I recently had a chance to interview the rock n roll, full gospel, rollerskating at midnight, suicide crisis hotline answering, renegade DJ himself: the legendary JM Blaine. You can read that interview on TheNervousBreakdown.com HERE. His new memoir Midnight, Jesus and Me may just save me yet.

Here’s a clip:

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…So there’s this great scene in your book where two mental patients are battling it out.  One believes he’s God and one thinks he’s Satan.  Can you describe that scene?

When you put two people in the same place—one who is sure they are God and another who believes they’re the devil—you’re gonna have some apocalypse.   That particular story came from my first few months working in the mental hospital.  “God” was this stumpy little guy with porkchop sideburns and “Satan” was a tall skinny Tom Waits-meets-James Hetfield looking dude.  Here I am this kid with a beard and hair halfway down my back, and when I get between them “God” points to me and says: This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.  WHAM, Tom Waits Satan bashes me with a chair.  I hustle him to seclusion and… man, this sounds ridiculous.

…And chocolate milk all over the glass.

Lot a psych ward fights ended with chocolate milk on the glass.  But really, that scene is just typical.  Just another night on psych.

READ THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE

There’s the naughty church girl shot who has clearly been caught indulging in her guilty pleasure:

And then there’s the happy pair reading together in a stronghold of sin, the No Name Bar in Boulder:

I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but I will be praying for them both. And…to help assuage their guilt and perhaps to right them on their course, they will each be getting a $50 gift certificate to the indie bookstore of their choice (because my publisher – Emergency Press – ROCKS…and cares about their souls almost as much as I do, of course).

Congratulations Juliette Bartsch and David Mans!

Honorary mentions go to: Emilio Suarez and Sal Devincenzo

So…what is “All of the Sin, None of the Guilt Week”? Excellent question. Glad you asked. For this week – and THIS WEEK ONLY – Amazon is letting Devangelical go for $1.99. Cool, huh?

And to do this right, I think we need a contest. (Because there is no better friend to “sin” than “peer pressure” – right?) So here it is:

THE ALL OF THE SIN, NONE OF THE GUILT CONTEST

Take a pic of you reading your copy (ebook or hard copy) of Devangelical somewhere awkward or funny (i.e. in church, while making out, smoking, drinking from the bottle, etc.). Winner gets a free hard copy to give to a friend. Send to: erae[at]thenervousbreakdown[dot]com -

Here’s the Amazon $1.99 ebook link.

Hurry – ’cause the whole thing expires March 31st, 2013!

]]> http://devangelical.com/2013/03/25/all-of-the-sin-none-of-the-guilt/feed/ 0 http://devangelical.com/2013/01/27/devangelical-interviews-stephanie-drury-from-stuff-christian-culture-likes/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=devangelical-interviews-stephanie-drury-from-stuff-christian-culture-likes http://devangelical.com/2013/01/27/devangelical-interviews-stephanie-drury-from-stuff-christian-culture-likes/#comments Sun, 27 Jan 2013 15:00:22 +0000 erika http://devangelical.wp1.glib.net/?p=1039 Stephanie Drury from Stuff Christian Culture Likes talks with Devangelical! As she puts it, “Christian culture is funny because it doesn’t have much (if anything) to do with Christ himself.” I love this girl. Not only is she wicked witty, but she has a good point. Here’s the interview below:

If you were in a beauty pageant, what question would you want somebody to ask you and how would you answer it?

I would want someone to ask me how badly do I want to get off that stage and I would answer “pretty bad.”

What is your favorite thing that Christian Culture likes?

My favorite thing that Christian culture likes has probably got to be the shared married Facebook account. It’s just so freaky and makes the individuals seem like they don’t have their own identity. In that way it’s such a picture of the de-identification Christian culture seems to work in people.

You have a reputation of sort of (ahem) stirring the pot in the evangelical community. What’s the best “shame on you” note you’ve gotten from somebody you’ve offended?

I kinda like it when I get emails that say I won’t be laughing when people are burning in hell because of my blog, I’ve gotten at least 4 of those. But my very favorite shaming email was probably when someone wrote that they know I’m really a gay man and am intent on promoting the gay agenda through my blog. I wish that guy would write me again.

On Stuff Christian Culture Likes…Why do you do it?

It’s a giant outlet for me to deal with the ridiculousness in Christian culture. I never had any place to share all my frustrations until the advent of the internet, and now I have a whole community who can say with you “yeah, that has nothing to do with Jesus and is actually kind of the opposite of what he was about.” Having people to process with and talk about this stuff that’s always bugged me has been huge.

Do you consider yourself part of the emergent movement or somewhere outside of it? And…do you feel women have much of a voice?

I feel I’m part of the emergent church in that I attend a church that is always trying to emerge really thoughtfully into what will make us more whole. I’ve always considered the emergent movement to have those sentiments but I’m not super clear on the definition. It’s hard to align myself with a church movement because they’re all whores but they’re all my mother, in a way. Sorry Augustine for butchering that but you get what I mean.

I think the emergent church really thinks they are equal-opportunist and they believe they are egalitarian but if you look at the percentage of minorities who have a platform within it, it doesn’t come close to being equal to the straight white dudes. And when your identity is tied to being progressive, you tend to panic when someone points out ways you’re actually not progressive. It’s actually gotten ugly. All in the name of Jesus, supposedly. Yay church!

I saw recently where you got into it with Tony Jones over his attitude toward women on his site. Care to explain?

As I see it, he asked why women don’t comment much at his blog and women answered, saying that we don’t feel it is a receptive forum to ideas or exchanges, and he really, really didn’t like that answer. It was disappointing because I had initially felt hope that we would all get to talk about this glaring problem of markedly fewer women speaking up in theological forums like run by men. That was really difficult. That difficulty is definitely informed by having grown up in the Church and being conditioned not to step out of what I was told is my place. I’m hopeful somehow that female voices will gain more leverage in Christendom, and I don’t really have a good reason to be, but I guess that’s what faith is about — this weird, inexplicable hope in the face of so many factors that seem to be against what we’re hoping for.

Evangelical Christianity and sex. Go.

Evangelicals are terrified of their own humanity. I think that about sums it up.

You grew up a preacher’s kid. How are you raising your kids differently? And…how does your family react to your online persona?

I’m raising my kids in the Church but I’m very deliberate about telling them to believe what resonates with them and to listen to their intuition. That’s where the spirit speaks to us and I think most people raised in church have a difficult time connecting to their intuition when they are adults. I want my kids to hone in on theirs while they are still children and are still curious and hopefully that will be something they give a lot of credence to when they’re grown up.  My parents haven’t spoken to me in many years, long before I started Stuff Christian Culture Likes, so I don’t know if they’re even aware of my online presence. None of family really says anything about my online persona, now that I think about it. I don’t think they really know much of what I do.

What the fuck is your problem with hobbits and wizards?

I just hate them the way I hate earthquakes and tornadoes and dog farts. I wish I had a good answer but that’s all I can tell you.

Confession: I have not actually met Erika Rae. As a journalist and as a former Evangelical, I feel the need to state that up front. Evangelicals possess a finely honed sense of guilt that, when we stray too far from The Truth, is assuaged only by public acknowledgement of our wrongs. We are similar in that way to Catholics, though we are loathe to admit this because many Evangelicals consider Catholics to be Pagans. I realize with mild surprise that I have written “we” instead of “they,” thus counting myself among the fold, again, though I left more than three decades ago.

Erika and I first discussed the entrenched cultural identity we share as former Evangelicals over the phone last summer, when she interviewed me regarding my book Holy Ghost Girl. We spoke again last week via phone and email about her new memoir, Devangelical, and about what it means to grow up in the thrall of an apocalyptic worldview.

There are differences in our stories….   [Click here to read the whole article on The Rumpus.]

Secret Youth Group Handshake: Brother JM Blaine Talks to Sister Erika Rae

You can also buy it here. It is perfect (PERFECT, I tell you), for that sassy little Christmas gift you’ve been searching for. Better buy three.

A HUGE thanks to all of my friends and family who came to the launch party on Friday night at Sherpa’s Restaurant in downtown Boulder.  Thanks also to those of you who brought food for the Food Bank. We filled a nice sized basket together. I am so happy to know all of you, angels and demons all.

On with the photos!

Thank you Brad Listi for talking with me about Devangelical on Other People! I think we cover just about everything from demons to adderall to sex to chickens. The last two have nothing to do with each other.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE.

And while you’re at it, check out Brad Listi’s newest book, Board, co-authored with Justin Benton. 

Board is an experimental work of nonfiction literary collage, the contents of which are derived entirely from the comment boards at The Nervous Breakdown.