I’m going to start posting my podcast, Chapel Probation, here. Below isn’t the transcript, but it’s the general script I used. I’m going to try to take advantage of Descript and Squadcast merging to generate a transcript of my episodes here because they make for compelling reading as well as listening. And you can decide if you want to listen or read. Options!
Greetings, reprobates. I’m Scott Okamoto, and I am excited to begin the 5th season of Chapel Probation. I tell this story all the time, but I started this podcast in January of 2022 as a supplement to the book I was writing that became Asian American Apostate: Losing Religion and Finding Myself at an Evangelical University. I knew I had way more stories to tell than pages of a single book, so I got in touch with people from my days at APU who I knew had some shit to say. And boy did they.
Now, did I know how to do a podcast? No. I did not. I spent around 20 hours on the first two episodes, trying to figure out audio and how to put together a cohesive episode. I was learning by doing. But I knew the stories were compelling, and even though I was not great at interviewing, editing, mixing sound and music, or promoting, I felt good that these stories were out there. If 50 people had listened, I would have been grateful. I was thinking around 10 or 12 episodes would make for a nice limited series that would lead up to my book. It turned out 14 episodes would be season 1 and then a break to write the book after I signed a publishing deal with our beloved Lake Drive Books.
But something cool happened. It wasn’t just APU folks who were listening. People from all over the country started writing to me, telling me they enjoyed Chapel Probation and would I ever have people on from other Christian schools. I didn’t realize how much of a niche I had stumbled into. I got messages from then-current students in Christian schools, including APU. I heard from professors, staff, and administrators who loved what I was doing.
From that point on, Chapel Probation would not be an APU-centered podcast. It would become what it is today. Now, I’m not exactly sure what it is today, but in general, we shit-talk Christian higher ed. Evangelicals have no business running anything to do with education, so for them to have accredited colleges and universities is ridiculous. Especially today. They don’t believe in science. There are professors and administrators who do believe in science, but those people give equal respect to those who do not. And they are far outnumbered. The world is either 6000 if you’re a young earth evangelical (and let’s be honest, most are) or 4.5 billion years old. One of those numbers is off by 4.5 billion years. In academia, we would say those numbers are not within a margin of error.
Evangelical schools at best debate whether being gay is a sin and more commonly just state that it is. They debate the role of women and whether they can teach men. In 2025 the issue is not settled for them. Sex is bad in every sense whether it be before marriage or during. It’s bad before marriage because it’s somehow a sin, even though the bible does not say this, and it’s bad during marriage because Christian men tend to be dipshits who center their needs. See the Horny Chapel for more on this.
But I’m here today to talk a little about the state of the deconstruction world. When I started all this in 2022, we were all Ex-Vangelicals thanks to Blake Chastain’s hashtag. Social media being what it is, subsequent generations of exvangelicals have come and gone with the term deconstruction taking over. Fine. It’s a good term. It’s even an academic term.
Whatever we are calling ourselves, past, present, and future, we are all seeking connection. Notice I didn’t say community. People do say they want community, but I get the sense that a lot of people coming out of Christianity don’t actually know what healthy community is. Like the term “love,” it can mean a lot of things. There’s the community we live in geographically. There’s a group of people all into the same thing or things. There’s fandom of celebrities and yeah, deconstruction gurus and pastors, which if you’ve read my Substack, I’m not a big fan of. And then there are the people who you can count on for life support.
As Christians, our interactions with other people centered on our idea of Christianity. God/Jesus/Holy Spirit were at the top or in the center of everything, so our gathering was focused on our adherence to Christian rules and regulations. Our wellbeing was only considered in the context of these rules and regulations and how dutifully we followed them. I used to think it was cool that Jesus said that where two or more are gathered in his name, he is there. Now I think fuck. How insidious. Because even if you’re just getting coffee or a beer with one friend, Jesus is gonna butt in and you know what that means. Rules and regulations. And these days probably praise for Trump and capitalism. Two Christians gathering can’t talk about their actual intuitions or their hopes and dreams that aren’t directly tied to Jesus. They can talk about their “struggles” but only in the context of their, you guessed it, adherence to the rules and regulations. And these are the people who always say it’s not a religion; it’s a relationship. And all those rules and regulations vary greatly, depending on which church you go to.
If you’re still with me, Christians generally don’t know how to have healthy human connections. Even when they do something nice, it’s only because Jesus suffered and died on a cross for them. There is no goodness in their heart to draw upon to produce good deeds. And if they claim a “goodness” it’s not because of them. It’s only Jesus.
My good friend, Atsuko Okatsuka has this to say about all this:
Now take this cult-minded human out of the church. This person has deconstructed or begun deconstructing the toxic theologies and social rituals of today’s Christian church. Great.
Actually, not great, because this person doesn’t know how to be in relationship with another human, much less how to be in a community of like-minded people. This person is programmed to not trust things like intuition, empathy, truth or beauty. Can this person learn these things? Of course. But it’s a long hard road to human redemption after Christianity.
The New Evangelicals
I will start by saying that I am not advocating for anyone being cancelled or run out of town or crucified. Everyone has a place on the internet. I hope Tim Whitaker, the person, is taking some time to reflect, heal, reconcile, and grow.
I also hope the victims find healing and closure for what they’ve been through. In a perfect world, this wouldn’t be such a public spectacle, but that’s why I’m saying this today. TNE is a non-profit entity putting out “content.”
About a month ago, I heard about the situation with the New Evangelicals. Full-disclosure, I’ve met Tim Whitaker, I’ve talked to him a couple of times for a few minutes. He seems a decent fellow with a good heart. I don’t think he thinks all that much of me, if he ever thinks of me, a basic nobody in his world. Which is fine. I have friends and family in my community. I didn’t weigh in on the whole thing because I didn’t have anything to add. But I have observed and thought about it all.
When “Me Too” and “Church Too” happened, those of us on the left side of things were told to “believe women.” Which was mostly fine. I understood it to mean that women historically were not believed. Often they were abused, completely ignored, and cast off as casualties of patriarchy and misogyny. The movement was a correction and a needed one. But of course we don’t believe all women any more than we believe all men. I don’t believe MTG when she cries foul. Again, the point was to listen and regard women as equal to men. At its extreme, some even suggested that women were actually always right when they claimed assault or abuse. The attitude was that a few innocent men condemned by the movement was fair price to pay for the thousands of years of damages done to women by men. There was some of this in the TNE aftermath.
So when a woman brought forth her complaint against Tim, (and to be clear, we aren’t talking about sexual assault. We are talking about toxic male rage) the deconstruction “community” immediately cleaved into two angry sides. Well, two and a half.
One side, following the “Me Too” framework immediately accepted the woman’s claims and saw her as the victim in the GRACE report. Side note: The GRACE report ended up being just like the bible in that people could read it and come vastly different conclusions. This side contained a wide range of people, from broken-hearted fans of TNE to those who already didn’t like TNE and/or Tim, himself. The other side had devoted fans of TNE who could not imagine any wrongdoing by a beloved social media influencer.
The One and a half side: The Inner Circle
I appreciated and felt deeply the support for Tim offered by people I know like Janice Lagata and Ashlee Thomas. They are close friends of Tim’s and of course they know who he is in the context of their friendship. They know he isn’t a perfect person. They see his flaws and publicly correct him when they feel he misspeaks or doesn’t understand something. But they can be in relationship with him, even as they acknowledge mistakes he has made. Their view is that Tim may have made mistakes, but we don’t know him like they do, so…fuck off. That’s how I interpreted it, anyway. And it’s true. I don’t know the guy.
The other part of this one-and-a-half side is the part I’m most bothered by. The New Evangelicals has constantly referred to its fans as a “community.” It has addressed the content-clicking fans as its “community.” The public-facing board members doing damage control have talked earnestly about healing the “community.”
And before I continue, I want to make it clear that TNE produces good content. It’s based around an alpha Straight White man, but for what it is, it’s good. It helps tens of thousands of people recognize the harms done by Christian churches and Christian culture. Great.
The Tone
That said, the board members looked right into their ring-lit cameras, smiled, and projected a happy, pleasant confidence that could be a training film for Frito Lay if someone ever found a severed finger in a bag of Cheetos. In the aftermath of what was certainly a troubling turn of events, they acted happy to have this conversation, which some took as patronizing. They acted like this happens all the time and they were thrilled to hear all the comments. They made promises because, well, they had to. They used the corporate damage control playbook because they are a content creation non-profit. It’s hundreds of thousands of followers are its audience. It’s market share. For better or for worse, TNE is seen as the guiding light for life after evangelical Christianity by hundreds of thousands of people.
One of the board members doing the PR damage control posts assured everyone that after a few days off for Tim, they were “going to get him back out there” making content because that’s what people are here for. It felt like they were referring to a church pastor. And it definitely felt like they had one eye on the all-important algorithm. Which of course they did. The whole point of an organization like TNE is producing content consistently. With each day Tim wasn’t posting, they were slipping from the algorithm.
Again, there’s nothing wrong with being a content creation machine. I just wonder if it’s fair to call itself a community.
In my piece on Brian Recker, I talked about how the messenger can become more important than the message. I think Tim Whitaker and the New Evangelicals have achieved that. In the threads on the TNE Facebook group discussing the GRACE Report, the TNE followers did not disappoint.
Chukk Anderson- “His voice is too important to be sidelined now”
Also in the thread were comments confirming that TNE is a brand and a company.
Gloria Neal Pope said, “I’ve seen this happen in the startup world. A tech company sells out its founders. But usually when that happens it doesn’t last much longer following. I see this as the beginning of the end. Hopefully Tim can move on, keep going, and grow from the experience. Mainly, just keep personal and professional boundaries tight and he should be better moving forward.”
So Tim is both an important voice and TNE is similar to a startup. Pope seems to be implying that changing the branding, in this case Tim’s face, will jeopardize the popularity of the organization. This is probably true.
The deconstruction world can get the exact same kind of content in a lot of places, but by and large it has chosen to get it from a few White people. But let’s not kid ourselves. The content can be found elsewhere. It’s just that Tim’s smiling face, his blueberry coffee (which I do like), and his on-camera persona is preferred by most deconstruction people. They want someone they can relate to and feel comfortable with. And Tim (along with Brian Recker and April Ajoy) is it.
And so we’re back to me and Chapel Probation. There aren’t many Asian American voices in the deconstruction space. I’m honored to be here and share space with friends who do this work. After season 2, I was actually concerned that my platform was growing too quickly, but my concerns weren’t warranted. Engagement with Chapel probation has been in steady decline. My book sold fewer copies than I have followers. BIPOC guests typically get about 20-30 percent fewer listens with a few exceptions. Nate Nakao’s BJU episode is one of the top-3 episodes. But I know I’m not in any position for growth in this space. You need to have one foot firmly still in christianity and you need to be White. Or at least you need to not be Japanese American. Or you just need to not be me: Scott Okamoto. Which is fine.
I could just stop doing the podcast and stop writing about deconstruction, and nothing would change. My friend, Holly in Atlanta, would be sad because she listens every Tuesday on her runs, but there are dozens of other people doing this work. Although there aren’t many Asian Americans doing it, but that’s another issue.
Read what Chrissy Stroop has to say about the deconstruction community here.
To be clear, this is not me asking for pity. This is me celebrating you, the listener. You are in exclusive company. You like me and this content. If someone wants to spend an hour of their day listening to me, words cannot describe how much that lifts my spirits. Thank you for listening. For now, I’m staying put, doing what I do for all of you. I’m also doing this for me. In my tiny sliver of this deconstruction world, I feel like I’m holding down some representation for AAPI folks. We have things to say that benefit the world, and being able to communicate with you all makes me feel like I’m part of all that.
Mind you this is still not what I think of as close or safe “community.” It’s an online community less than 1/350th size of TNE. I’ve gotten to know some of you in the past couple of years. But I suspect most of you see me as a resource for perspective, stories, and entertainment. This is cool.
But let me leave you with some perspective of what I think you should all be striving for. First, you need an inner-circle. The people you call or text first when good or bad things happen. The people who have your back, who really know you, love you, and respect you. A few weeks ago, I went to a funeral for the father of a beloved member of our extended community. It was a Monday morning, so I went alone, found a seat and waited for things to get started. My city had recently survived a fire that claimed 6 thousand homes and businesses. MAGA was destroying everything. I knew of other people who were sick or had died. I was feeling the weight of it all sitting alone at the back of the cemetery chapel. And then one of my closest friends, traci, sat down next to me and touched my hand. I instantly felt better. The chapel filled up to overflowing, but I looked back and saw my friends, Shin and Keiko standing. Our eyes met, and I felt the weight of our connection. Being there with them made me feel like things were going to be ok. As bad as everything was, and let’s face it still is, living with, fighting alongside, and creating with friends was going to get us through.
On a grander scale, our community helped us get through a cancer scare in 2015. I grew up thinking I needed to serve others, which is a good thing, but I never wanted to ask for help. My wife’s cancer diagnosis broke something in me. I suddenly felt completely inadequate to help her. I realized my confidence in helping everyone was way overblown by what I thought was God/Jesus/The Holy Spirit. But what I found in asking for help was that my community truly and tangibly helped. They showed up to our house for a cancer party. 50 people. Friends who lived farther away colored their hair purple in solidarity, sending pictures to show us we were no alone. This included christian friends and family who told us they were praying for us, and we appreciated it. But I didn’t pray once. I wrote. I called. I texted. I invited people over to sit with us in our terror and uncertainty. We cried, we laughed, and by the grace of…medical technology and knowledge at the City of Hope along with our community, we got through it. Short video recap of the year here:
If I were the praying type, my prayer for you all would be to have this. If there is one thing I hope you hear on Chapel Probation, beyond the laughs and tears, is that a life well-lived outside of the restrictive culture of conservative, fundamentalist christianity can be incredibly beautiful.
No matter the size of my “platform,” I’m never going to direct you to me for anything but stories and perspectives. Maybe some dick jokes. OK, a lot of dick jokes. Because no matter how much I care about y’all, I don’t know most of you. What I do know is that I hope you all find your people, your communities, and most importantly, yourselves. It can be a life-long adventure that only ends when you die. So, in the short time we have here on this earth, I’m so grateful for you who listen. I even want this life-abundant for everyone at TNE, Brian Recker, and Josh Harris. I want everyone to not just be OK. I want everyone to have that feeling I had seeing my dear friends at the funeral and in my kitchen with friends crying and laughing with us.
Welcome to season 5 of Chapel Probation
Share this post