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Welcome to the Queer Theology Podcast. I’m Brian G Murphy. And I’m father Shannon, T l Kearns. We’re the co-founders of Queer Theology dot com and your hosts from Genesis, revelation. The Bible declares good news to LGBTQ plus people and we want to show you how Tuning in each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness, and how they can enrich one another. We’re glad you’re here. Hello, hello. Hello. As you can tell from the title of this episode, we are coming to you today with another Throwback episode. There’s just so many gems that we want to share some more of them with you. And this one in particular we picked because it touches upon some themes that we’ve been seeing a lot of inside of the sanctuary community and the discussions that folks have been having, the questions that they’ve been asking, the ways in which they’ve been responding to stuff that’s going on in the world and in their lives, as well as some of the comments we’ve gotten on our Instagram, some emails that we’ve received recently that this sort of like idea of hell or disappointing God or being punished because of something we’ve done wrong looms large over many of us.

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And that is true for folks that even into intellectually don’t believe that there’s a hell or intellectually don’t believe that God is punishing them. Still, we are finding that sometimes there’s like some lingering fear going on, or just like not sure how to respond to people. If there’s a well-meaning parent or friend or uncle who is like really concerned about the fate of your eternal soul that can sort of like question of like, is God mad at me? Is God gonna punish me now or after I die? Is something that like looms large for folks? And so we wanted to highlight this series that we did a few years ago called like Scary Things that You may have Learned in Church. It’s a four part series. We’re going to air the first episode for you right now as a Throwback.

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If you would like to listen to the remainder of that series, you can go to Queer Theology dot com slash Scary Things and we’ll have them all linked in one place for you. There. Also, inside of our Learning Community hub, we have an A place to discuss the podcast. I mean, these episodes also live in there. That’s in the free for all area. So if you would like to discuss this episode of the one other ones that you listen to with us, with other folks who are also listening to it, going over to my greati com and create a free account while you’re there, you can also sign up for Spiritual Study Hall and or Sanctuary Collective if you want to get access to the community or get access to sort of our like OnDemand library resources. It’s sort of like a masterclass for spiritual nerdery and sacred storytelling and things like that.

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So, and it also obviously supports this work. So without further ado, here is the first episode in the Scary Things series. We are entering another special series and this is about Scary Things that you might have been taught in church. We’re gonna cover four parts over the next four episodes, the Rapture and End Times Satan Hell and Eternal Damnation. And it’s, yeah, it’s a little bit inspired by the format is gonna be a little bit inspired by the, you’re wrong about podcasts if you’ve ever heard that. And so for each episode, either Shea or I will be sort of like lead me the other through the various Scary Things we and you at home might have been taught at church.

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And so today we’re gonna start with the rapture in the end times. Shay, this is your episode, so take it away. Oh, I’m so excited. I feel like anyone who has listened to this podcast for more than a hot second knows that I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about the rapture. And so, but I would love to hear from you, like I grew up in a very specific tradition. Brian, you grew up in a, an evangelical Presbyterian church, so a a bit of a more mainline tradition. And so I would love to know like what were you taught about the rapture? Like is, was that even a thing for your church growing up? Yeah, I don’t think that the rapture was super a thing that was taught from the pulpit or in Sunday school.

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It definitely like wasn’t emphasized in like official church channels. Right? But I was also like, I was evangelical Presbyterian, so it was kind of this like, how are you both right? It was like double predestination, but also you have to go tell all of your friends about Jesus. And so, but the rapture was kind of like something that like generally was floating around in the ether. And at some like the end times or the left behind books or something that I never read, we definitely didn’t read as like a group, but that, that I had heard of, knew about people talked about.

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And so a lot of the sort of my exposure to end times teaching was much more sort of like speculative amongst my peers rather than something that was drilled in from the church leadership. And I remember, but I must have internalized it because I remember talking to my parents who converted to evangelicalism as teenagers And I was like, listen, I just have a, I have a feeling on my heart, God has put it on my heart that Jesus is gonna come back before any of the four of us die. So we don’t have to worry about death and dying and being separated because like, I just know, I just really believe that Jesus is gonna come back and we’re all gonna get to go straight to heaven and skip the dying part.

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And so, I dunno, like I think that I more so than being like magically suped up, I think I was maybe more along the lines of that like Jesus would come down first. Hmm. And like what, what if anything were you taught about either how the world would end, what would happen when Jesus came back? Like what was kind of in the, in the zeitgeist about that? Yeah, we didn’t talk about it that much. I mean, I think that like something about Jesus coming down, like I have like vivid imageries, like maybe he would be riding a horse or a chariot or I like a unicorn.

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I do know that like when I was a kid, I used to see like when I would like, you know how sometimes like rays of light will sort of like poke through the clouds and like there’s enoughness that you can actually see the sun beam. I’d be like, oh, do you think? Like, do you think Jesus is about to come down over there? But I, so it wasn’t like volcanoes exploding or mass wart. It was like, oh, I think I’ll just sort of likes descend. And I, I do know that I think, I think it Christian, like this type of Christian talk often points to images from Revelation. I have this idea that that’s where a lot of this end times and or rapture imagery comes from. And so like there’s like something about the mark of the beast, something about 6, 6 6, like maybe something about like war, but it wasn’t like, I didn’t have like one specific cohesive narrative.

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And then I also was like, they were like, there was, I think it was Carmen like Carmen song being the champion, like the is also sort of like part of that whole sort of like zeitgeist. We are gonna put a link to the champion music video in the show notes because if you did not grow up with Carmen, there is no adequate way for us to explain this man to you nor to explain his, and I’m using air quotes music to, to you. So I would just like go watch video. I would Have your mind, I would blast the champion And I would just kind of like, not dance, but just sort of like, you can’t see me.

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I like, like I was a fighter, right? Like sort of like bouncing around the room, like imagining like Satan in the ring gonna get killed by Jesus the warrior. Yes. My church youth group of course led by me did a human video to the champion and many others of course. So, you know, I grew up very much in a rapture tradition, which is interesting and we will talk more about that in a moment. You know, I very much believe that the rap