The New Zealand singer and songwriter Kimbra joins Pinchbeck and Jamie Wheal to discuss Christian mysticism and what a workable faith community might look like now. Raised in an atheist, scientific household, Kimbra describes an early mystical experience in New Zealand, an out-of-body state of overwhelming love carrying both a Christ aspect and a feminine presence, and her inability to find language for it within the church until she encountered mystics who could hold paradox. The three argue that religious vocabulary has become so politically loaded that words like Christian and sin land as landmines. Wheal recommends Jim Marion's Putting on the Mind of Christ, which reads stages of faith through developmental psychology and spiral dynamics, and separates congregational belonging from actual mystical experience. Burning Man, the Grateful Dead and Taylor Swift fandom are raised as contemporary substitutes.
Guest: Kimbra and Jamie Wheal
In brief
- Wheal argues that most of what churches provide is psychosocial belonging and communal self-help with no mystical or metaphysical component.
- Kimbra says the language of institutional Christianity reduced rather than illuminated her mystical experience, which is why she turned to the mystics and to art for a vocabulary that could hold paradox.
- The participants contend that political polarization has loaded terms like Christian, sin and Jesus Christ so heavily that conversation about them detonates before it begins.
- Wheal points to Jim Marion's Putting on the Mind of Christ as a way to map developmental psychology onto stages of faith, distinguishing communal belonging from direct unitive experience.
- Wheal warns that intense experiential communities carry cultic risk, and asks whether such a community could be pointed past tribal us-versus-them dynamics toward the inclusive experience he associates with Jesus.
- The group treats Burning Man, the Grateful Dead and large music fandoms as places where people now find the collective experience religion once supplied.
Full text
I think it's a sweet idea which is the psychosocial stuff is just belonging. Can I feel a little less shitty about my hard life? Can I hear some inspiring or uplifting stories? Can I be connected to other folks around me near me? And ideally, bonus points. Can we do some good in the community or some version of service? None of that has any mystical or metaphysical component. No. Right. It's just kind of communal self-help same as it ever was. When I think of a church space or whatever, I imagine something where everyone's experience of the archetype you're referring to or, you know, maybe someone experiences the divine as feminine and another experience masculine and the the different stories that everyone has related to it are all valid and are all helpful to the community.
excited to connect with you both on here. Like I said in my post, I was really impressed by the conversation you had last time and I'm like all my curiosity sparked as I was listening and it's so easy to feel in these sorts of conversations that you know to feel sort of nihilistic and like things are um so uninspiring to hear people talk about where is that and especially in America right now. But I started to feel, you know, like someone was speaking and representing some of the things that I feel and preparing ideas maybe for how it doesn't have to look so dire, but pull on, you know, some of the essential truths of these traditions to restore some sanity to the whole situation. So, I'm excited to talk more about it. Absolutely.
Think that Jamie and I, you'll discover, agree that it's pretty dire, though. Just because you got the wrong dudes, but yeah. Well, yeah. I mean it I think as I was listening to you guys talk I was realizing what makes it so dire is just that the language that we now have has become so binary like there's so much polarity in it and it makes it so hard to even start talking about it because every word even Christian you know it sin even Jesus Christ I mean they all seem to land with such bombs now because they have such strong um so interwoven and with the things that we now they've come to represent politically. So it makes it so hard to have conversations about it without um without it having all these landmines, you know.
And I think that's that's really where my I talked to you Jake about my interest in Christian mysticism lies is that as someone that wasn't raised um religiously and I know you did have more of a background growing up that way but I had just a very scientific household and atheist and was drawn toward um religion as like about 14year-old and had a quite profound mystical experience I would call it when I very young that sort of opened my eyes to this concept of an unconditional love or something that really existed that that euphoric experience that's only come close from maybe psychedelic experiences right the thing that one to you yeah so being out looking out in New Zealand and being kind of overwhelmed by um I was in a state of prayer and then was sort of taken to what I call a sort of out of out of body experience that was filled with total euphoria and it was both it had a Christ aspect to it but also a feminine presence to it. It was sort of this um complete feeling of overwhelming love and being completely connected to everything around me and utterly broken open. I get, you know, like a true mountaintop type experience that changed the course of my life forever because I, you know, had to go searching to religion to try to find, I guess, out what what happened to me or what was going on in that moment. And I stuck around in the Christian religion for a little bit, trying to find answers to it. But quickly so much of the language reduced that experience to me and made it feel so um that I that I couldn't grow within it because it was it was not reflective of what I had experienced.
And so when I discovered the mystics and their ability to hold paradox, right, this both and or this ability that God could be both feminine and masculine and that there was, you know, room for room for the God being the breath but also beyond us, transcendent, and suffering and joy coexisted and, you know, the it was they rejected spiritual binaries, right? So I finally found some language for myself that was could reflect more of the experience I'd had. But it's language more of the poetic and as you know I'm a musician and artist and that was why I moved into this this world and why it was so much um my a calling on my life is that it was able to express some of the stuff that was be articulated with any dimension within religious traditions. So I had to seek outside of them. And I think so many of us are in those places where we don't find a home within the the traditions that were given.
And so when you were speaking about trying to restore the the myth at the heart of these traditions, the essential teachings that are so now being kind of thrown out and completely twisted and distorted and the imagination and the need for direct experience which seems to be so by the wayside now. whole intent I think of initiating religion was to try to make sense of experiences that human beings have when trying to create or rather seek out meaning. Um, I don't know. That's just a jumping off point, but that's sort of I I experience that in myself, that frustration of wanting to find language that we can talk about this stuff with that's not immediately putting, you know, a box on things or or attaching it to something which is so completely not uh what I what I believe to be true of the Christ teachings. Does that make sense?
Yeah. I mean I mean what what comes to mind for me as you're describing it is um there's a book that I find super duper helpful for recovering um whatever people of faith it could be Mormon it could be Jewish it could be Christian this particular book is by a former Catholic monk uh named Jim Marian and the book is called putting on the mind of Christ and it basically just it it you know he was kicked out because he was gay so he's like all right a church that doesn't love me, you know, like I have to rethink my whole relationship to this thing. But basically, he just takes developmental psychology and, you know, spiral dynamics and various other kind of models and just lays it against relationships to faith. And so he's like, "Oh, what you were just describing, right? You had an iostico experience, right?
You had you had you had a straight up I I thou or I I hit. You then went seeking down the stack to where you found organized religion. if I was hearing your story right and you found that that felt constraining, binary, rigid, etc. Elaene Pgel's, the famous Princeton scholar who's just released a kick-ass book last month, New York Times bestseller called Miracles and Wonder. Um, she speaks of going to a Billy Graham revival in in Giant Stadium as a kid growing up on the Sanford campus and she was like swept up by the faith of it and goes down, you know, as he does his call to prayer goes down to be baptized and born again.
So she's like this high schooler self- steering does that it's like yeah I feel the Holy Ghost and then tragically loses a friend funnily enough she's in the car with Jerry Garcia the guitar the grateful dead before there's a before the grateful dead one of their friends get killed and then she goes back to church seeking solace and and her church members like well he wasn't a believer he wasn't saved he's going to be in hell and she's like that noise it is a case and gets booed back out so anyway this book putting on the mind of Christ just says look there are there's a stack of developmental stuff and most churches are orthodox law and order what in spiralynamics is kind of blue. You might then go up to kind of you know basically sort of orange agentic how does religion work for me personally and individually. You might go up to kind of unitarians and quakers and then be like it's all about community and then you might go beyond that. And at each of those levels you have both an exoteric like here's what we teach on Sunday school and an esoteric level. So there's kind of the secret within the secret at each of those levels.
As you were talking, I was like, "Huh, I'm I'm imagining I would guess that once you get to the postconventional levels, which is into the realms of the exotic and esoteric disappear, those distinctions and there is just that there is just the lived experience of the christened one. There's this quote Meister Echart that says correct if one is to know God one is to uh must let go of God. Right? So it's that all these images and all of these archetypes and even all the things that we try to make sense of they're there to provide a containment but eventually to be let go of altogether. And so that is that kind of um you know that the breaking open into the unknown seems to be the final destination that we're being led to.
But these things are sent to I guess you know trigger the the creativity to imagine which I hear you talk about as well is like how do we resurrect the imagination and the mystery in these traditions which can you know you talked about there not being one necessary singular Jesus but that it opens up and that this you know Christ consciousness that gets talked about which begins to to start to sound like something that could speak to people that sorry my dog um that are that are struggling with this kind of very uh one lane one lane way of perceiving the Christ as opposed to this ever evolving u figure that has so much to kind of speak to to people on at a time when there's just so much of a it's just been hijacked. I feel that and I feel the emotional weight of that that these these these teachings that um are so crucial to our you know connection to each other and our ability to to seek out transcendence. It's um it's I really liked what you said about not um throwing you know having to kind of throw throw it away altogether but to be able to turn up with the same teachings re you know reimagined but rather recover it back to where they you know really started and being able to give because you know it's it's it's um it's just it requires some whole new way of bringing together the different experiences that people have had if we if people were able to speak about their different experiences from like you said the esoteric and and and actually this is where interfaith dialogue comes in but um I host a meditation group where we do read some of the things that Jesus has said but we have a Buddhists attend the group and digest those scriptures through their lens and in this proposed idea that you have of the the church of the the good, beautiful and true. How do how could that work with having people from different faith traditions or different whether it's psychedelics as well or different experiences speak into the Christian tradition which still has something powerful for for the world but has been just completely divorced from its original meanings. Yeah.
And Danielle, I also want to give you a chance to jump in here if there's if there's anything that's that's of interest for you to comment on. Sure. Sure. I mean, um, I guess my question as I was, you know, listening to Kimber was like, how far back does the deviation from the original teaching go? Like sort of like an idea, right? Was it the fourth century? Was it the really like Harold Armstrong's book on like the history of Western religion or whatever? And it's like, yeah, I mean, been, you know, that's an easy that's an easy pin in the map. That's in the map. But even before that, it wasn't so clear.
Anyway, uh but yeah, uh but but but go ahead, dive back into the uh the good, true, and beautiful, and I'll pipe up and Sure. Well, I mean, a couple of things, Kimber. I mean, one is I feel like Christ consciousness has a shitty brand these days. And and organized religion, like organized Christian religion is hip to it. They're like, that's what those newagers try and smuggle in. And and and that way is the the the tempter. So, so I think it's on the part of any progressives to tighten up our game, you know, theologically, scripturally, uh, you know, even even sort of doctrine like what the are we talking about?
Or is this just a groovy placeholder for narcissistic spiritual bypassing, right? Um, so there's there's that. But that said, um if you're saying, "Hey, how can you um whatever interact with, animate, reflect upon, you know, the archetype of the Christ and do so in a way that both does it justice and feels, you know, tight, trustworthy, pedagogically or or theologically sound, and yet it doesn't reenact the dividing lines and the heisms, schisms of the past, Right? You know, you can look back to I mean, hell, you know, Ralph Waldo Emerson and that crew, you know, standing up unitarianism, there's Bahigh faith. There's a lot of there's a lot of efforts at this over the last few centuries.
And the question is, at least for me right now, is as there appears to be this religious turn that's happening right now and there are many many more people coming back into the fold and expressing faith, you kind of just look, you know, just kind of look from a sort of sales and marketing point of view. And what it really seems like is the ones that are are winning in in the mimemetic space are strangely or paradoxically not the most inclusive, not the most flexible. They're actually the ones with some of the highest and hardest bars to clear, the most defined doctrine, right? And the least kind of oopy groovy unitarian universalist pitches. Um, but that said, I think you can absolutely make a case, hey, look, for anybody hanging out on chats like this or is in conf TED conferences and big idea conferences and, you know, publications like Substack, you're like, all right, more or less we're in the Western tradition lineage idiom.
and more or less let's use the tools we have versus poaching other people's right or throwing them out altogether and saying well we can't do anything with it. Yeah totally. So then so then a way to sort of both honor some some form of rigor and precision without having that the boundaries be rigid and exclusionary or whatever is you can sort of just say hey this is like middle se you're a musician right so you're just like hey this is songs in the key of life right this is songs in the key of the western tradition and you know the the helenic tradition heic tradition the cristic mystic tradition you could sort of say there's eluc on the Greek side there's burning bushes and arcs of the covenant on on on the Hebrew side and there's the the Christiannostic flash on the Christian side. So that's where we that that's our middle sea. We can go off and riff.
We can we can weave in, you know, hes and and and and room. We can we can come back, you know, we can check out Kali and Krishna and Arjuna, you know, in the Gita. We can do indigenous traditions from the western hemisphere, but we resolve or return back to songs in the key of life or at least songs in this in this instance in the key of the western mystery school. And I feel like that gives us permission to be, you know, to be completely inclusive of anything and everything that also expresses resonant concepts, metaphors, analogies, but also not just be a drift musically or theologically. We do know where this thing resolves back to.
I love that you use the word resonant because I think a lot about resonance, you know, the tuning fork of actually being able to send out a resonance and then when other people bring a note in as well, it's not just about pitch, but it's about finding air and space with one another and actually forming a resonant vibration. And I think about that when people come together and they're able to share their different experiences within this realm. If there was more If there was more space for people to not feel like they had to have a position as soon as religion comes up, but rather as RK says to live the questions to realize that the whole point of these institutions begin beginning in the first place was to be able to search out um from a place of everyone not having the answer. That's sort of the the beautiful democratic space of it that nobody fully knows or can answer the question of who you know Jesus was whether it was historical like you said myth or all of this but what we can feel toward it and the is is the the resonance of the story and what it represents and you know this death and resurrection and the and that that like you know can relate to a lot of Buddhist texts as well. there's so many other things that resonate alongside with it and could be it feels like with that starting point like you said if we know that this there's resonance in this western tradition how do we bring things alongside it that can not feel threatening to because I think that's the thing is with fundamentalist Christianity right now it's like anything outside of the prescribed dogma feels like a threat to to the understanding of Christ rather than a deepening into the tradition or and an excitement to it of like you're unfolding it.
How do how does one get back to that feeling like a place of freedom as opposed to division and like wanting to shut out anything that doesn't align only with the one text? Danny boy have a crack. Well, I mean I think you know it sounds like you're already at that place. I mean uh I guess in general you know religion works differently for different types of people right I mean there are a lot of people who really are maybe at a stage of their evolution where they just want like um kind of rules and structures and somebody to kind of like impose that over them. Yeah.
Unfortunately I mean you find that even in indigenous cultures not everybody is like some high level initiates. Some are just like the normal the common people. And you know that's okay. I think the problem is when there isn't a core group that are actually undergoing initiatory processes then the whole thing just goes off the rails. Then you have like um you know you only have the indoctrinor structures you know people who are maybe like doing ritual a little bit empty and and they're still struggling with their own stuff whether it's around like sexuality is in the Catholic church or whatever or greed and power as it is with fundamentalist churches you kind of have nothing.
So it it seems like we've uh the only way this is kind of something Jamie and I talk a lot about would be to kind of reconstitute kind of a healthy kind of you know quote unquote religion you know would be if there was like a strong initiatory core that also had a kind of you know kind of moral ethical philosophical metaphysical foundation um because without that yeah it's like you know it's it's too ineffable or it's too open to interpretation or whatever um that's why I personally really likeistic idealism cast develops because I think it's actually very stable and makes much more sense than you know reductive materialism or you know hence hikism it gives us like a stable way I mean it's a new way you know it's more idea that consciousness is the foundational reality um rather than the material worlds you know um but I think yeah unpack that so how does because I mean I'm I'm down with monistic idealism I find it interesting well like like Castra stuff, but um as far as pedestrian accessible morality, ontology, etc., like, hey kids, this is the way the world works and this helps you on Monday morning. Be a less shitty human. How would you bridge that gap? It's a bit of a tough one, but I think it starts with a Greek that have that initiatory core. But it's kind of like with you know if you ever visited like um Tibetan Buddhist culture you whether it's in Darbala or like Nepal or whatever.
I mean it's like um there are some of these llamas who are really like going for it. There's tangible real kind of evidence. They have the tuk tub where they they die their bodies don't decay for weeks or they have rainbow bodies where their bodies turn into light. These are documented these things actually happen. So that esoteric practice ultimately produces tangible visible results, you know, like that's why everybody was so excited with Christ walking on board, turning loaves into fishes or something. It's like then it's like, okay, it's like they're not just like talking about it. They're actually like stuff's happening here. I can see that there's like a transmutation or transation of the material plane is actually legit.
Um but I think um yeah and and and so then like you know most people in like community uh are you know they don't know about you know they're not thinking about emptiness or they're not thinking about the pordial nature of Molly. They're like have a more worshipful approach to the Daly law. Uh that's okay. they're more in a devotional you know they're more like you know in like the sort of um Indian system they're different you know you know we don't have a c but I wouldn't want to impose that but on some level there's truth to it I think that there are different types of people and there are different types of religiosity or spirituality that are kind of appropriate for people at different states of development you know and it's like you know for some people they're at that point where the directess the initiatory kind of self-discovery the freedom of understanding that so many things are actually mental construct so on like that is the right path and then and then you know what you would need is those people who've kind of reached that state of you know maybe stability and that more esoteric um realms then to sort of figure out how you as you say kind of like build the bridge or find the middle se that then can like transmit out to everybody else you know seems yeah keep going sorry Dave that's Okay. Um, it was basically I mean it seems it seems to me like we're really talking about kind of the culture architecture of this like how would one go about building it, right?
That you really can't get away from the exoteric esoteric. What is the fundamentally the pro-social pro- psychosocial like it's good for my mind and heart and it's good for my connectivity to my community bread and circus. And then what is the esoteric mystery school within that? And whether or not they whether or not they truly bleed over, I'm unclear. Right? In many cases, they were monastic. They were removed from that. Even the Cathars back in the day, right? Arguably one of the more profound and pronounced mystical sects of the Middle Ages, right? You know, that spun up the Spanish Inquisition against them and all that stuff for folks that playing along at home.
But also, they they had two different groups. They had the bonoms, the good people, and that was the majority of the folks, the exoteric. And then they had the perfecti, the ones who had actually taken all the full vows and the full initiatory experience. And it seems to me like it might be like, wow, we're very sort of non- hierarchical and democratic and egalitarian in our days, like God consciousness should be for everyone. You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And not everybody wants it or is ready for it or it matches or blends with a householder's path and a thousand other things. So what is the difference between you know and and Sunday assembly they they started in England but they're now they have you know branches around the world but they were like you know they all were sort of bounced Anglicans they were church of England as kids they got out and their founders were like well what do we miss the most we missed singing and we missed the tea and cakes afterwards you know so can institute that now sadly they've done cheesy pop songs like Journey don't stop believing and stuff I feel like they've skewed a little too easy but it was I think it's a sweet idea which is the psychosocial stuff is just belonging.
Can I feel a little less shitty about my hard life? Can I hear some inspiring or uplifting stories? Can I be connected to other folks around me near me so I feel less alone? And ideally bonus points, can we do some good in the community? A or some version of service. None of that has any mystical or metaphysical component. No, right? It's just kind of communal self-help same as it ever was. Now then a secret within the secret would be okay now what is the confirmation experience what's the literal christening and would there be you know just just like confirmation in any any any protestant or even Catholic tradition you know months to year of preparation the initiatory experience itself and then you are welcome to your point Daniel into a you know a level of um both standing up for the church and its principles so higher expectations of you and also some probably visible signifiers of you now helping facilitate or share share the vibe because you've now tasted the thing.
I feel like so many people are searching for the ineffable and looking for spaces where they can have all those things you just mentioned Jamie, but also if there is no other space for the the mystery and the things that the mystics touch on which is this kind of you're breaking open experience or transformation or having maybe even an experience with a scripture where they interpret it completely. mystery of it. It's unfolded. Which of course a lot of these scriptures were meant to be read in these ways where they weren't completely um appealing just to the mind, but rather to be kind of um digested and and and opened up or the mystery of them revealed, you know, through of through discussion and through contemplation really and meditation, right? And so I I I think about the power of having people that have all had experiences within these spaces that are transformative in some way they've had.
And whether that's through silence and holding spaces together or retreat type things or just you know studies studying the mystics you know being able to understand that that awe and surrender and these these kind of values are crucial to kind of a transformative inner experience. Without that, I feel like it makes people so prone to becoming just um the the binary experience because there's no um there's no direct portal to the thing that actually is what everyone is is turning up there for, which is to penetrate something that we are all hungry for. This kind of deeper meaning and and understanding of this figure that like you have said has shaped the last 2,000 years. But it's been given to us in such a sort of rigid way that there's no um sense of being able to unpack it and unfold it with all of our different gifts with those that do come at it through a cerebral lens, intellectual lens, which is so important for those the theology of those scriptures. Then those like the artists and the poets that can understand like we all that when I think of a church space or whatever I'm imagining something where everyone's experience of the the the um archetype you're referring to or you know maybe someone experiences the divine as feminine and another experiences masculine and the the different stories that everyone has related to it are all valid and are all helpful to the community.
Um, but I'm trying to just identify within the structure you set up there if there's how to integrate a space in there that's for people to have transformative experiences that can be likened to some of this mystical stuff which actually starts the transformation of people getting on board with the radical side of what Jesus thought which is this topsyturvy worldview right first shall be last the kingdom of heaven is within you like ideas that just get so skinn skinned over or strategic on money, you know, and it seems like you can't grasp this stuff until there's been some sort of inner um shift in the heart that can then turn you toward a devotion or the the word surrender or something. Don't know if you're if that's sparking anything. Yeah, I mean it's what strikes me is I mean because we just did this uh sort of survey of of Austin churches over the last three four months and and you know went to several services time I'd been in a church for actual services in decades and and I found it really interesting because they were you know on a they shared an incredibly similar format. They were all in basically nonsified buildings. They looked like conference centers.
Yeah. Office spaces or whatever they were big jumbotron screens that kind of thing. So no even like architecture. No nave sacry none of the crucifiform buildings no even altars. No altars just just big jumbot johns. So like not even a focal point which I thought was really I was like wow this is bizarre but like completely you know stripped of it all and just Power Point slides digital sh I know. I know. And then and and we were noticing, okay, who's growing, who's booming, not the ones who are struggling. Like these are the ones that are rolling out and buying up other churches. They've got they've cracked something.
They've got product market fit and they've got traction. What's going on under the hood? And the and I think I think we surveyed it. I don't think I was missed there. I don't think there was a secret within the secret. Like I don't think we were not getting invited to the sexy afterparty. Like I think we saw what it was and it was um incredibly weak salts. It was it wasn't even you know cuz I mean imagine you know if you're going in England or you're going in Europe and you're in some beautiful thousand-y old cathedral you're going to you're going to feel it. You're going to be like holy Okay, I'm feeling the feels because the place I'm in, the space I'm in, the history, none of that, right?
And it was just follow the bouncing ball, cheesy ass Jesus rock with like rhyme schemes you can spot, you know, stanzas away and and and you're like that's it. That's your that's your ecstatic technology like technology, right? razor. So, so he's incredibly weak source was my feeling other than some version of basically what's the word I mean it's a meal Durkheim right you know the sociologist notion of collective effervescence right how do you create that communist house feel how do you create the thing of like I'm a peer among my brothers and sisters and I' there's nowhere else I'd rather be on a Sunday morning the the burning vibe well yeah but I mean you know Burning Man drops it right this is so I mean it was just like lame ass white folks raising their hands in their Bible it's like oh Oh, and I'm like, really people? Like, you guys need to get out more.
Um, it's not It was effective, right? It worked. And so, so I think what we're asking or at least what I hear you asking is what is an authentically mystically centered expansion and expression of Christ consciousness slash you know all mystery worship which to me is is a is a question within the question as to what's going on right now with this religious turn and the what'ss of the majority of that effort because I think the majority of the effort is actually depressingly pedestrian. Oh yeah. But still working and tribal. I mean it's that it's what what need is it filling? It's filling a sense of belonging.
A lot of those churches as well, everybody tends to look the same, dress the same. It's that sense of coming together and just feeling like you fit. You get told the teachings that make you feel comfortable, which a lot of Jesus teachings were not comfortable at all and were highly challenging to the status quo and to one's own life. And they fulfill a purpose, don't they, of just making you walk out kind of unchanged, which is the complete opposite of the the transfiguration idea of like being actually changed from the inside out, you know? So there's a real disconnect there from the original teaching and same as it ever was, right?
I mean, I think there was always been that tension between Paul and Thomas, right? between the bureaucrat and the the experiential mystic and time and time again the bureaucrats have won and so liberation theology in South America and Central America like the like the African-American you know like we identify with the Hebrews in Egypt and Exodus and Rasta ter you know theology all that kind of stuff has always been at odds with the power those you know the powers that be and the self-appointed priest clubs who have seek you sought to mediate divine power and authority use it to drive and govern control of the peasants and to radically suppress me or diminish the revolutionary impulse or the actual teachings of the Nazarene. J J J J J J J J J J J J J J J J J J J J Jamie, you've been writing a little bit about what's happening with the sort of tech oligarchy, the tech elite and their embrace of this kind of like right-wing fundamentalist or evangelical Christianity. H how how are they managing because these were you know mostly like I mean I guess Teal was sort of Catholic. I mean, Vance, I guess, converted to Catholicism, but how do how are they managing the contradictions from their, you know, sort of hypermaterialist, hyper kind of a kind of like empire building um ideology and then kind of like trying to find their way into this new Christian moment in a way.
Yeah. With with brazen balls of steel. I think I like the word used muscular. Muscular is the word. Yeah. I mean I mean there was an article I think in the New York Times this morning uh just I mean and you know we we've been observing it taking the piss out of it for ages because we're geeks but like fundamentally how on earth is it that Silicon Valley has now taken the Lord of the Rings and corrupted and perverted it you know to their own goals of like actually wanting to be Sauron you know and you're like wait what the and you know and then talking about Azimoff's Foundation series and you know all all the sci-fi and myth fantasy mythologies that are just getting conveniently co-opted to roll out the military surveillance state.
And added to that, I could say you could add the Christian mythologies. So, I would say they're of a feather with sci-fi fantasy and, you know, Christianity, which is just this is convenient. We're going to pick and choose like We're actually sometimes going to flat out invert the morals and the messages of these stories just because they're really well known and and you end up with um you know the smidge of apocalyptic the hour is you know ends justify the means because we're going to save the world. So a messianic impulse and an apocalyptic crisis which will then justify us seizing reigns. And then this notion that I have found just worth I think it's helpful right when I mean I think I read it for the first time a month ago but it was the notion of the this the divide between the cradle Christians and the convert Christians.
So the cradles versus the converts and the cradles especially in Eastern Orthodoxy and you know arch Catholicism always defer to the popes and the bishops. Like that's it is hierarchical as And the guys at the top have a direct hotline to God. They are infallible. Literally and technically, they're infallible. You do not question them. Versus the converts who have actually been radicalized online with these hyper masculine cosplay medieval versions of these religions and they're coming on board with all sorts of expectations and hoaxes. And then they're like, "You bishops and popes are a bunch of cucks. we want to send it, you know, and and and actually stick it to the lip toads.
And so we're seeing this bizarre schisming even within these supposedly orthodox and and traditional faiths by the, you know, there is no fervor like the newly converted. And these folks are looking to roll back, you know, a thousand years pre-reformation. And basically, and I and I made this case at some point in recent writing, but basically that what we're dealing with in the fundamentalist Christian turn right now is a continuation. It's an aftershock of the American Civil War. It is a rejection of mainline Protestantism. And it is a resurgence of this kind of virulent evangelical Pentecostal hyperundamentalist strain which was like you in the north and you Methodists and Lutherans and Presbyterians and Episcopalians like you guys and we and the pricks and hollers of Appalachia and everywhere else are nursing these wild hairball ones with demons and possessions and you know everything else.
and that that was a was a late 19th early 20th century uniquely American metastasization and a pre-reformation throwback. So basically when Samuel Huntington and Sam Harris were saying that is after 9/11 they were saying that you know that that Islam is so dangerous. It's so incompatible with modern democracies because they never had a reformation. This is some medieval ass these guys are throwing down. That's not safe in a multicultural rule of law, you know, League of Nations society. And therefore, them. They're dangerous. You could make this case that what we're seeing now as Christian fundamentalism in America is arguably pre-reformation batshit crazy and now in charge of all the weapons in the news.
Yeah. What's so tricky as well is that the people that I mean you mentioned the Episcopalians and the Quakers and those that don't hold these views, but that the problem is they're not the ones on the streets that feel the need to Bible bash that feel the need to get on headlines. They're doing the work at the soup kitchen down the road. They're preaching the humble sermons. They're doing the the work on the ground. It's they're never the ones with the loud voices or the the you know I mean you had do have Ela Pagels and people you've mentioned that are having these really big moments with books which is so important you know and new theologians coming up but we don't get to hear from the other side as much.
We don't they because they're not looking to swing their dicks and make a big noise about it. you know, it's like it's the humble road, the the more Christlike way, which is to, you know, he wasn't all about starting a church, you know, and the church wasn't that wasn't even in the Bible, starting a religion, you know, so it's this tricky tension because you have this teacher that actually is this humble and actually the way of the Christ is the way of the servant, right? That's the highest form that you can be is to be to be of service. And yet the the other representation we're getting of it is domination paradigm. But how do you get those smaller voices that the other side to actually feel as riled up to speak out for it?
I I don't think that it's not that they're I don't know about you know I don't think that's not that those voices are not trying to speak out. It's that you simply don't get heard because you have the money in this country like the Heritage Foundation. I think they have like an $800 million budget a year, you know. So it's like the you know the oil money and and the sort of um you know early money in the US all those people who went into this you know Christian denominationalist kind of a thing you know they they've just been fueling this this this this fire you know with cash and if you're on the other side of like oh let's be gnostic let's be shamanic let's let's integrate you know the different you know traditions and find the truth that's beyond you know the the the religious this indoctrination, you just you don't get um you know, you don't get platformed as much. I think it's um a place of paradox like we were saying before.
It's a place that often traverses not a simple answer that can be just relayed in a in a way that everyone could grasp onto easily. That's the thing about a lot of these teachings. You think of uh Zen Coins or the Desert Fathers and Mothers, the the kinds of teachings they have that are meant to sort of in a way bamboozle you out of your normal way of thinking so that you can digest something in a in a in a way that opens the heart or even the the mind as well, the psyche, much like I guess psychedelics can do, right? You you don't see things the way you saw them before. and and so presenting these uh different ways of interpreting the Christ story is so difficult because they're not people want to settle on firm answer, right?
They want a firm identity and a firm conclusion which the whole point of it I think a lot of religious searching is that it's it's this um it doesn't have a firm arrival. That's the whole point of why human beings keep consistently needing to to to try to answer these things through inquiry, spirit in spiritual inquiry of some sort. Well, it seems it seems like because Kimber you can you're continually coming back to a theme which I think I'm now picking up which is it almost feels like we're we're talking about two distinct threads or channels. One is hermeticism. Can I have the I I or I thou experience?
The other is maticism. How do you mobilize and rally a ton of people? And the reality is is that 1 to 10% max is is even eligible, you know, and an appropriate match for the hermetic flash. The only way you mobilize the masses, which we also appear to be talking about because we're talking about state of play and the country and, you know, and politics and all is mmeticism, aka storytelling. And those are distinct, right? they overlap where they might inform there might be a secret inside the secret of the stories we're telling for the hermetics right but it fundamentally do do our stories work and I think that if we're doing a sort of postmortem on why is it that alt-right right rightwing cryptofascists have hijacked all the storytelling I mean a the last months say this again and language you know yeah yeah yeah right and you know and also let's just acknowledge that the last six months has seen a swing so much further to the furthest right than anybody including the architects of the swing possibly imagined or predicted.
So the fact that Curtis Yavin and let's get past democracy altogether not let's win so our team runs democracy or fixes it or brings it back to what we think it should be. Let's blow up the republic and start with five good emperors, right? and a CEO technocrat like we're like whoa okay that's a whole other thing but for the progressive side of the fence andor true Christians or whatever you would want to say as goodartic people who like to live and let live right um has to do a post-mortem on the last decade where the far left completely shattered our mometics our shared mometics right because what we had was you know and this is true for every single reform movement at the in US history going from abolition to to suffragettes to MLK and civil rights 1.0 0 there was always that return you know to Lincoln and Gettysburg right was hey we've up we're in a rough spot but let's return back to first principles forcing seven years ago shining cities on hill American experiments the American dream etc etc et and and Bush did it after 911 Obama did it after the Charlott you know Charlottesville was it Charlottesville I think it was Charlottesville shootings right every moment of crisis we've returned back to double down on the promise of the city on the hill social justice warriors blew that city on the hill to smitherines. They said George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Ibraham Lincoln were genocidal maniacs, slaveholders, and hypocrites. Changed the names on the elementary schools.
There is no American dream. If a white if if a white person dares utter MLK's famous saying, it should a man should be judged not by the color of his skin, but by the conting. Oh, by the way, so is MLK. Right? And so in some respects, the social justice attack on what was this treasure chest of American memes to call us up to the better angels of nature, they nuked it. And as a result, we ended up with a staff infection, right, of Curtis Yam of these lawyer reactionaries. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I'm I'm a little bit more resistant to some of that story that you're just laying out there in that um um yes, there was a little bit of too much extremism on the part of this new progressive left, but on the other hand, you know, generally, yeah, like culture moves through overcorrection and then kind of like, you know, kind of a seessaw movement.
So, you know, a lot of people, minorities, you know, people of different identities, you know, really had been shafted historically over hundreds of years. And yeah, for 20 years, they were maybe getting a moment, you know, we're like, okay, the Whitney Bennial is like there aren't as many white cis male young artists. It's all, you know, and it was annoying, but but I mean, this is such an overcorrection. like it's you know I feel the story there's like an equivalency there is a false story and it's one that benefits the narrative of the right like the Jordan Petersons and all that kind of stuff and it's not the ca I mean it's like it's it was it was annoying you know but can you imagine how annoying it was if you were like black and queer over the last like 200 years when you couldn't you know do anything or surface in the society in any way whatsoever. So there was a a short reccalibration and a short overcorrection where some of these people who'd been marginalized and oppressed were sort of being stepped forward into the limelight in a way that was a little bit irritating.
But I think it's a completely false equivalence and the way the right has weaponized that and is now seeking to yeah like roll back everything back to as you say like pre- civil war or whatever. I mean this is just unconscionable. So I feel it it actually it actually bo to me it boosts up their story a little bit by saying there was such an equivalency here when there really wasn't. White people still had the power. You know white men were still basically running all the corporations. It wasn't like suddenly 70% of the Fortune 500 corporations were run by like black queer Native American handicapped women.
You know we were you nowhere even near that. So I just I think it's a false equivalence. That's all I would say. Oh no for sure. I I had three more sentences just to bring I I'm simply I'm not saying it's false equivalence. I'm saying the near-oreactionary Dr. Light were just itching for this excuse. This was the opening strategically that that was given to them. Yeah. Right. But what I would say is that progressives or anybody or let's just say yeah Christc centered Christians any any any anyone in that neck of the woods you have to go back and re reclaim and embrace American patriotism. You have to embrace traditional and faith-based values.
You we have to go into the memes in order to reanimate and reclaim those things because effectively the left of center seemingly set them all on fire. And so you have this incredible moderate middle of Americans that even whether they're practicing or not they are in culturally and mimetically they're Christian white Americans and they feel that that world has been completely attacked and marginalized by the people to their left and the only people speaking to it and valorizing it on the right but they're leading them like Pinocchio to treasure island right it's hell realms and then there's of course all of the new age narcissism that you speak to of all the other things that are popping up as other options But now your ability to be discerning over what actually feels uh resonant and real and based on you know the teachings that have like real value that has all there's all the options are now on the table of so many other kinds of spiritualities that also seem to be adopting convenient language from other traditions to push their agendas. So, it's a confusing time for people to and why it is so hard to talk about because it feels like so many different pikes of language have been hijacked to misrepresent what they essentially are there to do what the Yeah. Yeah. It's like psychedelic Instagram shamans in Tulum aren't exactly holding up there, you know.
So, so if you are a preacher in a pulpit, you're like, "And beware of the Luciferian temptations that walk, you know, and they might even try and seduce you with enthogens and sacraments and access to Christ, the Christ consciousness, etc., except that is the silver tongue tempted. Don't do it." They've got a point, you know? So it really does feel like if if there was to be an articulation Kimbra I mean my I guess my you know my hypothesis would be somehow to kindle a whatever who's counting fourth great awakening right if there had been there's been at least two solidly documented somewhere and there was a third um and we're probably at least on our fourth um which would be each time there has been a great awakening in American history it has been at a time of resistance resistance to the stodgy hypocritical doctrine of their parents and grandparents and the existing power structures that be and a move towards more direct more experiential more egalitarian expressions of faith. And that happened in Cambridge, Kentucky in 1803. That happened in the 1780s.
It happened again. Take your pick. It could have been the hippie Jesus freaks and you know, whatever. Um, but what would that look like if we could reclaim a grassroots experiential humanitarian ealitarian sea of faith? And could we set that on fire and allow it just like it did back in the day burn to burn over? Yeah. Right. all the old the stodgy and replace it with some beating heart, right, of you know, socially just, right, spiritually overflowing, community centered, experientially informed spirituality because that has played huge, huge roles in American history in the past. And if we had a chance to do that, you could maybe take it back from the, you know, cryptofascist neo-Nazis masquerading.
I mean, what's the thing? Oh, who is it? Who said it? Oh, I think it was Sinclair Lewis. He said it. He said, "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." Yeah. I love I love Dr. David. I love that. I mean, uh I wish I felt more hopeful that that was doable, but of course, one should try. Uh it just also kind of feels that when things reach um the kind of Nazi level uh which I feel like a lot of people in this country have reached, it's like a fire that has taken them over to the point where it just it doesn't burn itself out until death, you know, and I hope that's not the case.
But um um that is my concern right now. The sort of whatever, you know, whatever Trump has lit up uh feels like it's just going to burn like a forest fire right now. Um well I I mean I think that the the the word Jamie used this kind of muscular version of Christianity where they've taken all the conquering language of it and domination of it. It it is frightening and I'm not trying to downplay the uh consequences of that but it can only go so far in can mobilize people very far but I think that what we're all identifying is that there's a lot of people that exist with a different um desire to to a different orientation to the Christ tradition and the Christ himself which actually sounds a little bit more like a feminine approach. and even embracing the divine feminine within that has a it has a less of a kind of domination paradigm and more of a partnership one is what I'm hearing you saying Jamie like everyone's bringing something to the space you've got the the social aspect that there's a place for the mystical I'm imagining that you know even maybe interfaith dialogue could come into there where we learn about certain traditions through the lens of other people's traditions like Thomas Murden I mentioned fan of his work and he was one of the the first kind of Catholic language where people can then and not try to necessarily convert one another to the other tradition but speak into the space that is more it it has more fluidity it can hold two things at once it's not so there there is power to that too it's not I it's not the same masculine approach but it is it has a way of mobilizing people maybe through some sort of I mean I see it at maybe by concerts as well the way music that can take people to a moment where they get out of any concept of hierarchy and they're just all a sea of people immersed in a moment together and those ident those um differences fall away and I just I wonder if I know it's hard to imagine that there could be more strength to to a movement like this and the one we're seeing at the moment just because like you said there's so much power and money behind But it's a different kind of power that you're talking to here that that to me does have potential to be to light up the hearts and when you get this the spirit awakened and one feels like they have the possibility to offer something rather than just following a leader and just going you know but they they can bring something from their experience and from their tradition even you know what they've learned from their faith background.
Does does that make sense? Yeah 100%. You're basically bypassing the middleman. You're delivering, you know, exasius and communas, right? You're delivering the peak experience of gathering around salt, right? And and in fact, uh there was maybe 15 years ago now there was a group called Polyonic Spree and they were like they were like long castic they would literally show up almost like a church choir and they did and and I think they even showed up in some their sound they were in some soundtracks to like animated kid movies and this and that like reach for the sun I think was a song that was very famous of it.
Paul Simon saw them and he's like, "Oh, guys, you got to watch this because like like you guys are pulling that juice and you got to be super duper careful of just like crash and burn cultic energies." Um, but to your point, um, if if there was an opportunity to invite people into that kind of direct experiential community and you know Daniel mentioned burning men, grateful dead is another obvious example. There's a handful of these traditions. Polyonic spree would be one but like you know I would imagine your services I mean hell man swifties are having some form of right community question is is can you can you point that in a direction that gets beyond um the the tribal mimetics that are being activated and animated right now the us versus them ones into a felt sense right of the revolutionary and inclusive experience, right? Arguably that the Nazarene was hipping everyone to. Yeah.
Yeah. Guys, I got to jump. I've got I've got my this Meta Crisis SL. You guys carry on. What's that? Can't hear. We can't hear you, Jamie. Jamie. Oh, I said better leave on a strong lip than than run it into the ground. So So we're happy happy to bow. We'll bow out here. Maybe we'll reconvene another time. He's a nice little group. I like this. I think we should do something with Marian. Can we do four? Maybe we can get Marian Williamson in. I saw Doug Brushkov join. I wanted to ask him about Team Human as well because like obviously Doug's been doing a lot of articulation of that kind of stuff.
Absolutely. I think Doug Doug is at the moment. He's in uh Qatar, Dubai or something like that. But yeah, we can we can bring him in next time. Beautiful. So good to talk about this with you guys. I feel like Yeah. So needed. So needed. Fantastic. More to come. Yeah.
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.