Our Stories: An Interview with Joseph Bair

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Branum.org and with me I have my very special guest, Joseph Bear, writer, artist, and musician. Joseph I've been wanting to do this with you for a while and we connected actually on Facebook and started talking and invited you to come tell your story but I have been you know watching your post and watching your musician like me so we instantly connected and your music's way better than mine so I can I'll point people to the music and they can listen to it but far

far better than what I do but I just thought it'd be fun to get together and talk about the way things were and your stories you know the stories are helpful to people no matter who you are or what your story is there's somebody out there that can relate so I thought I'd have you on the show and maybe you could tell everyone a little bit about yourself. I really appreciate that introduction listen to John's music I also want to circle away any goodness that I don't know I was struck away any kind of you know we like to stay humble but

but yeah but also please stream my music please go to Spotify hillbilly underscore chic CHIC gowns GWNS please stream my music as well but I'm not plugging my music I feel free to delete that if you need to but yeah I really appreciate you having me and I just want to start this what I have to say off with I have a deep love for message folks I have a deep love for my people I have a deep love for the Appalachian roots that continue to this day to give me strength in my ability to show up in the world as a fierce investigative you

know person I want to thank my roots you know and I want to show my love for my people and and part of that by the way I think is is our relationship to the source of goodness in our lives I think it part is our relationship to God I knew God as as a young child I knew God as and and I want to Extend an olive branch to all of my secular folks all of my all my people that have been hurt by faith in all his forms I want y'all to understand too that where I'm coming from

I do not intend I do not pretend to have a monopoly on God however I but I do I have always had a relationship to God and that was severed by the church by by the But by the experience that I had in the message and I did not sever that it was severed by spiritual abuse and it took me years To reclaim that and by the time I reclaimed it I was a much more whole person and I didn't fall back into Some of the message things and then I actually started to see some of the

horrors for what they are in in the message All the child abuse if you look at Coney a digna-dad if you look at the trailer Or sorry the park if you look at You know all these things that were discovering that Brandon had ties to I mean and then and then you get on to the Facebook Message the Facebook group and then you and then you talk to people that it lived through it You have another perspective So like I said, I'm really glad to have you on the show you and I share a somewhat similar history with music

Years years is a little bit different than mine, but I felt growing up in the message. I like music of all kinds all genres all flavors But it was like I was told that I I can I was an artist and I could only paint with a color green and We got to talking offline before this and we You know, I was just really interested in the story that you have and I'm sure that our our listeners would also be interested To hear it. So leaving the message for me is the single most

single hardest Moment of my life series of moments of my life and most painful moments in my life And there are ones that I'm still to recover from fully We're working on though. You on every day

So Yeah, when I was 14 I With very traumatic Experience in the message I

Completely wrecked my nervous system That made me feel unsafe in every moment that followed after I could be in school It could be at home. I Did not feel safe And we're going to get to the funny Juicy parts, but I want to give some context

had some experiences at that age that did all the things to me. By the way, and the message, by message folks. And the saving grace. And I, I, I, the spiritual side of me believes it is divinely given in some way. I found strength through that hardship in music. I found jazz, jazz music, instrumental, jazz music. It was one of the few art programs in my high school.

I excelled at it. I worked my butt off. Practice four hours a day. That was a good kid. Practice four hours a day. You know, I'm high achieving. Ended up playing for Governor Manchin's Christmas Ball as a duet with a pianist. One saxophone playing jazz. Really applauded in my community, in the greater community. For my musical work, made the front page of the local newspaper, whose story about my jazz quartet at the time, digging the weather. The story was these four kids instead of being out on the street, skittin' into trouble are playing music and, you know,

bringing music to the community and, you know, all that stuff. It was a, it was a beautiful piece, made the front of this paper. And how is that seen in the message? It's bad. Jazz music was, so here's a little secret. I would hear, I wasn't allowed to listen to jazz music, obviously, because we're in the cult, but anytime I was in a store and they were playing it, I would pause and I would just listen to it. I love it. But yeah, it was very well frowned upon.

One of the insidious things about this religion is not everything is consistent. My family had never heard that message. We had never heard that tape. And I'm pretty sure, Brandon spoke on this like, once. I could be wrong about that. But one of the things that happens is people will, you know, they won't speak when something like, I just didn't even know that jazz was one of the things that was frowned upon. And so I was like, well, this is one of my options. I'm gonna do this really well and really with all my strength. But then it's weaponized against you when it's

convenient. Yeah, you know, he may not have even said it on recording, but people have this tendency to take things that they themselves dislike and let's say, well, the prophet didn't like this.

liked it or didn't, and in the end it's the guy's opinion, right? Absolutely, John. And in this moment, I think the church was had having trouble understanding me and understanding the distance, you know, emotional distance that I think I'd been caring. They weren't curious about that and loving about that and investigative in a loving way about that. But they, they knew one thing is that and what they knew is that I was getting out of line and that they needed to shut me up or just shock and awe, you know, scorched earth on me. And of course, the

way of doing that is pulling up this, these words of random that, I mean, I think he might have said once that jazz was wicked in some way. And anyway, the broader community, my broader community, saw me as a story in my pals, my friends that I played music with, they saw us as a story that was worthy of sharing for hope in the world.

Because we were playing music and providing value to community, and playing at the rotary club. Like that. And I wasn't like, I wasn't jumping into crowds of people at that time, you know, doing the rock star thing, you know, I was playing like rotary club and like the women's club gigs and stuff like that. So funny. And even working with other churches. But that's the kind of stuff I was doing at that time. And my front patient who's favorite because of it. And again, applauded by the my the greater community in Appalachia and a shady spring, West Virginia. Character assassinated in

my congregation. My dad was fired from his position. That he had for many years. I think he was deacon. I always can't remember deacon trust here, whatever, but fired from his position, many years. My mom was released from her position of playing music in the church. She was one of the like main pianists for our congregation. And it was a really haunting and lasting moment when after church, which at this time, I was being forced to go to that 14 because I I really couldn't reconcile my personal relationship with God with what I was seeing in

the church. But when when I left church, I guess my well by the way, one Sunday morning, in the back of my parents car, I can still remember the pregnant pause and the the weight, the heaviness and the air.

Before my parents told me that they'd been re-fired from their positions, the confusion and fear about what why and what was coming next, and then passing back, I can still hear the crinkling of the newspaper.

To the backseat, for me to see, the newspaper completely defaced. My image, my face was circled, much in the spirit of Heath Ledger's Joker, random things were highlighted and lines were drawn, you know, in just the most, you know, really defacing the way.

Right? Like, um, random said, chat's was equal. Chat's was equal. This was not something that I went against Brandon doing. This was something that my family supported because I had been having a lot of emotional problems.

It's not emotional problems. I was a kid suffering severe religious trauma and abuse and I was having trouble navigating that without resources, without education, without psychological help and the one way I found to navigate that was music, was jazz music, was speaking, you know, language through my saxophone, this abstract musical language that for everybody else in the world is pretty vanilla at this point.

And that was my expression, my heart's cry, my soul's cry, you know, to be heard because I couldn't use my words. It was a safe environment to use my words. I had found this and, um, and was character assassinated, was excommunicated.

My whole family suffered the repercussions of that. Practically every music was forbidden unless it was gospel. I'll never forget. I was, John, I want to speak to real quick, what else isn't forbidden? I've never heard them have a beef about baits open or a buck.

I, is it black music? I'm just posing the question, is it black music because they don't seem to have a problem with, um, any music that's rooted in, uh, European. Yeah. And interestingly, the theme song.

only believe was jazz music and it was introduced specifically by Paul Raider. He wanted a music that had a beat because it's so racist when you think of it but he says that beat is going to be able to help entice the people in Africa and in the native country. So it was a it was a merging of jazz and gospel and that's why Elvis Presley picked it up because it was jazz and gospel and that was his, that was his thing.

But you know they condemned all kinds of music and I laughed it's a sad story you tell but when you know when you said people now listen to it and they don't think anything of it. I'll never forget the first time I allowed myself to listen to the Beatles. We had this way of mentally blocking things in the message in the cult. So if I was in the store people say how have you never heard the Beatles and you're 40 when I left us 37 years old how have you never heard the Beatles? Will you mentally block it? You do these mental chance and things

you say these things in your head and you're really you're really mentally blocking it. The first time I allowed myself to listen to Paul McCartney I was like you mean this is evil I've heard so much worse than this and gospel music man it's just it's so weird when you think about it. Absolutely. So you have a really hard story and like I say I sympathize just for the simple fact that I'm a music lover you're a music lover we're both musicians you're far better than me obviously but you went what we also share is you went through some dark

places a lot of people don't know this because I don't talk about it much I went through some really dark places before during and after leaving because it's just like you said it is spiritual abuse psychological abuse it you mentioned you and I have talked offline about how this is just weaponized religion but it's more than that it it is psychologically weaponized as well as religious weaponized so you and I came through some dark places but tell us a little bit you know you've came out of this and you're doing pretty well for yourself right? So John I spoke to my ex-communication to the religious

abuse that I endured in my late teens and I did not speak to some of the harder places that I was that I had to visit and I believe it is the gates of hell and I don't use that lightly the religious abuse that I system saved, put me in a place, took me to the place where that when I was 13 years old, I was carrying and I'm trigger warning, I want to give a trigger warning so folks can I'm going to be talking about still farm, suicidal ideation. When I was around 13, 14, I was carrying

a razor and one of those refill blades for like a gelette around in my wallet and I was cutting myself and all the places that people couldn't see because there was no autonomy that I had in this world other than my own body and the harm that I can inflict on it. Speaking of the shame as well that this religion puts on kids and how self-hating we become in it. So it took me there, it took me to the place that when I was 13, I was putting a 22, putting a rifle underneath my head and getting more comfortable every day with the feeling of that. I had no

way of navigating any of the abuse I was sustaining in a healthy way and it took me to the gates of hell. Fast forward, 13 years, 14 years from that moment, I've had a rich life and a lot of rich experiences. I've gone to many different kinds of churches, I studied Buddhism and Thailand and Myanmar. I went to college, I got exposed to a lot of different worldviews, I got to experience a lot of different ways that people in other religions are harmed by their religions, how other religions weaponize harm to hurt kids, to hurt their congregations as a form of behavior manipulation.

I bolstered myself with expansion and that's where I found hope and connection with other folks that I've gone through with similar things and where I am today after all of the therapy, the deep spiritual work and giving myself, allowing myself the grace that we were afforded by scripture by the way, not grace by legalism but grace, affording myself that has allowed me to Well, John, just being in a place of hope every day, and the world's hard, man, geopolitics, I mean, geopolitics is hard, national politics is hard, local politics is hard, there's a lot of abuse in the world, there's a lot of harm in the world.

But what I know now and my relationship to the source of goodness in our lives is that I don't, I can be in the world and not of the world. I can show up with hope in a hopeless world, I can show up as a voice for love and hope in cynicism and despair.

I can be that person, I can be that voice and I can transform conversations with other people that might have a cynical or violent or hateful heart position. I can transform those conversations to where they are in touch with their humanity and with my humanity and with the humanity of other people.

I, you know, I think through, through grace, I have been transformed over the past 14 years. And anyway, this might be getting off topic, but I encourage you, if you're in this kind of religion, give yourself grace, allow the grace that scripture has afforded us to yourself, because it's just right there, it's just right there, you know, you can just have it.

Like you don't have to, you can just have it. So, so accept it, accept it and see where that takes you. Allow yourself to be wrong sometimes, allow yourself to learn. There are castles in the sky, such an amazing story, you've been, you've been through the darkest of places and on top of the world it seems now and it's exciting to hear somebody who has been there and has been to hell and back.

John, thanks so much. It's been a ride and I haven't had, I've been through hopeless moments in it, you know, life is just hard and it's hard for everybody. Yeah, exactly. The abuse really shocked me whenever I got into this.

I knew some of it had existed and I knew about specific situations in the churches that I was in, had no idea how widespread it was, had no idea how many men covered it up and had no idea the sheer number of elders in the movement that were part of the abuse.

That shocked me and it's not just in the United States, it's globally. I found out first, as I mentioned, I had multiple sites, and the first one got taken down by the cult, and then I had to rebrand, etc. Whenever I first started that YouTube site that got taken down, somebody in the cult, in the United States found it, and they contacted me, and they started naming names, and I'm like, no, I know that person. There's no way. But then I started hearing other reports of the same person, and other reports, and other people, and it spread. And like you said,

in the support groups that we have set up, you're a part of one. We actually set up several. It's a different world, because you know, there's the phrase, you don't talk about me until you've walked a mile in my shoes. Well, these people, they, you know, if the parallel is that phrase, well, some of them weren't even given shoes. It's just so bad, some of the things that they went through. And I think the biggest thing, you mentioned accountability, that's the biggest thing, really. The way that this cult and this movement is set up, it's set up in such a way where there

isn't a structure for accountability. They specifically want to have churches established where they're non-denominational for a reason. They don't want the reporting structure. They don't want the accountability. They don't want many of them. Don't want the tax records public. I'll never forget whenever I left the cult. And I went to my first real church in second and third, you know, trying different churches. I was shocked when they gave me papers that showed exactly where all the money's going. I'd never seen this man. I knew some of where the money's going. I had no idea.

But the accountability, for me, that's just the biggest problem that I see with all of this. I think that a lot of folks have talked to you, really relate to the sentiment of unaccounted money, unaccounted for. I think that, but is it unaccounted for when you go to the pastor's home, and it speaks to a certain affluence that none of the other community has, you know, because in my Appalachian community, folks were like living pretty humbly, you know?

Uneducated, homeschooled, not really a way to make it in the world. And it's the culture of desperation. And by the way, I have a theory. I call it the desperation. Desperation of the Pentecostalism Pipeline.

And, you know, because Here's the thing. These religious movements, whether all these things are interconnected, I think. But I just see in so many, I was in Myanmar during the genocide of the Rohingya Muslims in northern Myanmar by the fascist Buddhist administration.

I don't want to get too off topic. Feel free to ran me back in. But that kind of cynical violence by a religious institution in collaboration with the fascist government, where does that come from?

I think it comes from, I think it comes from despair. I think despair leads us whenever there's not hope, whenever there's not a way forward, cynical violence perpetuates itself. And I see that all over the message.

I see from like warring churches that like people stockpiling actual weapons,

to just like, you know, subterfuge tactics and the guerrilla kind of shadow banning of any kind of resources for folks that like are being abused. I mean, why would you shut that down? And you know, I mean, from a biblical perspective, from a Christian standpoint, from, you know, from if nothing else, love your neighbor out of yourself.

How does that, how does that speak to that? How can you not bear witness to someone else's suffering? I mean, where in the gospel is this paranoid authoritarian,

yeah, environment, like where is that in a gospel heart position? And I don't have an answer. I'm just, I'm asking because when I read the Bible, I didn't see that, you know, when I was, and when I was in church as a young person, I really connected to scripture.

And I just, I didn't see those things. And so where's that coming from? That's what I'm curious about. For me, that was one of the major factors in my leaving. There were several factors that made me decide to walk away, but that was one of them, just simply how people were treated.

And right or wrong, there are people, people have problems. That's, if you're a Christian, that's why Jesus came. So he could save the people that have the problems. And churches that aren't cult churches embrace that.

I say, every human is flawed. Let's help one another, one another be better. But in these groups, it's really odd because you have this tendency to hide it or you will be assassinated from behind the pulpit.

Whatever is your problem, if you're struggling with, you know, they make all these rules. So some of these aren't even really sins, but say you're a smoker and they condemn smoking. Well, you're going to hide the fact that you do it because they're going to name your name or they're going to tell enough where everybody is.

knows who you are, just assassinate you from behind the pulpit. Instead of try to help you get over the smoking, here's addiction counseling. Here's a group of brothers who will be your mentors because they too had a problem and they overcame that problem.

So you can look at them for help. There's no, there's no structure like this. Like similar to the fact that there's no accountability, there's no system of help. And when I left the cult, I didn't really understand that.

And I joined some support groups that, I'm not sure they even exist now, but some ex-message cult support groups and learned some of this, but really, until you experience it firsthand, the power of being in those groups and the power of people helping people, you really don't get it.

And I think, to a large extent, that's why the cult mindset is so difficult to break through because they've never seen a situation where there is an openness to try to become better. Yeah.

John, I think that it's so well said. And one of the things that I wanted to say, and piggybacking off of that, 2020 was a very formative moment in my life. I live in the zip code, or Mr. George Floyd was murdered by Derek Shalvin.

The police station, the precinct that Derek Shalvin operated within is my precinct in Minneapolis. Wow. That is that time in my life was really formative for me. And as an Appalachian kid who always felt maligned in media representations of Appalachians and all these things, I really connected to black folks in Minneapolis at that time.

And I made a lot of friendships and I really related to a lot of experiences that they talked about and how they've been so maligned. That time and time again, they can be murdered with, you know, judged during an execution style, just, and then represented in the media as deserving of that fate.

Whether or not deserving of that fate, again, whether or not there was even a crime committed, their crime was being black. Now, I really connected with black folks in Minneapolis at that time. And my own experience, how it shaped me, is I think that one of the things that the mess, that folks in the message today do, and I don't know if it's been the case all along, but one of the things that happens is we, the people that escape some of the abuses, because it's the people that are abused and end up escaping usually, you know,

and, you know, in the work act character assassinated for it, but we are atomized. We are kind of forced into this silence at fear of speaking out whether that's physical harm and

I'm not going to speak to that for me personally. I don't personally feel that Targeted by like physical harm, but emotional withholding withholding of love Emotion like just a relationship to my family a relationship to my extended family relationship to anybody in my life before I was like 17 All of that's on the table. Yeah, it's really surprising for me I've mentioned this publicly several times. I had no idea that I was raised in a racist environment But because we were told that the racism that we had was not racist and that even though we were discriminating against people with

Black skin It wasn't discrimination. This was a religious thing and oh, it's in the Bible. So it can't be it can't be racist That's what they're trying. That's what they try to say But they don't tell you that to make the leap to believe it's in the Bible You have to add all of this other stuff that isn't really in the Bible and

Unraveling that took me years. It took me a long time to unravel that because it's programmed in your head and to your being I can say that while I had family members who Went above and beyond that in racism to the extent that they They had no problem hurting the feelings of somebody with black skin and publicly did so how I've been I've been in restaurants where I wanted to crawl under the table man but I can say truly that I love all people and I've never been like that so inwardly that's the the only solace that I have

For for the way I was brought up it was horrific the way we were brought up but Like you said whenever you see these events when I see these events where something catastrophic happens It it's just so difficult because it sends this flood of emotions Especially the political side because you've got all these people fighting for the discrimination Publicly and you got all these people fighting against it Well, because this was a political cult disguised as a religious cult We set through sermons where they did the same thing and often about the same subjects so

It brings back a flood of emotions when this happens to me Yeah, we can take or leave this point But all I wanted to say was in 2020 one of the things that I learned about myself is that I have to connect with people that have gone through similar things that I've gone through one of the ways that Like abuse can continue is that people are atomized People that have suffered abuse are atomized they are not in community each other and they feel weak against a larger structure that is built on domination and abuse.

So let's talk about the church and leaving a bit. You've mentioned the support groups a few times and the experience of being in one and I get all of that. I know that everybody who has left the message and is working with other people who have left the message, they all feel it. Once you get in there and you realize that you think that your problems are unique because it can't be this bad for everyone and then they get in these groups and wait a minute, it's this bad for everyone. So there's this feeling that it's hard to

really express for people who've never been through this, especially if you've never even been in a cult. But the people in this message specifically, all of them share a similar almost cookie cutter experience of leaving. The way it works when you're in a cult is first, whenever you raise a question immediately, they have to silence the question and that happens a few different ways. They will either publicly assassinate you from behind the pulpit, character assassination, or they will privately talk to people and have them. It's not a full shunning, but it's almost like an emotional shunning. Suddenly you realize,

hey, these people aren't treating me the same as they did before. And some of that just comes through the natural process of being in a cult. You hear something about somebody and because the framework of the cult is backwards from what it should be, instead of people helping people, it's people trying to find people who have a problem so that they can exclude them. That's how the cult work. So there's that step, that first step where you feel really uncomfortable. And then leaving, it's very similar as well. As soon as you leave, it's almost like it's even King movie. In many cases, once you leave, they have forgotten

that you ever existed. And when you go back and you get in contact with some of the people, there's this either you're fully shunned and you can't get in contact or you're emotionally shunned and you might as well go into a grocery store and make a conversation with somebody who you've never met because you're going to get more response out of emotional response out of the perfect stranger than you do the people who you knew and loved. At least that's the experience that I've had and some of the others. Maybe you could tell a little

bit about that. What the message does is it makes folks afraid of ordinary people. And if you leave, message folks a lot of times, like sometimes I think there's malice, but I think a lot of times there's literal...

fear of me, you know, and it's a fear of ideas, it's a fear of information, it's a fear of being changed, but all of that is kind of projected on anybody that leaves. We're not safe to people inside, and that breaks my heart. But speaking to something else that you said, and this speaks to my point earlier as well, what they do is, you know, whenever you leave and then the withholding of love occurs, which I cannot reconcile with a biblical or Christian heart position that is irreconcilable from the scripture that I read with whatever that is, when they withhold love from you, when they

character assassinate you, when they, whether it's removed your name from the lambs book of life or what's the other one, release your flesh to what is it? In the movies they say, I sold your soul to the devil. When the incantations start, you know, and when they say they release your flesh to the destruction, the destruction of your flesh to Satan or whatever, I am mangled in the language and I don't care because it's it's perverse, it's weaponizing religion to hurt people, it's weaponizing spirituality or relationship with God to hurt people. So whatever, I don't know how they say it,

they say it, whatever it is, what they do, they turn you over to Satan for the destruction of your flesh. That's usually what you say. Turn you over to Satan for the destruction of your flesh, who were they to say that, who were they to be so virtuous, who were they to be so virtuous, and to have a monopoly on God in as much. But you know, one of the things I want to speak to regarding that and people escaping, we internalize that abuse because we are atomized from each other and before these support groups, that's all anybody ever did. And you see deaths of despair

and what the cult was so perverse, you see, you know, my early childhood was watching people that escaped the message die of drug overdoses. People that escaped the message

have lives that were so full of despair whether they died of a drug overdose or cirrhosis of the liver or whatever it is to just frickin cope with the trauma of being completely excommunicated from early childhood experiences, from folks in your life, from an early childhood, whatever.

Growing up seeing all these deaths of despair, what's so perverse, you know, a religion like this will then say, see what happens when you leave and they will then, you know, character assassinate the person after they died, as being un-virtuous of having left, of all these things.

And again, internalize that abuse. They project that abuse onto you. You are worthy of that abuse. You deserve that abuse. You acted against us, and you deserve harm. And that is the most perverse thing, and I think is the reason why if you have been in the message, and frankly, if you are still in the message, you should look out.

You should look for support groups to help deal with the traumas that I know are actively occurring right now in your life. It's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it's a self-fulfilling curse. Because psychologically, whenever somebody has invested their entire life into something, and then everybody they knew and loved suddenly and instantly turns against them, and tells them that they are cared for so little that everyone that they love would love to turn them over to Satan, so that Satan can literally destroy their flesh.

When you go through that, it sends people to very dark places. Like you, I've seen people who have turned into, you know, alcoholics, drug addicts, and the people in the cult, they say, see, this is what happened.

This is what happened. They went out of us, they went out of us because they were not of us, and then as soon as they left, they fall into this, you know, drug overdose, and they almost die.

Some of the people do die, unfortunately, but they don't realize that they are the ones that put them there. And for me, there are very few times that I get angry, but when I think back at what they did to the people, this is one thing that really makes me angry.

Because even if you study just, you don't even have to be a psychologist. Just study the basics of what it does whenever you do this to a person. When you put them into this mindset, you don't even treat your dogs this way, and yet they will treat somebody who loved them.

In many cases, they have no idea why the person is treating them this way. And they go all sorts of paths. In the support groups, you'll find that I'm very open and welcoming to everyone.

I don't care who you are, what you believe or don't, who you, where you've been, where you've came from, and where you're headed, because I know that people have gone through this, and many of them have to go to even darker places before they can see that there is a light to come back to.

And you can't continually tell them, hey, go towards the light because they're not headed in that path. They have to go this way on their own, and hopefully if you give them a little bit of encouragement, they can stay alive while they do it.

And it makes me so angry each time that I see it. it because the people who proclaim to be, this is not a Christian religion, this is a political movement disguised as Christianity, but these people who are claiming to be Christian do this to people and send many of them into atheism. Fortunately, some come back obviously, but it's not just a religious battle, it's a physical battle, it's a mental battle. It sends people into places where they have to get on depression medication. There's an array of mental health conditions that I have family who have mental health issues, and I know firsthand

how this works. There are people who might be on the edge of developing a severe mental health condition, but it was this that triggered it. So they may not have, they may have never developed the thing that they have had they not gone through this. These people not only have run their spiritual life, but many cases they run their physical lives. And I just, like I say, there's very few things that make me angry, but this is one of them. John, I don't have patience for anymore. I don't have patience for it. You're abusing children. You are throwing

kids into lives of despair, and I have been that kid. And it's unacceptable. I won't tolerate it. And you ought not either. If you believe in a Christian God, if you believe in ethical treatment of people, you know, and by the way, I just want to throw out a bunch of life rafts over here.

I love my humanists. I love my secular folks. And we all have access to the divine. I truly believe that. I believe that we all have access to God in whatever way that expresses itself.

But what this religion does is it cuts us off from that connection to the source of goodness in our lives. If we reject the more sinister parts of it, and how is, no, I reject it. I reject it wholly. Fortunately, I have the ability to be part of something bigger, where people are helping people. There is no central leadership. There is no one person who's out there is the quote, unquote, hero. They're people helping people. And that's what I've tried to help establish myself working with others who set all of this up. Because I don't want people to look at me and say,

well, John's the Moses that led God's people out. You know what I mean? I want them to be the Moses's that led themselves out. That's the way people helping people. And it's so different than the mindset that we were in when we were in the cult. You looked to somebody else to be that figure who is your saving grace, who's giving you all the answers, who's telling you the way that you should live your life and the rules that you should abide by if you want to make it into the other side.

You're looking for the human that is on the totem pole that everybody's worshiping. But that's not the way life is. Life is people, helping people. And I want to hone in on something that you just said.

I too was shocked whenever I first encountered a person who did not believe in God, who had left the cult, who was a kind and generous and loving person. Because we were trained to believe this can't be.

This is a person whose soul has been sold to the devil, right? And what it shocked me because not only was he a conundrum, but I felt sorry for him, because the God that he had been trained to reject wasn't even the real God.

I can't control his destiny. I can't control him leaving God and then coming back to God. This between him and God, it really hurts me to see that they've done this to people. Because like I said, it's not just the religious aspect.

It's every aspect of life. This person that I'm referring to, he was also denied education. They were strongly against education and many, many sects of the message. Even in the United States and he was from the United States.

So this is a person who rejected God, was denied an education, went down a deep pathway where he did educate himself and he, you know, he's still on a journey and I wish him the best.

But where I'm headed with all of this is there's this tendency when you've been manipulated, not just in the Brannum cult that we escaped, but in many similar religious groups in general, where if somebody doesn't believe like you, you're supposed to not only reject them, but scorn them and you've not walked in their shoes.

You don't know where they've been. You don't know where they're headed. And it's not your job to try to beat them into submission with the Bible in your hand. And I can assure you, having worked with all these people, that doesn't work anyway.

John, I just don't see the Bible in it, you know. And yeah, I mean, Paul, you know, speak once, listen twice, spare the rod, spoil the child, the rod of a shepherd being something that you guide gently, not something that you had a sheep over their head with, you know.

Like so much of Christianity has been weaponized to just, and just in Flittarme. That's the only goal of it. You deserve abuse. Nobody deserves abuse. No one deserves. to be, to have love and the source of goodness in our lives withheld from them.

Nobody deserves that. There are other ways to change human behavior if you think human behavior is problematic in some way. There are other ways to do that. And we've been given, by the way, a pretty cool book on this, if you are Christian.

You might have heard of it. But anyway, all that to say, let's say, John, I don't judge anybody on their path with their spirituality, on where they land. I love my humanists, my secular humanists, and I love all of my folks, and I don't have them not only on God, I don't have them not only on truth.

And we all end up in different places on our path and different understandings. I have gone through many years of atheism because what white Christian nationalism has done to Christianity over the past 150 years, it is not, it is not biblical Christianity.

So if you could give people in the message one glimmer of hope by something that you said or some message that you could give to them, what would it be? I think people marginalize the words of Christ and weaponize other parts of the Bible for a political end. And I don't know why you do that. And you strip the power, the gospel power of your message when you do that.

You know, if nothing else, love your neighbor as yourself, love your neighbor as yourself, love your neighbor as yourself, when you align yourself with that text and not something else that's been weaponized and decontextualized, when you align yourself with the core tenants of scripture.

And if nothing else, love your neighbor as yourself, if you align with that, I promise there's hope you won't live in despair and fear of doomsday and fear of the rapture and fear that grace of God isn't good enough for you and that the only grace that you have is by legalistic doctrine and that the only grace for you is of legalism.

You can just have grace, you can just have a relationship with God, you can just have love for other people that's uncomplicated and unconditional and we are empowered by scripture to do so. And you know, and reconciliation to God as well as our neighbor when you are in the power of that, you can confront the all the power structures that exist in America and the world into fatiguingly.

You can show up every day and do it if you're aligned with scripture. I think that is the legacy of Christ. I think that's the legacy of scripture and I think that that is what is so marginalized and in these religions.

You know, people ask me, what's the one thing that I can say to somebody to rescue them from a cult and what they're looking for is what's a failed prophecy that wakes somebody up or what's a critical fact that is obviously a lie that William Brannum said or the ministers are saying, what's that one thing? And unfortunately, none of that really helps. But I think what you just said is the key to all of this.

The Bible says, like you said, love God, love your neighbor as yourself. If you just simply do this, the whole framework of the cult and all of it's all of it. I mean, the entire thing just falls on it's falls, falls down atop, it's like a deck of like a house of cards. There's no way to keep it standing. If you can just convince people that the whole thing, the whole thing goes away. So very glad to have you on the show and I'm glad that we talked through this. Hopefully something that you said will encourage somebody and tell us again where we can find your music so

people can go find you and listen to you. John, thank you so much for asking where people can find my music. Apple music, Spotify. Here's what you do. Gowns, GW and S, this is the musical project I've been a part of for the past five years. The early Gowns tracks are very aligned with leaving the message story and my Appalachian culture of despair, kind of me just like working through all that stuff, as well hillbilly chic. That's hillbilly and then underscore CHIC.

And yeah, hillbilly chic is a very personal project that speaks to more of my ongoing understandings of the world. And anyway, both of them can be found everywhere you listen to music and feel free to check out the music video on Spotify for castles by Gowns. Really stand by that message and really excited by that video to this day. Yeah. Awesome. Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.org.

For an overview of the historical research of William Brannum and the Healing Revivals, read preacher behind the white hoods, a critical examination of William Brannum and his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.