Content warning for folks who are sensitive to conversations around religion and religious harm.

Welcome to our first September episode. Listen in to hear me interview my friend, Adam. Adam grew up in a community (Shady Valley) within Johnson County (my hometown) and discusses his experience in a particular denomination of Christianity known as the Church of Christ. He discusses his experience of hearing a particular sermon in which the way he empowered himself as a youth—reading—came into conflict with his experience of belonging in the church. Listen in to hear about how he began to ask questions and how he was empowered to question. 

Adam discusses the ways in which reading empowers him and how access to a variety of perspectives helped him to sort through his faith and engaging with considering that what he was raised to think and believe might not be the “right” answer. Adam and I discuss these topics with full knowledge of both of our vantages of privilege—his as a cisgender, white man and mine as a cisgender, white woman. You will hear me struggle a bit as a queer woman during this conversation, y'all and I consider it a testament to my friendship that I could safely hear his story. 

For some info about the county Adam & I are from, census data 2019, about 17,700   humans. 95.9% white, 11.6% of people in Johnson County have a Bachelor’s degree or higher. Median household income is $36,000, Land area is 298 miles. Here’s a map: https://www.mapsofworld.com/usa/states/tennessee/counties/johnson-county-map.html

If you want to connect to Adam, you can email him at fletchera1986@gmail.com 

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Song credits for "I deserve to be here" to the band Tellios.
Image credits to Adam Fletcher