Latest / The BlackSheep Podcast: Presented by HM Magazine / Brian Rush McDonald: Losing My Religion

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Brian Rush McDonald: Losing My Religion · The BlackSheep Podcast: Presented by HM Magazine

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Like bigger stigger, you are not me thinks that. Welcome, Welcome to
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the Black Sheep Podcast. Today we have an esteemed author and professor and thought
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leader, I would say, in a whole multitude of facets of life.
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I'm going to read from his book The Long Surrender, a memoir about losing
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my religion. His little mini bio that's on the back, all right.
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Brian Rush McDonald is a psychotherapist in private practice in Alexandria, Virginia, where
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he treats individuals who are experiencing depression, anxiety, or life adjustment issues.
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He also provides couples counseling, plays trombone on several community groups. Loves jigsaw
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pulls and crosswords. He his wife or he and his wife Kathy, loves
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sailing during the warmer months. They have three adult children and three grandchildren.
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Now I didn't read the majority of this because there's there's a whole lot more
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to your life beyond just the fact that you live in Alexandria, Virginia and
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that you're a psychotherapist and everything like that. But I want to start off
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by talking about the book because I think it's a fantastic book. It's a
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really quick, easy read that I think takes you through the journey of your
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life seamlessly. And really, I mean, you don't. You don't hide
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anything from what I can tell. No, I'm a friend of mine read
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it and he kept saying, he said, he kept saying to his wife,
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I can't believe he put that in there. Yeah. For listener's reference,
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there is a line actually multiple times where you say beat the meat.
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So you you are not pulling any punches. I mean, I don't know
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people in you might be pulling some other things, but not punches. I
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mean, you know a lot of things that we said that we're naughty down
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in the South. I don't know if we didn't get the memo or it
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got corrupted, but when I started being around people from all the parts of
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the country, they were like, what what is that? You know?
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So we evolved all the time it got down to us. Well, I
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promise you that I've said that a number of times in my life in my
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younger years, and I know Mason said it just last week, so more
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than just said it. Brian. Before we kind of dive into your memoir
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and your story, I am curious about the the book I love that image
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and I have never seen it in my life. Can you take us through
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a little bit about the image, like is this is this an original thing?
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Is this like an older image? I'm just so curious about it from
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the nineteenth century of French, a French artist, And it's really interesting how
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I came across that. We used to live in the Norfolk, Virginia area
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that's called the Hampton Roads. It's Virginia Beach, Northfolk, Newport News,
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those places down there and near Jamestown, the early days of our country.
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So we were I was visiting this museum down there once and I saw this
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picture and it was huge. I mean it's like fifteen by eight or something.
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It's that normous picture and it just struck me because it reminded me of
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what happened to me because I sort of signed up to be a minister at
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a very early age. And this is about a young man that joined them
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monastery and uh, he looks like he after the first night, he's like,
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what have I gotten myself in? Yeah? And so I ween,
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I just wanted this for the book. Now. The painting that's in Offolk
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was I couldn't get the rights to it. But it turns out this same
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painter he did this is an etching, believe it or not. And I'm
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not an art and so it's different than a painting, although it was the
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same picture and the same subject. Apparently at that time it was unusual for
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people to look right at the painter while they painted. That was unusual.
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And this that's why I looks so modern. I think, yeah, and
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he's like, but this was back in the eighteen hundreds. I think the
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artist was Gustav do'rat and yeah, and but it just I wanted that and
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I found it. Oh, by the way, I found it at the
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Harvard believe it or not. I mean I didn't go there, but I
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found it. It's in the Harvard Art Gallery, and and the etching is
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there, and it's in the public domain. So I was able to get
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it for the book. But I really wanted the book to be about my
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giving of my life to this calling. But as time went on, many
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years, I realized that should I have done that. As I said in
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the book, I really had wanted to be a musician. I mean I
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grew up in the sixties when the Beatles and all those groups came out and
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all you had to do was get the guitar, You learn a few chords,
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and you could you could sing those songs. They were great, you
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know, they and so did that. My brother was in like a rock
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and roll garage band for a while, and I hung out with those guys.
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Then I was in junior high got in the band and I started playing
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the trombone. I mean, I just love and then you got into a
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ska band, right, that's just naturally what happens, right. Well,
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I wasn't known back then, but I was in a kind of a garage
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band that, like most of them, never really got off the feet because
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you always have some people that wouldn't show up half the time. But we
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liked to play music that had horns, and at that time, the two
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big ones, this was the seventies, was Chicago and Blood, Sweat and
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Tears. They had horns, and we just worshiped them, you know,
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and so we tried to play some of those songs. There was another group
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that was short lived but was fantastic. It was called Chase c Chac and
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they had one Believing or not. They were a jazz rock fusion group,
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but they had a hit on the pop charge. It was way up at
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the top. It was called get It On, and it had these squealing
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trumpets and it was like a huge hit. So those kinds I had visions
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of being that type of musician. And but really the the got involved in
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the Jesus movement that was going along, and you know, you asked me
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more about that, but you know, it was a somehow I got the
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idea from some of the influence that well, if you if you really play
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music that you like, that probably doesn't please God. Mm if it feels
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too good, it's got to be wrong. You got to play that boring
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ass music if you want to worship God, all right, that's stuff that
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like the organ you know, that puts you asleep in my last So yeah,
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you know, that's kind of interesting. I think every person who grew
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up Christian has a similar story where, you know, something secular creeped into
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their life and it was supposed to be you know, excommunicated from your life.
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You were supposed to cleanse yourself of it. I myself, I was
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also I still am a massive Beatles fan. I had Beatles posters all over
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my wall and everything like that. And my pastor was over one night,
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and he's like, you know, I don't know if the Beatles really stand
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for anything that's godly. Have you ever listened to Keith Green He wasn't here.
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Oh he's great. I still love his music too, but he had
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no Beatles. Well, you know the Beatles. By the way, A
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couple of three years ago, I guess it was before the pandemic, my
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wife and I and another couple about our age, we went to see Ringo
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Stars All Star Bands. Yeah, he is an old guy a little bit,
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and but he gets up there and he plays the drums and he dances
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around, and he's got some musicians from other well known rock and roll bands
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and so forth, and it's pretty good. It's very good. Yeah,
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it's fun to watch for sure. Yeah, those guys were. I mean,
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Ringo was probably the least talented of all of them. I don't know,
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he'd probably say that too, but nonetheless he's part of character. Oh,
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absolutely absolutely. I could talk Beatles all day, so I'm not going
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to go on that on that road. Ayson knows I'll talk Beatles all day.
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I've talked number of times about it. Yeah, I have to.
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I'm glad this is on the internet because I could at least mute color when
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he starts getting on it. Have seen that television documentary I guess called Eight
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Days a Week. Oh yeah, yeah, that's creatible. I ituring years
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somewhere. And they were told that the black people wouldn't be able to What
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did they tell him? They wouldn't be able to come in? I think,
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and just like nineteen year old boys, and they said, well,
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that's stupid, won't we won't play here then? Right? And you didn't
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turn the Beatles away in those days, I mean, if you had a
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chance to get them exactly exactly. They were kind of groundbreaking in that respecting
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in many regards. Yeah, yeah, yeah, love Brianon. Let's talk
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about kind of the beginning of your story. You know, Colin and I
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grew up in the Midwest and evangelicalism, and that is its own kind of
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version of it. But it feels like if you grew up in the South
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and evangelicalism, that feels like you're growing up in the steroids of Christianity.
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Like it just it is so intense and uh, you know, Marty biblical
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bombs right totally. So what was it like? You know, I don't
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know if you like grew up Christian or not in the South, but being
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from the South and being a Christian and obviously getting involved in the Jesus movement
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and all of that in the seventies, it must have felt intense. So
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I'm really curious about this early part of your story. What got you involved
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in all of this? To begin with? Right, my family wasn't particularly
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religious, although they were Baptists, but we didn't go to church very often.
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My grandmother that I talked about a lot in the book, she was
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religious in sort of a folksy way, you know, she didn't really know
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much about doctrine, and you know, Dolmay. She was just like be
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a good boy and go to Sunday school and that kind of thing. But
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in high school, so I got in. It was it was during the
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time when there was uh, the integration of the schools and they had this
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what they call bussing to try to get the balance of you know, backs,
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blacks and whites. And so the second year of high school I went
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to a different school and I didn't want to go. There was unhappy about
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it. There was you know, there were some fights and so forth.
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That first year it was rough. I think it was the right thing.
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And I'm glad that I had that experience, and I'm glad it happened.
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But you know, the white people, let's face it, they didn't They
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didn't that right about that. But anyway, maybe that was part of it,
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because there was a lot of unsettling things. And now I did play
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in the high school band, but I had this friend and he was what
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was called Jesus freak. I mean, he he played in the band,
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but he brought his Bible every day. But he was kind of a hippie
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type, long hair and all that, you know, and so I kind
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of identified with that for a while. And of course all the boys were
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starting to grow their hair long, you know, down here, and but
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so I kind of went with this, taking my Bible of school every day.
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I had a crossover around my neck and we would have Bible studies and
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so forth. It first, you know, reading the Bible, it was
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like, oh, that's where that story came from. I remember hearing about
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that. You know, that was kind of interesting then that I was really
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troubled by this fact that people who didn't accept Jesus as we were saying,
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would go to hell. And it was and it really. In fact,
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it was upsetting to I couldn't eat after I read that, and I kept
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asking people about this. You know that went to church that were more mature,
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as they say, believers, Well, what about this? Is that
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true? Yes, that's the case, Well that I just can't accept that.
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They said, well, that's the reason we need to go and evangelize
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and so forth. But even then, it seemed to me like that was
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trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon. I mean, not bring many
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people were believe in it. I just say every now and then when we
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get Southerners on this podcast, They've got expressions I've never heard in my life,
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and I just hear them for the first time, and I just feel
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like a child learning language again, Like I'm this is this is so great,
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the ocean with a teaspoon. I need to add that one to my
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it for her. But we are. I grew up with a lot of
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storytellers, and that was what was good at all. We didn't have the
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internet. In fact, we didn't even have many televisions shows. So you
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you know, when Uncle George came, You're like, Uncle George, tell
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that one again about the time you did that, you know, that was
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our entertainment. But anyway, so about that time I met a girl,
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and believe or not, that is my wife today fifty years later. But
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I started going to her church and she had this very dynamic youth director.
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You know, he was we if he formed this evangelistic judo team. He
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taught us judo and we'd go around and put on the judo exhibition in church,
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and then of course he would preach and ask people to come and get
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saved. And I guess that was like that's like the proto version of the
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Power Team. Calling back in those books and have to back in those days.
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You know, even jealous evangelicals would do anything they could to get a
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crowd. I mean some bizarre things, you know, like oh yeah,
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yeah, yeah, but that goes back to like even like Billy Sunday and
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stuff like that. Yeah, oh yeah, walking the tightrope on the roof
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of these uh big tents. Oh that takes his preacher. That would bring
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his horse. He was had been a cowboy and he would bring his horse
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into the church. I love it. You know, church has always been
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a spectacle. Yeah yeah, But anyway, I didn't realize and I don't
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want to get too much in the weeds of this, but you know,
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this church was teaching me a lot of good things. But I suppose I
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say good thing, pretty mainstream Christian things. But it sort of came I
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realized a little bit now what I was getting into. We were going under
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this trip and we were going to be going to other churches. Actually the
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churches were up in like Michigan and so forth, because that's where our youth
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pastor was from. We'd formed the people in Michigan right well, well,
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no, that they were the fundamentalists up there, apparently, because when they
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saw the picture of our group, you know, the boys had long hair,
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I mean, you know, it wasn't that long, but it was
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down on our collars, and the girls had short skirts. And they said,
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you can't come to our church like that. And that was really shocking
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to me about the hair, because it had never occurred to me that that
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had anything to do with believing. I mean, it's like, yeah,
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I was just like blown aways, like what does who? No one had
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ever said that. Of course, my father had said, you look like
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a vagrant, and you know, I'm going to take you on Saturday to
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get your haircut. But nobody ever said it was anything about religion. You
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know, after all, every picture I've never seen the Jesus he had long
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hair, and I realized those are authentic. But apparently people were comfortable with
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that all all these years. That's a good point. But at any rate,
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in the end, we got a haircut short and we went on the
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trip. But that sort of began. What I didn't realize was that that
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church, while it was a Southern Baptist church, it was a extremely conservative
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fundamentalist church. So later when I started talking about maybe I will go into
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the ministry or be a missionary or something like that, it was recommended not
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that I go to the Baptist colleges, which were conservative in their own way,
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but it was recommended that I go to You might have heard of Bob
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Jones University. Oh yeah, And that was a shot because I mean I
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was in the Christian music scene to a degree. When you mentioned, like
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my five albums, I mean one has to be Andre Crouch. Do you
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know Andre Krauch was I'm not familiar. Now. Andre Crouch is really considered
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the bounder of Christian rock music. I mean he was back in the late
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sixties and seventies. He was black. I mean he kind of took that
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black gospel music and kind of made a little bit more like rock. And
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he was a sensation. Andre was in a Michael Jackson song and a Madonna
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song. I never heard of this guy before. Yeah, go to YouTube
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and put Michael Jackson live at Carnegie Hall. I mean, he was he
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was a force, but he was. It was very moving. Even the
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other day, I went and looked at, you know, the live at
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Carnegie Hall video, and it's very moving. He was very sincere, but
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it was rock. You know, It's like, finally we have a we
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have our person that will lead us to this rock music that's good and we
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don't have to apologize for it, you know. He there was one song
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that he wrote that became popular. Uh well, the one that I don't
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know which ones you would have heard of, but he wrote one call uh
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went get all excited and tell everybody that Jesus crisis Lord. That was one.
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Oh yeah, I know that song for sure. And another one that
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was a slower song was shoot I have decided to follow Jesus. I don't
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know, it was something like that. He was very good, so I
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was all into that. But when I got to Bob Jones University, I
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don't know how much you know about that, but that was I mean,
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it really was a cult. I didn't know what a colt was, and
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but I mean, we weren't allowed to listen to any music Christian certainly,
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no secular music unless it was Beethoven or Bach or something like that, but
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if it was rock in any fashion. And they defined rock as emphasis was
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on beat two and four rather than on beat one and three. So rock
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is like right, and so yeah, so we weren't allowed that, and
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not only that, it would be one thing to say we don't like it,
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but they said it was from the devil and all that. But you
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know, the first year I was there, in a number of ways,
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I didn't like it, but I don't know. I was young. I
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didn't know what else to do. My parents were not educated people, so
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they didn't know where to send me to college, and they my mother kind
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of liked it because it was real strict. You know, the boys and
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the girls couldn't go off the campus together and all that kind of stuff.
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You had to get up at a certain time, go to bed at a
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certain time. It was like being at West Point. I kind of drank
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the kool aid, you know, I mean, after a while, okay,
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I mean can't fight, said oh, this is the way it is.
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And so I was there. Actually I even stayed for a master's degree.
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And there's a lot of things happen and I talk about in the book
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that really should have raised my eyebrows more than they did. There was a
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lot of racism there. I mean, they were famous for not allowing blacks
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to attend. And when I first got there, that really upset me out.
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I don't know if I didn't know that because I had a black friend
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that I had met that was a Christian, and so suddenly they didn't allow
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blacks. I was just blown away. But they said, and they actually
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went to the Supreme Court of the United States about this in the nineteen eighties,
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if you know that, they said the reason they didn't allow blacks was
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that that the Bible taught that the races shouldn't intermingle and they shouldn't marry.
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Now, since then, I heard one of the Bob Jones just say they
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didn't teach that. But listen, mister Jones, I was there. I
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heard it, and so that was and it was I mean it was the
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South, and sure a lot of colleges had at one time been didn't allow
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blacks, but it was changing and people were opening up, but they refused
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to So that was one thing. But musically, so the one thing that
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I said, I was good at playing the trombone. I loved jazz,
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I loved pop music, and so I continued to play the trombone. Now
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I couldn't play that kind of music, but they had a pretty big music
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program there. They had a trombone choir. It was very good, and
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I played in that all the time I was there. So I kept my
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chops up at so to speak, playing the trombone. Anyway, I went
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into the ministry. I became a foreign missionary, and slowly I became disenchanted
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with particularly fundamentalist Christianity. Although you know, when it's your profession, it's
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kind of hard just to walk away. I mean some people have been critical
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when they read my book, like, oh man, you really gutless.
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Why didn't you just walk away? Well, I had chure. It was
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my profession. I kept thinking maybe I could find a way to make it
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work. And when I was a foreign missionary, in Taiwan, I did
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have more freedom. I mean, nobody was around to tell me what to
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do, so I'll begin to broaden my outlook in a lot of ways,
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and musically especially. I was asking my son because I have three children and
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my oldest son is forty five, and he really got into the Christian music
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scene when he was in high school. That's after we came back from being
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missionaries. And I kind of vicariously was into the Christian music scene through him,
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because by then I was in my forties, but he was yours again.
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Was that that would have been nineteen He graduated high school in ninety seven.
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I think so like he would have been super familiar with like Tooth and
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Nail kind of bands. And well, I asked today, I said,
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what were the ones that you were really into? Remind me? And he
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said, and he said, Jars of Clay Newsboys, Yeah, yeah,
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of the CM stuff. Yeah, I don't add audio Adrenaline, DC Talk,
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Take six Petra And actually there was a group called for him. Oh
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yeah, my wife's cousin was one of those, uh in another group.
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I don't know if you heard. Yeah, his name is Harris and that's
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her cousin. But my wife's brother was in a group that they kind of
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got a lot of college students. It was called Truth Have you ever heard
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of the Truth? And they went around and kind of you know, cleaned
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up the rock music and went to churches. But it was very hip.
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Uh, and they put out a lot of records and so he was.
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So we came from this scene. But it was like when I got into
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that fundamental scene, none of that, none of that, right, No,
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no, totally. In fact, you know, I hate the organ.
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In fact, I go to a Unitarian. I go to a Unitarian
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church and uh, which is you know, I don't know if you know
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what that is, but it's probably the most liberal church there is. But
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our minister priest's summon the other day and it was the love It was I
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hate the organ, And I said, how'd you come up with that title?
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But when that's in your background and it was crammed down your throat,
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you know, it's like I hear the organ and I get like PTSD and
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it's like, oh my gosh, you know, what about what about a
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good jazz organ? Oh well, yes, you know that in the jazz
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Well, I don't know what they say now but back in the rock bands,
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they used to call it playing a Hammond B three. Yeah, that
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is classic Charles and uh yeah, jazz, jazz or the rock groups.
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You know, they always had the In fact, a group that I loved
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was Sly in the Family Stone Oh classic, yeah, good stuff. And
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they had us on dance to the music and and different place. Give me
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I'm gonna play some bottom and the bass replay and they say I'm gonna play
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something Morgan B three. It's just the sound with that Hammond B three class
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well, especially in the black church, that is a classic sound. Oh
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it is, yeah, And you know, I hope it's okay to say
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this, but I was in a black church once and the preacher, while
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the preacher was preaching, he had a guy playing the organ who would emphasize
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what the preacher said with the organ. Oh yeah, it was that too.
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You know. They play off each other so well. Yeah, and
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it's not playing. I'm sure it's not necessarily planned where they know what each
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other is going to do, but they just sort of feel the energy of
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each other and you know, work with that and it's it's super impressive to
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watch. It really is. Probably some of those preachers. If they don't
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have the organists, they don't preach, because I mean that's part of my
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you know. That actually leads me to a question though, growing up and
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everything. You're very specific in the book about living in the South mobile all
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that stuff. Stuff is not exactly uh, what we consider kosher today in
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terms of race relations, right, and you're you're immersed in that, and
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then you're at Bob Jones and you're you know, probably inevitably immersed in even
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more there. What was kind of the tipping off point for you where you
25:18
said, now, this is not like the kind of culture that I want
25:22
to be a part of. Yeah, that's a good question. I mean
25:25
I was very disturbed because about the race thing, because you know, during
25:30
high school, of course that at first I was very angry that because of
25:34
the blacks we had to change schools and all this. But then I had
25:37
this one band director that was very important to me. Uh And then you
25:44
know, as Christians then it was sort of the hippie the Jesus freaks.
25:48
You know, we were like every God loves everybody the same. You know,
25:52
that was one thing about the hippies that the influence of the hippies on
25:56
our culture was that people are all the same, it doesn't matter what you
25:59
look, and so I really got a heavy dose of that. And then
26:03
when I got into a Christian setting where they wanted to exclude blacks, it
26:07
just I could not understand that. I really could not understand that. So
26:11
I think that planted the seed. And the other thing was the teaching on
26:18
you know, eternal damnation, which I never really could accept, so I
26:22
just hid from that. It's interesting that that is something that I now knows.
26:27
I mean, whether you believe the Bible or not, but it's not
26:30
really taught that cleared the Bible Jesus. In fact, did you see I
26:37
don't know if you know who Carlton Pearson was. He died the other day.
26:40
Yeah, he just died like this last week, right right, And
26:42
he was a Pentecostal picture, big time, six thousand member church, but
26:47
he decided he didn't believe an eternal damnation, and overnight his church went down
26:51
to a few hundred people and finally had to shut the doors. Wow,
26:53
and that's something that that has become a cardinal doctrine that if you have to
26:57
believe that, yeah, yeah, Well and then remember like the stuff with
27:02
Rob Bell. I don't know if you were paying attention around that, but
27:06
Rob Bell was a big megachurch pastor in Michigan, and in twenty eleven he
27:10
released a book called Love Wins where essentially he's making this argument for universalism and
27:17
yeah, overnight, well, he still remained like the pastor and everything,
27:21
but it definitely tarnished his in like he because he had like a couple books
27:26
in the evangelical world and he was a big well, like you know,
27:29
he did the whole evangelical conference, speaker circuit and everything, and he immediately
27:34
was not allowed to do any of that stuff anymore and ultimately ended up leaving
27:38
that church I think on like good conditions with the church, but the broader
27:45
evangelical community completely ousted him. In fact, there's a famous interview with I
27:49
think it was Franklin Graham on Fox News that basically was like Rob Bell is
27:53
a heretic. Yeah, and so yeah, he ended up getting completely out
28:00
did from that entire world, uh for that, And yeah, that was
28:03
twenty eleven, but yeah, Carlton Pearson was probably a couple a decade or
28:07
so before even that all happened. In twenty eleven. I'm sure he was
28:10
in the nineties or two thousands when that happened. He was a proge of
28:12
or Roberts. He was also a singer. I mean he was like a
28:17
runner up for like a Grammy or something. He was a kind of a
28:21
soul singer, kind of like, oh, what was that guy's name that
28:26
used to kind of a black guy that sang, that was big, that
28:30
sang soul. I think all of them, Yeah, that's true. No,
28:36
not whittling it down at all. There was one guy that was He
28:40
didn't really sing. He always had a choir behind him, but he was
28:41
just like yeah, yeah, bra oh, I'll think of it in a
28:45
minute. Me hold on this minute. Kirk huh kurk Franklin. Yeah,
28:53
oh yeah, he didn't really sing. He just he's still doing great stuff.
29:00
Yeah he was. And so I think Carlton Pearson was a little bit
29:06
like that. And yeah he was. He was big, but he had
29:08
the courage. I mean, you know, he was coming from a little
29:11
different place than me. But you got to hand it to him to be
29:14
that big of a name and just say no, I don't believe this anymore.
29:18
Yeah, did you? Did you have you mentioned that, Like,
29:22
you had some concerns and questions around eternal damnation. Obviously hell, and then
29:30
obviously there were questions around race relations stuff that was going on in that time.
29:34
I would imagine there were some other kind of topics that came up that
29:38
you you had some questions around around some of the beliefs that you were told
29:42
you had to believe. Were there any Was there anybody that you were reading
29:48
or listening to at the time that you were like, wait, like,
29:52
I don't necessarily have to believe Christianity this way, Like I can actually think
29:56
about it this way. You know, like a lot of people now there
30:00
there's all these sort of what people would say is like progressive Christian people,
30:03
you know, people like Rob Bell who got ousted. You know, there
30:06
are those kind of people that wait, when they started having these questions,
30:10
they realized like, wait, there are other people that think kind of like
30:11
this. Was there anybody that you were reading or whatever that was sort of
30:17
along those lines that helped you kind of move out of that or think differently.
30:21
Yeah, I mean much later, even when we were missionaries in Taiwan,
30:25
I did a little bit more. I mean when I was in that
30:26
fundamentalism I just wasn't exposed to. I mean I wouldn't have known about these
30:32
people. I mean this was before the Internet, so I wouldn't have known
30:36
people it had these views. I read though a book that it's really not
30:41
a religious book, but there was a professor at Emory University named James Fowler.
30:48
Well, i'll tell you who the book I read that was most influential.
30:51
It was wasn't really a religious book, but there was a man named
30:55
m. Scott Peck and he wrote a best selling book called The Road Less
30:59
Travel and he talked a lot about grace, but it wasn't so much the
31:03
religious grace as it was just an approach to life that you accepted the beauty
31:10
of life and that kind of thing, and that really appealed to me.
31:14
And then he referenced a man by the name of James Fowler who had positive
31:18
that there are stages of faith, and this is what I eventually did my
31:22
doctoral studies on, but that people will go through stages. And that really
31:26
made sense to me because as a young seventeen eighteen year old boy, you
31:32
know, teenager, I looked at faith in a certain way. This everything
31:36
just like the preacher said, is right, it's right, it's right.
31:37
There's no gray area. But as you go on, things began to be
31:42
less certain, and like probably you've experienced and I have you girl to a
31:47
place in your life where you're comfortable without certainty. I can't be sure of
31:52
a lot of things, but I'm okay with that. But places like fundamentalism,
31:56
they sort of park right there on that early stage, like, you
32:00
know, everything's black and white. The preacher knows the answers. You just
32:05
need to do what he tells you, and they sort of build their whole
32:07
denominations around that. People change sometimes, churches and denominations don't, and not
32:13
all people do, but churches, you know, they don't know what to
32:17
do with people that grow out of their rigid belief systems. They don't have
32:22
an answer to that. Do you you seem like a really happy guy,
32:29
you know, do you have any animosity or resentment towards the fundamentalists and the
32:34
evangelicals that you were, you know, so ingrained in their culture before for
32:42
a long time I did. I mean, I was like, why didn't
32:44
I just go to college? And I was originally going to study music,
32:47
you know, and a lot of my down in Mobile, Alabama. The
32:51
best music college nearby was the University of Southern Mississippi, so a lot of
32:57
people went there, and I was like, why did I just do that,
33:00
you know? And why did I get involved in all this? And
33:02
later on I would be frankly embarrassed to tell people I went to Bob's Young
33:07
University. In fact, I still am to a degree because I don't want
33:08
anybody to think I'm like a racist or you know, so I'm like,
33:12
why all the all the colleges I could have gone to, how did I
33:15
get involved in that? Yeah? Speaking of which, uh, you know,
33:19
when you when you were getting your your job as a professor at places
33:23
like George Mason University today, did you put that on your resume Bob Jones
33:29
University? Sometimes I did. Sometimes I would just fudge a little bit and
33:32
call it Jones University on the resume, and hopefully they wouldn't ask any questions,
33:37
smart move, hopefully didn't actually read it right, because by then the
33:39
thing is, once you've got, you know, a higher degree from a
33:43
reputable place, and I had gotten my doctorate from the College of William and
33:45
Mary, which is pretty you know, pretty reputable around here. They don't
33:50
really look well else and most people don't know anything about it. I mean,
33:52
there was a time when it was in the news a lot, but
33:55
thankfully it's you know, it's kind of but yes, I was a of
34:00
that, but I've tried to accept that this is just a part of my
34:05
life. I mean, look, none of us is where we were born,
34:07
and frankly, the things that we get involved in, we might think
34:10
we decided it ourselves. But there's a great quote from your book here that
34:17
I think kind of lays out exactly what you just said there, and it's
34:22
it's a rabbi speaking. He says, I'm afraid I cannot show you the
34:24
path out of the forest, but I can show you many paths that do
34:29
not lead out. And I think that is that's exactly what you're talking about.
34:34
I found that I don't highlight and write stuff in my in books very
34:38
often, but that's one thing I did right. I did highlight because I
34:42
found that to be a very intriguing point. I tried my best to make
34:47
Christianity work. I mean I was trying to is in the latter years when
34:51
I was still a minister. I was like Look, even if I'm going
34:53
to be the most liberal Christian in town, at least I'll still be a
34:57
Christian. I kept trying to read all these liberal fields algience and everything,
35:00
and a lot of them have a lot of interesting things to say. But
35:04
I kind of came to the conclusion that if you have to like redefine every
35:07
aspect of Christianity in order to accept it, that's ridiculous. You know.
35:14
Yeah, I mean I feel like I'm a follower of the teachings of Jesus,
35:19
but not all of what Christianity. It's just too much and it's oppressive
35:24
really the thing going. But you know one thing that you said, I'm
35:29
a happy guy. I think I am, and I mean I've been able
35:31
in the last twenty years to do things that weren't allowed. I mean,
35:35
look, I play a jazz band, which jazz was considered from the devil.
35:42
Yeah, and you know those time signatures straight from the pits of hell.
35:47
Oh yeah. Some people have tried to discover what does jazz really mean.
35:52
The word jazz nobody knows. Some people have suggested it means sex,
35:57
you know, but you know, the some people think the father of modern
36:01
jazz or the father of jazz was Scott Joplin. You remember that he and
36:07
the music he played was called rag time. And the reason it was called
36:12
that was because to that point, music was very orderly. You know,
36:15
you had Mozart and Bach and all this, and things were done a certain
36:19
way. Well, his music was like he was playing something different in left
36:22
end and right hand and different things, and people are like, well,
36:24
that's all ragged, and then it began to catch on. Interestingly, there
36:30
are no recordings of Scott Jopplin that I understand, but we know exactly how
36:34
he played because of the player piano. The player piano could basically record how
36:39
a person played and play it back exactly that way. So that's the reason
36:44
that we know how he played. But yeah, I mean jazz is like
36:49
it's almost like you need to know classical music before you can mess with it,
36:53
and that's what jazz and rock does, right. Yeah, definitely,
36:58
Yeah, So that I just love. And you you asked me, did
37:04
you want me to talk about some of the albums? Yeah, should we
37:07
get into that? We can totally get into that. I mean some of
37:12
them were from a long time ago. But when I was learning, you
37:15
know, I was like in the ninth grade and I was learning to pay
37:17
the trombone. The premiere trombonist in those days. Tumpa said the greatest in
37:23
the world, but that's arguable, but he certainly was in the top ten.
37:29
Was a fellow named Irbie Green, and he was a New York trombonist,
37:31
and he back in the late sixties, he made a record where he
37:37
got the twenty best trombonists, all jazz players in New York City and made
37:43
an album and they had some great arrangers and it was called Irbie Green and
37:46
twenty of the World's Greatest. I mean, when I heard that, that
37:50
was like almost like an orgasm. When I heard that, that was the
37:55
most beautiful playing I'd ever heard in my life. Had a tromboner, as
38:00
they would say, right, oh my gosh, I'm telling you bone,
38:05
I will say that sometime and I'll get in trouble. That reminds me when
38:12
you know, when everybody was getting an email, i mean email address back
38:15
in the Yahoo days. You know, sure you kept trying things. You
38:21
know somebody already took it. Somebody already took it. Somebody already took it.
38:23
You remember those days, So there's a I don't know if any of
38:27
you knew anything about the trombone, but one of the ways you play vibrato
38:30
is you just shake the slide and that's called slide brado. And so I
38:34
chose slide the barbrado at Yahoo not yeah Yahoo, no aol al dot com,
38:42
and it accepted it, Oh my goodness. But I found people would
38:45
they wouldn't open them from me, and one guy said, I thought that
38:47
was some porno thing or something. Anyway, that's the one downside to playing
38:58
the bone, is you just like you can't get out of the sexual innuendos
39:02
of Probably I know, but I always used to joke like, either you
39:08
play in the band and when you were young in high school. No,
39:12
I was never smart enough and my parents wouldn't get me an instrument. So
39:15
I really wanted to play the drums, but I was supposed to have to
39:17
like play piano a couple of years prior to that, and I was like,
39:21
I'm not doing that. Yeah. Well, anyway, in band different
39:24
in those days, no girls played the drombone or the tube or anything like
39:29
that. But the other instruments, you know, the players seem to have
39:32
a certain type of personalities. And the trumpet players because they usually care the
39:37
melody. But they were the hot dogs, you know, they always had
39:38
to be Combone players were the mellow gosh you know. But yeah, I
39:43
always said, but we got the girls. You know, we were smooth.
39:45
You know, they're like, they're like the drummers of a rock band.
39:51
Yeah, drum The drummers were low lives. Sometimes Now the drummers for
39:58
jazz bands. Oh yeah, drummers are a different breed. I mean those
40:02
guys, you know, they they're a breed of their own. Oh yes,
40:07
I love jazz. But jazz musicians they don't even speak regular English.
40:14
Have you ever heard? You know a lot of the expressions that we use
40:16
now came from jazz. You take, oh yeah, a job as a
40:20
gig, A groove groove came from jazz groove. Your horn is your ex
40:27
you know, the place where you stay is your pad. A lot of
40:30
these things came from jazz. H Smack smack came from jazz as well.
40:37
Yeah yeah, And but if you still you talk to some of these hardcore
40:42
jazz musicians and like, what did you say? You know, they just
40:45
don't talk like regular people, but they can pick cuquets for sure. Yeah,
40:51
okay, so that's one Herbie Rbie Green and the twenty other best tromboners
40:55
in the world. The other album and I'm gonna say it was the first
41:00
five Chicago albums. Yeah, you're kind of cheating by by by picking the
41:06
first five all time, but we'll let you cheat. I mean they were
41:10
also good. Now, Number five. That was the last one. I
41:14
had Number five before I got involved in the rigid religion. And I think
41:17
they how many did they come out? Thirty something and eventually was a whole
41:22
bunch of them and some people think, oh, they did just give it
41:24
up, but they you know, they had the horns and that oh song
41:30
in particularly Woo, I mean those when they wrote a lot of that and
41:37
I heard one of them ask what did that mean? And twenty five or
41:40
six to twenty he said, Oh, we were like up all night,
41:43
you know, making up a song. And somebody said what time is it,
41:45
and other thans like it's like twenty five or twenty sixty four. You
41:51
know, that became the name of the song. I love singing that song
41:55
in my car and in karaoke every once in a while. Oh yeah,
42:00
another one that was in Chicago. Five was Saturday in the Park. That
42:04
was a good one. I've heard that one. So going to jazz.
42:07
One of the great great jazz albums was by Miles Davis called Birth of the
42:13
Cool the Greatest. Yeah, that might be. I mean, it's certainly
42:17
up there. That's a great, great album. And I'm I personally am
42:22
much more of a fan of Bitches Brew really that that album just like blows
42:28
my mind. That's also Miles Davis album. Huh yeah, yeah, yeah,
42:32
And that's like one of those. It's it's like a full it's a
42:36
full experience. I have it on vinyl, thankfully. And if you open
42:39
up the vinyl artwork and everything and you listen to the music while you're looking
42:44
at the vinyl artwork, it is it is. It's a it's another step
42:49
in the the experience. That is is it like every orgasm the part about
42:55
me saying the orgasm part, don't put that on the YouTube. I'll be
42:59
in trouble. That'll be Like, but the other album, we're not going
43:05
to get demonetized. I don't know about you, but we won't get demonetized.
43:12
The other one. That's one of the all time great innovators in music,
43:15
not just jazz, but jazz was Dave Brubek. Yes, and you
43:20
know he'd wrote take five and that. I mean there are other songs written
43:24
in five four time, but usually they're very awkward. That one just works.
43:30
It just works. I mean, you don't think you're listening to something
43:34
that's in an odd time signature and h So he was a real innovator,
43:37
but his band it was just a combo. He had a saxophone player named
43:42
Paul Desmond, and he's my favorite ulto sax player ever. He just has
43:45
such a sweet sound. Same here, same here. Yeah. So those
43:51
are because those could be the five I didn't mention the Chase. I didn't.
43:55
I mean I did have an album of the Chase, but just that
43:58
song. Literally when I hit Chase, squeal those trumpets and get it on,
44:02
I would get like hair standing up on my neck and all that,
44:07
all those things, yeah, and anything else that was standing up. Well
44:15
those are I mean albums are kind of now coming and more into the modern
44:19
area era. What did I like? You know, I've been into a
44:22
group the last few years and please don't laugh, but it's the Avitt Brothers.
44:28
Yes, you know that. Oh yeah, for sure, of course,
44:31
of course. Yeah. The head the song Headful of Doubt I think
44:35
is one of the most beautifully written songs of all time. Yeah, if
44:37
you've ever heard that song, but that's that song makes me cry almost Yeah.
44:44
I mean they're very philosophical, you know, and I like that.
44:49
Brian, have you ever heard of Fleet Fox's? No, if you like
44:52
Avett Brothers, I feel like you'd also like Fleet Foxes. Colin, do
44:55
you feel like that's about right? Like if you you're a fanily you'd be
45:00
of the other what I'm especially Fleet Foxes also feels like a very philosophical band.
45:07
There's a podcast that Colin and I listened to called Song Song Exploder,
45:10
and they get these musicians that like break down their songs to talk through them,
45:15
and most of them are like, yeah, it was like high one
45:19
night and blah blah blah blah blah, like Fleet Foxes that that the guy
45:23
their songwriter, that guy just like goes all in like yeah, it was
45:28
like thinking about this like one like history like historical event that I was watching
45:31
and it was just like he just is so nerdy about all of it.
45:36
And uh, I think you'd really appreciate Fleet Fox. Yeah, I look
45:38
up. Yeah, definitely. I love I mean, I grew up with
45:44
you know, during the seventies and eighties, and I love you know,
45:46
I love the folk music. I loved you know, Dylla and those people
45:52
that you know sang those Peter Paul and Mary. I mean, these songs
45:54
were really good. You know. Have you listened to any mo in jazz?
46:00
Not not as much, but you know, jazz is such a broad
46:05
term, but it is not as much modern. But I do try,
46:08
you know, I'm I'm open to any kind of music. Can I give
46:13
you a couple of suggestions of some of my favorites of some modern stuff.
46:16
Uh, there's a band called Snarky Puppy. It's a terrible band name,
46:22
but it's a great great uh a group of musicians. Yeah, absolutely,
46:28
next time. It's almost as bad as the band name tool. Yes,
46:32
no, Snarky Puppy is the band name. Another one is by a fantastic
46:37
artist that I think is doing some of the most innovative work ever. His
46:42
name is Camassi Washington. Oh, yeah, you showed me his stuff.
46:45
He's legit. That guy's legit. Yeah. Yeah, very very good stuff.
46:50
I think you'll enjoy it a lot. I'm gonna look. I thought
46:52
of something else that I was really into while my son was in high school
46:57
in college was the Cherry Pop and Daddies, Yeah, swing val stuff,
47:04
yeah Riot, you know, yeah, yeah, for sure. I love
47:10
I mean I love the music. And I went with my daughter to like
47:14
a concert of them one time, and that was interesting. I mean the
47:17
lead singer that thing was he would never stop moving and he was like wrung
47:22
out with sweat when it was over, and it was really interesting. But
47:25
the kids doing the swing dancing, I mean they it was such a happy
47:30
music, you know, yes, yeah, but they're sort of a They
47:34
were sort of ska in some ways, weren't they some ways the Sky and
47:37
like swing Revival was like kind of at the same time, and there was
47:40
certainly like bands that kind of crossed over a little bit. Yeah. Like
47:45
another one was Brian Set's Orchestra. Yeah, I forgot was the song.
47:51
They were real popular, but anyway, they had that ska swing feel to
47:54
them. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Did you ever listen to five
47:58
Iron Frenzy? There were there of Christian band still are if you're if your
48:06
son was like, you know, a fan of Christian music in the nineties,
48:08
he would for sure No, Five Iron Frenzy, Yeah, okay,
48:14
you know they were like they were like kind of the the prototypical Christian ska
48:20
band. In fact, a lot of the Christian sko bands were really you
48:23
know, a lot of like Christian music wasn't necessarily all that critically acclaimed in
48:30
comparison to the mainstream you know, like you know, similar artists, but
48:35
Christian ska very very typically was like as critically was as reputable as all the
48:44
mainstream stuff. So Christian Scott had like some level of influence on the mainstream
48:49
genre of ska. Like it's pretty it's pretty cool to see a Christian version
48:54
actually have like some sort of mainstream mainstream success and also like influence a lot
49:00
of bands that were not even in that Christian world. Yeah, it wasn't.
49:04
It wasn't Bono and what they sort of a Christian group start with.
49:07
Yeah, they had, they had some adjacent themes, I would say,
49:10
yeah, but they weren't necessarily marketed as a Christian man, Like, they
49:15
weren't gonna be sold in like LifeWay if you remember life. Yeah, yeah,
49:21
what is interesting how many of these what was that guy's name. I
49:24
mean this was ages ago now, but anyway, he was a Christian singer
49:30
back in the probably the sixties, that kind of cross job and had some
49:32
popular songs. And I heard him say one time how hateful some of the
49:38
Christian people had been to him when he did that. BJ Thomas. I'm
49:42
trying to think of Thomas. Okay, I was thinking you were thinking of
49:47
Norman Greenbaum. Okay, you're the guy. Yeah. Another one that did
49:54
that was the girl what was her name? They baby? Oh Amy Grant.
50:01
Yeah, yes, yeah, she definitely she definitely had crossover one hundred
50:07
percent. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Of course, a lot of the
50:12
black singers, you know, start out in church. I mean, you
50:15
know, it's funny how it's I know, it's it sounds sort of like
50:17
stereotypical to say, but most white people can't sing worth of food. You
50:22
know, if you're standing around seat in that anthem, it's pathetic, you
50:27
know, well you're around. It's true, it's no true. Black people
50:31
they can sing, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean they sing for
50:37
like an hour and a half during church. Yeah. Oh yeah yeah.
50:42
One time I had a client, that black guy, great guy. He
50:45
married a white woman. And he said, so he started going to her
50:49
church. He said, I like white church because you get out in time
50:52
to go home and watch football. Yeah, they didn't have to do he
51:00
didn't have to do vocal runs for like an hour and a half. Yeah,
51:07
I mean that's true. They once. They even my son now my
51:10
youngest son and his wife go to a Catholic church. But there's one in
51:14
Washington, d C. That's sort of black Catholic church, which is not
51:19
that common, but they even do that. They go into the afternoon.
51:22
Really yeah, heck yeah, yeah, that's great. I can't beat it.
51:30
That's awesome. Brian, what do you what do you want to plug?
51:32
Obviously The Long Surrender is out, uh and people can buy it.
51:37
Where do you want people to buy it? Where do you want people to
51:39
get connected with you? It's it's available on Amazon and I have it under
51:43
my phone name Brian Rush McDonald. And you know, I think it's a
51:47
story if people are I have a lot of questions about their faith, or
51:52
they've kind of left it but they're feel ashamed or the you know, the
51:57
it is kind of a companion to you, like you not alone, you
52:00
know, And I mean I tried to say what it was really like.
52:02
And I feel like there was a man who wrote a book years ago that
52:07
said, when we talk about religion, let's be honest. That's something that
52:10
most people aren't honest about. There we are, and when you are honest,
52:15
some people get really upset with you, particularly down in the South where
52:20
I'm from. I mean, if you're a good person, you're a religious
52:22
person. Yeah, if you're not religious, how could you be a good
52:27
person? And I think I was sort of deluded thinking that, oh,
52:30
people will read this and they'll understand the poems I had and the problems.
52:37
Well, the people who understand are the people who are on the fringe.
52:39
They have always had problems with it. But the faithful they don't even read
52:45
it. They just read the synopsis and said, well, you need to
52:46
get right with God. You need to read the more. And that gets
52:50
me, Well, you need to read the Bible more. I think I've
52:52
read it more than all of them. I read it. I know it
52:58
very well, and it's like, you know, I think Mark Twain was
53:00
quoted, who knows if you really said this, But somebody said, doesn't
53:05
it bother you the things that you don't understand this in the Bible, and
53:09
he was go to saying, no, it's the things I understand that bother
53:13
me. I mean, there's some really troubling things. Leave it to Mark
53:20
Twain to just synthesize it perfectly, right. Yeah, yeah, so thank
53:24
you guys. I mean I was thinking, well, I don't know if
53:27
I've got anything to say for their program, but I do know that a
53:30
lot of have you seen a lot of these things, you know, Facebook
53:32
groups and so forth called like ex evangelical Oh yeah, Mason especially is huge
53:38
in that world. Yeah really yeah. You know. Now, unlike a
53:44
lot of these people that are in these deconstructing, some of these kids were
53:47
at homeschooled. They went to Christian schools their whole life, and that is
53:52
really hard to get away because they don't really know anything else. I was
53:58
lucky that I went to public schools. Parents weren't religious, So even though
54:01
I got deep into it, I knew that there was had to be something
54:05
else right, right, And so a lot of these kids that I say
54:09
kids there, they're adults now, but they're angry, and I don't blame
54:13
them. You know, they did either of you go to get it grew
54:16
up in some of those kind of like ultra Christian environments. Neither one of
54:22
us were like homeschooled or went to like Christian school. I guess I went
54:25
to a Christian college, but yeah, but we were we were sort of
54:30
like you where we grew up in that you know, Christian environment, and
54:34
both of our all of our both you know, Colin and nice parents were
54:36
both very deeply religious. So yeah, we both definitely felt that intensity.
54:43
But we also like didn't go to like a Christian college, or we didn't
54:46
go to Christian school, or we weren't homeschooled. Yeah, yeah, So
54:51
it was interesting because the whole Christian college, well, the Christian school movement
54:55
in the Christian colleges, they wanted to keep people away from other influences,
55:00
right, And that's what makes it, Like you asked, did I read
55:05
other authors back? Not back when I was associated with Bob Jones and all
55:08
that. They I mean, they wouldn't have allowed those books to be sold
55:12
in their bookstore or in be in their library, right Right. So that's
55:17
what's not just fundamentalist Christianity. But you take some of the cults and I
55:22
would say that fundamentalist Christianity is a cult in a lot of ways. They
55:25
keep their people. In fact, they discourage the people from listening to other
55:30
people's viewpoint, Like if somebody tries to explain to them why they don't believe
55:35
they they the leaders say, don't listen to that because that will rock your
55:38
faith. And it's interesting where it goes even beyond just religion, and it
55:44
also moves into the political realm and into like the social life, like you're
55:49
not allowed to have anything but like a traditional nuclear family and all that stuff
55:53
too. It's beyond just Christianity and instead of the beatles, that's right,
56:00
that's yeah, that's true. And the thing is what makes it so.
56:06
Then Devia says, if you're in one of these really closed off groups,
56:10
that the things that could help you see your way out are forbidden to you.
56:16
Right, Yeah, so it's really hard to I read an interesting you
56:22
know that church in Kansas called the Westborough Baptist you know, they're the ones
56:25
that protest about gay's and all that. One of the children defected from that.
56:31
She's written, Yeah, I've seen this before. I've seen this story.
56:34
It's really interesting because they were such a closed system in fact that church
56:38
was really all just one family. They came from this father who had a
56:43
bunch of kids, and then they all had a bunch of kids, and
56:45
you know, I mean when they were real little, they took them out
56:49
the whole sciences that said God hates fags and all that kind of stuff.
56:52
But this girl that wrote the book, I'll think of her name in a
56:55
minute, but she became their social media person and she would take the criticism
57:02
that came on social media. And there was this one guy that was patient
57:07
and kind but firm about criticizing their church. And I'll make a long story
57:12
short, she left the church and marry that guy. Wow mm hmm,
57:20
yeah, yeah, that one, that one piece of outside influence that was
57:23
able to speak to her directly, right, Yeah. I mean, first
57:27
all she gave him was the pat answers why he was wrong. So that
57:30
kind of speaks to us, like it seems like people say, oh,
57:32
no, you're you're, you're on the wrong path, You're you're you know,
57:35
you're gonna go to tradition and whatever. But they're saying that in the
57:40
defense of where they are. But that doesn't mean they might not be thinking
57:45
about it too. Sure. Yeah, well, and and to me,
57:47
that gives me a lot of hope. Like, you know, as much
57:50
as I feel discouraged about what's going on in the world, to know that
57:54
somebody could be a child in the Westboro Baptist Church, yeah, in her
58:00
life is able to change for the better. That gives me a lot of
58:04
hope that all of us, you know, wherever we're at in our lives,
58:07
we can change for the better too. And so you know, whether
58:09
where somebody is deep into fundamentalist Christianity as the Westboro Baptist Church and we change,
58:15
or wherever we're at in our own lives right now, like, we
58:17
can change. And that gives me a lot of hope we can change.
58:21
And as a therapist, sometimes people will say to me, well, people
58:24
don't change, you're wasting your time being a therapist. Well, I say,
58:28
well, I hope you're wrong. I hope they do change. I
58:31
believe people can change. I do yeah, yeah, I mean, we
58:35
see a lot of a lot of people that have done a lot of bad
58:37
things in the world. And to know that even that is not the only
58:42
thing that that person had, you know, that's not the final word for
58:45
that person. That they can still change. That gives me a lot of
58:49
hope. Yeah, and I think a lot of the I mean, I
58:52
know a lot of the things you see on Facebook from the deconstruction groups and
58:55
all that are kind of you know, snarky and about you know, Christiana,
59:00
And I mean I get it. You know. It feels great to
59:02
be able to say those things, but I don't know how much good that
59:07
does to convince the other side. Really. Yeah. Yeah, well,
59:13
Brian, thank you so much for for chatting about the book. Just so
59:15
exciting to hang out with you and h Yeah, just been it's been really
59:20
great and hopefully the book is doing well. And yeah, and you guys
59:23
are great. I appreciate you. You're really nice. I appreciate what you're
59:27
doing. And I know it's a big commitment to keep a podcast going,
59:30
So kudos to you and keep it up. Well. Thank you appreciate it. Yeah,