Audio

Episode Summary

This episode of Theory of Change is the second in our “Why I Left” series featuring Lance Aksamit. He is an associate editor at Flux, and the author of a new autobiography about life in the missionizing evangelical sub-culture called Youth Group: Coming of Age in the Church of Christian Nationalism.

Beyond telling his story of being born and raised in a homeschooling evangelical family that preached the gospel in Latin America, Lance also talks about how the beliefs he was taught derived from the larger far-right Christian supremacist tradition which began in the former Confederacy.

It’s a very necessary book because it shows just how mentally and emotionally dominating extreme Christian viewpoints can be, so I do encourage everybody to read it, especially those who don’t have direct experience with totalitarian Christianity.

The video of our June 10, 2023 conversation is below. A machine-generated transcript of the edited audio follows.