(259)S11E6/4: Propagandizing the Ideal w/Greg Johnson
Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. In this interview, I had the privilege of talking with Greg Johnson of Memorial Presbyterian in Saint Louis. Now pastor Johnson and, his church has have recently left the denomination that I am currently in due in part to some of the issues, that we talk about in this episode, issues of identifying as a gay Christian. You can go ahead and do your research. I'm not gonna hash all of that out here, but I would definitely recommend that you read his book, Still Time to Care, and listen to our discussion here to understand some of the key aspects of his stance.
Derek Kreider:And so as you research the issue, you can kind of figure out what, what took place and and where you stand perhaps. I thought pastor Johnson would be a great interview because it's been really hard to line up conservative guests, and he actually graciously agreed to an interview. Plus, as someone who's pushing back both against the gay lifestyle and the anti gay conservatives, I thought that he'd be a really good voice to color the discussion on how the church has used propaganda in regard to the gay community. Because at least in my book, he has, you know, he should have a little bit of credibility for both sides. If you're somebody who doesn't believe that, a gay lifestyle is moral, and then he holds that position, and he is a celibate gay man.
Derek Kreider:And, hopefully, you can hear him out. At the same time, if you are somebody who thinks that those, Christians are kooks and bigots and they, you know, they just hate gay people, you know, here we have a a gay man who is able to talk from a religious perspective. So I think pastor Johnson is a a wonderful person to have on to discuss this topic of propaganda as as it comes to, Christianity and the gay community. But as usual, before we get into the interview, I want to point out a few things that I want you to be on the lookout for. 1st, pretty much right off the bat, pastor Johnson is going to give you a really good and succinct history of how the scientific and medical communities have handled gay men and women at least in the past century.
Derek Kreider:And we covered a bit of this in our previous episode, but it'll be good to hear again as kind of a recap, and it's a it's a good short place to get that. One thing you have to understand from our section on medical propaganda here is that science is not some beneficent or even neutral endeavor. It's often very biased, and it's often wielded very violently, all while being packaged as benevolent. 2nd, much of what we discussed in this episode is centered around the use, or appearance, dressing up language or dressing up actions without true transformation or relationship. The discussion will be a good one to kind of tuck away because after we conclude our next section on government, we're gonna pave a path to a discussion on discipleship transformation, what I think is the true propaganda killer.
Derek Kreider:And I think that this discussion uncovers very well, as just one example, how conservative Christians have sought power and control through the objectification of others, through the manipulation of language and the legordomain of untransformed action. Or as we talk about in this episode, kind of putting a paint job over over some rust. Right? Just kinda dressing it up and making it look good even though it's not. So there's a lot in regard to propaganda here that that, we get into.
Derek Kreider:Finally, as a Christian, I definitely don't want you to miss the gospel in this episode. Pastor Johnson beautifully points over and over again to how the gospel has transformed him and still drives him to love and to self sacrifice. While we talk about a lot of problems the church has in this episode, and I've talked a lot about the church's problems throughout this season, We only do that because we want the church to be what it ought to be. We want it to be purified so that it can be the hands and feet of Christ. And please don't hear only our critique of the church, but rather look beyond that to a depiction of what the church ought to be, a living model of the gospel of Jesus.
Derek Kreider:So if you pay attention for these three elements, I think that you'll walk away from this episode edified and informed. So here it is, my interview with pastor Greg Johnson. And so maybe, first of all, you could just give a a brief introduction as to, who you are and, you know, kind of some of your your background for the topic that we're we're, gonna discuss here.
Pastor Johnson:Yeah. I'm Greg Johnson. I'm a senior pastor at Memorial Presbyterian Church in Saint Louis, Missouri. 50 years old, unmarried, celibate, grew up atheist in suburban DC. My father worked for the was a senior executive in the US federal government.
Pastor Johnson:And, I, you know, I was the gay kid and then became a Christian in college while studying architecture at the University of Virginia, and was led to Christ really through the ministry of of what then was Campus Crusade for Christ. Today, it's CRU. And very started devouring everything I could find theologically, took classical Greek at UVA just so I could learn to read the New Testament in Greek. And then, you know, my campus minister who was, you know, the first person I came out to as a as a young believer, as a a new Christian. You know, he he was the guy who mentored me and developed me, poured into me, loved me, and ultimately was the first person to to encourage me to go to seminary.
Pastor Johnson:Continued on, did a PhD at Saint Louis University in historical theology. My dissertation was on the historical and theological development of the Quiet time in Anglo American devotional practice in the late 19th early 20th centuries. And, am author of a couple books, The World According to God, A Biblical View of Culture Work, Science, Sex, and Everything Else, InterVarsity Press 2,002. And then, the more recently Still Time to Care, What We Can Learn from the Church's Failed Attempt to Cure Homosexuality. I'm a contributor to USA Today and Christianity Today and a couple other places.
Pastor Johnson:But, mostly, I just love shepherding my church right here in the heart of city of Saint Louis.
Derek Kreider:Awesome. Thanks. So a little bit of of my background that, you know, is gonna be pertinent for the first question that I have for you. I grew up in a in a Christian school, fundamentalist Christian, conservative Christian. And so we were we were, very skeptical of science growing up.
Derek Kreider:And, we were we were I won't name any names, but we were very into, you know, probably some of the people that you can imagine that go along with that.
Pastor Johnson:And so Were were there dinosaurs on the ark?
Derek Kreider:Yeah. Yeah. Things like that. And, you know, great. You know, that's great.
Derek Kreider:But there was a skepticism of science that came along with that. And so anything that that came down the pipes, if it had to do with, things like global warming or if the earth was older than, yeah, 6000 years old or things like that, We just we couldn't accept that. But it seemed like there was a, you know, a double standard because there were other things that we would be able to accept. You know, like, if if science seemed to show that religion, extended your life because it made people happier or whatever. We're like, oh, yeah.
Derek Kreider:See, science science proves this. So we kind of had this this double standard. One of the double standards that it seems like I feel like you uncover and are familiar with is, in regard to some of the the science that deals with, with gay people. And, you talk a little bit about conversion therapy, which has historically been very popular in in Christianity, especially conservative Christianity. And it's, it's something that we don't really use the term today, but you'll still see inklings of its use and maybe disguised as a different name today in, in in a lot of conservative Christianity.
Derek Kreider:So I'd love for you to talk a little bit, first of all, about maybe your your view of science and religion, whether those things are compatible, and if you've if you can value science. And then lead that into, what do we know about conversion therapy and and how that seems to work out?
Pastor Johnson:Yeah. I mean, when you consider science, it really has its its origins at creation when God made the cosmos, separate and distinct from himself out of nothing. And then when you see in the creation narrative in Genesis where where God takes Adam and he places him in the garden, and then he has Adam, look at and name each animal. And and what he's doing is he's creating human categories within which various things will be organized and understood. You know, that's very much the the the founding of the scientific enterprise of of examining the world as it is, seeking to understand it, and seeking to give things names and categories that relate to what they actually are as a part of God's good creation.
Pastor Johnson:And, and so, you know, certainly, you know, as Christians, we we have an overall paradigm that is established by, you know, the narrative of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation, that the world was made good. It has fallen now, and and, therefore, that goodness in places has been lost, more so in some areas than in others, and yet it's still an understandable cosmos, albeit a fallen one, that has already begun to experience redemption with Jesus becoming incarnate as a permanent part of creation. The incarnation is permanent. He is at the right hand of the father, physically, being the locus of our salvation, and then and then he's coming again to make everything right again. And and so within that framework, you know, Christians should be able to ask questions, make, you know, hypotheses, test hypotheses, come to conclusions.
Pastor Johnson:Science is limited. There are certain things science can't tell you. Science cannot tell you whether or not Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, you know, because science is the examination of repeatable events, and history is unrepeatable. And so as humans, we have another category of knowledge and and and and academic study and endeavor that we call history. And, and, you know, that's much more where my training is as a historical theologian.
Pastor Johnson:But, yeah. And as it comes to to issues of sexual orientation, you know, there has been no end to speculation, even going back to antiquity, over why some people are gay or same sex attracted or whatever term you wanna use. Why some people are inverted, to use a nice, you know, early 20th century term that nobody seems to have too much stock in these days. You know, in antiquity, it was hypothesized that it was because, you know, you were born under a certain, you know, a certain star or a certain sign. You know, others had various hypotheses, and those hypotheses always carried with them, by implication, possible roots of fixing it and making everybody straight.
Pastor Johnson:And, and, you know, I mean, it's been everything from I mean, you just can't I can't go through all the examples. I mean, you know, in the early 20th century, right after World War 1, there was a a boom in testicle transplants among gay men in Central Europe because they hypothesized that, the seat of homosexuality was in the testicles. And if you could remove, cast rate somebody's homosexual testicles and replace them with a straight man's testicle, he'd become straight. And, you know, one one, you know, surgeon in Berlin, you know, advertised that he only used the testicles of hypersexualized men in order to give a better chance of of of cure. The Nazis experimented on gay men, injecting testosterone into the reproductive organs to try to see if they could, convert somebody to the form of conversion therapy, having forcing gay men to basically rape, Roma and Jewish women, Polish women, to try to see if they could make them straight that way.
Pastor Johnson:After World War 2 in the United States, there was a boom in lobotomies for the sake of of conversion therapy to make people straight. In the early 19 seventies, The Advocate magazine referred to the, state, mental penitentiary in California at Atascadero as Doc O. For Queers because those who engaged in homosexual practice, it was considered a crime at the time. They you know, police officers would peer over the transom windows above doors of hotel rooms and arrest people for having oral sex. And then it was considered a psychiatric problem, and so they would be imprisoned in a psychiatric, prison where they would have a choice of either castration or lobotomy, where they would, you know, stick a whisk through the back of the nose and scramble the frontal lobe of the brain, which, of course, caused horrible, horrible damage, permanent damage.
Pastor Johnson:People were no longer able to feed themselves, clothe themselves, bathe themselves. That's what our government was doing to gay people during my lifetime. You know, I was born in 70 2. So this was happening during my lifetime. This is not ancient history.
Pastor Johnson:And among Christians, what became popular, particularly in 19 starting in the 19 eighties and really becoming a big boom in the nineties, what was called reparative therapy, which was the theory advanced by Joseph Nicolosi, who was a nominally Roman Catholic, but he was a psychologist. And his theory was that homosexuality itself is a desire to repair the broken relationship with the same sex parent. And so the thought is if you could figure out where that relationship with the same sex parent failed to affirm and, you know, strengthen, the person, then, you could go back and address those issues. And the result is that homosexual longings would be replaced with heterosexual longings. And, you know, the the the specific, individuals that would trigger sexual temptation would switch gender.
Pastor Johnson:There was never a single study documenting that it worked. And, in fact, it did not work. And, but it was very popular. Not only the the the the actual practice clinically, but also just these ideas seeped into conservative Christianity, both evangelical and Roman Catholic, and also very big in Mormonism, for the matter for that fact. They often led the way in these things.
Pastor Johnson:The language of same sex attraction was first used by Mormon ex gay ministries in the 19 eighties and then really redeemed and popularized by by Roman Catholic conversion therapists in the early late 19 nineties, early 2000. But, but, yeah, the reality is it never worked. And so by the time, you know, Alan Chambers, the last president of Exodus International, stood up in 2012 and announced that out of the, you know, hundreds of thousands of clients that that had been through the various Exodus International programs and the various Exodus International affiliated ministries, that 99.9 percent had seen no change in their sexual orientation. You know, the the reality is it did not work. There is something deeply rooted about what kind of people trigger, or occasion sexual temptation.
Pastor Johnson:And, and so, yeah, there there there's and there's a lot of science explaining what's going on with sexual orientation and why some people experience, or attraction to the opposite to the same sex instead of the opposite sex. And, yeah, you see twin studies where, you know, if if one identical twin is is gay, the his identical twin is 31% chance of also being gay, which is astronomically higher than than one would expect if this is all in the brain. And quite a bit higher than with fraternal twins who have different DNA, but the same womb and the same home environment. And they themselves are much more likely to be all both gay than, nontwin siblings who have the same home environment. And so, clearly, there's something genetic or epigenetic, and there's also something intrauterine going on, and lots of studies about that.
Pastor Johnson:But, yeah, Christians, there's a there's a whole anti intellectual tradition of Christians who feel threatened by knowledge, and that's a very weak faith that cannot handle reality. You know, our understanding of Scripture is also shaped by what we know of the world. You know, it's very common that something learned through history, secular history, sheds light on what the Bible means. It's not a one way street. You know, it's all knowledge and truth, and certainly, scripture is supreme in setting the narrative grid.
Pastor Johnson:But, yeah, that's a few thoughts.
Derek Kreider:I appreciate that that history of of all of the ways that that we've kind of seen science play out, because I had to read, like, 5 books to get what you just summarized in, like, 3 minutes. So so that's, that'll be really valuable. I appreciate that. You know, as as you were mentioning all of those things, it kind of struck me that, when I refer to conversion therapy, you know, we think of trying to just get somebody to to change their choices. But really, like, if you if you think about all of those things you mentioned from, lobotomies to before sex to whatever, like, all of those things are attempts to try to get somebody to convert, you know, to to change their orientation.
Derek Kreider:It's just different ways to get them to try to convert. But what I found really interesting was that, in your book, Still Time to Care, you, you discuss, you kind of push back against this idea of, converting gay people to a a different orientation. And one of the things that that initially struck me is that you you named people like, you know, Lewis, Graham, Schaeffer, Stott, and how all of those those men had had compassion, compassionate views towards gay believers and didn't really have problem using the terminology that that it feels like we're we're trying to avoid. We don't wanna call somebody gay. We want them to convert so that, you know, they're they're no longer gay.
Derek Kreider:We don't wanna use that term. Why do you think why do you think after at least a 100 years and I'm sure that the history goes back much farther. But why why do we have this this desire to convert the orientation, today so much more more strongly than we did in the past, it seems?
Pastor Johnson:Yeah. You know, I think we're dealing with the legacy of the ex gay movement that started in the mid 19 seventies, came to fruition during the AIDS crisis of the 19 eighties and 19 nineties, and then declined and collapsed, about 10 years ago. But that ex gay movement that really got its start in the kind of Jesus movement, independent charismatic spirituality of 19 seventies California, where everything was about miracles and everything was about healings and everything was about power, religion, and power encounters, and, you know, people being delivered from addictions and delivered from mental illness. And, you know, a woman loses her, has a mastectomy, and and her breasts miraculously grow back. It was totally a fraud, almost all that was.
Pastor Johnson:But, but, you know, there was this heavy emphasis in in the Jesus movement of miraculous healing. And, you know, I remember, you know, one of the founders of Exodus International and and Love, you know, one of the first, ex Mexican ministries as well. You know, he was working in a call center at Melodyland Christian Center and shared with his supervisor that, that he was homosexual. They used it as a noun back then, but that he was committed to following Jesus in obedience, and and the supervisor said, you know, you're not a homosexual. You're a heterosexual in Jesus, and you need to claim your reality now.
Pastor Johnson:And that's where all this came from. When conservative reformed people in 2,000 23 parrot back things that the weirdest charismatic edge people were saying in 1976, then that should give us pause. Because, you know, that was it was not always that way. But what we're dealing with is, is a movement that began as a charismatic fringe expectation of absolute, complete, divine deliverance from temptation, became mainstream in evangelicalism, and even conservative evangelicals adopted it. And and its language and its categories have stuck.
Pastor Johnson:And so, you know, if I say that I am a Christian who struggles with unwanted same sex attraction, using the language of conversion therapists there, people feel that's safer than if I say, I'm just a gay guy who fell in love with Jesus, and I'm celibate because I wanna obey him. You know? And and in certain circles, the the notion of progressive sanctification, people think, oh, well, you know, if I, you know, am a thief and I become a Christian, then eventually that longing to steal is going to go away. And it's just that logical to them. And yet, they're comparing it to stealing, which is something completely external to us, they should instead compare it to being attracted to other women that they're not married to.
Pastor Johnson:Because we were not created to be stealing people, but we were created to be sexual beings. That's part of God's image in us, part of who we are as that we have this ability to enter into the creation act with God as co creators, imaging him by making new humans through our sexuality. You know, this is something that's close to the center of our being, and there's nothing in the Bible that would suggest that in the ordinary process of spiritual growth, Christian men no longer feel sexual temptation toward women other than their wife. If somebody tells you that's the case, they are lying through their teeth, or they had a horrible crush injury, or they're just uniquely spiritual because I'm a pastor. And, I, I know that these sexual temptations don't go away.
Pastor Johnson:And and, morally, being attracted to your neighbor's wife is not that much spiritually better than than being attracted to your neighbor. You know, you don't get partial credit for being straight. It's still sinful temptation inside of us, tempting us to turn away from God in order to satisfy, through objectifying other people, longs that we have because we want them to make us feel the way that Jesus wants to make us feel, which is loved and accepted. And so, yeah, you know, it just it doesn't go away in this life. And yet the ex gay movement, really beginning in kind of a kind of a name it and claim it kind of prosperity gospel thing, caught us.
Pastor Johnson:And we bought it hook, line, and sinker, and it destroyed a lot of lives. There are probably about a 1000000 people in the United States who went through some form of conversion therapy, and these are people who are often very bruised, very broken, sometimes bitter. They were they were sold false promises by false prophets. And when God did not deliver his what they thought he had promised because their ministry told them that he had, they grew disillusioned. You know, it's it's very much like the the leukemia patient who is told that they don't really have cancer.
Pastor Johnson:They just need to claim their healing, and they'll be delivered. And then when the deliverance doesn't come, they feel guilty, and they're wondering if they're even Christians, or God wasn't faithful to them. God broke His promise. It destroys souls. So we we really need to find a better way, not procuring homosexuality, but but caring for people for whom this is part of their story and and help helping them with the love, the community, the intimacy, the support that's needed to walk faithfully in obedience to God.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. One of the the books that I read, in regard to that was, I think, Julie Rogers has a book called Out Love, and, she was a part of the the, the Exodus community. And she she talks a lot about her experience and, kind of coming out of that. And so that was that was very helpful in understanding that movement. But, you know, she's she's also echoed one of the things that you said earlier, which is that, those movements did make false promises and that the people who claimed that they were transformed by and large, if not all of them, have relapsed or in action or have have continued to, to have the same orientation.
Derek Kreider:And I think you you have, you know, Christian scientific researchers like, Jarhuis, who basically is is gonna say the same thing. And so one of the one of the questions that I've been struggling through is, on the one hand, I believe that that language is very important, because language can, it can create ideas, it can create beliefs, it can create, feelings in people, But it can also it can also mask things. And so figuring out when language is important versus versus when it's just trying to to hide things is is difficult. So would you say that that the language that we use here is really important to fight over? Like, would you fight to maybe fight's not the a great word, but would you advocate for continuing to use the word that you are a gay Christian?
Derek Kreider:How important do you think that is and and in regard to language?
Pastor Johnson:I think what's important is our doctrine of Christian freedom, which is that the gospel allows us to be far worse sinners than we ever realized we were, and far more loved and secure in the arms of Jesus. And that our standing in the Christian community does not hinge on how we describe our experience. And as Christians, we have no need to control how someone describes their experience. For someone who was LGBT activist, they understood gay to be the center of their being. It defined who they were.
Pastor Johnson:It wasn't, descriptive, but it was prescriptive that they had to be true to themselves. You know? And and so they were engaging in all sorts of sexual sin, and they had various partners, and they had all this stuff. And and and then they become a Christian. They may not want to call themselves gay, even though in terms of the orientation, they are.
Pastor Johnson:But they may prefer to use language like same sex attraction or something like that because they're trying to get away from the old them that had defined them. And yet, for somebody who was raised Christian and went through 20 years of ex gay ministry and conversion therapy, you know, that language of same sex attraction is incredibly triggering. And to tell them that they have to use that language, you are doing violence to them and will stand before God for that because that is part of the abuse they experienced at the hands of Christian leaders who lied to them. And all the other pastors who were silent while it was happening. And, and so, you know, for them, where they, for 20 years, were told to lie and say, I'm not gay anymore.
Pastor Johnson:I used to be gay, but now I'm a Christian and God has delivered me, though I may still struggle with some same sex attraction. That, you know, that language, when they were given language that was used basically to conceal their story, to hide, because the church didn't want gay people around. They wanted they didn't want in process Christians. They wanted fully arrived Christians. And, and so for them, it's gonna be very important that they call themselves gay, to be honest, to be real.
Pastor Johnson:But this is a part of me. This is a part of my story. This is not all in my head. And I think a lot of Christians in their arrogance think it is all in their head, when when science says otherwise. And so I think the the main thing is allow people to describe their own story.
Pastor Johnson:You know, somebody who, you know, a recovering alcoholic, when they describe themselves as an alcoholic, it's not because they're glorifying alcohol. It's because they are trying to tell a story about something that has impacted their life massively. And, and when you're dealing with a Christian who is same sex attracted or gay, you're dealing with something that has had a major impact on their life, and has brought a lot of suffering, a lot of hardship, but, also something that God is willing to use in us as he uses everything for his own glory.
Derek Kreider:So it seems like for for the gay Christian, you know, sanctification wasn't available to them, only glorification. You either you either arrive or you don't. They weren't allowed the process.
Pastor Johnson:Yep. Because because the expectation was that sanctification means you are no longer tempted. And that's a standard we never put on straight men. You know, that's tying up heavy burdens that you yourself cannot carry and not offering a finger to help.
Derek Kreider:So one of the the things that you just said about, you know, the language, you know, changing to same sex attraction, You said 2 things. You said, first of all, that to somebody who's gone through that period of time, that was experienced as abuse. Like, that language was was used, and it it was abuse. And second? Okay.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. And then you also said that, by and large, that language is kind of used to mask. And that's kind of the the the feeling that I I get from the research that I've done and and the people that I've talked to. And one of the things that I think you highlight really well in your book that just, is a is an unfortunate picture that just kind of clicks as to, like, oh, yeah. I I can see how that would be really damaging.
Derek Kreider:Because I think sometimes it's hard to understand how language is damaging if you haven't experienced that language as abusive. But when you talk about, you know, as part of conversion therapy, you know, a a gay man, going and learning how to throw a football or change the oil or, to walk a particular way, you know, as if as if those things had a connection to making one heterosexual. And you used a phrase, in that section, you said something like, propagandizing an ideal is what they were trying to do in in, gay men in particular. So that seems like basically what we're we're calling it this conversion. We're trying to convert people.
Derek Kreider:But what we're really doing is just like with the language, we're we're masking people. We're kind of trying to to paint over it.
Pastor Johnson:Very often, conversion therapy. Yeah. Very often, it was it was teaching us to better hide in our closet more deeply.
Derek Kreider:Why why are those outward appearances so important for the church if you're if you're hiding in the closet and you're not really being converted or transformed, why why did the church care so much about something that really only changed outward appearances?
Pastor Johnson:Yeah. You know, I think there is a long history of moralism within North American religion in general and Christianity in particular. You know, it's the you know, because legalism, by its nature, it seeks, measurable, quantifiable spiritual growth. And the thing about real spiritual growth is it's not measurable. You know, how do you measure coveting?
Pastor Johnson:How do you measure the pride of life? You know? How do you measure, loving your neighbor as yourself? You know, these are very difficult things. But what we can quantify is whether I watch r rated movies, whether I listen to secular music, whether I wear, you know, certain types of clothing or certain types of makeup or certain kinds of hairstyle, whether I drink whiskey or Sanka.
Pastor Johnson:You know, those are things that are very easily quant easily quantified. And in American conservative evangelical history, we have tended to gravitate towards things that are measurable because we're basically all a bunch of legalists trying to trying to figure out the gospel. But we think that the gospel is for the non Christian to become a Christian, and you start relating to God based upon rules. And and, typically, they're man made rules that build a fence around the law that keep you from getting too close to to sin, but actually do nothing to address the issues of the heart. And, you know, Saint Paul in Colossians says that these these regulations have an appearance of wisdom, but they're of no value in restraining sensual indulgence.
Pastor Johnson:And so, you know, if it's like, okay, take the Senka, not the whiskey, See the PG movie, not the R rated movie. Listen to Christian music, not secular music. Say same sex attracted, not gay. You know, just it's just another thing where we it it functions as a shibboleth to say, oh, he's one of us or he's one of them. Because our folks would say it this way and theirs say it that way.
Pastor Johnson:It was actually DA Carson, Don Carson, who first called it a shibboleth to my knowledge, of these sexual identity languages, in his endorsement to Gregory Coles' book Single Gate Christian. But, but, yeah, we we tend to, miss the gospel and and want to replace it by outward things that tell us or tell the church or tell the world that we're making progress. And, you know, for me, you know, I knew I was gay when I was 11 years old. I was glued. My eyes were glued to a groomsman in a wedding, and I just would have done anything for that groomsman, whatever he wanted at the time.
Pastor Johnson:And and I've never been sexually attracted to a woman. Sexual temptation for me has always been toward males, not most males. 99% would be just disgusting at the thought. But, you know, but when I am tempted, it's always a male. And so, like, well, Greg, what has sanctification done if it hasn't made you sexually attracted to women instead?
Pastor Johnson:I mean, obviously, if you were really growing in Christ, you'd quit lusting after men and start lusting after women and looking at female porn. And you think, well, that's that's a really low standard, you know? And yet, what sanctification has meant for me is, you know, I'm 50 years old. I've never so much as held hands. Never had an erotic hug.
Pastor Johnson:Never snuggled with another guy. Never had sex in any form. I've been off of pornography for about 17, 18 years. I've lost track. And it means that there are places I don't go because and this is different for everybody.
Pastor Johnson:Don't go make a bunch of rules out of this, then that won't defeat the whole purpose. But for me, I've never joined a gym because I don't wanna be around a locker room where I might be tempted to follow somebody in because I'm curious, and that wouldn't be good for me. You know, I I go in a restroom, and I figure, is there a urinal with an empty urinal on either side, or do I need to go to a stall? You know, just because of what I might see, you know, that they're, you know, having covenant eyes on my on my Internet access and meeting every week with for over 20 years now with one of my elders, same elder, to to pray and for accountability and, you know, trying to look the other way like any other Christian guy should be doing when temptation is faced, and dealing and and more proactively addressing, the longings of the heart, the god given longings of the heart that sin tries to use to our advantage tempt us. And so making sure I'm building community, and I have intimacy and community, and I'm known, and I'm giving and receiving real love so that I'm not tempted to fake it in my imagination.
Pastor Johnson:You know, that's what sanctification looks like in in practice, not temptations which engenders. That's not likely to happen.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. That that talking about sanctification, you know, that reminds me of, of one of the things that you talked about as well in your book. And and something that it's a word for me that, as I do this season on propaganda, I it it's it's what I I think is, you know, the the Christian's form of counter propaganda. It's the way that we we fight lies and manipulation and and deception, and that's discipleship, which is which is really just social social, sanctification. You know, it's it's being sanctified together with other people, like Hebrews 1024.
Derek Kreider:You know, come together. Don't don't forsake that and build each other up. And one of the one of the places that I think you highlight that in your book is you include a a quote from Nancy Gritter, I believe. And she says something to the extent of that, were to be pastoral, not political, partners, not empire, relational, not pragmatic. And then the last one is what kind of got me because I agreed with the first part she said were to seek discipleship, not change.
Derek Kreider:You know, I had to really think about that one for a bit because I I agree with the discipleship, but the but, yeah, discipleship should include change. But then as I was thinking about your example of of the football, you know, teaching gay guys how to throw a football, I was like, oh, I I think what she means is that she's saying, you know, discipleship is is transformational from the inside out, but change is, you know, like a like a paint job over over a rusty car or something. You know, it's it's just something that that looks nice on the outside. And, when we seek somebody to change like that, we're basically we're objectifying them. We're like, you know what?
Derek Kreider:We don't really care about you. We just wanna slap some paint on you to kind of to look good. And that's that's objectification. That's not discipleship. And I think what you helped me to understand more is that I I think the church, a lot of times, does this.
Derek Kreider:We think that we're trying to change the person for their good, but what we're really doing is we're objectifying them, sometimes for our good, you know, to say, well, look what we did. We created this person who who looks good now, or whatever our reasons are. Or like you said, we we like numbers. So a lot of a lot of people care about converts. They don't care about disciples, even though the Great Commission is about disciple making, not not convert making.
Derek Kreider:And we seek polemics, we seek we seek empire so that we can control and we can force change on people. Why do you think, maybe you could talk a little bit about the importance of discipleship, kind of expound on that because I know you you do that really well in your book. So what is the importance of discipleship, and why is the church conflating discipleship with with, you know, outward change? And why are we getting it so wrong? Yeah.
Pastor Johnson:And, of course, that word change in an ex gay ministry context has a lot of meaning because the, you know, the the motto of Exodus International was change is possible, and the change was orientation change. Not a transformed life, but a sexual orientation change. But, yeah. You know, discipleship is messy. Discipleship happens in community.
Pastor Johnson:Community only works where people can be fully known, where they can let somebody in. And, you know, I don't even like to think about coming out. I I prefer to think of it as me letting people in, letting people see the real me, warts and all, as a fallen creature made in God's image and a subject of of Christ's redemption. And, you know, the discipleship only happens where we can be seen all the way down and still be accepted because that's what does the gospel ministry in us. And when we tell somebody that they can't be honest, about their sexual orientation, that they have to fake it, we are cutting them off completely from the path of discipleship.
Pastor Johnson:You know, if if an alcoholic can't be open and honest about their alcoholism, their addictive disorder, whatever you want to call it, whether they're rolling out of a bar at 3 in the morning or whether they've been sober for 20 years is beside the point. If they can't be honest about it, then they cannot experience discipleship, because discipleship is the application of the gospel in community that means full disclosure and complete acceptance. Not that we have to have full disclosure to everybody, but we have to have full disclosure to some people. You know, there are you know, it is it is the secret sin that is that has power over us. And, when we can be open and honest, that allows for us to be known in community.
Pastor Johnson:And and for that to happen, the church needs to think of itself as family first and foremost, not worship and programs. But we are a worshiping family. That means, you know, having the single gay person go on vacation with you, having them adopting them into your family or adopting her into your family. And I've had Christian women say, oh, but I couldn't have such people near my child, and all I can say is you're probably not even regenerate. You know, there's just nothing of the gospel in you.
Pastor Johnson:If you honestly think we're all pedophiles, you're crazy because, again, the science proves otherwise. You know, there have been studies that show that you know, there was one study done many years ago of of all of the child sex offenders in the state of Massachusetts, and it found that of all of them, they looked at how many were sexually attracted to adult women, how many were sexually attracted to adult men, and how many of them were fixated or just attracted to children and not adults at all. And they they found that, most of them were either fixated or heterosexual in their attractions, and none of them were gay. Not a single one was attracted to other men. And and it makes sense because if you're attracted to muscles and testosterone, an 8 year old doesn't have those.
Pastor Johnson:You know? But there's this notion that you have to protect them. Anyway, I I digress. But it's it's just, you know, we have to pull those parts of the body that seem less presentable. They need to be brought into the center of the church, not pushed out to the periphery.
Pastor Johnson:And, you know, you should you know, sexual orientation should not be an should not be a determining factor in figuring out who you're gonna love, who you're gonna invite into your home, to whom you're gonna offer hospitality, who you're going to take on vacation with you. You should walk people of Christian character near your kids. Whatever temptation they face is beside the point.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. As I as I, dug into this more and I've I've listened to, and read Preston Sprinkle a bit too, who I really like. Yeah. As he he just he has really good questions, and he just has such a a good heart. And he he talks to all kinds of people across the spectrum.
Derek Kreider:And I just realized, I was like, you know, if you're if you're gay or if you're single, and at least in in the PCA with with our demographics, if you're a minority, it's like, where where are you really gonna go where you're gonna feel, loving community that that envelops you and brings you in to edify you? And it's just it's so it's so hard. And I think, not just the PC, I think I think evangelicalism in in general in the states has difficulty with with singles and with, gay people. And, yeah, one of the one of the things that has been popping up for me a lot, lately is, this this term, eudaiminism. And it's, you know, it's this concept that, like, basically, God created a good world.
Derek Kreider:And so you'd expect that if you do the right things that, you know, if you do righteous things, that that that will produce the best results. And it's not the it's not the, you know, health and wealth gospel, type of thing. It's just it's kinda like Proverbs, you know, in generalities. If you do this, then this tends to follow. It it's wisdom.
Derek Kreider:And one of the things that that strikes me about that is I would expect that, if we have the spirit of God, if God exists, if he created a good world, we should be producing fruits and that fruit should not be rotten. Yet, you know, one of the stats that stuck out to me that as I was watching one of your interviews is that whatever it is that we're doing as a church, it seems that we're producing rotten fruit because you you quoted something. I might get the number wrong here, but, like a 37% higher suicide rate if a a gay person is associated with I don't know if it's religion in general or Christianity. And to me, that just seems like that just blows my mind that the church wouldn't produce better results than that if we're doing the right thing in God's good world. So maybe you could talk a little bit about about that stat and and talk about what that indicates about how the church is doing and whether or not we're following God's prerogative?
Pastor Johnson:Yeah. I was in a 2,000, a study using data from 2,011 of 21,000 plus college students, for example, found that, you know, for straight students, if they were religious, they had a lower rate of suicidal ideation than secular students. But for gay and lesbian students, it was actually, they were 38% more likely to have had recent suicidal thoughts. And, for lesbians only, it was actually a 52% increased likelihood of of suicidal thinking. And there are a lot of studies like this that look at now they tend to look just generally at the impact of being religious as opposed to irreligious.
Pastor Johnson:And so that's gonna lump in Hasidic Jews. That's gonna lump in, you know, right wing Roman Catholics, the independent Bible Baptists, every everybody, Muslim students, you name it, Christian scientists. But, but with the prevalence of Christianity in in North America, you know, clearly, that reflects to some degree on the church. And and, again, I think the issue is is a lack of gospel culture in so many of our churches, including Reformed and Presbyterian churches, back often. And, you know, when it with churches saturated by the gospel, then not only the pulpit, but the people are free to be sinners loved by Jesus.
Pastor Johnson:They're free to be open and honest because they know that they've been clothed in the righteousness of Christ and all their sins have been forgiven. So not only are they forgiven, but they fed the 5,000. They raised Lazarus from the dead, and they always did what we use the father because they're united to Jesus in whom all of those things are true and his righteousness has been reckoned. And that gives you to them, and so it gives you this incredible freedom to be open and honest. And when a church gets the gospel on that deep level, where they know that the only class of people Jesus called are sinners, it's that's when you see 80 year old men talking about their struggle with lust and explaining how it doesn't ever really go away.
Pastor Johnson:You know, they they may no longer be able to have sex, but that doesn't mean their minds are suddenly pure and angelic. You know? That's where, couples that struggle with infertility can be open and honest because it's safe, and it won't be a whole bunch of people telling them what to do to fix it. It'll just be people who can empathize with them because they too know suffering, and they too know what it's like to be broken and damaged by the fall. That's when your addicts can talk about their addiction open openly.
Pastor Johnson:That's when married couples can talk about how difficult their marriage is and how they struggle to forgive and love each other. That's when your, you know, 13 year old in youth group feels comfortable telling his youth pastor about his questions about his sexuality or gender confusion. You know, that's where it's safe for gay people to follow Jesus and not be told that they need to pretend to be straight, lie about their orientation changing, and use euphemisms. You know, that's that's the reality. And so, you know, to some degree, God's law kills.
Pastor Johnson:That's what the Bible says. The law kills, the gospel gives life, the Spirit gives life. And there's a part of me that God's holy law had to kill and has to keep killing. The part of me that's prideful and arrogant and lustful and objectifies people, I might be more tempted to objectify a man than a woman, but I'm still doing the same sin, And is the temptation still there? And so, you know, learning to love with the generosity of Jesus, with the compassion, to love others for their sake, to love God for his own sake because he's worthy of love, to grow that heart of Jesus inside of the you, that takes the gospel.
Pastor Johnson:It's the gospel that teaches us to say no to sin, not the law. And where American churches are focused on rule keeping, they're pointing the finger at those sinners out there instead of the sinners in here, where it becomes about performance and looking religious and looking spiritual, that kills, because that's law. Where the gospel takes root and gospel centered churches are a small minority of American churches, including conservative churches. But where the gospel takes real root, you know, some Presbyterians roll their eyes and say, oh, the grace guys. Well, that says, sadly, a great deal about the state of their soul if they're rolling their eyes at grace because it's all we've got.
Pastor Johnson:And, you know, all my eggs are in Jesus' basket. And I'm just like, Jesus, I'm giving up everything for you. I sold everything I had, and I bought the field because you're my buried treasure. All my eggs are in your basket. You better not be lying, Lord, because you're my only hope in life and in death.
Pastor Johnson:You know? And you know me. You know what I am. I am totally capable of all kinds of sin. You know?
Pastor Johnson:I don't have to when I sin, I don't have to say, no, honestly, I'm not that kind of guy. I am totally that kind of guy. That's why I need a savior. And to come to his grace again and again and again and drink of it and feel his love and delight washing over you and him singing over you in song and carving your name into the palm of his hand. You know, that's when you know you have a dad who loves you in heaven.
Pastor Johnson:You know, that that enables a freedom. And so I think it's interesting because when you look at some of the research, you know, that that Mark Jarhuis and and, Olia, Zebrowsetz published back in 2019 under the title, Costly Obedience, Learning from, you know, Seldom, Gay Christians. You know, their research of 355 gay, lesbian, bisexual, same sex attracted believers who were committed to the biblical sexual ethic found that by and large, psychologically, by every objective standard, they're doing really well. The the ones who are single, unmarried, and celibate, are gonna struggle more with loneliness and finding community and churches that build everything around family ministries and marriage, but by and large, they were doing really well. And so, you know, that's a bit of scientific research that gives a counterpoint.
Pastor Johnson:I think the difference is the presence of the gospel, not as something for non Christians, but the bread that we feast on every day.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. That was that was transformational for me coming into, the PCA when, I think we went through gospel transformations. And I was like, the gospel? I mean, yeah, I I prayed that prayer when I was like, you know, 5. What what do why are we talking about the gospel?
Derek Kreider:I'm we're I'm not here to evangelize. I'm here to grow. And, yeah, that is just so it's so beautiful, when when that does become a part of your life. And it is it is freeing. And I think that highlights one of the things that you point out so well is the the difference between guilt and shame.
Derek Kreider:And I don't remember exactly how you put it, but guilt is maybe something you've done and shame is more who you are type of thing. You know, the irony of people being upset with you saying that you are a gay Christian who is who is, you know, trying to mortify the flesh, are often the the same group who are creating shame, which says this is who you are. You know?
Pastor Johnson:Yeah. Yeah. I've I've often said, you know, my critics and opponents spend a lot more time talking about my sexuality than I ever have. And that's just downright creepy. I mean, it really is.
Pastor Johnson:Like, the thought that there are all of these religious people sitting around the table on Sunday morning discussing my sexuality, when, I mean, my sexuality is like a 1972 Ken doll that's still shrink wrapped in its original packaging. You know? Like, why are they talking about this? You know? It's the thing I try not to think about all the time.
Pastor Johnson:But, yeah, you know, they're they're very big at shaming people. And, yeah, you're right. The difference is guilt relates to what I've done, and shame relates to what I am as a creature affected by the fall as one that's so much less than the best of humanity, so much less than was intended. And and, of course, it's it's interesting because, you know, most of the world functions as a shame based cultural ethic. It's it's really Western Europeans and Americans are sort of the weird ones in that we're not primarily a shame driven culture, much more a legal, guilt focused culture.
Pastor Johnson:But where you see it in North America is very different is when you're dealing with, Asian Americans, immigrant families for 2nd, 3rd generation, or people raised in very conservative religious contexts where shame is a massive manipulator and everybody's trying to avoid shame, but it's used as a lever to gain control over people. And, and, of course, what Jesus does in terms of, like, I I often talk about the pastor's toolbox. You know, as pastors, we have certain we we wanna help people not sin, and so we have a toolbox with certain tools in it. And, you know, you got the hammer, and that's guilt manipulation. You can beat people up with guilt manipulation, tell them how horrible they are with an awful thing they've done, and you get short term results, but you end up bashing their head in in the process.
Pastor Johnson:And so Jesus takes that away and says, I atoned for all their sins. There there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So he takes away the hammer. And then I pull out, you know, the Phillips screwdriver, very, very handy. That's shame, shame manipulation.
Pastor Johnson:Shame can do things that a hammer can never do. Shame can screw something in or screw it out. You know? Shame says you're defective. Look at you.
Pastor Johnson:If people only knew. And, Jesus says, no, I've clothed this one in the righteousness of Christ. They now have my resume. They have been given the Congressional Medal of Honor and ushered into the the halls of power. So shame, he takes that away.
Pastor Johnson:And then there's, you know, people pleasing, fear of what others will think. That's maybe the wrench, and he takes that away. And then there's the fear of punishment. You're gonna go to hell if you do that. And he takes that away.
Pastor Johnson:And, ultimately, what's left in the pastor's toolbox is just the gospel. Even when exercising church discipline, we're merely declaring that one is not walking in line with the gospel. You know, it's a declarative ministry. It's not judicial. And, you know, all we've got is grace.
Pastor Johnson:And the more I tell people how much Jesus loves them, the more it sinks in and they actually want to serve him.
Derek Kreider:And that's
Pastor Johnson:true for gay people as well as for straight people.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. No. That's a that's a good reminder to me too. You know, as a parent, I think, I have that same toolbox, and, unfortunately, I use the hammer, more than I should, I think. Alright.
Derek Kreider:Last question for you. Okay.
Pastor Johnson:I I
Derek Kreider:think it's really easy for me, at at this time in my life, at this time in history, whatever it is, to be to to be frustrated, I think, with with the church at the moment or to be disillusioned by it. And, you know, while while there are definitely things that that I I think are important to point out because I love the church, and I wanna fix it. And you love the church too. I mean, you're a pastor. I'm doing missions work, and we love the church.
Derek Kreider:I I think it would be, it it wouldn't be fair if I spent the whole time just talking about the church and not acknowledging that, you know, of of course, there are issues elsewhere too. So if if you could close, I know that you said you've received hate mail from from Christians and, and people like that. But I would imagine that as somebody who is who is religious receiving religious hate mail for, still identifying as gay, yet at the same time, not approving of a gay lifestyle. I would imagine that you maybe sometimes get hate mail from the other side too, or or maybe negative interactions. I'd love for you to kind of just close out by talking about maybe some of the the experiences that you've had receiving a lack of love and charity from the other side and, or or some of the the their scientific viewpoints and and, refusals to accept, maybe what science shows in terms of of, the lifestyle or or where that leads.
Pastor Johnson:Yeah. You know, I have had some some negative interactions with those on the other side, far more from conservative religious people. You know, most folks on the kind of secular LGBT side, they they think it's weird that I'm celibate and that I'm probably not being true to who I am. I'm repressed and self hating, and and they hate that. And and occasionally, somebody will get very, very heated, claiming that that the Christian ethic that I hold to is inherently violent to gay people and that I'm there for fermenting youth suicides and all that kind of stuff, and because they're assuming that my message is one of law rather than gospel, because they're just focused on the one aspect of sexual norms and and not the bigger picture of of the gospel in which that's discussed.
Pastor Johnson:And, so, yeah, I've had to block some folks on Twitter who were, you know, activists and who were just constantly accusing. And and I tried to be gracious. I tried to interact. I tried to be positive. Eventually, I just had to say, this person's trolling me.
Pastor Johnson:I gotta block them. You know, when we hosted the Revoice, when Memorial Presbyterian, St. Louis hosted the Revoice conference in 2018, the first conference, you know, we were denounced in the local LGBT media, for promoting conversion therapy 2.0, which is what they viewed celibacy as. And there were calls to picket us, to picket our church during the conference that it never happened. But, you know, out of that, I was able to reach out to some of those activists and and sit down with them, including one young man who who had gone through some form of, you know, conversion therapy, said through a, through a a a counselor that at the time was using space in our building.
Pastor Johnson:And so he'd gone through it as a teenager in our building, and I was able to hear his story and ask his forgiveness. And he's he's the, you know, vice president of of Pride Saint Louis and heads up the local, you know, LGBT community center. And so I was able to ask his forgiveness because we didn't protect them. Love always protects, and we let that happen. And, I was able to establish positive relationship there.
Pastor Johnson:There's another activist who's a, ethical humanist minister, atheist, gay, was able to meet with him because he was the one calling for pickets. And we had drinks together 1 1 afternoon, and and when he heard my story, he he wanted to say, okay. So you're you're a gay atheist, and you became a Christian. Why would you have done that? And I just asked him, are you asking for my Christian testimony?
Pastor Johnson:He's like, yeah. I love hearing things like this. So, you know, here I was able to, you know, talk about Jesus with people who might not be able to hear that from very many sources, but but they could hear it from me. I remember, you know, we have an arts venue where we serve all sorts of non Christian artists. It's a ministry to the artists themselves where they come in and do their art from their perspective.
Pastor Johnson:They could be Jewish, atheist, humanist, Hindu, Muslim, LGBTQIA, whatever. It doesn't matter to us. We're just there to love people. And, we have some expectations of what kind of art we do we host, but, but we don't censor. And we had one theater company that did a group of plays written by transgender playwrights, exploring gender dysphoria and this sense of separation from one's physical body.
Pastor Johnson:Some of it was science fiction, but it was really fascinating. It was good really interesting stuff, really eye opening for somebody who's never experienced gender dysphoria. But, you know, afterwards, our our pastors actually ran the bar. We give away free drinks. That's the the thing.
Pastor Johnson:We give the space free, and we give drinks to their patrons for free, you know, beer, wine, and soda, just to to love them. And so that they know that there were Christians who didn't judge them and did love them and treated them with respect. And so our pastors ran the bar each night, and our youth and family guy, the last night, he was running the bar. And afterwards, when almost everybody was gone, one of the actresses came up to him and said, we all know what your church believes, and so we don't understand why you're treating us this way. You know, because we were so loving and caring and compassionate, and they didn't understand it.
Pastor Johnson:And he was able to hear her out and share some of how we we actually do this precisely because of what we believe. Because when we were his enemies, Jesus died for us. When we were different, he came and loved us and entered into our experiences. So we want to love people who are different from us, whether they agree with us or not. Whatever the perspective, we wanna love them, and and we know how much ill will has been fostered by Christians and by churches toward LGBT people.
Pastor Johnson:And so we want to to to address that by not telling you all the stuff that we believe, but just loving you. And she talked for about 45 minutes. She had a lot of stuff on her chest. But at the end of the day, she walked out of that chapel, that arts venue, and said, this is the first time I feel like a Christian has respected me. That's that's pre evangelism at least.
Pastor Johnson:You know, that is inroads for the gospel, bridges for the gospel of Jesus into a secular world. And people criticized us for it, but, you know, I would always point out, I can't remember if it was Dwight Moody or Billy Sunday, but some prominent lady criticized his evangelistic methods, and his response was, Ma'am, I like what I'm doing better than what you're not doing. And when it comes to ministering to LGBT people, American churches, the ones that actually believe the gospel, aren't doing much. There's a lot we can do, and yet it's always from beneath by loving them, by serving them. You know, the way Jesus reached my heart and captured my soul and made me want to obey Him is not because He became my Lord, but because He became my savior.
Pastor Johnson:Because He got down on His feet when my feet were dirty, He got down on His knees and washed my feet. When I was guilty in his enemy, he went to death on the cross and absorbed the Father's wrath for my sake, so that I would never have to absorb it at all. He drank the cup of God's wrath down to the dregs so that I would never see it. And and that's the way, you know, when we think about influencing a culture, Presbyterians, unfortunately, often, on the left or the right, they think if we can just get our guys into power on top, we can force all the non Christians to act like Christians, when the Christians don't even act like Christians. That is what Jesus said.
Pastor Johnson:It's the the way the the rulers of the Gentiles exercise authority over them. They said it must not be with you. Whoever wants to be great must be your servant. And the way we're gonna influence a culture is not by getting our people on top politically, but by getting our people on the bottom, serving LGBT people, serving non Christians, serving atheists, serving critics, serving people who hate us, and and letting the gospel do its work.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. I couldn't agree more. I, I love the image of of the upside down kingdom. I think that's such a such a fitting, fitting analogy, fitting picture. That's, that's all I have for you.
Derek Kreider:So I I really appreciate you taking more than an hour out of your time. It actually went went longer than I was expecting. Is there anything else you'd like to to plug or say, or any closing thoughts?
Pastor Johnson:No. Just, check out my book, Still Time to Care, what we can learn from the church's failed attempt to cure homosexuality. You'll learn all about, in the first chapter, C. S. Lewis and his gay best friend, Arthur.
Pastor Johnson:And, you'll learn all about, what the late Francis Schaeffer had to say about, you know, his first encounter, with Jerry Falwell senior, when he said that man is disgusting over his homophobia. You know, there's a great history to learn. And last I checked, it was about $5 on Amazon, which is cheaper than I can buy it from my own publisher. So, go and buy a crate and give them to all your friends. It's a great way to learn about Jesus.
Derek Kreider:Alright. Well, thank you so much again.
Pastor Johnson:Alright, Derek. Thanks.
Derek Kreider:That's all for now. So peace, and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it. This podcast is a part of the Kingdom Outpost Network. Please check out the links below to find other great podcasts and content related to nonviolence and Kingdom Living.
