S1 EP03 - Jehovah Breeder w/ Emily Joy Allison
Blake
Hey folks, it's Blake. This episode, we ended up talking about a few things that have the potential to ruin your day. Those things include sexual assault, religious and sexual abuse, as well as conversion therapy. We just encourage you to listen with care and to take care of each other.
Kashif
Hey everyone, you are listening to Who's Gonna Be There, a podcast for anyone who has ever had to reschedule a hookup because they were just too tired. My name is Kashif.
Blake
I have been there. My name is Blake.
Kashif
And we're excited to be talking today about contemporary Christian music, Church Hurt with Emily Allison, and several other parts of our histories that relate to Christianity. Okay, so Blake, my first question to you, if you had to name a Christian band that we were both in, what would you call it?
Blake
Like if we formed a christian band what would i call it? I have no idea probably all that's coming to mind are like christian coffee shop names so
Kashif
but those often cross over
Blake
yeah holy grounds?
Kashif
yeah
Blake
Actually it would probably be on my knees
Kashif
Okay i was gonna say the sailors or like the seaman like but the seaman like s-e-a-m-a-n because there was a song that we used to sing many years ago that was like a hymn, Some Poor Fainting Struggling Seaman You May Rescue, You May Save. But the way everybody pronounced it in church was like, some poor fainting struggling seaman you may rescue.
Blake
Who wrote that?
Kashif
You may save. I don't know, but it was a fag for Jesus.
Blake
They were repressed
Kashif
Okay. They very much so. And I'm here to save all of the struggling fainting seaman. Okay.
Blake
All right.
Kashif
So yeah, you and I both have interesting histories with contemporary Christian music. And for those of our listeners who don't know exactly what contemporary Christian music is, you might see it more commonly abbreviated as CCM. And CCM is a post-war phenomenon that's post the Second World War, I would say, Blake, that really peaked in the 80s and 90s. And then sort of in the early 2000s, it had its sort of fall and moved into more worship music that doesn't have the same type of radio play. But Blake, what do you think people need to know about CCM?
Blake
I mean, I just remember it from the 90s and early 2000s, just because that's my experience with it. But I think it was really characterized by a rise in just like young musicians that were part of their youth groups, because I do think that youth group culture heavily influenced what CCM became. And I'm speaking as somebody who now knows a lot of those, you know, giants of the CCM industry. And so, I have a lot of their perspectives on it as well. I think that it was the convergence of two sort of currents. One, that there were all of these young musicians that wanted to make music that sounded like their favorite quote-unquote secular bands, but they were still expressing the things that meant the most to them in their lives, which was their spirituality. And so, what that left us with was a kind of like Christian analog for what was going on in secular music at the time. So, like these parallel kind of phenomenon, which lent itself very well to the market and to those in the industry and just kind of like evangelical leaders at large. Sorry, that's my dog. Percy.
Kashif
Hi, Percy.
Blake
Where was I? There were also a lot of evangelical leaders at the time who had been for decades trying to craft a Christian alternative to what was going on in the secular world because they were scared that they were going to lose the kids to, you know, debauchery, that the kids were going to fall away from their faith, you know? So, I think those two things going hand in hand made CCM a very potent phenomenon. But I was drawn to CCM personally because, yes, it was Christian music, but it also featured a lot of artists that were very honestly and vulnerably wrestling with what it meant for them to live with their religious convictions in the time and place in which they lived. And so, I will stand by this. I do think that there was really thoughtful, really creative, and objectively good music made in that world. And I also want to qualify that a lot of those lyrics carried a lot of harmful ideas in them. And both of those things are true, right? They packaged a kind of poison for us, no matter how thoughtful that poison was. But there was a kind of authenticity that a lot of those artists had that I don't see a lot of today. I think that like, there are some CCM songs that were released then that I don't think would get radio play today. They would be banned, you know, just because of the content. Like back then you could, you could have both Psalm 23 and Psalm 88 in your Bible, right? Which is like Psalm 88 ends by saying darkness is my closest friend. There's, there's no room for that, you know, in kind of the modern worship world, but in CCM that existed. And I think for like a young kid like me who came into Christianity on my own, apart from my family, and always felt a little apart from the Christian world, I found in CCM an honest reckoning with faith that reflected what I was going through at the time.
Kashif
Yeah, I'm glad that you phrased it that way, because I'm thinking now about the angst. It's interesting that when it was my younger sister who discovered CCM, I grew up in a Pentecostal church, a Caribbean Pentecostal church, where that was not a thing. We sang either hymns or Christian reggae or reggae gospel. CCM, we didn't really, unless it was very, very popular, like Shout to the Lord or something, and even then had a reggae sort of turn to it. But I think the angst in Christian rock was an outlet for me. Sanctus Real, that was for me, I had never been allowed to feel that way. And so I found in a lot of the CCM a type of honesty that was refreshing. And I wanted to go to a place or go to churches or spaces where they play that type of music because it meant that maybe people would understand my quote unquote struggles. You know, it wasn't fire and brimstone. I call it like a softer Christianity, but it portended, I think, a place where I could work out all of the theological questions that I had. So that resonates with me as you talk about the lyrics, especially in that period of like the late 90s into the early 2000s.
Blake
Yeah.
Kashif
And later we lose that with a turn to worship music. But I agree. I think that's what pulled me to CCM as well.
Blake
Yeah. And just so the listeners know, I want to be clear, neither one of us are kind of squarely in that world anymore. I don't want to speak for you, but I have completely...
Kashif
You can speak for me in saying that. That is no interest.
Blake
Okay, yes. We have completely deconverted from, you know, those ideas in that world. And yet, we're talking about this because they were so influential for us and shaped us in many ways. But I also think that it has something to say about kind of the larger social currents of our time as well.
Kashif
Yeah, and especially in the South, especially living in a place like Nashville, of course, even if you come out of that world, it finds you in curious ways. I will say this, though, as we're recording, I'm back in my hometown of White Plains, New York, and I very intentionally did not ask my parents to pick me up from the airport. I decided to take trains all the way. And when I got back to White Plains, to North White Plains, and got off of the train and walked down into the heavily wooded train station, as soon as I, it was like clockwork, I started hearing the intro to Jeremy Camp and A.D. Camp's version of It Is Well. And I could feel the tears already because it just, I think about how often I walked in those same pathways asking for God to make me straight. And CCM was the soundtrack to all of that. It is interesting how all of it stays with you.
Blake
Yeah.
Kashif
Yeah.
Blake
I'm curious. I know, obviously, a little bit about your story. And I know the forces that drew you from New York to the South and then eventually into Nashville. What role did CCM play in that journey?
Kashif
Yeah, I mean, I think of CCM a lot like the Siren Song. It held for me the promise of, I say, the word of rest. Like, anytime I would listen to CCM, I kept thinking about living in a place where it would be like an essentially like a big youth group. And there would be bonfires and belonging. That was really, it was about the belonging. I think it was not only the music, but it was also the packaging, right? It was the fashions, the clothing, the artists themselves and their presentations. But I saw people who were, I don't know, seemed to be living well, okay. That they took youth group trips to go fishing and kayaking. That they went on missions trips to Guatemala. They didn't do that in my church. So I think CCM for me was like, okay, when I was making my choice about where I was going to go to seminary, I thought, I want to be in the Mecca. And Lee University made sense, and I got a job there. And I went to seminary across the street. And from that first day, I remembered having a sense that I had made an error. I just thought like, I'm too old and too black and actually too gay. Like I had the distinct sense of being on the outside of something. And I, yeah, I mean, that held true. But that was, CCM brought me, like carried me on the wings of the music. So that's what brought me, you know, to the South. And I was trying to also just find brotherhood. And I had a sense that like, I don't know what I thought. Honestly, I thought that I would get to Lee and that there would be a bunch of dudes walking around that kind of like look like Jeremy Camp, maybe. I don't know. But that I would be brought into a type of brotherhood and belonging. And that didn't happen. It was all a lie. And slowly but surely, I began to see, especially when I came to Nashville, life on the other side. And I was like, oh, these are people and some of them are fucked up. But this is also like an industry. These are careers.
Blake
The first time I started feeling that, because like you, I was drawn to Nashville because of CCM. I came to literally go to school to study it and to write songs in that world. And this is reminding me of the first internship that I had in college. It was like an internship slash mentorship program that my school did that we would be placed with a publishing house and we would intern for them. But then we would also mentor under them with the expectation that at the end of that program, we would get publishing deals. So I was with Integrity Music, which was at the time the biggest publishing house for worship music in the world. I mean, they had like, you know, Hillsong, Jenny Lee Riddle, who did a revelation song, just like if you can think of a worship song during that time, that was Integrity. And so my responsibilities for them were all of the grunt work of the internship, but then also pitching my songs, getting my songs critiqued and possibly getting cut. So surprise, a bunch of free labor. But I became very quickly disillusioned by seeing behind the scenes. And one of the quickest ways was part of my responsibilities for the internship was to enter in all of the songs that the writers turned in. The way that publishing works is if I'm a writer for a publishing house, usually I have a quota of songs that I need to get cut per year. And when I say cut, I mean that an artist actually records. So I write a bunch of songs, I turn those songs in, and some percentage of those songs eventually get cut, and I need X number of cuts a year. So it's to my benefit to turn in a lot of songs, hoping that I'll get enough cuts out of them, right? And that also means that there were a lot of songs that I put into their database that never would see the light of day. And I got to say, a lot of those songs were fucked up. Fucked up. There were songs that were just blatantly Christian nationalist songs, songs with just like whack theology. But I say all that to say that like our favorite congregational worship songs that we sang were written by people who were also turning in songs, complaining about a declining country after the election of Barack Obama, who were complaining about prayer not being in schools, who were complaining about the war in Afghanistan and how it needed to be a holy war. And so the veneer that you were talking about that drew me in quickly wore off. And like you, I was sort of like, what am I doing here? And it wasn't so much the aesthetic for me as it was, I just saw CCM as a place where people were exploring the depths of their emotions and ideas and theologies via music. And that's what I expected to find when I would go in and write a song with somebody. And what I found instead was, hey, how can we turn something out that will make us money? And I got to say, I was a purist at the time, so that really offended me. And so, I left that mentorship, you know, with my head held high, but definitely with my opinion changed about the industry at large.
Kashif
Yeah. So, it's really interesting to have that shift from listening to the music and thinking that I was going to belong at this Christian college, that you were going to belong in these writer's rooms, and then to live in Nashville and actually to encounter some of these people. That's one of the things about living in Nashville is that you might be sitting in a coffee shop and a Christian musician is sitting right next to you or walking in.
Blake
Yeah, they're everywhere. And the kind of Nashville code is that you don't say hi to people usually. But yeah, I mean, when I was a young kid writing little Christian songs in my basement, I would dream about, and when I say dream, I mean, I would literally have dreams that I was making friends with some of my heroes that I would listen to, that we would write songs together, that we would be on a bus touring together, that we would be playing festivals together. And so when I moved to Nashville and I did start running into those people, it was really exciting. And a lot of those people are my friends today. We don't make music. now we just like get high and sing karaoke at lipstick lounge you know our uh lesbian bar but uh then there are also people that you meet who were heroes of yours who you admired who um have disappointed you greatly you know um one such person when i was growing up i listened to my jam was more kind of like the really uh kind of like edgy thoughtful like singer songwriter types. So like Rich Mullins down and all of his kind of people who he's influenced. And one such person was Chris Rice. And I don't know if people know, but in 2022, there were allegations that were brought forth that Chris Rice had been grooming and sexually abusing boys in his youth group for decades. And when I learned about that news, I was actually talking to another industry friend of mine. And I was just like, I've seen Chris around. Like he would come into Frothy Monkey like regularly, right? And this industry guy was like, you know, I'm really not surprised. I kind of thought that something like this would happen. Chris had always had like younger guys trailing around him. And then he was like, haven't you ever heard the song Sailing With Russell? And I kind of froze in my tracks because it was like he voiced a thought that I was just about to have. Because I knew that song very well. That song had always meant a lot to me. And I never quite knew why. But Sailing With Russell is a song that Chris Rice wrote essentially about him having a good time with his friend named Russell.
Blake
A good time. A good time with his friend. But in this song, they're just kind of out sailing, like they're out on a boat. And actually, I'll read the chorus really quick. The chorus is, I'm sailing with Russell, chasing that heartbeat, playing on sunshine, laughing with heaven. When I'm sailing with Russell, it's like walking on the water and floating in the freedom and thanking the Savior. And after that conversation, I went back and I listened to the song. And this is after I had, you know, deconverted from Christianity. I listened to that song and I was like a little breathless because that song is what conversion therapy feels like.
Kashif
Yeah.
Blake
Yeah. And I know we both kind of have our different stories around our sexualities and coming to terms with it. And either, you know, like actual conversion therapy or like the tenets of conversion therapy that I would argue are more ubiquitous than a lot of us care to realize. But in conversion therapy, we are taught that we are the way that we are because we didn't have the necessary male intimacy growing up. And because of that lack, it became sexualized during puberty. And now we're just unlucky enough to be into dudes. And the solution that they would often give us was to set up these kind of Christ-like, you know, brotherhoods.
Kashif
Brotherhoods, yep.
Blake
That were so weird. They were like emotionally dependent and we would overshare all the time. And there would be all this like weird sexual tension, but we could never act on it. Do you know what I mean?
Kashif
And all the touches and the sort of like what's appropriate touch, what's not appropriate touch.
Blake
It was like the closest approximation that we could create to the thing that we actually wanted. It was the love story that we could tell when our love story was forbidden. And I think Sailing With Russell is the closest approximation to a love song that Chris Rice could write. It was a love song that you write when you are forbidden from writing love songs. It was a love song that I would write when I was in conversion therapy. I wrote songs like that. Do you know what I mean? And I don't want people to hear this and think that, you know, like queer repressed people end up growing up and abusing people. That's not what I'm saying. Those are two separate things. But it does make me wonder if the affinity that I always felt towards Chris Rice's music was because I was seeing my repressed self reflected in that music, which is a whole other thing about CCM. Not just that I saw my own kind of doubts and spirituality reflected, but I saw my sexual shame reflected in this song, you know?
Kashif
It is very complicated. And as you talk about the type of relationships that are deemed appropriate, brotherhoods with conversion therapy, I'm thinking now about the ways in which CCM was the score to my own conversion therapy experience, because it was also about the promise of how God was going to complete the work, that I would find the sort of brotherhoods. You know, obviously there were, there was women, but that did not feel like being in love with a woman didn't feel like real love to me, being in love with a man did. And the closest I could get to that without sinning was brotherhood. And CCM was the score to all of that, you know, sort of facing Jesus, but facing Jesus in the same direction, you know, shoulder to shoulder, so to speak. So I find the parts of your journey also fascinating. And I will say also, you know, too, I did go to conversion therapy, but my stint was shorter there. The sessions that I did in Chattanooga, most of my experience, I think, was the tenets and precepts of conversion therapy that I encountered in my church in my teenage years. But I think all of that is just, it creates an atmosphere that is just primed for abuse, especially with leaders.
Blake
Yeah.
Kashif
Yeah. I mean, I've wondered often, like, what is it about us? Is it something that, is there maybe an earnestness that these people sort of see?
Blake
Yeah, God.
Kashif
You know, I wonder what it is.
Blake
I've wondered that too. Because we do know that the abuse rates for queer youth is higher than the abuse rates for straight youth. And for a long time, that statistic was leveraged against us as proof that abuse turned us gay. You know?
Kashif
Yeah.
Blake
I will just say, I had an experience. This was also in the Christian music industry. After I got done with my internship at Integrity, I interned for a label called Centricity Music. And so think like Brandon Heath, Aaron Schust, Lauren Daigle, those folks. And I worked in the artist management department and the head of that department, his name is Jeff Berry. But when I was working there, I often felt like I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing on a day-to-day basis. But he would come in every day and tell me how hard a worker I was and how good a job I was doing. And the wild thing is that he knew somehow that that's exactly what I wanted to hear as a ranch kid who grew up with the highest value of hard work. And that endeared me to him. It seemed so calculated in retrospect, but at the time, I just felt so validated. And he would pray for me, and it seemed like he was so invested in my future. I mean, he would also connect me to artists that he knew that I liked. I mean, he sent me to go pick up Jason Gray from the airport and take him to Andrew Peterson's house, knowing that I adored his writing, both of their writing. And at the time, I was interpreting all of that to mean, man, this adult person who was my boss, but also kind of a spiritual mentor of mine, was investing in me, believed in me. And all of that created a version of me that would do whatever he wanted, really. But he was also known for taking all of his employees out to lunch or to drinks all the time. And there was kind of a joke that he was kind of a spicy Christian that loved to, you know, drink a little bit too much. And that would be the kind of running joke around the office. But he would often take just me out. And there was one time towards the end of my time at Centricity. I was 21, I think. And he took me down to this wine bar and was feeding me wine. And I will never forget this. There was this moment, it was like alarm bells started going off in my head and I had no idea why. It was the first time that that had ever happened to me. And I remember being so confused. I remember looking around and trying to intellectualize what I was feeling because I was like, I'm not in danger. I don't see anything wrong with my situation. And so, I sort of took it to mean that maybe I had drank too much. I was blaming myself for getting a little carried away with the wine. And he later asked me to go to his house when we were wrapping up on that meeting. And I luckily said no, because I was feeling shame that I had drank too much and I went home. But as the years would go by, we would meet up and catch up. And ditch effort with me. We went to Hemingway's. It's now called Ernest. And he was so aggressively feeding me drinks that night, just drink after drink after drink. He wouldn't take no for an answer to such an extent that eventually when he went to the bathroom, I had to tell the waitress, hey, like he's going to tell you to bring drinks out. I need you to make it a mocktail. Like I need some help here. Anyway, I ended up being able to like wrap that night up and we went out onto the the sidewalk and he invited me back to his house and I said, no. And so he just stuck his hand up under my shirt and in my pants. And I kind of like pushed him away, but kind of like in a coy sort of way. It was kind of like a fawn response, you know, because I just knew that if I could get away from that, that I wouldn't have to talk to him ever again. And luckily I did, he got in his Uber and he went home. And a month later I found out that there were charges that had been brought against him. exactly the same as Chris Rice, had been grooming and sexually assaulting boys in his youth group for years. And I was kind of like another boy in a long line of young men that he would hire in his office as interns. And all of this kind of comes back to me as a look at what CCM actually is. We've talked a lot about how there's this kind of shiny veneer, but underneath it is this insulated world where predators can run rampant and fulfill their desires and face no consequences for it.
Kashif
And still be viewed as spiritual leaders.
Blake
Yeah. And I'm sure that as we get into our conversation with Emily, she'll speak on, you know, those dynamics within evangelical circles, but I'm also curious to pick her brain about, you know, how that plays out in kind of like Christian corporate worlds as well.
Kashif
Right, right. Yeah. I'm anxious to hear that. And before we go, we're going to take an ad break, but I would like to say that I wish I could have been there to punch him in the face. All right. With that, we're going to take a break. We'll be right back.
Blake
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Kashif
We are so excited to have Emily Joy Allison with us today for a conversation on the ChurchToo movement and a bunch of other things. She is author, of course, of the book ChurchToo, and she has a new book coming out that we will talk a little bit about at the end of our conversation. But welcome to the show, Emily. Hello.
Emily
Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. Is this episode three or episode four? I know I'm like close to the beginning here, yeah?
Blake
This is episode three.
Kashif
Yeah, three.
Emily
Yay, okay.
Blake
You are very close to the beginning.
Emily
I feel very privileged then
Kashif
Part of the OG Chronicles. Okay, so I have been reading ChurchToo, and I am fascinated by how you break down power and the ways in which power enables abuse and all sorts of scandal in churches. I wanted to know why you decided to write this book and how people have responded, the different ways in which people have responded to it.
Emily
Yeah. I mean, so at the beginning of that whole thing, like with the hashtag, I had not set out to write a book or even start a thing. You know what I'm saying? I didn't prepare for my launch and have my Instagram handles and my website already locked down. It was quite an in-the-moment, spur-of-the-moment decision. And, you know, I mean, I've been writing about this stuff and speaking about it for years and years, you know, at this point. So I had always thought about writing a book at some point. You know what I'm saying? I really enjoy writing. I used to travel and do a lot of, like, performance poetry and things like that. So, like, I've always been a writer. So I was all like, maybe I write a book about something at some point. But that was not the intention with this particular thing that happened. But as things began to unfold, so it was, God, when was it? It was in November of 2017 was when Church Two kind of happened, blew up on the internet. And then January after the holidays was when it really got big because that was when the story of Jules Woodson and Andy Savage was in the New York Times. And so that really like broadened, you know, national and global awareness of what was happening. And then as the conversations continued on into like the spring and the summer of 2018, I began to see that there were people who were really active in these conversations who did not see that piece of power the same way that I did. And in my view, we're deeply unprepared to speak about the actual issues at play when it comes to like the enabling and normalization of sexualized violence in religious spaces. And, you know, they would just be saying stuff like, well, you know, this is obviously bad. We need to stop, you know, sexual abuse in the church. But it's still important to remain pure if you still got it, you know, these kind of things. And I began to realize, like, I just got to this place where I was like, I did start this. So it would be really reasonable of me to write the book with that name. But furthermore, if I don't, somebody else will.
Blake
Yeah.
Emily
So that is how that started and ended up kind of shopping it around that summer and finalizing where I started to write it. I think in 2019, we wrapped that up. And then it came out in the spring of 2021.
Kashif
And then in that period, because I know as an author, your relationship to your book changes over time. How have people responded to it now that you have some distance from it? And how do you feel about it?
Emily
Yeah, I've had so much interesting and like really like effusively grateful responses. You know, like there are people and including people from my past, people that I loosely was connected with who have come out of the woodwork and been like, hey, like I knew some of these people, like, thank you for writing this, like people who have felt empowered to come forward about their own things. You know, I've had people tell me they assigned the book in their college classes. I had somebody tell me their parents did a book study at their church with it, you know, like that kind of stuff, which is just sort of incredible. I no longer read my own Amazon reviews After I read a man call me surprisingly cogent, which is just like, okay, what a backhanded compliment for the ages. Can you just unpack that? Right? Well, I didn't think she'd be cogent, but darn, she actually was smart.
Blake
I guess she is.
Emily
She sure didn't seem like she was going to be. So anyway, I stopped reading my Amazon reviews after that. I've also had a lot of really interesting feedback. And this is actually the piece of the feedback that I have been most interested in. And I've got it over the years from multiple different people. But there was a lot, there has been a lot of feedback over the years of, why didn't you talk more about the Bible verses? Because, you know, you're talking about how, like, purity culture is bad. But, like, so then why didn't you go in and be like, well, here's how we're going to, you know, unpack the clobber passages. And I'm going to show you in the Greek how homosexuality isn't a sin. And why didn't you do that? You really kind of just blew past all the Bible verses. And I was like, well, first of all, that was not my project. That wasn't the scope of this project. I know just enough Hebrew and Greek to be dangerous. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, that's somebody else's ministry. Second of all, you're trying to order a milkshake from the Home Depot, right? Like, you're just like, you can't get the thing that you want there because you're at the wrong place.
Kashif
I mean, but some people have ordered milkshakes at Home Depot, if you know what I mean.
Emily
Okay.
Blake
The one on Gallatin.
Kashif
Okay.
Blake
Okay.
Emily
The one up on Joyce Lane.
Kashif
I'm talking about the one up on Thompson Lane, honey.
Emily
Okay, yes.
Kashif
That's where they be doing that at.
Emily
Anyway, yes. It just was like, the reason I didn't do that was because I'm not a hermeneutical apologist. And also, I'm just not interested in using the Bible that way. You know what I'm saying? Because is it a useful line of inquiry? Yeah, sometimes, right? Because it's like, the Bible is not like as conservative and homophobic and nonsensical as like really hardcore right-wing evangelical Christians want to make it out to be. Like, yes, the word homosexuality was added into the Bible in the 40s. We know this. Like, that's worth mentioning, right? This is true. It's not, but it doesn't, to me, it doesn't matter almost. Because I'm like, let's say the Bible is super duper homophobic. I still don't think we should use it to inform our ethics in 2025, right? I feel like focusing so much on the apologetics of those verses is like, this goes into my second book, but missing the point that what we need to reimagine is not like the meaning of arsenikoitai. What we need to reimagine is our engagement with the text, right? And like what the Bible is and what it means. And I also like, I'm not going to make a case for myself. I'm not going to make a case for the humanity and belovedness of myself and my community of my friends. I'm going to start there. My presupposition is that we're all good. And then we build our ethics out from there. Because I also don't have time. My book would have had to be so much longer to deal with that if I got to make a case of why I'm not going to hell first.
Kashif
Yeah. Before I can, like, tell you what I actually think about things. You know? Like, it's just, it's a waste of time.
Blake
A lot of this has to do with just, like, whose terms are we having that conversation on?
Emily
Yeah.
Blake
You know what I mean?
Emily
Yes, and I'm not trying to have it on those terms.
Blake
Exactly. Yeah. Emily, I'm curious. You talk a lot about how churches, evangelical churches in particular, are kind of like safe havens for predators. Or you say there's like a big flashing open sign.
Emily
Yeah, like a neon hotel marquee.
Blake
Exactly. Yeah, just because of like the theology that cultivates sexual shame in folks, but also protects predators. We've been talking a lot about CCM today.
Emily
Yep, yep, yep.
Blake
I have my own stories of grooming in that world. I'm curious if you have any thoughts about the particular kind of way that that might manifest in not just like a Christian music space, but any sort of industry that calls itself Christian, wherein you have that regular power dynamic between you and the boss, that kind of corporate power dynamic married with bosses who also position themselves as your spiritual leaders.
Emily
Yeah. You know, one thing that I was thinking about with regards to, you know, obviously, whenever people listen to this, if they're listening to it a long time from now, it may not be immediately relevant. But the Michael Tate stuff is what has been coming out for context in the last, like, month or so, basically two months. And I was thinking, I've been thinking so much about that. Also, because I have a new job right now. And I work downtown in Nashville. And every day I have to walk by the Southern Baptist Convention building, which is super fun. I wave to them and I say, hey, it's me. I've been making your life hell for the last 10 years. But I've been thinking about that a lot. And I think that one thing that I find very, very sobering and concerning about these kinds of communities is where so much of the anxiety, the stated anxiety. right? Like there's internal motivations and there's like what you say your motivations are, but so much of the stated anxiety when people like don't want to, you know, follow the proper channels, don't want to disclose things, don't want to make like legal reports where applicable, right? They don't want to like do the things. The stated anxiety of it is that like they don't want to make the church look bad. They don't want to make the CCM industry look bad. But what is concerning to me about that, right, is that if exposing and, like, meeting out consequences for an abusive person is equated with the church, like, that abusive person, you're saying, like, that's the church, that's the industry that I'm trying to protect. Like, it's concerning to me when those two things become conflated, that protecting abusers means protecting the church, that protecting abusers means protecting the contemporary Christian music industry. Because then it's like, it's almost like an admission of like, yeah, like it's abuse and you're just protecting the abuse. And they don't even, they don't like unpack it that way when they talk about it. But I just think we should be very concerned when someone says like, oh, I don't want to make the church look bad by exposing this abuser. I mean, what is your church? What is your industry? Like those are, I think those are like really serious conversations that we have to have. So I think with the Southern Baptist Convention, you know, particularly, I don't feel this way about every church or every denomination or, you know, affiliation of groups that have, like, ever had any, you know, sexual abuse scandals. But specifically with the Southern Baptist Convention, like, I don't think there's really an argument for that being, like, a church anymore. And I don't mean that in, like, a no-true-Scotsman sort of way of, like, oh, that's not real church, that's not Christians. I mean that in like a, I can't remember the philosopher now, but there's a philosopher who has this idea that like the purpose of a system is what it does. And a system can't claim to be something that it constantly fails to do. And so when I say like, I don't think they're properly a church anymore. I don't really mean like no true Scotsman, like real followers of Jesus wouldn't do that. I mean, like, it's very clear to me that they are constructed to do something else, which is primarily abused women and children cover it up and also function as like a right wing Republican MAGA Christian nationalist. Project 2025 policy arm, right? Like those are kind of the two things that it's doing. It's not properly really a church at this point. So yeah, I mean, I think like that has been the thing that I have been thinking about the most. And with regards to like the comment about that sort of like hotel marquee, right? I think if I was a bad person who wanted to abuse people, if I wanted to take advantage of women, children, young boys, whatever it was, I wanted to get away with it. And I wanted to ensure myself a steady supply of victims who will probably not call the police and I'll just be able to do it forever. How would I construct that system? Like, what authority structures would I put in play? How would I mold the culture in that community? Like, what values would I want people to have? Like, submission and unquestioning unchecked authority and, you know, sexual shame and lack of knowledge about body parts and—
Blake
There's one quote from your book where you say, purity culture doesn't teach people to say no, but it teaches them to say nothing.
Emily
Yes, that's how I would do it. So that's what I think about it. It's like it really, a lot of these structures feel to me very reverse engineered to enable and normalize and hide abuse.
Kashif
Yeah, I think that's really important. I find this comes up quite often in the book, where a woman will be abused or have experienced abuse, and she will be made to go back to her abuser and apologize, hug him, happened to you.
Emily
Happened to me.
Kashif
Can you talk a little bit about that? I mean, it comes up several times, and every single time I found myself kind of jarred at the image of this, you know, a young woman hugging a man or, you know, whatever leader, and being made sometimes to do that in front of everybody. I mean, I just, yeah. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Emily
Yeah. I frankly think that the adults that taught us this bullshit also did not have a proper understanding of consent. Like, I don't think they really got it either. I don't think that they were these, most of them, you know, I mean, some of them evil masterminds for sure. But I think by and large, the vast majority of them were not just like, oh, I want to set my kids up to be abused. You know, they just, they didn't understand consent either. But I think it's a basic failure to teach about consent because if you have an understanding of what consent is, you know, that like a minor child cannot consent meaningfully to a romantic relationship with not just an adult, but an adult who is in a, you know, an additional position of spiritual authority who like controls other parts of their, I mean, can't with an adult anyway. Then you add on top of this, this like spiritual abuse piece of it, right? But it's like they didn't have an understanding of that. And I know that for a fact, right? Because my father married a girl out of his youth group. He was the youth pastor and he selected her when she was 16. And that wasn't a church scandal because her parents knew, the pastor knew. Now, as an adult, I'm like, oh, that just makes, you know, four complicit adults instead of one. You know, like, now looking back, I'm like, holy cow, we call that something very different now. They called it a love story back then. But, like, they did not have a proper understanding of consent either, and that got passed on to us. And so then you get into these situations where—and actually, oh my God, I'm going to share something with y'all that I have not shared with anyone. Because it just happened. This is me being vulnerable, all right? Like a few days ago, I was, I knew that I had in my basement, like a big, big box of a bunch of stuff from Moody. I went to Moody Bible Institute for my undergrad. And I took so many like hermeneutics classes there and like different things. And so I was like, I was like, let me go pull that back up because I bet there's stuff in there that I can use to write my new book because my new book's about the Bible. And I was like, I want to re-familiarize myself with like what I was being taught and see, you know, sometimes there's like useful handouts too about for different things. And so I was like, maybe there's some useful stuff in there too. I mean, it wasn't all bullshit. So I was just going through this like giant box of stuff from Moody. And I actually found like a lot of stuff that I think is going to be super helpful to help me write my book. So I'm stoked about that. And just, you know, 15 years later, like, why did I, why did I still have it? But great, great that I do. Anyway, so I was going through it, and I found—and I couldn't even tell you what class it was, but there was some, like, I don't know, freshman or sophomore, like, spiritual development bullshit something something class that everybody had to take where you had to, like, write about your story, your testimony, your whatever, right? And I found mine, and it talked about that story. It talked about me being abused in high school. But that version of me telling that story had no understanding that that's what it was. And I repeatedly blamed myself. I repeatedly ascribed to myself responsibility that I should not have done this. I should not have done that. I was, you know, in need of the healing from all of the sin that I had been doing. Right? I remember feeling that way. Like, I remember feeling that way. But it really wasn't until, like, later into my 20s that I really started to unpack it. Because it wasn't like, it wasn't ever like a secret secret. Like, you know, I talked to my friends about it. I talked to people that I dated about it. Like, you know, I would share it with people when we got to the part of the friendship where we were sharing deep things. But like, but it just wasn't something that I had like spent a ton of time unpacking until, you know, like then the internet happened and we start realizing, we start having conversations about purity culture and like back early aughts, Twitter, I think was really helpful for that. But anyway, it was just so fascinating. I pulled that paper out and I just read it and I was like, I love her and I feel so sorry for her that she is carrying around all of this guilt for something that was done to her that then none of the adults in her life recognized as exploitative because they too were an integral part of that system. And all of that is to say, right? Like, I think that's why those things happen. That, to your point about like, why we have, you know, girls being forced to go like, say I'm sorry to their abusers, because they're seen as like Jezebels who tempted a godly man and not victims of a gross guy.
Kashif
Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting. I'm thinking about my two sisters and all that they suffered going to church, and especially my older sister, how that's how she was treated as the seductress, the Jezebel. And I love her rebellion in those years because she was like, oh, fuck y'all. I mean, we didn't say that. She didn't say that in those years. But when they told her she had to wear a floor-length skirt, she was like, you know what? I'm going to wear a floor-length skirt, but I'm going to have a split straight at the thigh. And how's that?
Emily
There you go. We love malicious compliance.
Kashif
I mean, yeah, she was definitely, because I think early on she realized sort of what was at play. But it actually didn't stop her from, you know, later being blamed for an incident that happened. But all of that sort of power, I mean, yeah, growing up in church, the same thing in my Caribbean church. You know, if a young lady got pregnant, she was made to stand before the entire church and apologize by herself.
Emily
Yeah.
Kashif
While the young man would be sitting in the congregation and nobody would say, like, I think you should probably go up there with her.
Emily
Well, he's just a visual creature. Right?
Kashif
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. This is just how he's hardwired, you know?
Emily
Yeah.
Kashif
Anyway. Emily, can you give us just a quick, like a 60-second rundown of how your forthcoming book, and if you can remind us of the title, how it's going to be structured?
Emily
Yes.
Kashif
And what people can look forward to.
Emily
So, yeah, after all of this, I'm writing a book about the Bible, which I think is very funny. It's called In the Beginning, A Guide to Reading the Bible for the First Time. And currently slated for publication like early 2027. But it is about reading the Bible from a compassionate and curious and religiously neutral perspective. You know, there's a lot of books about how to read the Bible, but very many of them have sort of like an ulterior motive, right? Of like, here's how to read the Bible so that you believe the same things that I do. And I'm like, I actually genuinely don't care. I don't have a single dog in the fight. I don't care if somebody's Christian or non-Christian. I don't care if they believe the Bible or don't believe the Bible or have ever read the Bible in their entire life. It doesn't matter to me where you end up. But to me, every single thing that happened to all of us today was affected by the Bible. The Bible undergirds pretty much everything that's happening on the political scale right now. Did you get a nasty name called at you walking down the sidewalk? That's the Bible. You know what I'm saying? Should kids have a hard time in public school today accessing sex ed? That's the Bible. Did immigrants get rounded up who are here legally and put in a detention center? That is the Bible. Like, people are using the Bible to justify these things, and most people don't know what's in it, have never read it. Rightfully speaking, are reticent to because they see it as undergirding so much harm in our society, and in many ways it does. But I think you should know about it. I asked one of my atheist friends when I was, like, working on this book proposal just out of curiosity. I was like, hey, who wrote the Bible? And she was like, I don't know, Jesus? And I was like, okay. So we got some work to do, right? Because this book that affects our lives, I mean, probably, not to put too fine a point on it, but, like, probably the most impactful book ever written in human history in terms of, like, not just national politics but global politics and just, like, the way that human history has unfolded. And people don't read it. And I actually think it's a lot more fun to read when you don't believe it. You know what I'm saying? One thing that I've really noticed was I was like, you know, I've read the Bible cover to cover because I was a very, like, zealous young Christian when I was younger. Of course, I've read the Bible cover to cover multiple times. But I haven't in a while. So I thought to myself, okay, well, I'm writing a book about the Bible. And it's about, I mean, the book is kind of structured, like, we're going to talk about the historicity, but then we're going to talk about the different literary genres. And like, you know, if you want to engage with it spiritually and, you know, these different things, right? All kind of stuff. But I thought like I should read it through again while I'm writing this book because I haven't in a while. And that would probably be like a good, you know, intellectual exercise for me. But then I thought it'd be funnier if I did it on TikTok. So I've been getting on TikTok live every day.
Blake
I love that.
Emily
And just like reading through the Bible. I just finished Genesis yesterday. What a funny book. That is a funny fucking book. There were so many things that I was reading through just in Genesis where I was like, I forgot about that. And then actually at one point, TikTok Live kicked me off and suspended my live streaming privileges because of something that I was reading in Genesis.
Blake
That's so funny.
Emily
So in the middle of the Joseph and the Rainbow Code of Colors story, there's like this interlude where Joseph's brother Judah has a daughter-in-law. This is the pull-out method story.
Kashif
Onanism
Blake
Onan.
Emily
Onan, yeah. And this is where it comes from that, like, you shouldn't masturbate. But he wasn't actually even masturbating. What he was actually doing is the pull-out method. So if you're going to take the Bible literally, it was not so much that God hates masturbation. It's that God hates pulling out, you know. So that's kind of the one. But the problem was, right, that he wasn't giving his dead brother's wife a child. And so whatever. So she takes matters into her own hands and then, like, goes down to the road and dresses up like a professional. And seduces her father-in-law. And this all happens in the middle of the Joseph story. And then all of a sudden I got this notification, like your live stream has ended. You violated our community guidelines. That's amazing.
Blake
My main takeaway from this conversation is that God is pro-breeding.
Emily
Yeah, or at least use a condom. God is anti the pull-out method, but maybe it's just because it's not that effective. I don't really know.
Kashif
Oh my God. God, the breeder.
Blake
That's so funny.
Kashif
How do we say that in the Jehovah, Jehovah breeder? What would that be? I don't know. Jehovah Rapha, my provider.
Blake
Oh my God.
Kashif
It's a Jehovah something, something breeder. Give it to us girls. Write in, write in. Somebody's got it. I need to figure out what breeder is in Hebrew. So Jehovah, whatever that is. Okay. I want to hear it because I'm here for it. Okay. That's my guy.
Blake
Oh man.
Emily
You heard it here first.
Kashif
You heard it here first. Okay.
Emily
Yeah. I mean, back in live stream again now, I had to appeal it though. And I was like, damn, I really just got kicked off of TikTok for reading the Bible.
Blake
I mean, it's going to happen again. That's not even the worst part.
Emily
That's not the weirdest stuff. I'm only in Genesis. Just wait till I get to Song of Solomon. And let me tell you what, I'm reading that when we get there. I'm reading that in the message version.
Kashif
Message version with candles, with, okay, get some incense smoke going on.
Emily
It's Marvin Gaye. It's Marvin Gaye in the background. It is the Bible after dark.
Kashif
Okay. Okay. With some silk sheets on. Okay. In a deep little voice.
Emily
Yes, I'm here for it. And then we'll have to be reminded, God hates the pullout method. You better not.
Blake
Stay in.
Kashif
Stay in. That's it. Stay into that enclosed garden or whatever it says in Song of Solomon. Okay. Well, that is very exciting. And we look forward to when that makes its way into the earth. I don't know why I just phrased it like that. When that appears on the scene. Let's put it that way.
Blake
I think you were thinking of Onan.
Kashif
I was definitely thinking of Onan. Oh my God. Okay, perfect. We love it. We love it. Okay, so we are going to take a quick ad break and we'll be right back. Stay tuned. My friends know that one of my favorite sayings is,that's nothing to write home about. And sometimes if I'm feeling a little spicy, I'll say, don't get out your good stationery. Well, not getting out your good stationery is very hard to do when you shop at Gift Horse in Nashville. Gift Horse is a locally owned shop that focuses on paper goods and unusual gifts sourced from independent artists around the world. I love to walk in there, catch up with their team of knowledgeable staff, and soak in all the colors. And it is my go-to place when I need to send Nashville-themed gifts to my friends and family living elsewhere. Whether you're looking for a Kawako fountain pen or a sardine jaw clip, You can find it at Gift Horse. Don't live in Nashville? No worries. You can shop online at gifthorstnashville.com.
Blake
It's that time in the episode, every episode, we play this little game where we text the randomizer on my phone, who is going to be there. And then depending on what names that randomizer spits out, we are going to have to decide whether or not we're going to this party or we're conserving our energy and we're staying home.
Emily
I'm so scared.
Blake
All right. We've got three introverts on this call today. Emily, would you call yourself an introvert?
Emily
Yeah.
Blake
I figured.
Emily
You've been at parties with me before. You know, everybody at some point looks around and is like, where's Emily? And it's like, I left a long time ago or I'm like asleep in somebody's spare room. I just like, I'm out. When I'm done, I'm done. I've done that at parties at my own house. When I get tired, I'm just like, bye.
Blake
Oh, what I do is I say, hey, everybody, it's bedtime. Get out, please. So we're going to decide whether or not we're going to go to this party. A little caveat. It's CCM edition. So the guests at this party are going to be major CCM artists.
Emily
Who put these names in?
Kashif
We did.
Blake
We came up with a list.
Emily
Okay.
Blake
We did get some input from our, if you go on our website, you can enter in a name that you would like to see in our randomizer. And so there is a name that somebody submitted that is a part of this list.
Emily
Okay.
Blake
So let me pull this up real quick. The first name is Kirk Franklin.
Kashif
Okay.
Blake
All right. Second one, Sean Feucht, Fucked. How do you say his last name?
Emily
No, Shiny Fucks. That's what we call him on Twitter.
Blake
I'm going with Fucked.
Emily
We called him Shiny Fucked.
Blake
Shiny Fucks. That's what he will henceforth be known by. Last.
Emily
Oh, no.
Blake
Jeremy Camp.
Kashif
Yes!
Blake
Kashif's personal favorite.
Kashif
So, I have some ideas.
Blake
Listen. You've been thinking of these ideas for decades at this point.
Kashif
Not decades. No. Okay, yes, fine. Okay, okay. We're not lying. This is a Christian podcast.
Blake
We've got Kirk Franklin, Shiny Fucked and our favorite, Jeremy Camp.
Kashif
So, okay, are we going to this party? The first thing I'll say is that Kirk Franklin would probably want to talk to Jeremy Camp about working out. It would probably be very bro-ey in that corner because I think Kirk Franklin is on the shorter side. And so he always gets roasted for, like, wearing little clothes. But he is very fit. I once saw Kirk Franklin at Soho House in Nashville. And, yeah, he's just – he's very – he's a very portable fellow. and so I could definitely see him trying to arm wrestle Jeremy Camp like they somehow something happening there and I think I would love to just see that but I'm afraid that Sean Mr. Fucked would be a bad influence on Jeremy Camp and in the terms of like bringing out some sort of like white nationalist energy, I'm worried. I think that would be frightening. So maybe I'm reconsidering. I'm like, would I want to go to this? I don't know. What do y'all think?
Emily
My thing is just like, I don't trust myself to be in a room with shiny fucks because I come from a long line of poorly behaved people. And I worry I would be like, oops, here's my drink that I spilled on you. And then it would evolve into like a real housewives style brawl.
Blake
Fuck him up.
Emily
Yeah, honestly. So, yeah, I don't know that I could. I don't know that I could. I don't know that I trust myself.
Blake
I'm not going either. I'm not going to this party. I don't think that Sean fucked, however you say his name. I don't think he's ever been to a party where he hasn't picked up a guitar and tried to get people's attention. He just seems like that person.
Emily
Oh, and that's right. It would be like every guy in Bible college who like grabs the guitar and plays it in the hallway, hoping to lure his future wife with his sounds.
Blake
Yep. Yeah. And I can't stand that. So on that alone, I'm not going. But the vibes in general, it's just too, it's too manly.
Emily
Too much.
Kashif
The voices would be like several octaves lower than like what's normal.
Blake
Yes.
Kashif
How people talk.
Blake
Very performative.
Kashif
Like, you know, people challenge me all the time. Which there is a video where he says that.
Blake
And how many times have you listened to it?
Kashif
Once, just for reference. 70 times, 70 times is all it takes to make it right. Anyway, but I think that Sean also would, the singing would just bother me, but I literally think that a lot of people wouldn't know who he was. And I think he has a sort of Trumpian, like any of the people who are near Donald Trump or on his sort of side, whatever, I think they tend to adopt that, like, I am famous, that sort of giant ego. I feel like people at the party wouldn't know who he was and he would get very upset by that. So he would probably just like keep singing or trying to do very like right wing, like MAGA shit. And I just wouldn't be able to stand it. So you know what? I am shocked to be saying this. I don't know that I would go to this party.
Blake
The randomizer did you dirty.
Kashif
The randomizer did me dirty. There were other names on this list that the randomizer could have chosen, but instead.
Blake
The randomizer cock-blocked you.
Kashif
Very much so. Yeah. Okay. Because I had it set up.
Blake
You can always. You can always maybe go and then like try to pull Jeremy Camp away.
Emily
Make a quick appearance.
Kashif
I could find a little side room and say, yeah, I'll take the place of that man. Okay. But also randomly, Kirk Franklin, I think one of his sons is bi and was on a reality show recently or something like this. Anyway, so I don't know. Maybe there might be some okayness there. I'm not sure.
Blake
Okay. So what I'm hearing is we're not going.
Emily
I'm not going.
Blake
Kashif might try to find a way, but for the most part, we're not going.
Kashif
Yeah. Sad face.
Blake
All right. Well, that brings us to the end of our time today. Emily, where can people reach you?
Emily
Oh, so I'm @EmilyJoyAllison on most of the things. That's where I'm at on TikTok. I guess I'm @EmilyJoyPoetry on Instagram. I'm also on Blue Sky. I mean, Twitter is where all of the churchtoo stuff happened. And I haven't shut down my account because I wanted to preserve the history of it. But I'm just literally not on there anymore due to the fact of all the Nazis. But Blue Sky is nice. There's a lot less Nazis on Blue Sky. So yeah, I'm Emily Joy Allison on Blue Sky and TikTok. I am @EmilyJoyPoetry on Instagram. There are other ways to engage with me. Yeah, come say hi. I like when people from the real world come and connect with me there.
Blake
Yeah, awesome. We'll go tune in to Emily reading the Bible on her TikTok.
Emily
Yes, I try to do it. I was doing it in the morning and then I was like, nobody's watching TikTok lives in the morning. So then I'm like, I'm experimenting with time of day right now. If I'm not too tired after this, I may go start Exodus, but we may start Exodus tomorrow. We'll see.
Blake
Love it. Okay, we'll have to tune in. We'll have to hop on too. If you would like to leave us a name in our randomizer so that that name could potentially be part of our game, you can always visit us on our website at whosgonnabetare.com.
Emily
Can I just tell you one now?
Blake
Yes.
Emily
Can you put Jojo Siwa in there?
Blake
Is Jojo Siwa? I don't think she's
Kashif
She's not.
Blake
I don't think we have her in there yet. She belongs on the list. She belongs in the randomizer. Okay. Jojo Siwa was going in. If you have another name that you want to recommend, go to our website. You can find us on TikTok and Instagram at @whosgonnabetherepod. That's it. Kashif, it is good to meet.
Kashif
It is sad to part.
Blake
Until next time, we will see you. Everybody enjoy your two weeks.
Kashif
Bye.
Blake
Bye.
Emily
Thanks for having me, y'all.
Blake
Thanks, Emily.
Emily
I want to get the Duck Dynasty Bible really bad.