Welcome to Breakfast and Hell.

This week we welcome back to the program Dave Whyett's I'm excited to have Dave returned to the show to finish his story.

You can hear his bio and all about his upbringing on our part one episode, which originally dropped on July seventh, twenty twenty five.

While Dave's childhood through his early twenties were steeped in evangelicalism, the next thirty years of his life are their own journey, and in it we find Dave embracing his identity, becoming active in his community, and also going through stages of grief from his former identity.

He leaves the church still loving Jesus.

He gets angry at the church for not even acknowledging his personhood, and he tries to bargain with the church, or, at least, by his own admission, tries to fix it for them.

He becomes completely disillusioned with anyone with a church background, before ending up where he is now accepting church folks, whether conservative or progressive, for what they are, regardless of how unfortunate that might be.

He's moved on to trying his best to be all the things that make a good human being while also accepting that those involved with the church aren't going to change.

It's a fascinating conversation, and Dave is an undeniably gifted communicator and storyteller.

It's also an encouragement to others that have left the church that finding your new normal doesn't happen overnight, that anger is normal, that disillusionment is going to happen, and while your past demons might never leave you, they don't have to stop you from moving forward and being better.

I have no doubt you'll enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

Here's Dave, So, Dave, the reason I brought you back, aside from just sheer popular demand, is that you walked me through your time in evangelicalism.

But because of your standing in years, you have just as long just as long without it.

And I can imagine, just knowing how I feel, you know, probably seven or eight full years removed from evangelicalism, how my i'm in it has absolutely like dictated some of my life out of it.

I can only imagine what that that's been like for you.

And I know You've got many more stories to tell, and I have more to hear, so, uh, we can pick up right there.

I know that you ended up leaving because you know Reagan, Reagan and the church had a nice little marriage, and that's when it was just kind of not for you.

That's kind of where we left off and where everyone pick ups fine by me.

Oh yeah, like you said, I'm one hundred years old, and I uh, you know, while while while you kids were having you know, your your reliant case and your purity rings and your veggie tails and whatever, like I was, I was going to gay bars.

Yeah, so you were living.

I was out.

I was gone.

Yeah that's right.

And and so yeah, if you haven't listened to the first episode, eh, it's fine.

What happened was briefly fifteen years from childhood to my early twenties in the church, and then I had to go.

And it was I think we leaned pretty heavily into the idea of my political you know, disenchantment with the church.

But it was just as much a function of having having to come out.

Yeah.

I finally figured it out, right, figure out, Oh you're queer, you need to you should go because you don't even have to tell them, right, they won't like it when they hear it and so you should maybe just leave.

And this is in the pre You know, so many people I talked to that are still an evangelical church will very proudly tell me there's a gay couple that comes to our church, or there's you know what I mean, like there's this one.

You know, we have this, we have this lesbian couple that come and they sit in the front row and you know, they love Jesus.

So there is this new type of hate in the evangelical church, which is correct, that is that is a very service level we accept you on our terms kind of thing.

Your coming out is in the I mean in the absolute wheelhouse of being gay, flies in the face of everything God is designed, and your your life expectancy is shorter because it's all the gay's fault because age like you're you're you're coming out in the like I remember being nine ten years old and just hearing about the godlessness that is gay.

So I mean it right, Yeah, that's the that's the environment with which you were.

You know, this is this is in the heyday of the more overt hate and so what can you walk me through what that was like?

Bad?

Because you were a criminal.

I mean, it's really difficult to explain to people who are not my age.

I'm sixty one by the way, Yeah, I mean I look so cute from my age, it's so young.

There there were actual laws that criminalized you as a person, right, So it was illegal.

For example, I was in Texas.

It was quite literally illegal to be queer in Texas.

And that's not just Texas, that's all over the country.

Right, we're not even talking about, you know, can you bring your partner to church with you, or can you get married or something like that.

On top of it, gay men were dropping like flies.

This was nineteen nineteen ninety one.

And so because I spent the eighties deeply closeted and not neither touching nor being touched by another human being, I stayed safe from HIV.

But I learned.

I knew, I knew what was happening, and I knew what I was allowed to do and what I was not allowed to do.

And so having walking into it with all that information that was, you know, developed not by the United States government but by queer men for that decade coming into the nineties, they taught themselves.

They took care of each other and coming into that you had to be like on your guard all the time, not just culturally, but you're very physical being.

You know, you were always under the cloud of you know, you could die, you could you could just die.

And there's no treatment, there's no medication, there's no cure, there's nothing.

So it's funny.

One of the first things I did not funny, haha, But one of the first things I did was upon graduating from college, I I became involved at an AIDS foundation that was in Dallas.

It's called AIDS Services of Dallas.

So my job as a volunteer was because I sort of in my head, I thought, well, this is now your community.

Like this the community that you thought you were a part of, they they do not want you.

And so you have to go, uh, you have to become a part of this new community and and and and do your part.

Like you've sat on the sidelines for ten years trying to figure yourself out in a little, you know, rural area in Texas.

But now you're in a city and this is your life, and you've got to take care of yourself and as many other people as you can possibly help.

My job was to drive the van to the food pantry.

So like it was a big hospice this place, and when I say hospice, that's not exactly the right word to use.

It was a residence facility for people with AIDS, and if they had families, then their families lived there with them, and so people were in various stages of having hav having AIDS from the very like, everything's fine and you're living your life and here you are to you're in bed all day, you know.

It was all that kind of all that variation.

So my job was to drive the van to the food pantry, which was run by I think at the time it was known as the Game Lesbian Center of Dallas.

I don't know what they call it now.

I'm sure it's the LGBT Center now.

But they had a food pantry and you got free food.

And so my job drive the van, carry the groceries up to the apartments, you know, one by one.

And then my job became and this became a really interesting thing, drive the children that lived there to the movies on Saturday.

Oh I love that.

Yeah.

So you had all these kids there whose parents had HIV or whose parents were already quite sick, and there were about a dozen kids under the age of ten, right, Yeah, they're living there with their families, and to get the kids out of the parents' hair for an afternoon on Saturday, I drove that same van, a big eighteen cedar van like this is youth pastor kind of van, right yeah, yeah.

The benches.

It couldn't have been more unsafe, yea.

Yeah, And I uh would drive these kids to the Dollar Theater and sort of occurred to them, like a dozen under tens at the movies for about you know.

It took three hours every Saturday.

Uh, So that became a thing I was doing.

I got involved in act up.

This all sounds like really good things church churches should be doing.

That was where I met Alonso for the first time.

Wow yeah, okay, Yeah, my now husband and I met at a demonstration introduced by a mutual friend.

And he has no memory of this, but I I remember it.

And we literally introduced ourselves to each other, shook hands and said good to meet youa and walked away and didn't have any other contact for like three or four more years.

Oh okay, we did not re meet.

I was about to give Alonzo a hard time.

You just have a really good memory.

Yes, basically yeah, yes, yeah, yes, uh and.

So the uh so Yeah, I was involved in activism, and I was involved in volunteering and doing whatever I thought I could.

I felt like I was playing catch up with the queer community because I was because I was hiding for for the entire nineteen eighties.

Do you so just two things?

One is you talked in the last episode about church being a safe place for someone who was still figuring out their sexuality and who just you you could just kind of hide in there.

The how diametrically opposed is it when you realize, hey, I'm I'm a queer, I'm a queer man.

I like, all of a sudden, the church becomes the like an immediate villain, you know what I mean?

Like you did, you said, I don't have to come out.

Let's let's let's say it right.

They were always the villain.

Yeah that's right, Well you just did.

Yeah yeah, yeah yeah.

Bruce Willis has been dead all along.

Yes, But so that you know, to have your safest place a family that you know, you didn't have, your family structure at home was consistently kind of changing or in and out.

To have your safest, most consistent place to have been the villain all along.

Like when you're do like you immediately jump into outreach and activism.

Is that a product of this is how the church should be acting or is that a product of I have to do the opposites.

I have to find something to fill this void.

It's funny that you asked that, because when you leave the church, and again the reason I'm here is I've been out of the church for thirty five years.

I haven't been in a church in thirty five years.

Okay, Leaving the church is tricky because you carry with you all of that stuff.

Now, some of the stuff you carry with you is is good, right, Like if you are a person who when you are a Christian in the church and you want to participate in the community and you really want to like help people, maybe you join Habitat for Humanity and you help people build houses, or maybe you have maybe your church has you know, uh uh uh, some sort of ministry to you know, hungry people or whatever.

I mean, most of them don't, I think these days, but some of them do.

And and and if you were doing that, if you were already sort of involved as an activist type person on that level.

It's in you, right, you want to, you want to, you want to keep doing things.

So so all that stuff you carry with you, but you also carry with you all of that mess, all of that ugliness, and you carry that into your normal life and then you get it all over other people who weren't asking for it at all.

So the the, the the the queer activism, I thought, was, you know, a good use of my time.

And you said the church had become a villain.

One of the things that Act Up would do is very frequently protest at evangelical sponsored you know, political events, like I remember the reason I met Alonzo duralday as we were both demonstrating outside of a building where Jerry Folwell and Pat Robertson and one of the Bush's old oldest Bush they were all speaking.

They were speaking those yeah, yeah, the biggies right.

I don't know if you've ever seen or photos of Act Up doing die insh lying on the ground and you chalk outline your body and all that stuff.

We did that that, Oh, that's fantastic.

That's a romantic meat way to meet.

Yeah, come on, better than that.

And then he forgot all about it.

Unbelievable.

What a guy.

I'll make him pay.

So so, yeah, like you wind up in direct opposition to the people that you thought were your your your we call it the church family.

You thought you thought you thought they were your family, and they were you know not.

Yeah, and it's it was easy for me because I didn't have a biological family that were also involved in the church, so there wasn't there wasn't a lot of you know, connection other than just my presence there.

I think it's even harder for people who have been raised in the church and didn't sort of voluntarily just step into it.

You didn't have nearly as many strings to cut there.

My older brother and my younger brother were there, but it wasn't like for generations we've been going to this same church.

You were raised here, and everyone loves you and knows your name, and oh, there's something unusual about you.

We don't know what it is, but we're going to pretend it doesn't exist, and there will be this process of I watched this happen to other people, right, but it happened little by little to me.

But I was aware that it was happening while it was happening.

When you're a child, and it starts happening.

You don't know why you're being treated just a little bit differently than other kids, right, It's this process of shunning that takes place in increments until finally you realize, Oh, the reason they're treating me differently is because they see me before I could have even seen myself.

You know.

There's all this talk now, you know, like what happens when you're eight year old tells you they're queer, you know, and and they're like that that must have been something that came from the outside world and infected that kid, and it contagious.

It's a contagion, right.

So, but the deal is this, you know, if you're a if you're a feminine little boy, everyone else sees it.

You don't.

You don't see it.

You just think you're you, that's right.

And but they'll they'll start acting, you know, differently around you.

I don't know if you've ever I don't know if you've ever seen any old TV specials with the Case family.

Do you know who they are?

No?

I don't.

They were huge in the nineteen sixties and into the nineteen seventies.

There were a big family of singers, and they had a show on network television oho their youngest child, little boy.

The kid's name was Cam.

He was very ready to be on camera and singing, dancing, you know, all that stuff.

And every once in a while one of the moms would say, like, you know, we don't know what to make of Cam, and they would say this on camera, Oh my god, yeah, and this would wind up on television.

Right.

So this kid grew up not quite understanding himself and having his own family who loved him very much and who were you know, very visibly and famously connected to each other sort of look at him like what is that about that boy?

Now?

So it's so crazy that I mean to interrupt you, but that just maybe not to that extent, but maybe I mean, when I was in middle school and high school in youth group, we did this to kids, right, and we and we thought it was really good, like we thought it was biblical, like with biblical it was good to like, you know, create this line right now, that's right, create this weird space until they understand what it means to be in the fold.

And and it's so disgusting to think about, but we did it, like I know, we did it, and I noticed.

Why when you meet queer people they are like cockroaches.

You cannot crush us.

That's because that stuff has been happening our entire lives.

Good news about cam uh.

He was the original voice of which mutant turtle one of them.

Uh gave the voice of one of the I'm talking about.

This is this is important information for my kids who loved the original.

Rettal teenage mutant Ninja Turtles.

He was the voice of one of the turtles.

Turtle.

He's been a voice actor his entire adult life, written a book about the family.

We've interviewed him on the Linoleum Knife and he's awesome.

He lives around here.

And uh so, anyway, side story about people you've never heard of the uh so, where was I with this?

You were telling you talking about when you're even from the time you're a kid, like the person that the kid that is a feminine doesn't know.

And you don't even have to be demonstrably anything.

You just have to not be the same as correct boys.

Yes, I had three brothers who were all jocks, not me.

I identified with Ferdinand the Bull.

I wanted to sit in the field at the flowers and read my little book, you know.

And as I said, in the first time we did this, and my parents indulged that they let it happen.

They were strangely cool with their having a weirdo child.

I mean, that's pretty like that's great though, you know what I mean.

Thank God.

Unfortunately, it was also a big shock to them when I came out in my twenties, and so that was a drag having to like walk them through it, you know.

Uh, but you know, that's that's what happens.

I think, you know, one of the things I was saying earlier about how you carry all that stuff with you is that you have to spend a lot of time unlearning the stuff that you learned.

In that way, it is very much like being in alcoholics Anonymous or alan on.

You have been involved, and I know people recoil when they hear this, but you have been involved in a cult, yep, and and you have to unlearn the cult like behavior, and no matter how cool and progressive and liberal you were while you were there.

And I always think of myself as being like, yeah, man, I was the rebel.

I was the renegade.

I was a lefty, and they didn't want me, and I was awesome and they were dumb.

And I was still a judgmental asshole.

Yeah yeah, And.

I was still a know it all, and I was still a path I was still pathologically helpful in a way that I carry with me thirty five years later, all of those things.

You may leave the church and be gone for three years, five years, seven years, ten years, fifteen years, but I'm here to tell you, brothers and sisters that thirty five years later, you are on some level, not I mean, it's not crushing you, but on some level you are still mixed up with and mixed up by this stuff.

Yeah that they they they like jack hammered into your head.

I can attest to that as someone who's just only you know, a half decade to a decade, depending on how you define it.

I've used the film Inception so much more on this podcast than I thought I would.

But like, there are there are so many damn tops that you have to stop from spinning, you know what I mean.

Like, there's so many ideas that are the firewall of your faith, that have nothing to do with faith, that are that are ingrained in you about how you treat people, on why you do what you do that are just something somebody made up to have power and still removed from church as many years as I have, It's still something you have to It's like learning a new language, like it really is.

It's it's wild or unlearning a bad language.

I guess right.

I am always confronting, you know, in myself these ideas about being very controlling, about knowing what's best not just for myself but for everyone around me.

Uh, intervening in in situations that I was not asked to intervene.

This is all.

This is all stuff that's real close to home for me, Dave.

I'm just like if I feel all of this on a very personal level.

Yeah, so you know, and this is this is with like going to thera therapy and uh, you know, basically divorcing myself from all evangelical culture entirely and being in a queer community of people who you know either have also left or who never were involved.

I think I know more atheists now than I do Christians.

I'm married to an atheist.

There's this cartoon I saw somewhere.

Somebody draw drew an illustrated cartoon about what it means to try to leave your your all the terrible stuff that you encounter when you go into therapy, right, all the things, and it's like you bring the guys dragging this bag full of you know, demons let's call them, that are fighting inside the bag, and then the bag opens and they're terrifying the person.

And then and then the last frame is they're just walking there with you by your side.

Yeah, they're never going away.

No, they're never going away.

None of that stuff is ever going away.

You are going to constantly be doing this and and and working yourself, working with yourself about yourself, and trying to you know, just be a regular normal person.

Sounds so easy.

It is, I suppose it's easy for people who are regular normal people.

It doesn't help right now that in twenty twenty five we will in a country where the government actively hates its own citizens and has, you know, for some time on a quiet level, but now doing it on a very demonstrative level.

Everyone around me, everyone I know, has like daily freak out, panic anxiety situations about the state of the United States.

And so add that to what you might have already been dealing with in life, and it's tough out here right now.

Yeah, I think.

You know, a thing that I learned a lot in church was like, hey, we hold this life with an open hand because it's not where our destiny is.

You know, that idea of like right now, like it doesn't matter what happens here, because you have an eternity where it's all going to be reconciled and figured out.

And that is rich coming from the people that definitely got a sure thing in life.

You know what I mean?

Like, there are there are a lot of people groups that aren't you, that not you, Dave, but you these people that have to hold life with an open hand because just as Obertville v.

Hodges was put into law, it turns out that could turn around based on the whim of someone trying to please an electorate.

And that is it's terrifying and sad, and it it flies in the face of progress that I feel like we've made as someone that doesn't have to endure that type of persecution.

But I will say this before we get to there, because I think we're headed that way.

As someone who is clearly pretty raised, pretty anti establishment, raged against the machine punk rock was, you know, was more than happy to confront you and be different.

Uh, and then when you realize that church has demonized the thing that you are, did you did you relish in or take any like pride in just going, hey, I'll be that person, like I'll when it comes to you talking to you as an evangelical like or did you feel like I'm going to rise above the fray and and show them how how incredibly petty and and hateful they're being.

Well, here's another trap that you can fall into.

Right, So I spent a good ten fifteen years, let's be generous, let's say twenty or more, Okay, with the mindset of you know what I'm going to do because I'm so much better and smarter and cooler, yeah, and more thoughtful.

I'm going to help these Christians understand things.

Now.

I'm going to speak prophetically to the church about the church.

So anytime I encountered somebody, you know, I was ready there with the critique.

Yeah you were, but not in a way that I considered I'm sure they thought it was an overbearing dick, but like, not in any way that I considered to be hateful or mean, just smarter and better and cooler and absolutely calmer than they were.

You know, I was going to show them what what should really be happening with them.

Here's the problem.

Like, for a while I was online engaging on like Twitter with other exvangelical you know people, and I see that group of folks that's you know, me and and you and other people trying to decide for the people we left behind what their religion should truly be.

Yeah, yeah, I do it all the time, man.

And here's the here's the crazy part.

Right.

The Bible is so wild, yeah, and so malleable m hm that no matter what anyone will will try to tell you, it is a it is a site of confusion and extravagant inter rotation and has been for century upon century upon century, and people will just read that book an the old way they want.

And so for one particular denomination right or sect, they will absolutely be certain that women should be silent, and Jesus was a capitalist, and queer people should be killed.

And then there's this other one over here that's like a few miles down the street where everyone is progressive and you've got a lesbian pastor and they're all they're doing everything the right progressive way, right, and they can all go to the Bible show you why they are right.

Yeah, and so none of that shouting matters if you are choosing to be a part of a faith community.

All all you're doing is picking the one that you like the best.

Yeah, you're not conducting a you're not conducting a you know, a blind study.

Where you test.

Yeah, you're not.

You are not, you know, the the King of Theologians, looking for the one that best aligns with the way Christianity ought to truly be enacted and interpreted.

You just want what you want, and eventually you're going to find it.

Yes, whatever denomination you find that fits you best, it's like trying on a pair of pants.

That's you know it when you feel it, and it's going to be that one that you pick.

There might be some parts of it that you think I don't maybe that's wrong, but in general, I like this.

People are nice to meet here.

Yeah.

And so if I if I walk up to, you know, a right wing Christian and I say, you know, you're doing it wrong.

You know, Jesus never wanted that, they could just as easily say to me as I would say to them, Oh did you know Jesus.

That's exactly right?

Were you there they're gonna everything you just said.

If you're going to argue with them, they're going to be like, aren't you doing the same thing?

Are you doing?

You're finding the one that fits you, like a pair of pants, a bet, like that's all they're got.

That's what's just gonna happen.

That's what everyone is doing.

And so so when I see progressive religious communities doing what I feel is really good work, I think, yeah, go you guys, Yeah, but I'm not gonna be there with you.

I'll be doing this somewhere else with some other people because it's like I'm jumping out of one and landing in another, and it's still kind of all the same.

Yeah.

The difference, I think is that you know, if you have so, I may have misspoken a little bit in episode one when we did this where it seemed like my leaving had more to do with politics and queerness, and it did that did that did prompt me to leave.

But another thing I had to unlearn is how I was going to deal with this feeling that I had when I was a kid.

I loved Jesus.

You know, that wasn't just it wasn't just about rules and order.

And stability.

Uh, it wasn't just that stuff.

I loved Jesus and I believed it and I felt it.

You know, if a prayer didn't get answered, I just thought, well it wasn't the right time.

You know.

If I think a lot of people were in that boat, I think.

It did work out.

I was like, oh, God answered my prayer.

And I was like, well, guess what.

None of that happened.

And so the whole loving Jesus angle of it, it feels weird to call it an angle.

But if I miss anything, I missed that, I missed that feeling.

That was a good feeling.

It's a good feeling.

That was a good feeling.

And uh, and so you know I miss I missed like the church pot Look.

Yeah, I sang in the choir as I said when I was early, I said, I said, not the handbelts.

Now, you didn't do the handbelts were too small.

We didn't have anything.

But I sang because I can halfway sing and and my voice was deeper.

Yeah, bass man, Yeah, I get that.

I got that baritone part every time, you know.

And that was cool, That felt fun, That was that was that felt good, That felt like loving Jesus singing in the choir.

I missed the music.

I do not miss contemporary Christian music, Amy Grant, notwithstanding who said before the Queen.

Yeah, but like gospel music.

Have you ever heard Ofretha Franklin's amazing Grace album?

Oh yeah, so incredible.

And somebody wrote those songs.

And the person who wrote those songs all, every person who wrote every one of those songs, they felt something ten times more than I ever felt.

Yeah, yeah, And.

Those songs moved me to this day.

I love them that it is.

I love the hymn Softly and Tenderly.

One yeah.

Absolutely.

And there's there's a singer that people don't really have much connection to anymore.

She was a gospel singer and she's alive.

She's not dead.

She is a gospel singer.

One is one.

Her name is Cynthia Clawson.

And I don't know if you've ever heard of her or not.

She was kind of big in the seventies when like she sang with like the Gathers, Yeah know them, right, But she was her own creation, right, she's I guess she's in her seventies maybe eighties at this point.

I don't hear about her singing or anymore.

But I saw her perform in a big church in Dallas in nineteen eighty two, and she came out in this this is long white gown and a white turban on her head, and I thought, oh, hey, our lady, what's your deal?

And she sang a variety of songs that were both religious and secular in a church and I could feel the audience being like, hey, man, what are you doing?

Yeah, stop mixing it up.

A few years later, she sang softly and tenderly over the closing credits of that acclaimed Academy Award winning film, The Trip to Bountiful.

It was the late eighties, and then in the nineties she began singing in gay churches.

Oh boy, and this is a heterosexual, married woman, double award winning Grammy nominationspel singer, like gospel singer, not like cool CCM kind of singer.

But she was like, Yeah, I'm going to sing in the gay church because that's what I'm going to do now, because everybody gets to have this, this thing that I love, everybody gets to have it.

And she got her store, her records taken out of the Christian music stores, and she got ghosted by the Christian music industry, just like that.

Not shocked at all, Yes, heartbreaking, not shocked at all.

She I said earlier.

Amy Grant is a real one, Cynthia Claus and you don't know that name, another real one, And that is that's the stuff I miss.

I miss people who like her, who found their way through and never left.

You know, I wonder about those people.

I wonder how they deal with yeah, all the craziness around them.

Well as much as you and I have to deal with what we were a part of.

These folks that are real ones, like I think my parents are really real ones, like legitimately, I've watched them progress and and make strides, but have remained a part of the church.

Folks that are in that boat have to deal with reconciling being real and authentic and loving with what has been done in the name of them.

And not being afraid to just let people tell you that you don't belong there anymore that's right, which is what they did.

Yeah, so that's what I missed.

I missed, I missed the stuff that felt good.

But you can still go to this, you can still listen.

You could still listen to a hymn if you wanted to, like, you could still throw on softly into like I like.

For me, I just like I liken it too.

Like there's something about when a filmmaker just really nails his thesis, do you know what I mean, or her thesis or their thesis that is like, Man, I don't know if I agree with you, but I also think you crushed it, you know what I mean?

You know, I think you just nailed it.

There's something fairly cathartic about seeing someone you know do the thing that means so much to them, that is moving.

It is well with my soul as a phenomenal.

I love, love, love that song.

I just do.

And so I get that, like I feel that deep in my in my bones, like this emotional resonance of reconciliation and redemption that I think all of it.

You know that's a Shaw Shank redemption line, but I think that's what we all feel inside of us.

Do I believe that?

That's probably why I'm still a person of some somewhat of faith is because of that.

Currently reading a book that was written in the twenties by a French author named George Bernanos Okay now I know if I'm not mistaken, that you have seen the film The Diary of a Country Priest, the prison film.

This is the movie we couldn't find to do with First Reformed.

So I've seen First Reform, but we couldn't find a copy out of here, going to do it.

Confused by that, and I want to see it.

I know where to see Spotty.

Yeah, you love that movie, and you love that film.

I really love that movie.

So The Diary of a Country Priest, a Robert Bursson film from the fifties, was based on a George Bernanos novel called The Diary of a Country Priest.

So I'm currently reading another Bernanos novel called Under the Son of Satan, another book about another priest.

Bernanos was a very conservative Catholic and he uh had no time for nihilism and you know, people who entertained evil.

So he wrote these books about these tortured, tormented priests who were you know, vessels for holiness.

And in this particular book, this is a priest who, in his own words, he lives under the Son of Satan.

He lives on a cursed earth and his job is to be a person that God works through and inasmuch as he does this, he has given the special gift of being able to see into people's souls.

The outcome of this sort of gift is not great for some of the people involved.

So it's a complex story about you know, how much do you really want to know?

How much do you really want to feel?

Yeah, and it was also made into a film.

He's starring Gerard Depardieu as the priest and uh, that one's on the Criterion channel right now in case it Yeah, Yeah, it is the kind of book that I find myself drawn to over and over again.

I am drawn to these religious authors who deal with stuff all the time, Walker Percy and Flannery O'Connor and George Bernanos and you know, you name who else.

What it is about those books that speak to me is I think there's a lot of turmoil involved in them, and they remind me of that sort of that constant push and pull, that constant struggle of trying to figure out who you are and what you believe and what are you going to do with it in your life.

So yeah, post church, my life is reading books about about this kind of thing.

Once again, something you know, I don't know why we weren't doing while we were in church aside from it was kind of frowned upon.

But yeah, no, I'm with you.

I've read more books in the last five years than I read in the previous thirty six.

So they don't like it.

They're likely when you read books because you start saying things.

But it is like you but like you said earlier, there's a lot of groups reading the same book and coming to a very different understanding of that.

And you know, for and I'm going to ask you in a second, but for me, like how small is your almighty God that the possibility that an ancient text written by people has errors in it?

And that changes his almightiness?

Like you know what I mean, like for there to be this wide of discrepancy and everyone goes, well, the you know, all these folks that say they have the interpretation are all like, there's not an error in it.

If there's an error in it, then it would all fall apart.

Why why would it all fall apart?

With an air?

Like I thought, like, if there's something greater than you, I don't know what that's a problem, but it is a fascinating attempt to control, to control the narrative of why you should be living a certain way that benefits the folks that are in control.

That's the way I've always taken it.

Yeah, it's it's about having power, yeah, over you.

So the better part of that twenty years has spent trying to dialogue activism.

Here's how you should do the thing, and that there's a post.

There's a post Dave White after that.

Oh yeah, this is the worst possible version I think of, where I'm like, you know what, just how about everybody just leave me alone?

Leave me alone?

Yeah, how about everybody just stop talking to me?

Yeah, and I'll make a do with you.

I won't talk to you either, I like, I will stop trying to fix you, you know, Evangelical Person of the Year twenty twenty five.

I will not participate in trying to fix you.

I tried, and you don't want it, and and so goodbye, that's goodbye.

That's goodbye.

Yeah.

When I said at the end of the last one that you don't even want to talk to an evangelical, and I can see why, like, I can see how we got there.

Yeah.

Well, and it's and it's for my it's for my benefit.

It's not because they're such you know, uh, terrible people.

Individually, A lot of them are really okay, Yeah, it's the structure that's trast evil.

You are fighting against a structure when you were fighting against this, you're not fighting it against an individual person, because then you're just hurting somebody's feelings, you know.

And if they are actively hateful, then they deserve to have their feelings hurt.

But if they're not, no amount of you talking and talking and talking and talking and showing and demonstrating, it's almost never gonna work.

He does.

That's a magazine article about you.

You know.

Oh, look you changed this pur They used to be a neo Nazi.

You know, they're not anymore because you loved them so much.

That's right.

Well, that's I was going to ask you, like, do you think in all those twenty years, let's call it, that you changed minds and hearts?

Do you think there's anybody who is You don't think so at all.

No.

There were responses like, oh, Dave is crazy and he's a leftist, and you know he's a he's a homosexual, and that is a problem also, So it's not you know, my mind is already in their estimation, my mind has already been taken, like the devil has found home in my heart, and they and that's what they think.

And so I can't.

I can't fix it.

I can't please them.

I can't do anything to make it better for them or me.

So now I just don't That just don't mean.

That doesn't mean that the thing I said earlier about all the stuff you carry with you, all the emotional stuff, all the ways that you try to control and and and make people do the things you want them to do, that doesn't mean that has stopped.

That means I still have to keep dealing with that.

Yeah, I was gonna say, how does that manifest?

How does that manifest itself in post post COVID day White's life?

Like all the religious the religious trauma that demons that are still walking there.

With you, it's you know, it's an everyday thing.

It's an everyday thing, and you have to you have to in each individual interaction with another human being, you have to stop and say to yourself, am I trying to benefit in some way from this?

Am I trying to control them in some way?

Because if I were actively working in an evangelical frame, of mind, I would be trying to be like I'm trying to lead you to Jesus brother, you know, or whatever.

And and and I'm not trying to leave anybody to Jesus anymore.

But like what other things am I am?

I am I exerting a goofy amount of control over And that is again, it's an everyday thing.

You have to make sure that you're trying to do your best buy other people for them, not for you.

And this is yeah, and by the way, constant failure.

But like what you're saying, and you know, like the two things that I find fascinating what you're saying.

It's super admirable to like, I think that, you know, there's a lot of illustrations of how like choosing what's best for you is hardly ever choosing what's just.

But I like what you're saying.

If you tacked a Bible verse on at the beginning, in the end and some sort of story, you would basically be preaching a sermon from church.

Right.

It's crazy how the thing that you've kind of like made, the reduction saw us is universal.

It's universally the thing that should people should be trying to do in and out of church, in and out of culture, religions or whatever.

And so even though you're not telling others that now as actively, it's still where you landed, which I think it does speak to something that's that's in us.

I mean, I think I'm trying to.

Be a bummer about it now, but people should know that you have an entire life in front of you where you're going to have to each day be like, oh, I was wrong about that, that's right, that and that other thing, and I need to go this, fix this thing that I did wrong and apologize to that person for not understanding that I was wrong in the first place.

And then I need to sort of daily guard against that kind of selfishness and assholishness and self righteousness and obnoxiousness, all of those things that you were taught.

Yeah, you need to actually do you actually.

Do It's it's it's a very it's Daniel, it's difficult.

Yeah, same same Dave Hard, same of you here.

Uh, let me ask you this.

You you say you're married to an atheist.

Would you classify yourself as an atheist?

I don't know what I am?

I am?

I am, I am?

I am that Peanuts character when Charlie Brown goes to camp and he's trying to make friends with other people, and there's that one kid that sits on the bunk and you never see the front of his head.

You just see the back of his head, and every word everything he says is shut up and leave me alone.

Yeah, yeah, I am.

I am.

Shut up and leave me alone.

You're from the church of shut up and leave me alone.

That's right.

First church is shut up and leave me alone.

I'm not holding to you to this in all perpetuity, but like if you if you just had to place your money on a square, if there's like an.

After nice, wouldn't it be nice?

If if there was a heaven.

Wouldn't it be that be cool, That'd be amazing, it would be great.

And I always say to Alonso.

I always say to Alonso, I don't have to worry about any because I'm going straight to heaven.

Yeah, dude.

And he's like, uh huh, fine, you tell yourself that.

Oh I'm sorry to inform you because I'm also a universalist.

That's right, you're going straight to heaven too, that's right.

I can't get away from me.

There's all eternity, nothing you can do about it, Alonzo, You're not going to be able to go in the dirt.

You've got to come join us in heaven.

Sorry, not so your.

Body gets to become a tree if you really want it.

But it's right, you know you're.

Not gonna want that.

You know what's wild is is that David and talking to you for someone that wants people to leave you alone and has done trying to huff and puff and change people's minds.

You're and also says that your demons are never going to leave.

You have some you have some very dark things to say.

You're a very hopeful individual of what life looks like.

I am.

I think I'm repeating myself, but I'll say it again.

I think it was Graham che the communist, who say pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.

Yeah, only it's honestly, it's the only way you're going to survive.

I listen, that's the first I've heard that.

I don't think you've said that here, and if you have, I missed it.

I love that.

I love that so very much.

If there's so you you know, I you know, obviously I don't have your experience and obviously, I lived a pretty privileged childhood that didn't include alcoholic parents or dealing with the church.

Then coming out and have being demonized by the Church.

That's so good as long as you feel guilty about it now I listen.

I you know, one of the when I used to teach in a Christian school, even after I stopped going to church, I was still teaching one class, a US history class in a Christian school, and I would try to explain why as a white persons, as a straight white dude, I should feel bad about so, you know, things that are going on in in the Book of Daniel in the Bible, Daniel hears about all the things that his ancestors did, like how they enslaved groups of people and mass genocide, and he's like, he literally weeps, says, I like takes the burden on him.

It's one of the best passages of the Bible.

And it's like Daniel, who is like the best of us, not this Daniel, that Daniel.

You know, if he can do it, you know, if the guy that shut the line, you know, God shut the lion's mouths to keep from killing.

If that guy can realize you know, what was done by people who had the privilege I had was wrong, and I carry that in order to change it.

If he can do it, I think we can all do it.

I say that to say, what, you know, it looks very different to realize that you're gay as an eighteen year old in the church your whole life now than it did in the nineteen eighties nineteen nineties.

So what is if you obviously you're not giving advice to people in the church, you're not in that market anymore.

But if you're giving advice to someone who's like a current Dave White at eighteen nineteen, who's anti establishment, found safety, realize that all that's going south, what's that advice look like.

Are you financially dependent on your parents?

If so, you laugh, so you don't cry.

If so, then get that money for as long as you can, until you're stable and able to attend to yourself, and then you can come out.

I know that's a really, really mercenary thing to say, but back in the day when it was almost a certainty that you're going to get rejected and thrown out onto the streets by your family, that was the wisdom that was passed along among queer people.

Like, don't come out until you can take care of yourself financially, until you have a place to live.

Now, the world is so different now that you know, it's probably not like that for lots of kids.

So kids don't listen to me, don't take my advice.

But if you think there's even a hit that you're gonna get cut off, and if you can take it, if you're tough enough to take it for a while.

And they're like, maybe you're a sophomore in college and you need those last two years paid for or whatever you could wait.

I feel like this is part of the story of Lonza.

Gerraldi told me about how he waited until he was a senior of Vanderbilts.

Oh, yeah, this is this is Alonso and I have had this discussion.

Now.

I worked my way through college.

My family was poor.

That didn't it didn't matter.

There was no money.

I got no money from them.

But you know, his parents were paying for college, and he was like, I'm waiting until I graduate, you know.

And he grew up in a nice home.

People were nice to him, They loved each other.

They still do.

It's nuts.

It's crazy, like I'm in one of those homes.

Yeah, but even he was like, yeah, when I graduate, We'll see what happens when I graduate.

And then I'll yeah, all right, last question, Dave, and then I'll wrap this up things so much?

What if you know, I get it, you don't want it this dialogue anymore.

But if there are folks, if there are folks that are not where I am, but are still going to church every Sunday because they love Jesus and they don't agree with maybe where the church stands on this, they don't agree with what their pastor says or everybody in the church, but you know, they still this idea of Jesus on a pedestal as this bastion of goodness and redemption is just and tradition, and their kids are going to church or whatever, all the reasons that you go to church that aren't I'm fully boughty in what would you like them to know?

Is you know in his playing of terms as possible.

God, I don't know, because again, nineteen ninety is not twenty twenty five.

It is.

It's a whole different, like boiling pot of evil out there right now.

And so you don't have to get rid of Jesus if you don't want to.

Nobody has to do anything they don't want to.

But you might, you know, you might.

Let's say you have children that you take to church with you.

What are those kids learning?

Who's talking to your kids at church?

And what are they telling them?

Like, what's the Sunday school teacher saying?

Do you know, boy, you better watch out?

That's my advice, you better watch out.

Listen my heavingly to get out.

And the answer is get out.

Of Sunday School.

That's right, This is the the I would say nine nine point nine percent of the wrong things I was taught growing up came from outside of my household, but it was Sunday School.

Christian School made little Lingle who wrote a.

Now I'm just blanking on a regal in time, yes Christian author.

Right.

She got interviewed once, this was in the eighties and they asked her, you know, do you go to church And she's like yes, and and they said do you take your children?

She said, oh no, I would never.

Yeah, he said, I don't want my children subjected to anything that they're going to hear in Sunday School and have to and I have to unteach them that stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, boiling down big, big faith ideas for seven year olds.

That that's just that with concrete answers.

That's kind of that's where it all happened to me.

That's gonna go well school.

Yeah, Dave White, you're a champion.

We appreciate you so much around here.

Thanks for coming back and finishing.

Thank you, thank you for having me back.

I don't deserve two episodes, but yeah again, I'm one hundred, so I've got a lot of lot to say, Dave.

Why Yeah, two episode one per thirty years.

That's what we do around here.

I can't thank Dave enough for joining me this week.

Because of Dave's experience both in and out of church, he helped personify the answer to the question now what.

Dave expertly articulates the difficulties of leaving a faith tradition, as well as how it can be even harder to do with further attachments like family ties that even predate your own existence.

Dave's parents didn't attend church with him, and he would probably would argue that as a kid, church was where he was running two, not where he was running from.

But for those that have parents, grandparents, or even great grandparents with established presence in the church, attendance and participation seems like a foregone conclusion, and if when they're able to extricate themselves, the aimlessness can be overwhelming.

For those that have left the church or their childhood faith, I can only imagine that they resonated with at least one stage of Dave's post church journey, whether the desire to still put Jesus on a pedestal even while leaving the church, the anger of how the church was treating you or those around you, even the desire to fix it, control it, or at least dialogue with it to expose the hypocrisy that you personally feel.

I can tell you that all of these things really hit home for me.

I think you can easily hear a man thirty plus years removed from a situation that was at worst a cult and at best an unhealthy, high control religion saying that your demons never leave, and it can be depressing.

But if you listen to the totality of Dave's story, I think you'll hear quite the opposite.

Dave almost relishes in his understanding of just how terrible things can be out there, but also combats it with a rational understanding of his opportunity to quiet his demons by doing things ironically that the church claims they preach, loving others, will, helping his community, and living at peace and contentment.

He finds joy in his little rebellions, which I think is the ultimate testament to a life being well lived.

He even cracks a wry smile in his long shot belief and the possibility of a heaven in the face of a church that propagated the message that Dave's sexuality was a choice, that his identity was a perversion, that who he was was inherently wrong.

It's no small victory that Dave has found his way to contentment, that he's found his way to acceptance, that he's found his way to hope.

Who could ask for more?

Thanks for listening.

Breakfast in Hell is produced by Will Cown is written and hosted by Daniel Thompson.

If you enjoy the pod, please do us a favor with a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and follow us on Instagram at Breakfast in Hell pod.

You can also join the discussion group on Facebook.

It's free and the link is in the show notes.

If you've got questions, comments, or it'd like to be on the show.

Dm us on Instagram, or send us an email to Breakfast in Hellpod at gmail dot com.