Episodes

In this episode of Straight White American Jesus, host Brad Onishi sits down with Dr. Liz Bucar, religious ethicist and professor at Northeastern University, to unpack the hidden costs of the modern wellness industry. Exploring themes from her new book, Beyond Wellness: How Restoring the Religious Roots of Spiritual Practices Can Heal Us, Dr. Bucar argues that consumer culture has stripped profound traditions like yoga, mindfulness, and psychedelics into a "spiritual salad bar"—trading real tran...

Brad and Dan show up wired, sleep-deprived, and ready to go, breaking down a week where the absurd somehow outpaced the outrageous. They start with a surreal clip of Donald Trump reflecting on his son’s wedding before diving straight into the heart of the episode: a massive DOJ–IRS settlement that includes a $1.8 billion “slush fund” ostensibly for victims of government “weaponization.” The hosts trace how this fund is likely to benefit January 6 participants and allies, connecting it to the lon...

Throughout his presentation of manhood and masculine virtue, Josh Hawley assures us that he’s telling us “what the Bible says,” or “what the Bible teaches.” And he’s not alone: biblicist Christians almost always support their claims by assuring us that they’re simply passing along “what the Bible says.” But is it that simple? What else is going on here? How do the claims to merely represent “what the Bible says” operate as mechanisms of control and coercion? How do they serve the interests of Ch...

Sunday's nine-hour “Rededicate 250” event on the National Mall brought together politicians and religious leaders calling for America to be returned to God. In this episode, Brad Onishi breaks down key statements from figures like Robert Jeffress, Mike Johnson, Pete Hegseth, and Marco Rubio, exposing how their claims rely on selective history, mythmaking, and a deeply misleading vision of the founding. From the Doctrine of Discovery to the legend of Washington at Valley Forge, the story being to...

In this episode of the Straight White American Jesus Sunday Interview, host Leah Payne speaks with Jonathan Calvillo, sociologist of religion at Candler School of Theology at Emory University and author of The Saints of Santa Ana, about growing tensions within Latino evangelical and Pentecostal communities over immigration, political representation, and the public platforming of prominent evangelical leader Samuel Rodriguez. The conversation centers on the recent “We Are Not a Monolith” stateme...

Brad and Dan dig into another whirlwind week in Trumpworld, beginning with the unveiling of a towering gold-leaf Donald Trump statue at his Doral golf resort and the increasingly explicit fusion of political power, religious symbolism, and personality cult. The hosts unpack Trump’s comments that he does not think about Americans’ financial struggles while simultaneously pushing a pro-natalist agenda alongside figures like RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz. From “under-babied” rhetoric to Heritage Foundation pr...

Despite claiming to present us with a “Christian” vision of manhood, there is nothing identifiably Christian about Josh Hawley’s account of masculinity and masculine virtue. Instead, he can define masculinity any way he wants, and call it “Christian.” But there’s a flip side to this. He can also dismiss anyone who disagrees with him, anyone who doesn’t accept his account of masculinity, anyone who opposes his “Christian” vision, as an “atheist.” How does this work for him? Why make this specific...

In the premiere episode of season five of Our Seven Neighbors: Religion and Resistance in America, host Reza Aslan joins historian and Smithsonian curator Peter Manseau for a sweeping conversation about the real history of religious freedom in the United States. Together, they dismantle the comforting myth that America was founded as a uniformly Christian nation devoted to liberty for all, revealing instead a far more contested and complicated story. From Puritan theocracy and the execution of Q...

Brad Onishi interviews Texas Monthly senior writer Robert Downen about his 12,000-word feature on Paul Pressler, a key architect of the Southern Baptist Convention’s conservative resurgence alongside Paige Patterson. Downen outlines how the takeover, framed around biblical inerrancy, gender hierarchy, abortion, and weakening church–state separation, helped align the SBC with the GOP and built a broader culture-war mindset, aided by sophisticated internal tactics such as tracking pastorates, spyi...

Redistricting Mania and the Christian Nationalist Push for Minority Rule Brad Onishi and Dan Miller discuss the fallout from a recent Supreme Court decision they say further rolled back the Voting Rights Act, triggering aggressive redistricting across states like Louisiana, Florida, Indiana, Virginia, Texas, and Tennessee, including carving up Memphis’s Black-majority district. They highlight Christian nationalist rhetoric from figures such as Kevin Roberts, Indiana Lt. Gov. Brian Beckwith, and...

In this special crossover episode, Dan Miller joins Dr. Laura Anderson on Sunday School Dropouts for an in-depth examination of the ideological forces shaping modern Christian masculinity. The conversation centers on the specific theological frameworks used to justify patriarchal hierarchies, including the elevation of Adam as a model for the masculine ideal over the figure of Jesus. By analyzing recent political literature on the subject, Dan and Laura pull back the curtain on how high control ...

In this episode, Annika Brockschmidt sits down with Adrian Daub, Professor at Stanford University and author of the upcoming book What Tech Calls Governing. Daub provides a searing intellectual history of the vibe shift in Silicon Valley, dismantling the myth that the tech world has undergone a broad political transformation. Instead, Daub argues that we are witnessing the radicalization of a billionaire elite, a small class of men like Marc Andreessen, Elon Musk, and Peter Thiel, who have moved...

In this week’s solo roundup, Dan Miller deconstructs a series of aggressive maneuvers by the 47th administration designed to codify Christian nationalism into federal policy. The centerpiece is the newly released report from the Anti-Christian Bias Task Force, an entity Dan argues serves less as a shield for religious freedom and more as a sword against civil rights. By framing standard anti-discrimination protections as inherent attacks on the faith, the administration is effectively creating a...

Despite his promises, Josh Hawley’s vision of masculinity and masculine virtue is not “Christian” in any definable way. But while this may be surprising, given his Christian nationalist credentials, it actually serves the interests of his ideology not to be distinctly Christian? In what senses? What can be gained by ensuring that claims to “Christian masculinity” aren’t actually Christian? Join Dan for this week’s episode as he explains. Subscribe for $3.65: ⁠https://axismundi.supercast.com/⁠ S...

The repeal of the military’s flu vaccine mandate by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth might seem like a minor policy shift, but it opens a window into a much larger movement reshaping American politics, religion, and public health. In this episode, we unpack how vaccine hesitancy—once a fringe concern—has merged with evangelical Christian nationalism, “medical freedom” rhetoric, and the post-COVID backlash to government authority. What looks like a simple choice about a seasonal shot is, in reality...

In this compelling installment of Senate Sunday, host Brad Onishi engages in a deep-dive conversation with Dr. Tiffany Townsend, a distinguished psychologist and former Chief Diversity Officer, to discuss her timely new book, Weathering the Storm: Navigating the Anti-Social Justice Wave. The episode traces the trajectory of American DEI efforts from the "radical hope" sparked by Barack Obama’s election to the current systemic dismantling of equity initiatives across the country. Dr. Townsend off...

Brad Onishi and Dan Miller discuss the Trump DOJ’s indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center, alleging it defrauded donors by paying informants for access to extremist groups, with charges including wire fraud, bank fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering; they note legal experts’ skepticism, SPLC’s past cooperation with law enforcement, and argue it reflects MAGA hostility and a Project 2025/Project Esther-style push to label opponents “domestic terrorists.” They then cover Virginia voters ...

Josh Hawley tells us he’s giving us a vision of Christian “manhood.” But as we near the end of his book on the subject, is he? In this episode, Dan argues that there’s actually nothing specifically Christian about Hawley’s account of manhood at all. In fact, he argues, Hawley goes to length NOT to discuss any specifically Christian themes, even when he comes to the chapter on men as “priests?” So what’s going on? Check out this week’s episode to find out! Subscribe for $3.65: ⁠https://axismundi...

Trump’s 2 Chronicles Reading and the Politics of Christian Nationalism Brad Onishi discusses an 84-hour marathon Bible reading at the Museum of the Bible tied to U.S. 250th anniversary celebrations, noting that Donald Trump read from the White House rather than attending. He argues it is dangerous that Trump—whom he calls immoral and unfamiliar with scripture—was assigned 2 Chronicles 7:11–22, a passage long used by evangelicals to frame national crisis as divine punishment and to demand repent...

In this episode of the Straight White American Jesus Sunday Interview, host Leah Payne speaks with journalist Sam Kestenbaum about his reporting on celebrity pastor culture and the rise of the “hype priest.” The conversation centers on Kestenbaum’s widely discussed profile of Judah Smith, a “pastor-to-the-stars” connected to figures like Justin Bieber, and expands into a broader analysis of how millennial pastors have fused evangelical preaching with aesthetics, branding, and media performance. ...

Religion scholars Brad Onishi and Dan Miller recap a week of conflict in which Pope Leo criticized war and bombing in a statement widely read as aimed at the U.S. approach to Iran, prompting a lengthy Trump Truth Social attack and backlash over an AI image of Trump as Jesus. JD Vance and Speaker Mike Johnson told the Pope to “stay in his lane” and invoked just war theory, leading Miller to explain its criteria and argue the Iran conflict fails them; the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued...

What does it mean when cultural and religious conservatives proclaim that they affirm a “culture of life?” We know it means that they oppose abortion and abortion access. But what else does it mean? In this episode, Dan dives in to decode this message to look at the racial, gender, and social positions that are encoded in this seemingly familiar slogan. Subscribe for $3.65: ⁠https://axismundi.supercast.com/⁠ Subscribe to our free newsletter: ⁠https://swaj.substack.com/⁠ Order American Caesar by...

In this episode, Brad Onishi unpacks the escalating clash between Donald Trump and Pope Leo—from Trump’s public criticism of the Pope to the now-viral AI image depicting himself as Jesus. What might seem like another headline-grabbing controversy reveals deeper tensions between political power and religious authority, especially as figures like JD Vance attempt to downplay the conflict while advancing a broader ideological vision. Going beyond the news cycle, this episode explores the concept o...

In this episode, Brad Onishi is joined by world-renowned New Testament scholar Dr. Bart Ehrman to explore the origins of the Western moral conscience through his latest book, Love Thy Stranger. The conversation challenges the common assumption that altruism is a "natural" human impulse, revealing instead how the ancient Greco-Roman world operated on a logic of social dominance and power. Ehrman traces the evolution of ethics from the specific tribal obligations found in Leviticus to the radical,...