay people probably had a demon of some sort. And then I saw my brother who told me, balling, like he could barely get the words out. And he said that he had known since he was in middle school and had begged God like countless nights to make him straight through tears and God, never did. And so he just felt like God didn't love him and didn't understand why God would make him this way to not change him if it was a damning offense. And I just, hugged him and I said, Hey, I love you. It's okay. And I know I'm crying too. And in my theology still, I didn't know where I was theologically yet because a lifetime of indoctrination is hard to break out of initially, but I just knew in that moment, I have to choose. my brother. That started me on the journey to become LGBTQ affirming. But I will say in that moment, even though I didn't know where I was theologically, I had changed politically because I just realized too, I know that there's no way my brother who grew up in the same homophobic household and environment that I grew up in, that he would choose to be gay. That would be the last thing he would be. And so I knew that I knew my theology was wrong again. But, also there are people out there who didn't choose this. And if they don't believe what I do, who am I to say they're not allowed to get married? So I kind of left, like dropped my political weapons, but it took me a little longer before I figured out what I believed theologically. How did you and your brother kind of work through that? I think that your story, impactful, it's emotional. I mean, I can tell. I'm sure you've probably told the story a lot. And it seems like every time I've heard you tell it, you could still see the emotion kind of like in you, like your disposition changes. And you're just like, wow, like this really was kind of a moment. But like, how did you and your brother? kind of work through that or did you and you was it more you working through kind of your stuff uh or did you guys collaborate to kind of figure out like this new reality? Yeah, was, we worked together through it. We had some very hard conversations because he moved further along faster than I did. Because when he initially came out, he said, he told me about side A and side B, which are Christian terms. Like side A means you're fully affirming and can be in a gay relationship and God sanctions that and is totally cool. And then side B is the belief that God did make you gay, but that it's still a sin to act out on. you're supposed to be celibate. When he first came out, he was like, I know it's wrong. I'm going to be celibate. I was like, okay, cool. um But then it wasn't long after that that he became affirming. That one was harder for me because I really struggled with not wanting to enable sin because I also grew up in a household where like someone else's blood could be on your hands if you didn't speak up, if you didn't tell someone about Jesus, if you didn't warn somebody about their sin and they continued doing it and died and went to hell that their blood would be on your sin. And so I really didn't want my brother's blood to be on my hands. And that was not because I thought he was dirty or disgusting or anything. It was literally because I wanted my brother to go to heaven with me because I believed it so strongly. And also, I knew that... There were just some things that started to not make sense also where it didn't make sense that God would make him that way and then keep him celibate because I wanted to be wrong. I think that's a difference too because I think when you're getting conversations with people about their theology, especially when they're Christian nationalist, that you have built up defenses because you're taught oh apologetics. You're taught how to defend your faith and you're really just taught hot talking points because they unravel pretty quickly. There's a lot of hypocrisy and inconsistencies within the ideology. But you put up these defenses and you're trained to do so because you don't want to be wrong. Because if you're wrong on one thing, everything else crumbles because that's how fragile the belief system is. But in this case, I love my brother so much that I wanted to be wrong. And so I didn't have those defenses up. I was nervous that I was wrong. I didn't want to be wrong because I didn't want him to go to hell. But I wanted my theology to be wrong because I wanted to be able to celebrate him and really support him. And also that made my view of God so much better because I found myself being angry at God. Like, why would God do this? And then once I realized, no, God does create queer people. And that just makes creation that much more diverse and beautiful. um So I eventually got there. But I do think one of the reasons was because I didn't want to be right. it was one of those things like I'm okay to be wrong. will change. Like I want to be wrong. Yeah, you know, a lot of the people that we speak to and just even some of the comments we get on our YouTube folks that have have gone through kind of this deconstruction um always seem to find themselves a little bit more freer for one reason or another. uh We spoke with a guest, Amy Hawk, who had left her church. She was going to Bethel. uh Super right wing. ultra patriotic got turned off by Trump in 2016. And now she's sort of doing her best just to try to relate with other people, kind of like what you're saying that you're doing. you know, when people think about questioning the church, you often hear this term like ex-vangelical or deconstruction. And it's kind of used in a pejorative sometimes, especially for those on the right. I'd love for you just to kind of talk a little bit about about that and if what, you your journey, um you know, falls into one of those veins deconstruction or ex-phangelical, I mean, both terms are kind of used sort of synonymously anyways. Yeah. I do consider myself an ex-vangelical because I feel like evangelicalism, at least what it has become is more of a political identity, unless a religious one. And so I don't want to associate with the, what, 80-some percent of white evangelicals that support Trump, still today after everything. ah So I consider myself an ex-vangelical, but I still consider myself a Christian. I would be a progressive Christian. still love Jesus. There's still spiritual moments in my life that I don't know how to explain other than God. I would say I did go through a deconstruction journey, but for me, my deconstruction, and I do think it's the case for most people who are deconstructing. There's this... demonizing of deconstructing that it's because people just want to sin or they just want to go out and have sex. That could just be the furthest thing from the truth. Deconstructing was so hard. It was basically an existential crisis. When you look yourself in the mirror and ask, it was everything I believed a lie, was everything wrong. The reason why it is demonized is because people in the church, especially when you're hearing it from pastors, like I always, I always try to tell people they have ulterior motives because their livelihood is based on the people that come to their church. And if people start deconstructing and realize that they don't need to go to that church in order to follow Jesus, um, they lose their livelihood. They, they lose their, their tithe money. That's a huge reason that we saw so many churches refuse to do virtual services during COVID. They needed tithe money and people are more likely to give in person. It's not about Christian persecution. It's not about people wanting to go sin. It's literally they need money. em But for me, was I deconstructed because I wanted to follow Jesus so strongly. And I do believe that The people who deconstruct are the ones that were in it the most deeply, that followed it the most sincerely. and solve the hypocrisy. Because when you're genuinely in it, because you believe you're doing the right thing and you believe you're doing good and you believe that God is involved and you're trying to follow Jesus and you suddenly see pastors promoting a serial adulterer, like a pathological liar. He lies about, like Donald Trump lies about stupid stuff, like stuff you don't need to lie about. um And also, I was a child of the 90s. And I remember when Bill Clinton had his whole scandal, all like my dad and so many of his pastor friends were saying, drilled into me, character matters. You want a good, you want a president that would be faithful to his wife. Because if he's gonna lie to his wife, how much worse is he gonna do to the American people? So it was like drilled into me. You want moral men in the White House. And Donald Trump, Suddenly it was like, oh no, we're electing a president, not a pastor. Who cares? I was like, what? Well, that's news to me. anyway, all that to say, when you believed something, when these people were saying, we do believe in character, we believe in taking care of the poor, and then you see that they're voting to take people's SNAP benefits and welfare away and taking free lunches out of schools and how children are going to... go hungry, like when you see the things that they actually support and it goes against the things that they've taught, you have to question it. Because when you come in contact with something that doesn't make sense, that shows that what we've been doing is actually causing harm, you have two choices. You either double down and convince yourself that that's not what's happening or just throw your integrity out the window because that's easier than admitting you were wrong or you admit you were wrong and you figure out where did we go wrong? Why am I wrong? Am I only wrong on this issue? Because I genuinely wanted to be on the right side of things. And so it wasn't like I deconstructed everything at once, but once I deconstructed one thing, everything else just kind of started falling apart. I mean, the amount of times I bawled because I realized I had said things that were super harmful and I had voted for men that harmed so many people. Then at the same time, I was gaslighting everybody else on top of it and demonizing half of the country and I was wrong doing that. There was a level of You know, no one wants to look in the mirror and realize you were the bad guy. So I understand the knee jerk reaction to double down and to not actually explore where you're wrong. But I believe the people who are deconstructing have the most integrity because they couldn't just ignore the blatant hypocrisies. And that's why people started leaving the church and started deconstructing. And there are a lot of people who have deconstructed that still have faith. Yeah, I think that's probably the biggest question I have. So, I came to the faith in 2008. ah My wife is a PK, pastor's kid. And uh I spent more of my life as an atheist than I have as a Christian so far uh in this life. And whenever I hear people talk about deconstruction, You know, being an ex-vangelical, I mean, these are foreign concepts to me, although I recognize that this is like the time period that we're in where people are kind of coming to terms with what they've been told, as you stated. The one question I have that I can't really put my finger on is why even stay in the faith? So if you are, you know, acknowledging that there is sort of a body of lies that you've been told, why not include what you believe about God and Jesus as a part of that? I that's a fair question. And I've definitely have asked myself that question many times. And there were moments where I was like, I don't know if I will leave any of it. em I do think that for me, I've had a consistent connection with the divine in my head. And I know there are atheists out there that are going to roll their eyes. em But for me, I feel like I have a personal connection to God and I've just always used the language of Jesus and have had a connection while using that name and so that makes sense to me. ah I believe in a more universal Christ. I just believe in a much bigger God than what I had been taught. I believe that it can be an inclusive of all faiths. It's just the language because of the culture that I am that I use God and Jesus and I love Jesus and I believe in Jesus teachings and like that's how would I live my life by. So by those definitions, I am still Christian. And also this is like a more petty reason. But for me, I believe I can go further in my work and with my goal of trying to wake people up out of Christian nationalism while still being a Christian than I ever could if I you know, became agnostic or atheist because agnostic and atheist especially are heavily demonized within, you know, Christianity. And, you know, and a lot of them would say I'm not a true Christian anyway, you know, and I get dismissed. But they have to, they have to go an extra step to dismiss me, you know? So that's, that's also, that's part of it. I just, I, you know, and we still go to church and I still see a lot of really beautiful things within the church that And maybe it's a fool's hope that we could get back to having a faith that is inclusive and is radical love and is about standing up and fighting for the marginalized and the poor and the widow and the orphan and wealth distribution. Jesus's teachings are actually pretty awesome. And so I think if we were actually following the teachings of Jesus, we wouldn't have Christian nationalism because it's pretty much antithesis to the gospels. And I do think when you are a Christian nationalist and when you grow up in white evangelicalism, you don't listen to facts. Like facts do not matter. You have to fight, like in this case, fire with fire. I've got to fight their interpretation of scripture with my interpretation of scripture, which is just as valid, you know? Like for every verse they have, got five verses. It's kind of like I speak the language. I know why they think what they think because I used to think that too. I know what people said to me that made me doubt even if it was just for a split second. I know I can say that to them. Even if they double down because I would often double down to the person and looks like they did nothing. But it got in there and it stuck with me. I think that that that's so so true and so uh so awesome because so on our podcast we've we've spoken to a lot of theologians smart people that have talked about very controversial Christian type topics, you know, like LGBTQ stuff like that uh Where when people come and tell me hey, yeah, the Bible is pretty clear about about you know gays and queer people and I'm like, I don't think it is. I've spoken to a lot of people with like fancy letters behind their names that say it's not necessarily subtle and you know, the Bible's uh what's the right word, agnostic about the topic because they don't really address it. But yeah, that's sort of like the key focal issue for a lot of Christians. So like, do you talk to other Christians about you know, LGBTQ type stuff, because it is a sticking point. And I don't understand what it is. you know, even for Josh, mean, Josh has come a long way. uh But, you know, he's still, I don't know what the right word, uh he believes a marriage is between a man and a woman. um So help us, you know, figure out how do we have these kinds of conversations with our Christian brothers and sisters? Yeah, a lot of times it takes multiple conversations over years. And that can be very frustrating if you're the person on the, you know, carrying the weight of that. Things that I find that helps because there are verses in there that you can use to, you know, say that, you know, man sleeping with man is wrong. I mean, I... I believe in cultural context and power dynamics and there's definitely interpretations of all of it that still leads us to an inclusion of queer people. I think it depends on the person because if you're talking to someone who also believes in women's rights and is more egalitarian and believes that women can lead as well, then easily you say, okay, you're okay with women. when the Bible does say this or Paul says this about women, why are you okay excusing that and not this? Or you just point out all the rules in the Bible that they're breaking like wearing ah two different fabrics or eating shellfish. Or if you're on your period and you're a woman, why are you out in public? Why are you not away in your tent for seven days? uh I just like it. Slavery is a big one too. Like the Bible talks about slavery and it doesn't necessarily condemn it. It tells you how to do it. um You know, and this is when they start doing all the mental gymnastics, you know, and they start like, well, that was different. Then suddenly cultural context matters, you know, but then it's like, okay, if cultural context matters there, why does it not here? You know, in Sodom and Gomorrah, they love to bring that up. At Ezekiel though, it says that your sin of Sodom was because you did not welcome the stranger and you were inhospitable. That says that's what the sin of Sodom was, but they were like, no, it was Gaze. That's not actually what it says. There's always a way to combat it with scripture, but it depends on where someone's at too, because uh if it's beneficial for them to double down, especially with their livelihood, if they're a pastor, or a minister, they make money off of that. They have extra reason to keep believing what they believe because if they change their mind, they lose everything, which is really scary. But I know a lot of pastors that have done that and either became progressive pastors or are doing real estate right now. so funny. What's your favorite skit you've ever done? um I think my favorite one is actually, uh it's actually about deconstruction. I don't know if you are you familiar with Pastor Matt Chandler out of Texas. So a few years back, he made a clip where he was going after deconstruction and kind of mocking it. He was like, he says deconstruction has become some sort of sexy thing to do. And so I stitched it. just with the question, is deconstruction sexy? And my spouse helped me film this. So we had like, we put white sheet up on the wall and just had a white sheet on the bed. And like this really, I mean, it looked like we were shooting like a 90s porno. If you just looked at the room and I put on this like red jumpsuit and I put on fake eyelashes for the first time in my life. Then I just started rolling around the bed being like deconstruction. was everything I believed a lie and like Noah's Ark. How though? Was just like saying, your common questions you think of when you're deconstruction, but in a sexy voice like existential crisis. I don't know, that was just really fun to make. Was there another video that you made that you got a reaction you weren't quite expecting? Hmm, I have to think about it. Like it touched a nerve you didn't realize was there. I mean, will say anytime I post about queer people being queer inclusive, get the most hate from that. And it is funny too. I also will lose followers and it's funny because I do make some content that is just generically funny if you go to evangelical, like it just makes fun of evangelical culture. So you can laugh about it and still be inside that culture. And so I'll get followers. that don't really know who I am, but they thought that was funny. And then they see that I support queer people and they're like, oh my God, I thought you were a Christian unfollowed and like make a big poop about it. I was like, okay, do your research, you know, like you say you do. my gosh. uh So um one of my last questions is, what's something that gives you hope? mean, we live in such a, I don't even know how to describe the period or time that we live in, but uh when we talk to a lot of our guests, and especially we talk to them about kind of the heavy period ran, we oftentimes, like we, We still want to continue our normal day, despite, you know, we're living under this authoritarian, like, president. You know, we want to go have McDonald's and go eat at Panera or whatever. And meanwhile, it's like, you know, Trump is disappearing people off the streets. So like, what's uh something that gives you hope, you know, that kind of helps you carry on throughout your day? Yeah, I do think there are a lot of good people out there who are fighting the good fight and aren't going to just roll over and take it. And that gives me hope. I find a lot of hope in my kids, actually. And I think from raising them, you just realize how much hate is taught because they've seen trans people and literally didn't think anything of them. because they hadn't been taught that that's bad or that that's wrong. They just saw another human being and thought their nails were awesome. And I think knowing that that generation is coming up and despite the move in young men right now, still believe and statistics still show that every generation gets a little more progressive. And so I'm hoping that is the same with my kids and their generation. I've had some really good response from ah my book too, from some people who maybe passive aggressively gave it to a Christian nationalist loved one, and they actually read it, which I think that's the hardest part. They actually read it because I try to write the book in a way that ah was more mocking myself and admitting my own failures and vulnerabilities. so that I could kind of hold up a mirror so that people could see themselves in my story, but it wasn't me attacking them necessarily. And so I've heard from several people that said they're Trump supporting family member, read my book and then decided not to vote for Trump this past time. And I think not just my book, but I do think there's a huge group of people that are still going to evangelical churches right now that are maybe just now starting to question things. with Donald Trump, you know, because he is kidnapping people off the street and sending them to prisons in countries they've never been to. And I think those people are going to start waking up and they're going to join the resistance because I do think most people that perpetuate Christian nationalism mean well at their hearts. They're good people. And I know that seems counterintuitive because they're They promote and they support things that are so harmful, but indoctrination is a hell of a drug and they genuinely believe that they're doing the right thing. And so if we can appeal to their goodness and say, Hey, I know that you hate that an innocent man is in an El Salvador in prison right now. I'd like, know that, that you actually care about justice and right. And, know, and righteousness and that you don't like what Trump is doing. Like how, how can we. work together to make this country better for all people. And just finding common ground and not demonizing them. Because if you demonize them and you call them a bad person, you call them a bigot, even though I'm guilty of doing that as well, because we all have our limits, right? um But if you do that, they're just going to double down. And we have to find a way to bridge that gap. But I believe that that's possible. And more and more people, they're waking up every day. That's true. Yeah. So how can people follow what you're doing and what projects are you uh currently, you know, pontificating on? Yeah, so I, if you want to follow me on the interweb, I'm at April a joy on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube threads. I'm still on Twitter X. ah Wait, did you say scram? Instagram. scram, get out of here. Yeah, no, you can buy my book Star Spangled Jesus. There's also an audio book that I narrate. And I also host a show, a podcast twice a week called The Tim and April Show where we talk about current events and Christian nationalism from a progressive Christian perspective. Tim from New Evangelicals, right? Yeah, I met him for the first time at the summit. uh Super cool. Well, thank you so much, April, for joining us. This was a great conversation and I just appreciate everything you're doing and keep on making the the funny. Actually, you remind me of Sarah Cooper a little bit. uh She does the voices for Trump. I'm not familiar with her, but okay. I will take that No. So yeah, thank you so much for being here. This has been great. Yeah. And to our audience and listeners, hey, thanks for stopping by. As always, make sure you like, subscribe, do all that kind of stuff you're supposed to do. And as always, keep your conversations not right or left, but up. And we'll see you next time. Take care. Yeah, thanks so much, April. This has been really, really good, the recording stop. You live in Virginia? I used to live in Virginia when I worked for CBN. We live in Kentucky now. We're in Lexington. Where in Virginia are you? We're uh near Richmond. So oh I'm about 20 minutes south of Richmond, Chesterfield, and Josh is in Henrico. Okay. Yeah, we lived in like Chesapeake, Norfolk area for a while. m yeah, I do have to ask, like, what strategies do you use to kind of get your stuff, like, I don't know, like, do you do anything special? it just mainly content you don't really focus on, like the metrics or anything like that? I feel like I spent so much time early on trying to figure out algorithms and I just drove myself crazy. So now I just like, I'm just constantly throwing noodles at the wall, just seeing what sticks. I've not found, I do think posting in the afternoon and evenings on TikTok does better. And then Instagram, feel like I haven't, to me, it doesn't seem to matter on Instagram as much from my like, and this is totally anecdotal. um But yeah, no, wish I had an answer for you. There'll be like a month where nothing I post really does well, and then I'll have a month where everything I post is just amazing. And like, I don't think the content is really, isn't better necessarily. So I don't know. Yeah, we're still trying to grow. We've been doing this for five years and uh always looking for advice on how to grow. mean, it's so weird. It's like we don't have any trouble getting gas uh because I think that people think we're a lot bigger than we are just because we got like a website and we do a lot of like on our website. We've got a religion in America timeline I built. Basically, it's like from the doctrine of discovery all the way to like current day Kennedy v. Bremerton. So we do a lot of work in this space because we want our show to be more educational ah than I don't know anything else. So if you're ever looking for proof that theologians don't really think the LGBTQ issue is a huge deal, let me know. I can put you in contact with some pretty big theologians. uh So, which is weird because like my co-host still doesn't believe them. uh And that's the thing, there's plenty of, there are a lot of very respectable theologians that were like, yeah, queer people are cool. And everyone's like, no, now you're a Marxist. I was like, Who are you to tell me, you know, person that's been studying the Bible for 30 years and does Bible translations? uh So, yeah, so this episode is scheduled to be released, I think, like towards the end of June ish June. We got a pretty big, big lineup, actually. I think this this next month, we've got. like Rachel Lazar, Shannon Fleck, John Kasich, a whole bunch of other people. And so you're in good company. Yeah, definitely. And yeah, hope to maybe someday have you on again if you're open to it. Cool. Awesome. Well, thanks so much, April. I'll see you next time. You too. Bye.