Queer & Christian with the TikTok Pastor

What if faith and queerness weren’t at odds? What if a vibrant, affirming Christian life was not only possible for queer folks and their families, but deeply sacred? This week, In the Den, Sara continues a conversation with special guest Reverend Brandan Robertson,  a dynamic pastor, author, and thought leader at the forefront of LGBTQ+ inclusion in Christian spaces.

Special Guest: Reverend Brandan Robertson

Rev. Brandan Robertson is a noted author, activist, and public theologian, dedicated to exploring the intersections of spirituality, sexuality, and social justice. He serves as the Pastor of Sunnyside Reformed Church in New York City and is the founder and Executive Director of The Devout Foundation. Known as the "TikTok Pastor," Robertson's inclusive theological content reaches over 250,000 followers and has garnered 6 million views. He has authored 23 books, including the INDIES Book of the Year finalist True Inclusion. Robertson acquired a Bachelor of Arts in Pastoral Ministry and Biblical Studies from Moody Bible Institute, an Master of Theological Study from Iliff School of Theology, and a Master of Arts in Political Science and Public Administration from Eastern Illinois University. He's presently pursuing a PhD in Biblical Studies at Drew University. He currently resides in New York City.

Links from the Show:

• Find Brandan on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@revbrandanrobertson 
• Find Brandan’s website here: https://www.brandanrobertson.com/ 
• Gay Church: www.gaychurch.org 
• Find Brandan’s books in the Mama Dragons bookstore here: https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=brandan 
• Brandan’s new book Queer & Christian: https://bookshop.org/p/books/queer-christian-reclaiming-the-bible-our-faith-and-our-place-at-the-table-brandan-robertson/21752396?ean=9781250321343&next=t 
• Join Mama Dragons today: www.mamadragons.org 

In the Den is made possible by generous donors like you. Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today at www.mamadragons.org. 

Transcript

SARA: Hi everyone. Welcome to In the Den with Mama Dragons. A podcast and community to support, educate, and empower parents on the journey of raising happy and healthy LGBTQ+ humans. I’m your host, Sara LaWall. I’m a Mama Dragon myself and an advocate for our queer community. And I’m so glad to be part of this wild and wonderful parenting journey with all of you. Thanks for joining us. We’re so glad you’re here.

Hello, Mama Dragons! I am so excited to welcome back Brandan Robertson, Queer Pastor, author, and public theologian. This is Part 2 of our conversation–we had so much to talk about when he came on the show that we brought him back for a second episode. If you want to go back and listen to part 1, go back to episode 113; it’s amazing and we do a really deep dive into some of those challenging religious beliefs and concepts that are difficult to deconstruct when leaving religion behind. And Brandan does a great job of walking us through those reconstruction ideas. And then, today’s episode we’re going to get to hear about Brandan’s continuing journey as a Progressive Christian Pastor, his viral TikTok presence and his new book, Queer & Christian: Reclaiming the Bible, Our Faith, and Our Place at the Table. Let’s get into it.

SARA: OK. Brandan. Thanks for coming back for Part 2 of this conversation because there’s so many more questions I wanted to ask you and a deeper conversation I wanted to have. So I’m excited that we get to do this and I’m going to dive right in. What I’m really curious about in listening to your story and your deconstruction and reconstruction is, what was it that compelled you to stay with your Christian faith? So many choose to walk away. We didn't you?

BRANDAN: Yeah. I think two answers. One, I’m remarkably stubborn. And so when people – and I’ve heard this a lot from other people that stick around – when people tell me I can’t do something, I’m going to try to do it. And to just tie to that is the fact that I had an encounter with what I understood to be Jesus when I was a 12-year-old kid in church. And it did change my life. And the Christian story and the Christian rituals and traditions have meant so much to me over the course of my life that, just because I came out as gay, it felt so strange to all the sudden be hearing, “You can no longer be the thing that in many ways has been such a crucial aspect of my identity.” Christian is a deep part of me. And so all that’s not to ignore the fact there have been moments when I have sincerely thought, “Maybe I should leave because it’s a lot of work to be in a tradition that constantly is telling you people like you don’t belong.” But the thing that I could not deny is that my encounter with God happened in this tradition and the things that this tradition has offered me have made me a better person and my life more rich. And so I remain in this path.

SARA: And we are so grateful because you are doing some extraordinary work in this space. You are now a UCC Pastor serving a church in New York City, yes?

BRANDAN: Yes.

SARA: And the United Church of Christ denomination that you’re with now being one of the more Progressive Christian traditions out there. And I’ll just name for my people, we Unitarians like to think we’re cousins. So tell us a little bit about that journey, how you found Progressive Christianity.

BRANDAN: Yeah. One of the blessings of not growing up religious and kind of doing my whole journey on my town terms, like I went to the Baptist church and I chose to go to the Evangelical church and literally have been a part of virtually every kind of Christianity that exists. I was part of Charismatic Pentecostal Churches. I’ve been part of the Eastern Orthodox church. I interned as an Anglican Minister at a church for six months, and have hopped around virtually every kind of Progressive Christian. I’ve worked for the United Methodist church. I was in a process to become an Episcopal Priest, and ended up as a UCC Minister. And the reason I ended up here is, I’ll say this. On paper, Unitarian Universalism is actually probably the closest thing on paper to what I actually embody in the world, minus the commitment to Jesus. The only Christian denomination that comes close to that is the United Church of Christ. And what really compelled me and drew me to the UCC was a few years ago they launched a campaign called, “God is still speaking.”

SARA: Yes. I remember that, it was beautiful.

BRANDAN: It’s this core belief that our faith is ongoing and evolving, that God didn’t stop speaking when the Bible canon was closed, and there are very few Christian traditions that hold to such a clear statement that God is working still in the world and that we should evolve with God. And that has become kind of the heartbeat of my faith, is that I think we should always be evolving and reforming and changing. And I think Jesus taught that in the Gospels. And so I ended up at the UCC because they believe that as a core as value, and because it’s such a diverse structure of how we do church. I believe that individual congregations should have the freedom to express faith in the way that looks like what it looks like for them. And the UCC’s a congregational church that allows individual congregations to worship the way they want to worship, believe the way they want to believe, and so that compelled me about the UCC and that’s how I ended up here.

SARA: That’s great. And as you’re talking, I’m thinking, in just as when you were in Evangelical Bible school and there is a theology to follow that is taught in that space, Systematic Theology, similarly Process Theology is a theology that embodies a lot of: we involved with God in our religious understanding. And I know a lot of theologians in these Progressive Christian spaces really turn to Process Theology for a lot of their inspiration and grounding.

BRANDAN: Totally. That’s the beauty that Conservatives don’t tell you about when you’re in their tradition is that there are so many other strains of theology whether it’s Process or Liberation or Womanist. And the Progressive Christian movement gets to really draw on this rich strain of theology that isn’t the white European theology that, frankly, all Evangelicalism is based on. And it’s so compelling and beautiful.

SARA: It is. I love it too. A fun fact about you is that you relatively recently – within the last few years – became widely known as the TikTok Pastor with over 25,000 followers and over 6.5 million likes. That is impressive. Will you tell us the story of how that came about and why TikTok and how did you go viral? What was the video that really catapulted you into that space?

BRANDAN: It was this story, there’s kind of this cohort of ministers that all joined around the same time. It was during the pandemic. I was pastoring a church in San Diego. And our church had done like every other church did. And so I found myself with a lot of time on my hands. And I’m a theology nerd at heart. This is what I talk about with my friends over whiskey. This is what I do with my life. And so I started seeing clergy on TikTok. Not many of them were talking about theology. A lot of them were doing funny dances in clergy collars. And it was getting some interesting engagement and I saw people in the comments asking questions about these clergy. So I thought, why not. And my first few videos were literally me dancing around in a clergy collar in my bedroom in San Diego. Thankfully they’re long buried right now and you can’t find those videos. But then I was like, well, what if I start answering these questions people are asking? And I literally just set up my phone and would answer, what is a Progressive Christian? And how can you be gay and Christian? And all these things that were coming in. And I don’t think that it was one video. But what I noticed was that because TikTok has a unique algorithm that shares videos with people that don’t follow you but thinks it would be aligned with their interests, I started noticing that my one-minute explanation of what Progressive Christianity was, was being viewed by 10,000 people which was more than anything else I was putting out on social media. And because it was in a pandemic, we were all using things like Zoom. And so what I started going was seeing the people who were responding to videos, I’d invite them to Zoom Bible Studies in the evenings. And we’d spend four hours with – and sometimes we had 500 people showing up on Zoom, just talking.

SARA: Oh my goodness.

BRANDAN: And it really just became this virtual world where I was so compelled to see young people because most people on the app at this time were high school and college age, wanting to have deep conversations about theology and showing up, not just on TikTok but in Zoom and other places. And so I just kept doing that. And it’s been really remarkable. The goal was never to have a platform or to be known as anything. It really still remains to make Progressive Christianity accessible because, guess what, Conservative Christians have dominated this market for the last 20 years. They are very good at promoting their message. And this became an opportunity for us to share an alternative version of faith. And people want to hear it, apparently.

SARA: I love it. I love it. I love that you're attracting young people who are curious, too. And that has been a real benefit of TikTok. And I also know that, just like everywhere else in the social media sphere, you get a lot of push back, probably get some trolls.

BRANDAN: Yep.

SARA: You get a lot of criticism. How do you handle that on your platform, especially from those more traditional Evangelical Christian voices?

BRANDAN: I think my experience on TikTok is a little bit unique. I think all Progressive Christians or queer folks get some pushback. For some reason my niche, because of my background, the algorithm puts me largely in front of Conservative Christians. And so if anybody were to click on any one of my videos, a vast majority of the comments, hundreds of comments, are Conservative critiques. And that has been hard. I’ve had to work over the past five years of being on TikTok of how do I take care of my wellness when every single day there are hundreds of people saying negative things. And I’ve not always navigated that well. Sometimes I’ve said snarky rude things back. And that’s a learning process. But there’s also a lot of empathy. I shared this in our last episode. But a lot of these folks are young people that are in a fear-based theology. And they’re saying what they’re saying because it’s what they’ve seen modeled in church and it’s what they believe they need to do in order to not go to Hell. And so I try to engage in good faith with a lot of the young people that are saying this stuff. And some of the most beautiful stories I’ve seen on TikTok are the young people that start off as complete haters that stick around for six months and then I’ll get an email saying, “Literally, six months ago, I said this terrible thing to you and I’ve listened since then. And now I’m really open. Can you recommend some books? Would you have a zoom call with me?” And that has become a ministry in and of itself that has just been so life-giving, is to see that transformation take place. And that makes it worth going through some of the rough comments.

SARA: Oh, yeah. That’s amazing. And I’m so glad to hear that. I think that is such a beautiful benefit that counters all that hate and makes it worth keeping going, Brandan. Keep going on TikTok. I think it’s so needed. It’s so desperately needed. There are so many people who have been so hurt by religion. It makes it hard, sometimes, to be a religious leader. I  struggle with my own sadness and deep pain around that in moving in this world. And I know they struggle to believe that religion, but particularly Christianity, can truly be inclusive, because Christians have shown time and time again that they can do really terrible, awful, evil things over history. And you talk a lot about this and you write a lot about this. And in one of your books, the book True Inclusion, it addresses this very question. And so what would you say to those folks who still are really in that place, who feel like there’s no place for them in religion, and who really just don’t feel like Christianity can truly be what you’re saying it can be?

BRANDAN: I mean the first thing I say to people is, “As a religious leader, as a Christian pastor, I want you to hear, you don’t need to come back to the church. And you don’t need to be a Christian.” A lot of people carry that guilt throughout their life feeling like they need to inevitably end back up in the tradition of their youth. And I want to free people from that. It might not be right for you. And there are other kinds of spirituality and fulfilling things you can find. And I’ll just say as an anecdote, there’s been seasons in my life in the past ten years where I wasn’t pastoring where I didn’t go to a Christian church. And my life was lovely. It was meaningful. You don’t need it.

SARA: Good. Thank you for that. I agree.

BRANDAN: And it’s actually just a marketing issue, because if you look through the history of Christianity, especially in the last 500 years, almost all of the major movements for social renewal and social justice have had, at their core, a Christian component of people that had a different way of understanding Jesus. And whether we’re talking about the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., whether we’re talking about the Women Suffragist Movement. A lot of those  gathered in churches and church basements. Even here in New York City, one of the things I love to do is take people around on the tour in the village of there’s like 15 religious Christian communities that the gay rights movement began in. And so I say all that just to say there’s always been a faithful remnant of subversive, Progressive, boundary-pushing Christians. And if you actually look at Jesus, I think most people like Jesus and most people resonate with Jesus being the boundary-pushing, renegade rabbi that he was. And so I just want to invite people to be curious. To do some reading about some of these movements, especially the queer religious beginnings of the queer rights movement in America. But then to use the resources that are available. I always recommend gaychurch.org. It’s this beautiful website that has thousands upon thousands of Christian churches in every corner of the United States. Go step foot in a Progressive, inclusive community whether it’s Unitarian Universalist, United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church, and just see. You don’t need to commit. Most of these communities are not going to try to rope you into membership in your first day. But see how it feels and what you will find. And I’ve found, that so many people have found, that stepping into an inclusive community for the first time, where they really see inclusion on display does so much for their healing. And the last thing I’ll say and then I’ll end on this, in True Inclusion I talk about the revolving door. Just because you might reenter an inclusive community and it might be healing and life-giving, I also want people to know that they have permission – and one of the typical things I’ve seen as a Progressive pastor – is that people will come into an inclusive church. It will heal a lot of their religious trauma. And then they will leave and go do something else on Sundays. And that’s okay. That’s what I think our role is as Progressive Christian communities is to be the healing place. I’m not interested in growing a church of 6,000 people. I’m interested in helping people recover from what our kind of Christianity, the conservative kind, did to us. And if that’s all Progressive Christianity is for you, I think that’s incredible. And so I just don’t want people to feel pressure like they need to join a Progressive Christian church. But it can be, and is, healing for so many people. And there are so many great churches in virtually every state of our country that you can do this work in.

SARA: Yes. Thank you. Thank you for that reminder too. That is such a helpful reminder for all of us, lay-leaders and ordained-leaders, in these Progressive religious spaces to remember that the breadth and reach of our ministry and that it can and should look so different than the Conservative alternatives.

BRANDAN: Yep.

SARA: I really appreciate that. I want to highlight a quote from True Inclusion that really spoke to me because I think it gets at this nature of inclusion in Christianity. You wrote:

“Therefore, for a person to take up the cross means to be ‘willing to name our privilege, willing to carry burdens in solidarity with [the oppressed], and willing to destroy exclusion by our own self-sacrifice.’ (p. 64). 

That just captures it right there. It’s a beautiful quote. Say more.

BRANDAN:  This is the seed of the next book that I wrote, which is called Filled to be Empty, the Path to Liberation for Privileged People. And these all emerged for me, it was all right after the death of George Floyd, Donald Trump was president. It was this very interesting moment, not unlike the one we’re in now, where lots of people were talking about privilege all the sudden and it wasn’t a familiar concept to me at the time. And I feel like a lot of people had not really heard that language before. And as I was learning that, I was looking at the Bible and Jesus. And there’s this beautiful passage in Philippians Chapter 2 that says “Christ lowered himself and did not consider his status as God, something to be exploited for his own advantage. But he gave it up and became a servant to others.”  And that jumped out, off of the page to me because that is precisely what we are called to do as people of privilege, is to not use our privilege for our own good, but to give it up for the good of others. That is what true inclusion is. It’s a willingness to say, “Yes. I understand I’m a white man. There are spaces that I carry immense privilege. But instead of using it to benefit me, how can I use it to benefit the people in my community, people of color that are going to be discriminated against, the people that don’t have the education that I’ve been privileged to have, all the ways that I’m privileged. How can I utilize that for the good of others?” That is the call of Jesus. That is what it means to be inclusive. And I write that in True Inclusion because so many churches only want to take inclusion to a very nominal step. It’s a “fly a rainbow flag, say gay people are welcome, say black lives matter, say we care about disability justice,” but how are you actually demonstrating that to those communities outside of your four walls? Inclusions not about your sanctuary. It’s about the community around you. And the way you do that is by utilizing your resources, utilizing your energies to actually serve these communities. So I think that’s what it means to be a Christian and I think that’s what it means to be truly inclusive.

SARA: That’s fantastic. As you were speaking I was thinking that is also really the example in my mind of what a sacrificial faith might actually look like.

BRANDAN: Yeah. Absolutely.

SARA: How are you talking and working in your congregation right now in this current political and cultural climate? And you can talk about all the issues you just named. But I’m also really curious from our perspective the onslaught of attacks that we’re seeing against queer, and specifically, trans folks and kids. How is that showing up in your ministry?

BRANDAN: I mean, the thing about this moment – and I feel like every pastor will understand this – is it’s almost paralyzing because you look around, and my church is incredibly small. We are 20 people, it’s a 125-year-old congregation. Most people are above the age of 60. And yet, there’s this deep desire to want to do something in this moment, but recognizing we have limited actual capacity to do anything big. So in this moment, I think the last Trump term actually, was a really good experiment to help get us ready for this term, is becoming hyper-locally fixated. And saying, “What can we actually do on our block to actually serve our community?” And that has looked like we started a pantry to help. Our community has a lot of homelessness and migrants here in New York City. How can we help them? We’ve intentionally started looking at ways to make our sanctuary a sanctuary even with the new policies that allow ICE to raid churches. We’re having those conversations. And, again, not thinking about every executive order that’s coming down, but thinking about what we can do in our neighborhood here in Queens, New York. And it’s really beautiful because it actually helps people move out of despair in the community because they’re actually doing something that has a real impact. But the other side is this, and this is a call for preachers, this is a time to be political. This is a time to step into the prophetic nature of what it means to preach. I don’t care what tradition you’re from. We need to be addressing what’s happening and people want to hear faith leaders have moral imperative. And I think sometimes Progressive Christians have historically been too wishy washy and too sentimental and too “Woo-woo, let’s talk about everything but the issues.” And I was honestly afraid to talk about political things from the pulpit. But then four weeks ago, I preached a sermon that called out what was happening in our country. And the response from the congregation was like, “Thank you. That was a release valve for us to hear what we know to be true.” So I’m leaning into these next four years being especially years where we are talking about what’s happening in the world. And we’re asking, how can we apply our faith and what does our faith require of us in this moment? And then, inviting people to real action in our community. And I hope that works. But we’re all making this up as we go along together.

SARA: I love it. I hope it works too. And to me, it almost doesn’t matter if it works or doesn’t work, it makes a difference. It’s that release valve. It has an impact. I was at an advocacy workshop and I heard a Reform Jewish Rabbi say, “If you’re not being political, you’re doing it wrong.”

BRANDAN: Yeah.

SARA: And I was like, “Thank you. I’m going to take that back to my community.” It was just very clear.

BRANDAN: Totally.

SARA: You have written so many books. I think I saw 23 on your website, 23 books?

BRANDAN: Yes.

SARA: It’s astonishing to me because writing takes a lot of time. And so I’m curious to hear a little bit about your journey through writing and curious if the writing was part of how you continued to reconstruct and understand your own theology?

BRANDAN: So, to be clear, I’ll say I’ve written 10 books. I've contributed to a total of 23 books. But this goes all the way back. It’s a very strange thing. It goes all the way back to teenage years when I became a Christian, my pastor had a book and so I self-published a book when I was 13. And ever since then, just kept writing. I started a blog. And Joan Didion – I always say her last name wrong, so I hope that was right – has this beautiful quote, “I don’t write what I think. But I write to know what I think.” And I have found that to be so true on virtually everything I’ve ever written. I love talking. And yet, I will go back and listen to this and be like, “Oh, I should’ve said that differently.” The difference with writing is it feels like I’m actually working stuff out and it’s becoming solid ideas. And I’m understanding what I actually believe and what my perspective actually is. And I don’t know that until I’m reading it back afterwards. So it’s almost a spiritual practice. It’s definitely a psychological practice for me to process stories and trauma and all of that. And it’s an addiction, I would say, in the best way possible that I can’t stop writing. And for better or for worse, I’m the kind of person who will write something and then just publish it without editing it. I’ll send it to a publisher and say, “Will this work?” And what that means is out of the ten books I’ve written, there’s lots of stuff out there already that I disagree with. But I’ve become content with the fact that people can see my journey and hopefully I can still speak to people at different stages of the journey. And so now it’s just a fun way to process and to be real with people.

SARA: And it’s compelling to know and to hear you share that, that your writing shares your journey. You should be evolving and changing your mind and that you’re willing to share that with people is great, instead of having it be so perfectly thought out and clear and like a belief at any given moment. And I want to share with everyone that you can order any or all of Brandan’s books in our Mama Dragon’s online bookstore. And we’ll make sure to put a link in the show notes to the bookstore. And you have a brand new book about to come out that folks can preorder called Queer and Christian, Reclaiming the Bible, Our Faith, and Our Place at the Table, which is the entire premise of our whole conversation. But tell us a little bit about why you decided to write this new book and what you hope folks will take away from it.

BRANDAN: This book is kind of my final word on this particular topic of queer Christianity, reconciling faith and sexuality. It’s my third book on the topic. But this one was written for the TikTok audience. Meaning, all the other ones were either church leaders or academic. And it was meant to move the conversation forward. There’s a lot of LGBT Christians [who] begin the journey by simply reading books about what the Bible says about sexuality and understanding it doesn’t condemn homosexuality. And a lot of people believe that’s where the journey’s going to end. “I know the Bible doesn’t condemn my sexuality so now I can join the Christian church and be fine.” But what I found in my own life and what I found in the thousands of LGBT Christians I’ve gotten the privilege to interact with, is that for most of us the journey doesn’t actually stop there. Queerness is more than an aspect of our identity. It’s not the fullness of our identity. But it is more than an aspect. And it’s more than sexuality or gender. I’ve discovered that queerness is actually a disposition that a lot of people have – and a lot of even non-LGBT identified people – have a disposition to queerness. And that’s a really interesting thing when you bring that to religion. And so I define Queer in the beginning of the book using a bell hooks quote talking about being in opposition to systems of conformity. I think queerness as an identity is about that. But I also think queerness as a disposition is about that. And I think Jesus embodied a queer disposition in the world, pushing back against the forces that were telling him, “This is how you need to please God. This is how you play as a part of the religious institution.” So this book is meant to move people beyond the, “What does the Bible Say about Sexuality?” To “What does it mean to bring the fulness of queer identity to Christian faith? What does it mean to read the Bible from a queer lens?” And I have a section where we uncover queer saints in the Bible. It’s nothing new. But there are people in the Bible who transgress gender and sexual categories. And then I go into a practical section where we talk about “What’s a queer sexual ethic?”, meaning “How do you move beyond purity culture? How do you think about things like non-monogamy? How do you think about things like masturbation and self-pleasure from a non-narrow Christian perspective but a grounded, still Christian but queer perspective?”

SARA: Without the shroud of sin.

BRANDAN: Yes. Exactly. And so I’m kind of butchering a simple explanation of what the book is. But it’s just meant to be a permission slip and an accessible guide for queer people and their allies to believe that God is still speaking. And to believe that we can rethink and reclaim Christianity from the hands of the people that in this moment are weaponizing it all the more to be a battering ram against the queer community. What would it look like if queer people said, “Actually, no. The Bible’s ours. Christianity is ours. And we can use its resources for our own liberation and to resist the forces that are seeking to oppress us.”

SARA: I cannot wait to read this book. This sounds amazing. I’m going to preorder my copy as soon as we’re done.

BRANDAN: Thank you.

SARA: All of what you have said is very similar and also part of the premise of this concept of Queer Theology that a lot of Progressive religious folks are studying and talking about. And I know you’ve studied it quite a lot. And I’m curious if you’ll say a little bit more for us about how do you understand Queer Theology both as an academic term for apologetics and exi-jesus. But you touched on this a little bit with this queer disposition. What is Queer Theology mean, culturally ,in the queer religious space writ large?

BRANDAN: I mean, queer anything is very hard to define by definition. But Queer Theology, what it’s doing is it’s bringing both Queer Theory –  which is a kind of philosophical theory that has developed out of the postmodern movement – and queer hermeneutics –  hermeneutics being the word that essentially means interpretation or how we interpret. And a queer hermeneutic is saying “We’re centering the LGBT person’s experience and understanding of the world and we’re using that lens to interpret Christianity.” And then Queer Theory is, of course, this idea of resisting norms. It’s, at its core, a challenging of any structure that’s telling you you need to perform or show up in the world in a certain way. Queer Theory asks: “Why? Says who? For what purpose?” So it’s oppositional in its nature. But I hope people can hear, it’s a very creative and generative space because it’s an invitation to break things and remake things. So Queer Theology is basically saying, let’s take Christianity, for instance, and say “How would a queer person read the story of Jesus? What aspects of Jesus’s life stick out to a queer person and might be viewed in a queer way from a queer person’s experience?” In the same way that Black theology or liberation, Black Liberation Theology says, as James Cone for instance, writes, “Let’s view Jesus as a Black man. How does that change the way we understand the rest of the story?” It’s a very compelling and generative space. And it’s healing for Black communities to read Jesus in that light. And it’s healing for queer communities to read Jesus through a queer lens. Now, there’s also a lot of pushback against Queer Theory in this moment. People might know here in this community, Matthew Vines, the founder of the Reformation Project, wrote a very helpful book ten years ago, God and the Gay Christian, that helped a lot of people reconcile faith and sexuality, but came out six months ago and said Queer Theology is a danger to our movement because it’s going too far. There’s a certain strand of LGBT Christianity that just wants to be accepted by the traditional Christian church. Queer Theology is not interested in just being accepted in a traditional church. It wants to see the entire system liberated. And so it’s much more expansive. Nothing is safe or sacred. Everything is worthy of being critiqued and rethought. And I love this space. I think it’s an invitation for all people to reclaim Christianity as their own. And I hope my book helps to at least give people a taste of what a queer lens could look like. And as you can hear, this is not just for LGBT people, all people.

SARA: Yeah. It’s an invitation even for someone like me who feels pretty solidly grounded in my own religious understandings, to keep on the work of deconstruction and reconstruction continuously through all of these different lenses. And it’s been very liberating for me. I’ve also really enjoyed studying and learning from folks like you. Your writing also extends to all kinds of publications and articles that are listed on your website. We’ll make sure to link the website in our show notes as well. I just loved reading through the titles of some of your articles. For example, you have a couple. One was called, Why You Need to be a Progressive Evangelist. And the other that I really appreciate, another one was, How Progressive Christianity can Save the World. I love these provocative titles. I imagine, though, that some might be surprised by these titles. So I’m curious if you’ll tell us a little bit about why Progressive Evangelism and how Progressive Christianity might save the world.

BRANDAN: Yeah. One, people should hear TikTok, social media has taught me about Clickbait. So in order to get people, and I know how to get people. And I think there’s a utility in that. But I actually do believe those things. Why you need to be a Progressive Evangelist? Progressives are terrible at marketing. And that’s Progressives across the board. There’s a reason Conservatives have dominated YouTube, for instance. If you watch Conservative media on YouTube, it’s just better. It’s more high-quality. It’s done better. For some reason, we Progressives just have not excelled at marketing ourselves well. And I think that definitely extends to Progressive Christianity. You can see that by the fact that most people don’t know Progressive Christianity exists and yet it’s existed and at the foundation of some of the biggest social movements in the history of our country. So that article is like, “Hey, Progressive Christian Pastor or individual, talk about your faith. Get out there. Help people understand that you exist and that we exist and that there’s an alternative.” And so I think that’s, again, from the UUs to the Episcopals. I think Progressive Religion needs to get out there a lot more. And the Why Progressive Christianity Can Save the World, well, because Conservative Christianity is destroying the world right now and I don’t think that’s an overstatement at all. I think there’s utility and I think there’s a special moment – and I don’t meant to privilege us Progressive Christians – but I do think we have a special role in this moment because we are still playing on the same field as the Conservative Christian and we can reclaim resources that they are using to oppress us, and subversively challenge them with those very resources. So I think this is a moment where it’s not just expedient for Progressive Christians to step up and be public. It’s actually necessary if we’re going to defeat Christian Nationalism because atheists aren’t going to be a very compelling counter to Conservative Christians. But a Christian pastor who knows their Bible and can go toe-to-toe with the conservative politician, that is actually something that can shift hearts and minds of Conservative Christian in the Midwest. So I really do think it’s less that Progressive Christianity will save the world. It’s that, if the world is going to be saved, Progressive Christianity has to be a part of it in this moment.

SARA: Has to be a part of it. I was really curious to hear you talk a little bit about how your thinking and preaching and working in this climate of a rise in Christian Nationalism and authoritarianism and this call to remake our country into “a Christian” nation. And thinking about, the president recently declared in the Department of Education he was going to create a task force to “Root out this anti-Christian bias in our schools!” So I’m curious how you’re thinking about that, Brandan. Is anti-Christian bias a thing? Do you think there is an anti-Christian bias?

BRANDAN: It’s the biggest threat that our country is facing right now, for sure. Just kidding. Sarcasm, everyone. No. But it’s not a surprise to anybody that Conservative Christianity runs off of a persecution complex. If you grew up Conservative Christian you heard this. Mainly because Jesus actually does say this based on a different context, right? He says, “Don’t be surprised when people hate you and persecute you because of my name.” And so Christians have interpreted that as, “If you’re actually following Jesus, you’ve got to be persecuted. And if you’re not being persecuted, you’re not following Jesus.” And so Conservative Christians have had to manufacture persecution to justify and make themselves feel like they are actually following Jesus. And the way that looks is essentially by being as offensive as they can be. This is not how Conservative Christianity has always been, friends. If you look back to Christianity Today – which is the flag-ship magazine of Conservative Christianity – if you look back in the 1950’s, Christianity Today was endorsing abortion saying it is a Christian thing to support abortion. That was Evangelical mainstream. But something has happened and there’s lots of social and political things that have happened over the past 60 years, 70 years that has caused this politicization and polarization that has created this need for Conservative Christians to make everyone else the enemy, feel persecuted, and then use that persecution and all of that angst that they’re building up among lay-Conservative Christians to unleash as a political movement. And I think that’s what the MAGA Movement is, largely. It’s people that have been fear-mongered to, for the past 20 years, all the sudden are given a release valve in the person of Donald Trump who’s saying, “I’m here to get vengeance for you, to get revenge on all the people that have been persecuting you.” Of course they’re going to get in a line and support him. And think that’s precisely what Christian Nationalism was intended to do. I think this is a long game. They’ve been planning this for 50 years. And we’re just seeing the fruits of a well-executed scheme.

SARA: An excellent, an explanation that I haven’t heard yet around this idea around persecution. So thank you for that. That helps understand it in a different way. An area that’s of great concern for our Mama Dragons Community, in particular as we think about how we support our kids out in the world when they are in schools and in public institutions as they are being targeted – particularly in those spaces – you wrote a beautiful article titled, “American Evangelicals’ Deadly Silence on Nex Benedict,” where you really hold Evangelicals’ feet to the fire on this issue and anti-queer theology. And you write, “Anti-queer theology is not just inaccurate. It’s deadly and it causes tangible harm to millions of queer people around the world every single day.” And I wonder if you would just share a little bit more about that.

BRANDAN: I mean, it’s just the unfortunate reality. I think any queer person that has a religious background will know people that have been really harmed, whether that is physical harm, suicidal ideation, that kind of stuff, or mental health concerns, or being kicked out of the home. There’s real consequence to an anti-LGBTQ theology. And not many have by-and-large held Conservatives to account for the actual tangible harm being done by what they say. The studies are so clear. I’ve quoted them in Queer and Christian and in R-Witness, and in The Gospel of Inclusion – three different books – three different studies that show that an LGBT youth that sits in a Conservative Christian Church is something like five times more likely to have suicidal ideation than an LGBT youth that’s not raised in a religious environment. That’s an indictment against our churches. And very few people are holding that statistic up to the Conservative Christian and saying, “Answer for this.” The Bible talks about good trees bearing good fruit and bad trees bearing bad fruit. If your theology bears death, destruction, mental health issues, it’s clearly bad fruit. It’s clearly wrong. And Jesus says it needs to be cut down and cast into the fire – His language, not mine. And so I think it’s one thing, especially for your community, to know these statistics. This isn’t just liberal talking points. This is scientifically studied, verified. Words matter. Religious teaching has an impact. Religious community has an impact. And this is not just a theological debate anymore. This is a debate with people’s lives. Nex Benedict was one of many examples of LGBT youth whose lives have been lost because of a direct connection to conservative, non-affirming theology. This stuff matters. And it’s also why the last thing I’ll say is, in Queer and Christian, the book, I’m writing to the LGBT community, the secular LGBT community and saying, “You need to not just concede the Bible, and concede Christianity to Conservatives, because the moment you say, “Just screw it all. Why do we care about it?” you’re conceding millions of LGBT people under the influence of these folks to abuse. We need to reclaim it. Even if you don’t believe it, you need to know how to reclaim it and subvert it because this is the water we’re swimming in right now and lives are on the line.

SARA: Amen, Thank you for that clarity and that power. I think that really resonates with me personally, but I know it will resonate with so many of our listeners. We’re winding it up. We’re getting close to the end of this Part 2 time. Gosh. We could go on forever – I could go on forever. I am curious if you had a piece of advice to give someone struggling to reconcile their faith and identity, what would it be?

BRANDAN: It’s actually probably not what people might expect. I don’t think reading books about the theology is actually all that important. That’s a step in the journey. But it’s not the first step. The first step is to get in contact with a community, a mentor, people that will affirm you, that have a different theology that affirms you. Most of the time I counsel people to go to an LGBT-affirming church. Again, you don’t need to join it. But you just need to see what it’s like to be in a community that holds your faith and also embraces you authentically. Because, as you go through the journey, the worst thing that happens to so many people is that they do the journey on their own. They change their theology on their own. And then they come out but don’t have a structure or a community to help them when their church rejects them or when their family rejects them. And that’s a dangerous space to be in that you don’t need to be in. And so I just want to encourage people: LGBT-inclusive churches exist near you. And even if there is not one that exists in your immediate area, there are communities online that exist. Step into it. Explore. No one’s going to force you to change your beliefs if you’re not ready to. No one’s going to force you to come out if you’re not ready to. But you need a community that you can be honest, and ask the questions with, and go on the journey with. The theology comes later. Everything else comes later. Connect to a community first.

SARA: That’s great advice. Really good. I have two final questions that I like to ask all of my guests at the end of our time together. The first has to do with the Mama Dragons name and the origins of the name which came about out of this sense of fierceness and fierce protection. And I know that you are fierce about inclusive religion. But setting that whole conversation aside and the two episodes that we’ve done together, what else are you fierce about?

BRANDAN: I mean, it’s kind of the same thing. But I’m fierce about queer joy. If people actually look at my life –  I’m sure the same is with you and many other Progressive ministers – we don’t live the traditional life you would expect a minister to live. I spend most of my time out in New York with queer people, dancing in queer clubs and being in queer book groups and just trying to maximize the joy that exists in life. There’s so much in the world right now that is trying to take us down, trying to make us afraid, trying to take away joy. And I’m all about maximizing. Ecclesastes says “Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.” It’s a little nihilistic for me. But I do think there’s something beautiful about saying, “Let’s set aside all the cares of the world for a second and reclaim joy.” And so I’m relentless about that in my life and telling other people, “Turn off the news. Go have fun.”

SARA: I love it. Love it. And that is a perfect segue to my final question which is, what is one thing that is bringing you joy right now?

BRANDAN: Again, it’s probably very stereotypical. I would say chosen family. It’s a hard time. Both politically, I struggle in the winter months with mental health things. And just to have built up a community, some people might have romantic relationships, it might be friendships. For me it’s primarily friendships. But to have people that are there with me that we are supporting each other. It just makes me so grateful. And it’s something that closeted Brandan ten years ago could’ve never imagined that I would have a community like I have that loves me in all of my strangeness as a queer Christian, all of that. So I’m just so grateful for those relationships.

SARA: That is fantastic. Brandan, thank you for sharing so much of yourself and your time and your beautiful work in this world with us. I am so grateful that you exist in the world and you’re doing what you do. It means so very much.

BRANDAN: Thank you so much. And likewise. It’s such an honor to get a chance to chat with you. And you and all the Mama Dragons out there are doing such, such, such important work. So thank you.

SARA: Thanks so much for joining us here In The Den. Did you know that Mama Dragons offers an eLearning program called Parachute? This is an interactive learning platform where you can learn more about how to affirm, support, and celebrate the LGBTQ+ people in your life. Learn more at mamadragons.org/parachute. Or find the link in the episode show notes under links.

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