In this episode we are joined by the filmmaker of the new power-house documentary, True Believer, Kristen Irving. You might have noticed we’ve spoken with several filmmakers recently. All have released documentaries focused on White Christian Nationalism. They are all fabulous. But, folks, as Lisa mentioned, “True Believer hit me in a place I didn’t even know I had. As the credits rolled, I wept like a baby.” True Believer is an intimate story of healing within and between a daughter and her mother, as they examine the impacts of their years inside a White Christian Nationalist church. #POWERFUL And in the interest of transparency, Lisa is in it. Such an honor.
We’d love to hear your thoughts. Thread or Insta Lisa @lisasharper or to Freedom Road @freedomroad.us. We’re also on Substack! So be sure to subscribe to freedomroad.substack.com. And, keep sharing the podcast with your friends and networks and letting us know what you think!
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Erica Smith:
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Transcript
Lisa Sharon Harper: [00:00:00] Coming to you from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the city of brotherly love and sisterly affection. I’m Lisa Sharon Harper, president of Freedom Road, a consulting group dedicated to shrinking the narrative gap. Welcome to the Freedom Road podcast. Each episode, we speak with national and global faith leaders, advocates, scholars, artists, and activists.
To have the kinds of conversations that we normally have on the front lines. It’s just that this time we’ve got microphones in our faces and you are listening in. And on this episode, we are joined by the filmmaker of a new powerhouse documentary y’all. And I really mean powerhouse. The documentary’s name is True Believer.
Kristen Irving is the filmmaker. And you will want to know her name. You might’ve noticed that we’ve spoken with [00:01:00] several filmmakers recently about the content around white Christian nationalism. I’ve seen them all. I’ve seen all the documentaries, and actually have been in a couple and they’re all fabulous.
They really are. But this one folks. Oh my gosh. True Believer hit me in a place that I didn’t even know I had. As the credits rolled, I literally wept like a baby. And I, I honestly couldn’t even tell you exactly why I was crying. Ooh, it just hit me. It was incredible storytelling. True Believer is an intimate story of healing within and between a daughter and her mother as they examine the impacts of their years inside of a white Christian nationalist church. Hashtag powerful. And in the interest of transparency, I will tell you again, yes, I’m in this one too. So hey. [00:02:00] And let me tell you, it was a real serious honor. It was a real honor to work with Kristen on this.
So we would love to hear your thoughts. Please tweet to me at LisaSHarper or thread me same place or go on Insta also LisaSHarper Freedom Road. You can catch us at FreedomRoadus on Twitter or Freedom Road dot us on Instagram or Facebook so keep sharing the podcast with your friends. We keep getting new listeners every single month and we love that every single episode actually. We love it. And let us know what you think.
Okay. Alright, so let’s dive in.
Okay, so, Kristen, the way that we normally kind of move into our conversations is that we start with the personal and move out from there. And the cool thing about your story and about your film is that it is personal. So when we start with the personal, we’re actually totally starting with your, with, with the film and with your story, although there’s more to you than the film.
So can you just tell us [00:03:00] what is your faith story, like how did you come to faith in Jesus and what has been your, your journey? You don’t have to tell us the whole story as you know, that is actually the film, but what are the main points we need to understand about your relationship with Jesus and how it came to be?
Kristen Irving: Sure. I really appreciate that intro. I had chills as you were talking about my film. I wish you could introduce it always.
Lisa Sharon Harper: I can, I’d love that.
Kristen Irving: So I was born into the white evangelical faith. And choice and lack thereof is, is really a theme for me throughout my faith journey and life journey. And my mom became evangelical when she was pregnant with me.
And so we kind of grew up in the faith together. And music was a big part of my relationship to the faith from a really early age on, you know, I was in the, I was in the bell choir. [00:04:00] I was in the church choirs when I was old enough. I was on the worship teams, and music was really my core connection to Jesus and to the faith. Started my education at a private Christian school in Orange County, California, which is where I grew up, but was also in this sort of in between world where our church life and my private Christian school life was overwhelmingly white and evangelical, but I grew up in a community called Santa Ana.
Which was an immigrant town and I grew up there in the eighties and nineties and most of my classmates and neighborhood friends were first generation Mexican kids. And so I grew up with not language or framing necessarily, but a knowing of distinction of difference. And I saw, [00:05:00] I saw poverty around me.
I saw homelessness around me. I saw, um, things that were happening in real life that weren’t necessarily being discussed within the walls of the church or the schools that I was attending.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Can I just break in real quick? Because for you to say that you saw those things in Orange County. In the eighties and nineties before it had its major demographic shift, which has happened in the last decade or so, it’s kind of really striking that it’s, was there, was, it sounds like what you’re saying is that the demographic shift did not actually just happen in the last decade, that there was a significant population in Orange County of people of color and people who were impoverished.
Is that right?
Kristen Irving: That’s absolutely right. The demographic shift that’s happened in the last decade is. That populus coming of age to vote.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh my gosh.
Kristen Irving: In the last couple of [00:06:00] decades, which is turning Orange County purple. Wow. But in the area of Orange County that I grew up in, which was Santa Ana, which bordered Westminster and garden Grove, there was an influx of Vietnamese and Mexican immigrants.
Going back to the 70s, into the 80s, into the 90s. So I grew up in a very multi-ethnic, multi-racial community, but had the contrast then of being in very white, evangelical spaces.
Lisa Sharon Harper: And can I just say that really what you’re also showing through this is that you as a child had a much more diverse experience of Santa Ana than adults.
Back in the seventies and eighties, because there were more children that were people of color than adults. There were people of color, you know what I mean? Cause they have two or three or four kids as opposed to, you know, just one to represent the whole family. So that’s really striking. I never heard that before.
And it also is interesting because even back then, and I was there, I [00:07:00] was not in, not in Orange County, but I was in LA. From 1991 through 2005 and Orange County back then was just known as solidly, like just solidly white and solidly Republican, you know, and I would imagine your… the school that you went to represented that more than that diversity you talked about among your, your, your peers, your classmates.
Kristen Irving: Yeah, there was this conservatism, which of course was informed by the military culture of Orange County, alongside this expansive growing community of immigrants and their children. And those were the children I went to school with and grew up with once I transferred to public school. So halfway through elementary school, I transferred to a public school in Santa Ana and had a totally different experience. And was there through middle school. I did attend a white Christian [00:08:00] university. I went to Azusa Pacific University.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh, wow. Okay.
Kristen Irving: Yeah. Yeah.
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s a white Christian,
Kristen Irving: Especially when I was there in the early aughts.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah, that’s actually, let me tell you, you were there the very first time I ever spoke, um, did a speaking gig in public, and I spoke at that school for a writing class and it was 100 percent white.
Kristen Irving: You’ve actually shared some of that experience with me and…
Lisa Sharon Harper: I did. Yes.
Kristen Irving: I wanted to put it in the film actually. And I thought, no, this is the diversion. This has a nothing to do with the story.
Lisa Sharon Harper: It’s a really interesting story, but yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but that’s, I mean, so I understand. Um, when you say you went to a Christian white, a white Christian school, I mean, Azusa Pacific interestingly is located at near the site of the Azusa revival, Azusa street revival, which was led by black women, women of color, but Azusa Pacific is not that. It was born out of the race [00:09:00] schools, that created white campuses in order to avoid segregation after Brown versus the board of education.
Is that right?
Kristen Irving: Well, I would discover through making True Believer that not only was that true, but I started my education at what was the Segregation Academy.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Kristen Irving: My elementary school.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Kristen Irving: Yeah. So it’s very, my experience in college very much mirrored my earliest experiences of that contrast of being isolated within these walls, but then this entirely different world existing outside of it.
And I had the absolute pleasure of being a part of communities on campus that weren’t completely white. And by that, I mean, because of where and how I grew up. Very early on, I found a lot of comfort in not only being in white spaces. [00:10:00] And on campus, I was a part of a housing community called global village, and it was mostly international students from places in… we ranged from having students from Taiwan and China to Ghana to, you know, Lots of friends from different places within Africa and Asia, and I found, I look back and think I probably shouldn’t have always been in those spaces.
I think I was probably taking up space in certain… at certain times that maybe I should not have been. But when you’re in those spaces, the core identifier is evangelical. The thing that matters the most is your shared identity in Christ, which then erases a lot of other parts of who you are. And so I think, and [00:11:00] the journey that I’ve been on even post completing True Believer, I can look back to my upbringing to my Catholic family, to my ancestry, to my friends who were not white in so many of the spaces that I was privileged to occupy, but we didn’t really see each other because we weren’t allowed to.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh my God. Wow. You weren’t allowed to. So can I ask you, let’s take a step back for a moment, cause I do want to dive into this, into the film, but I want to take one step back and ask, how did you get the idea for the film?
Kristen Irving: So True Believer was originally Pro Lifetime. That was the early title of the…
Lisa Sharon Harper: Pro Lifetime.
Kristen Irving: Pro Lifetime.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh, interesting.
Kristen Irving: Yeah. And that Translates to a decade ago. I was [00:12:00] still attending white evangelical churches actually, 6, 7 years ago. I was still attending white evangelical churches. But at this time, I was still wrestling with where I stood on the issue of abortion. I was, I was no longer voting Republican, but internally I was still kind of conflicted about, um, whether or not I was pro choice or pro life.
And of course that’s born out of the experience that I had growing up and being born into a politicized version of Christianity and believing that my primary goal as a voter, as a Christian was to save unborn babies and to do that through overturning Roe V. Wade.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow. And how did you learn that? How, how did, how did that become your primary goal as a believer?
Kristen Irving: Gosh,
Lisa Sharon Harper: Do you remember if anybody taught you that? [00:13:00]
Kristen Irving: Yeah, I do.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Or was it osmosis.
Kristen Irving: One of the, one of the, how do I even say this? Being born into white Christianity in the early eighties and then beyond for the generations following, was a type of Christianity that was already hyper politicized, but those of us within the, the faith didn’t realize it yet.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-Hmm. . That’s right.
Kristen Irving: That’s when I,
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s when my faith was born. 1983.
Kristen Irving: That’s right. Mm-Hmm. . And I was born in 1981 at the end of 1981, right before Reagan assumed office, right?
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Kristen Irving: And my mom doing the best. She could had me in these very conservative churches and schools. And I remember messaging and I remember learning the scriptures early on about God, knowing every hair in my head.
And forming me in my mother’s womb, and there was such [00:14:00] celebration, and such sacredness around that conversation around what it meant to care for children, whether they were out of the womb or not. And, then as I got older, the conversation was only about the unborn. And I’d say in high school is when I was really hyper-politicized into a white Christian nationalist identity.
So, when I went to vote for the first time, I was already radicalized. I was already pro life. I voted for George W. Bush because he was the pro life candidate. He was going to appoint Supreme Court justices to overturn Roe v. Wade. And I’d say that identity really became crystal clear at about 15, 16 years old.
Lisa Sharon Harper:Wow.
Kristen Irving: A lot of the sermons I was hearing in church, was about being pro life. It was also about being gay and how that would send you straight to hell. But even, even more [00:15:00] than that was getting an abortion.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah.
Kristen Irving: Yeah. Are we okay on time?
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kristen Irving: Okay. Um, so I don’t even remember the question.
Oh, the pro life time. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. So, okay. So it was really innocent. I was having a meal with a girlfriend of mine a decade ago, and she was very progressive and she very proudly wore the identifier of feminist, which was also still something that I wasn’t comfortable with. Cause that was like the other dirty F word, right?
So, um, I remember her asking me, are you pro life? I know you go to church. I know you’re a Christian. Are you pro life? And I said, I’m pro lifetime. I don’t believe that a child should just be born. I believe that there should be care for that child, for that parent, for that family and community throughout the entirety of that life.
And I started [00:16:00] developing that idea further and thinking about what I had seen in my community, which I at the time was fighting tooth and nail to stay within.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm hmm. I get it. Totally.
Kristen Irving: The cognitive dissonance was there.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm hmm.
Kristen Irving: The tension was there. I no longer aligned with most of the values of the community, and I was grieving and I didn’t have.
Lisa Sharon Harper: And where were you in this timeline? Like was this just a few years ago? Was this six years ago? Was this two decades ago?
Kristen Irving: This was a decade ago.
Lisa Sharon Harper: A decade. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So you’re almost to the point where you’re moving out of it, but you’re not quite. Oh, wow. Okay. Keep going.
Kristen Irving: So I’m. I’m attending churches in Hollywood, white evangelical churches in Hollywood.
I’m almost engaged. I’m dating my now husband. We are both evangelical. We’re attending the church of the pastor who would marry us called Reality LA. And [00:17:00] I remember after the sermons, the worship set would start and I would feel physical discomfort in my body.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Kristen Irving: And I would get up and say, I’ll meet you outside after the worship set.
And I would sit outside and breathe and come back to my body.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Kristen Irving: And this went on for several months. And. Now, of course, there’s this idea and language around deconstruction. I didn’t have that.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah.
Kristen Irving: No, those of us who went through this process pre a few years ago, we didn’t have any framing or language to help us understand what was happening.
All I knew was that. My body was rejecting whatever was happening in there.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Dang, man. What?
Kristen Irving: Yeah.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Okay.
Kristen Irving: So it was really confusing and really painful. And I felt like I was losing my religion and I didn’t know what was happening and I was clinging to [00:18:00] Jesus and I was clinging for a reason to be able to stay in those spaces.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Kristen Irving: And I thought, well, if I can just reform it, then I can stay in it.
Lisa Sharon Harper: I understand that too. I know you do. Definitely do. Yes. Wow.
Kristen Irving: And part of that is kind of narcissistic. Like who am I to reform an entire system? You know, that God-complex is real that we’re indoctrinated with. But also I didn’t want to deal with losing it all.
You know, it, I mean, it was, it was my family. It was my community. I had a lot of fear and anxiety around what it would mean. To not just leave during the worship set, but to leave the whole thing entirely.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Kristen Irving: And nor did I know that there were alternative spaces that existed that were loving, and inclusive and affirming and, as you say, not tainted by white supremacy.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Hello somebody. Yep. So let me ask you this. Why do we need True [00:19:00] Believer now? Why now? Why does this film matter now?
Kristen Irving: I’ve been working on this film, some version of this film, like I just referenced, for 10 years. This is pre Trump, this is pre January 6th, this is pre uprising during the summer of 2020, because
Kristen Irving: my tension and my relationship to the church and to it’s, it’s, it’s, Values which were aligning more and more deeply with what we now understand as white Christian nationalism.
Again, that term didn’t exist. That’s right. All I knew was that I could no longer remain within this community that had taught me to love Jesus. But, but why now were they punishing me for [00:20:00] loving Jesus in the way that made sense to me? Why was I being pushed outside for thinking that there was room at the table for everybody?
So True Believer is my story, but it’s all of our stories. I’m simply a proxy for those of us. And there are so many of us who have gone through a similar process and I hope that my film, that True Believer, will offer a path for those who don’t have one. I didn’t have one because what we’ve done with true believer is weave the history of the religious right and the pro life movements within my personal story of navigating faith.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah.
Kristen Irving: as a hyper politicized young Christian girl through the 1980s and 1990s, but this history, of [00:21:00] course, precedes that. And I think one of the things that so many political commentators and analysts have fallen prey to is thinking that this story began in 2016 with the election of Donald Trump.
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s exactly right.
Kristen Irving: And that’s just not true. And I think True Believer, like some of these other films that you’ve referenced, show us how we got here.
Lisa Sharon Harper: These are our stories. You’re listening to the Freedom Road Podcast, where we bring you stories from the front lines of the struggle for justice.
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So, Kristen, what did you learn in the making of True Believer that we need to understand about white Christian nationalism?
Kristen Irving: Yeah, I’m just going to say it because I can.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Please.
Kristen Irving: It’s all, and has always been about race.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow. Oh my gosh. So can I just say one of the big Fads right now. One of the big, yeah, just call it a fad is to take the word white out of Christian nationalism. People are talking about it. Everybody’s doing it. Everybody’s doing it right. So there people talk all the time about Christian nationalism, Christian nationalism, but what they’re really talking about is white Christian nationalism.
Even when they’re talking about it among the rise within the Latino Pentecostal church, they’re actually talking [00:25:00] about. White Christian nationalism inside of the Latino church, and that’s because Latino is not a race. Latino is an ethnicity and the race, at least within those quarters, are you is usually if you go to their census, right?
And what does it put on the census? They will mark white. So what we’re, what we’re usually talking about is white Christian nationalism, but people are taking that word white out. Why do you think that is? What’s going on?
Kristen Irving: Well, I can only speak from the white perspective.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Okay. And that I’m sure that’ll help.
Kristen Irving: Which is, which is that if I can externalize it as a white person, I don’t have to confront it within myself.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oof. Go on, girl. What?
Kristen Irving: And the thing that’s really important for us white folks who were raised in conservative, fundamentalist, religious spaces to understand is that whether or not we’re [00:26:00] still in those spaces, in that church, even if we leave, we are carrying white supremacy.
We are carrying homophobia. We are carrying patriarchy with us out the door. And so just because I leave the white evangelical church. That is where I was taught white supremacy.
That is where I was taught homophobia. That is where I was taught to hate women, to hate gay folks, to think that I was superior as a white person.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-Hmm. .
Kristen Irving: So to externalize it as though the whiteness within white Christian nationalism isn’t at the center of that identity…
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Kristen Irving: Means I don’t have to confront it within myself, and that is where the true work lies.
Lisa Sharon Harper: How did white Christian nationalism impact the way that you saw the world?
Kristen Irving: Well, [00:27:00] white Christian nationalism impacted every part of how I saw the world because it centered my whiteness. It centered my Americanness.
It centered my very narrow version of what it meant to be Christian and to follow Jesus, which was really more political than anything else.
It harmed my relationship to myself. It prevented me from embracing or even knowing other parts of my identity beyond white evangelical. It harmed my relationship to my family. Particularly those family members who were not cis, white Protestants. I grew up as a very young child thinking that my Catholic family was going to hell.
Thinking that my gay family was going to hell.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah.
Kristen Irving: I had, I had…
Lisa Sharon Harper: How did you live in your family? How did you go to like Thanksgiving dinner, sitting around the table with people [00:28:00] who in the back of your mind, you believe they’re going to hell. And I know, cause I did it too. I absolutely, every Thanksgiving I’d sit, I’d sit around the table with my family.
And in the back of my mind was they are going to hell because they don’t believe in Jesus the way I believe in Jesus.
Kristen Irving: Yeah.
Lisa Sharon Harper: How did you do it?
Kristen Irving: I carry a lot of grief still for the ways that I believed and existed in the world in relationship to people who did not think and believe the exact same ways that I did.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah.
Kristen Irving: One of the examples that we go into in the film is my relationship with my uncle, who is a gay man. Yeah. And loving him was actually one of the biggest disruptors in my life of me being able to stay in that white evangelical church.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Kristen Irving: And I think it, I think for most of us who are in that space, it gets to the point where it’s [00:29:00] either I have to love myself or I have to love others more than this doctrine.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow. And it’s true.
Kristen Irving: And I know as a white woman, my female identity was one that I was taught to hate. The queer identity of the folks around me, including my family, I was taught to hate without knowing it, the nonwhite identity of people I was in relationship with. Again, I was taught to see as inferior and of course, the Catholic, the Jewish, the Buddhist, the atheist identities.
For me, it was Catholic. A lot of my family was Catholic, is Catholic. I was taught to hate, and that is just tension that I carried with me in my body, in my heart, in my mind, in my spirit. From the time I was four years old, I was four years old when I was taught about hell. [00:30:00]
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow. Right. And how does that impact a four year old?
Wow. Look, you say hate. Do you mean hate? Or do you mean something else?
Kristen Irving: I mean it now. If I, if I go back into my childlike brain.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah.
Kristen Irving: It was literally an ordering of every person in my life. According to whether or not they were saved.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Right. So when you say an ordering, do you mean so-and-so gets to come in close, then they’re a little bit further away, and then if they are a non-believer, they’re outside of the circle?
Like it was outside of the circle of concern.
Kristen Irving: It was very black and white.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Okay. So it wasn’t even like that. There was no, no, no shades. It was, there were no layers. Okay.
Kristen Irving: No, it was a binary of saved unsaved.
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s right.
Kristen Irving: You’re going to heaven. You’re going to hell. And if you’re going to hell, it is my personal responsibility to save you.
So there was no real authentic relationship with anyone because there was [00:31:00] motive.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Kristen Irving: And I was just being a good girl and a good soldier.
I didn’t know that what I was doing was incredibly harmful.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow. Oh my God. You just said so much and I’m so tracking with you. Um, I still want to come back to this question of hate though, because I think that it’s a lot, it’s, it’s, it’s common in our vernacular to say that white Christian nationalists hate other groups.
They, you know, and they are, they are. They are hate groups, you know, but I, in my experience, it’s not about hate for them. It’s about supremacy. It’s about literally, like we are literally the elect. We are literally the ones that God ordained to lead the world. And you are not, you’re proving that you are not the elect.
You are not among those that [00:32:00] God chose for heaven. You are among those that God chose for hell. And that might, in my experience, that might lead to hate, but it also, it also, in most cases, I don’t know, unless, you know, it often leads to indifference. Like you just don’t think of those people at all.
Like that world is literally not in your brain at all, or you become a missionary and your whole life is about going and saving them, right? So that’s your, that’s your way of loving them, them. Yeah. Right. So for you, if you say, no, no, no, hate is the word. Why is hate the word? Or if it’s not, you know, where do you fall in this rubric that we just talked about?
Kristen Irving: I’m going to try to place myself back, back into that mentality, that way of being. And it’s certainly not driven by an awareness of hate for anybody.
In [00:33:00] fact, I would argue that being, being in that world. You’re motivated by what you understand to be the purest form of love, right? Which is eternal life with Jesus Christ.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Right.
Kristen Irving: And I remember, and, and we, we have this in the film and I’m not going to give away the answer, but I asked my mom even when my beliefs started shifting, if she was afraid that I was going to hell.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah. Because really poignant part by the way. I mean, that was a wow. Like I will never forget that scene.
Keep going.
Kristen Irving: Because when you are a fundamentalist white evangelical, the highest form of love is sharing the love of Christ and being able to spend eternity with those that you love. [00:34:00] And so when I was trying to quote, save my family members or friends or people that I didn’t even know and have relationship with, I thought I was moving and acting with supreme love.
I view it very differently now. I went on the missions trips. I served on the Mexico outreach team at my university,
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mexico outreach.
Kristen Irving: Mexico outreach.
Lisa Sharon Harper: So what does that mean? You were like, your goal was to save the state, the nation of Mexico, basically
Kristen Irving: Thousands of thousands of university students from Azusa Pacific every year, go down to various parts of Mexico to do missions work.
And I worked [00:35:00] in that office. I didn’t just volunteer with it.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Okay. All right.
Kristen Irving: I spent a summer in South Africa as a missionary when I was in school.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Okay. And I would, I would imagine that you weren’t trying to convert the white people in South Africa from apartheid. Is that right?
Kristen Irving: No.
Lisa Sharon Harper: See, this is what I’m talking about.
Kristen Irving: Okay. I worked at a home. My first job out of. Out of college was at a group home in Hollywood, and my shift partner was also an evangelical Christian, and I remember she would guard the door to make sure none of the administration was coming while we were putting the kids to bed, and I would pray to them and try to lead them to the Lord.
And these were mostly brown and black young children who were raised in usually other faith traditions.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Kristen Irving: And I thought I was doing the most loving thing that I could [00:36:00] do.
Lisa Sharon Harper: And by other faith traditions, do you mean unchurched, Muslim, or do you mean like black church?
Kristen Irving: I mean, like Catholic. A lot of these kids were Catholic.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh, interesting.
Kristen Irving: And again, at that time I’m 21.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Right.
Kristen Irving: I’m thinking these Catholic kids are going to hell.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh, yeah. Oh, that was a very prevalent thing. Absolutely. It’s only in like the 2000s that InterVarsity where I used to work, you know, began, they had like, One, one staff worker who rose through the ranks and began to actually, promote the idea that Catholics are Christian.
And that was a whole new thought. Yeah. Anyway.
Kristen Irving: Okay. I look back on that time when I was colonizing as I would understand it now, when I was evangelizing as I would understand it then. And [00:37:00] I have a lot of regret and a lot of, I carry a lot of grief. I did that everywhere I went, whether that was overseas or in my work, in my family.
And that’s part of the harm of being indoctrinated within white evangelical spaces, as a white person, because I believe that I move through the world with a calling with a God-ordained calling to spread the gospel, which at the time I thought was really loving and I look back and think. Oh my gosh, I was doing such harm in the name of Jesus.
I wasn’t, I wasn’t allowing for the autonomy, the, um, the independence, the choice, the, I wasn’t allowing there to be full humanity in other people because I didn’t see me [00:38:00] in them. Wow.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah. And, and honestly, let’s be real. Didn’t really, and I’m not just talking about you. I’m talking about within that stream of the faith don’t really value humanity.
I mean, fleshliness is thought to be evil. And it’s like, when we die, We leave this evil body and we go up and be a hundred percent spirit. So, you know, valuing other humans, that’s not even a value. It’s not something that. No, you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t even talk to somebody like that trying to convince them to love other people because it has nothing to do with the body.
That’s interesting.
Kristen Irving: No, there’s a, there’s a disembodiment that I think you have to exist within in order to function in those spaces. And I don’t, okay.
Lisa Sharon Harper: So, no, I mean, so, so tell me, you said earlier that it impacted the way that you, you interacted with yourself, your own self. Like, [00:39:00] what does that mean?
Kristen Irving: Well, I see that through two major lenses now. One is my own ethnic ancestry, the lineage through which I come from. And one is my identity and my embodiment as a female within those spaces.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Right. Yeah. Wow.
Kristen Irving: And you’ll see on my name here that says Kristen Cisario Irving, Kristen Cisario Irving. Uh, my grandfather passed away a couple months ago and he was first-generation Italian.
And I wasn’t allowed to know anything about my ancestry because it was, at odds with my white evangelicalness, I wasn’t allowed to know that I’m half Bosnian American until very recently because [00:40:00] those practices are at odds with what it means to be a fundamentalist Bible believing white evangelical.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Half-Bosnian. That’s deep.
Kristen Irving: Yeah, my birth father immigrated here from, from former Yugoslavia, now the region of Bosnia.
Lisa Sharon Harper: It’s deep because what you’re talking about are people groups that actually we, like, if you’re not white, you think of, well, Bosnians are white, right? But actually they’re Bosnian and Italians are white, right?
But no, actually they’re, they’re Italian. That’s the reality. That’s the history. That’s it’s whiteness. Is that what that, that moniker that’s laid on top of them in order to really in order to create hegemony among Europeans in America, right? So you’re not allowed to learn or to grasp or hold up your Bosnian heritage because that actually is a betrayal of your whiteness.
Kristen Irving: And a [00:41:00] betrayal of my white evangelicalness, because a lot of those faith practices that I’ve now done some research on going back many, many generations on both Bosnian and Italian side are, would be, I think, considered witchcraft or, you know, they’d be considered like not holy, not Christ-like. And…
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow. And it’s only because, honestly, because they are indigenous, like they are indigenous to the, to the place, to the space, not to England. 100%. Bottom line.
Kristen Irving: And you’ve, you know, you’ve been really Just in our friendship, but also in our interviews for True Believer, you’ve been really crucial for me. And I have such gratitude to you, even in reading the Very Good Gospel and reading your work, the ways that you challenge and have challenged white evangelicals.
Like, like me [00:42:00] to interrogate the stories that we’ve been told about where we come from.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow. I’m amazed that you took me up on that. I mean, really, and that it led you to healing. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord.
Kristen Irving: It led me to healing and it led me to walking in the fullness of who I am. I mean, I’m still in process.
This work won’t ever end. But two months ago when my grandfather was dying, he was in hospice. And I said, you know, I’m thinking about taking back my original name. Irving is an adopted name. Cesario was my first name on my birth certificate.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh my gosh.
Kristen Irving: I said, I’m thinking about taking that back. And he said, that’s your birthright.
Lisa Sharon Harper: All right. So now you’re going to make me cry.
Kristen Irving: I’m crying too.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Kristen Irving: I couldn’t do that if I was still in a white evangelical church, it wouldn’t have even [00:43:00] occurred to me.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah. No. And it also, I mean, what it would have done is create a distinction, right? Versus blending in, which, you know, in some places it’s welcome, but it’s also risky.
It’s very risky. Can I ask you how it impacted your relationship with God? Being in that space?
Kristen Irving: Being in which space?
Lisa Sharon Harper: White Christian national church.
Kristen Irving: Oh Gosh, I’m still recovering.
I’m still recovering from the ways that I interpreted God, understood God, acted on behalf of God. Um, I was a trained soldier from the time I was [00:44:00] born into this faith. I was a functional tool in their army to win the country for God, to overturn Roe as a first step in creating a theocratic, white supremacist nation.
And I did so with my whole heart and my whole mind and my whole body. And I don’t know that I’ll ever… I hope that I’ll be able to be in relationship to God in a way that doesn’t include those things. I don’t know how. I don’t know how. And [00:45:00] Julie Ingersoll is another person that’s in our movie in True Believer.
Both she and Randall Balmer, who are also in the film, talk about the distinctions between the generations that choose the faith and those that are born into it and have no previous identification.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Kristen Irving: And the way Julie says it in the movie is, the people that are born into it. And then walk away from it because they don’t have any earlier identity. They don’t know who they are.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow. And I never thought of that. That’s true. And I remember, I do remember her saying that in the film, but you know, that’s not my experience. My experience is the other side of it. I came into it and so I never considered… Wow.
Kristen Irving: Yeah. So I as a early 40 something[00:46:00] woman discovering who I am. I am an Italian American.
I am a Bosnian American. I am, I don’t know what my faith identifier is anymore. I believe that modeling my life after who I understand Jesus to be, who I’m discovering him to be through works like yours and others. But that comes with, again, doing the work of dismantling the identity of white, evangelical Christian.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Walking Freedom Road from coast to coast and around the globe. This is the Freedom Road Podcast.[00:47:00]
So can I ask you, how did you find your way out of white Christian nationalism? We’ve kind of talked about, we talked about. Your journey to the line, you know, your sense of feeling physically ill every time you went to church, every time you went to go sing. And then we see you making this film. It’s almost like there’s a jump.
So can you show, like, share with us what was the bridge? What was, how did you walk out? Or are you still walking out or it doesn’t seem like, it sounds like you’re kind of out right now. You’re done .
Kristen Irving: Yeah.
Lisa Sharon Harper: But what was that, what was that bridge that you walked across? I think others would want to know so they can find it.
Kristen Irving: Well watch the movie because the movie is my bridge. Oh, wow. Yeah. I was in… it’s the process I was in, in the process of learning and unlearning [00:48:00] through making this film and being in conversation with people like you and others in the movie was my guide out.
Lisa Sharon Harper: You were seeking. You were in seeking mode.
And now I remember, I remember the first time we sat down and had an interview. And I remember it getting like going from interview to in some ways like ministry. I remember that. And you were asking like real questions and it strikes me now that that’s because you weren’t just making a movie.
It’s because you were really, really searching.
Kristen Irving: It just happened to be a documented process.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Right. Yeah. Wow.
Kristen Irving: And I sat down with a friend named Zaid Gail, who runs a foster youth organization in Los Angeles called Peace for Kids. And I had known him for many, many years professionally, and I was hoping to have him in the first version of this film pro-lifetime.
Because I thought, well, [00:49:00] foster youth, that’s a great lens through which to challenge evangelicals to be more expansive in their view of what it means to be pro life. First time I sat down with him, it was the fall of 2015. He said, this is a great story, but you’re missing the main point. Which is my understanding of the pro-life movement that was born out of segregation.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow. He told you that
Kristen Irving: He told me that. And I really wish the cameras had been rolling.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow. Okay.
Kristen Irving: So I have to give credit where credit’s due. The first person who alerted me to this history and pointed me in the direction of this process, which ultimately resulted in me leaving the white evangelical church was a black man, a black friend.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Kristen Irving: I had never heard. Any portion of that history before in the white spaces that I moved in. I went home that day after that conversation with Zaid and literally [00:50:00] googled the origins of the religious right pro-life movement segregation. And an article popped up from Politico and it was Randall Ballmer’s article from 2014 about the real origins of the pro-life movement and the religious right.
And I read it and it affirmed everything that Zaid had said to me.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah.
Kristen Irving: Because when I left Zaid, I thought, my dear friend is a conspiracy theorist.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Isn’t that something? I’d have to say it does feel really wild, but it’s because there was a conspiracy. That’s the whole point. There really was. Because they were really, truly, like working a plan behind the scenes that was incredibly intricate, incredibly well connected, incredibly well resourced. And we are seeing the fruit of it right now. It took 30 years, but here it is.
Kristen Irving: Yep.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Kristen Irving: So I can measure my life [00:51:00] and my relationship to the white church in halves, according to that day where I met with Zaid, there’s my understanding of Christianity of the pro-life movement pre that conversation.
And then there’s everything else that’s come after. And so initially I set out to disprove what Zaid had shared with me, what I read in Balmer’s article, I reached out to Randall and said, Hey, I read this article. Can I interview you for my film? That led to Mel White, that led to Julie Ingersoll, Diana Butler Bass, you, others, and what you experienced of me in that conversation was absolutely me seeking and searching and interrogating my own relationship to my faith.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah, that was, it was palpable. Now how was your mom? [00:52:00] I love your mom. Oh my God. She’s so sweet in this film.
Kristen Irving: Yeah.
Lisa Sharon Harper: So sweet. And she’s such a mom. Like, I mean, literally. Like she just oozes mom energy. And at the same time, like your relationship with her now, or even in the midst of you going back and forth with her was just so tender.
It was so tender. And we watch, we watched a really powerful transformation in your relationship with her over the course of the film. And, but even more than that, we see a transformation of her faith. Yeah. How did that happen? I’m not sure we see how that happened in the film.
Kristen Irving: Yeah. So my relationship with my mom is central to True Believer is central to the film.
And in the same way that I initially did not [00:53:00] want to be on camera, I had a lot of resistance to asking my mom to join me on camera.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Kristen Irving: It was my surrounding team that thought we need you in relationship to somebody else that loves you that you love where there’s trust where we can see you having these difficult conversations.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Kristen Irving: And I knew what I was asking of her and I don’t know that she knew what I was asking of her at the time.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah.
Kristen Irving: Because of course, those conversations developed into what happens in the film and, and also what, what we don’t see in the film. I mean, my mom and I joked recently that, you know, when I was campaigning for Obama in 2008, she and I had like, flat out fights about politics and our faith in relationship to politics because my faith My faith actually led me to vote differently, whereas she was still grounded in a [00:54:00] Republican, Christian, white, evangelical identity.
And those conversations just never stopped.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Kristen Irving: And I remember, I remember you and I in conversation once. I don’t think this was part of an interview. I think it was over a brunch or something. And you said, Your job as a white Christian and as a white person is to make other white people uncomfortable with their whiteness.
Lisa Sharon Harper: I said that?
Kristen Irving: You did.
Lisa Sharon Harper: It was brilliant.
Kristen Irving: And I took that to heart. And because that had always, I mean, talk to anybody in my family, that’s kind of you know, don’t invite me to the family dinner if you don’t want to have those conversations. But I’ve always been in those conversations with my mom, and from from early, early on.
And so it wasn’t unnatural for them to take place. It was just unnatural to have a camera on in some ways. Oh, I see. [00:55:00] But… and she and I have talked about this and we continue to talk about it. The relationship with my mom is my relationship with my mom is really complicated because she’s the person that bore me into this system.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Right? Yeah.
Kristen Irving: He’s the reason. I had to deconstruct out of a white evangelical identity. She’s the reason I was in spaces that taught me that I was inferior as a woman, but superior as a white person.
And so part of the process with her has been learning to hold two truths at the same time. One is I love you.
I know you did the best you could. I know your intentions were good.
And also you did harm, but also you were trying to survive the same system. We all were, but also [00:56:00] that was destructive. And so…
Lisa Sharon Harper: Also you were paying the price now.
Kristen Irving: Yes.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah. How, how did she, is she, is she still on a journey herself coming out of it or is she still in it?
Kristen Irving: Yeah. She still participates in a white evangelical Bible study every week with her friends.
I think a lot of it is for like, for most of us that hang on for a really long time. It’s community.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah. Yeah, it took me a very long time, but here’s the thing. I mean, for me, I am, I was never a white evangelical, but I was very much deep into the white evangelical world, very deep. And I mean, for me, I kind of like, I guess I’m still on my own decolonizing journey.
I think for me, the biggest question more recently has been, you know, Well, really it’s like, why do I need evangelicalism at all? Or, or anything that is like born out of Europe, [00:57:00] quite honestly, because that was, I would say, you know, maybe good for that time and that place that God did something in the reformation that was needed in the European context to correct a major wrong that had gone wrong in the European context.
But then to say that that is the lesson for the entire world. And that is the entirety of Christian faith, just because Luther or Calvin had a good idea about how to, how to correct a particular wrong at a particular time in a particular place in Europe. That is what I’m realizing. No, like, no, that’s, that’s not, that’s not it.
And I’m finding, I’m finding much more what it looks like, what it means to have or to even see, like encounter faith that is not, has nothing to do, no, no relationship [00:58:00] to Europe, but actually comes from the land that Jesus came from, or faith that is born in an African context or an Asian context without the influence of white missionaries, right?
So, and that, let me tell you, it was very rare, but it’s there. So if we look for it, we can find it. And I think that’s the space I’m in now, but you know, and in that same way, I would have to, I personally feel like I would have to kind of lie to say that I don’t still believe in Jesus. I do to say that I don’t believe in Jesus transformative power. I do.
I know that there was something really real that happened to me when I came to Jesus. There was a real transformation that happened in my life, but at the same time, I was told it had to look, and move in a particular way toward a particular end, which really does [00:59:00] actually smack of nationalism, white Christian nationalism when you really kind of boil it down, though, they would never say that the people that I was hanging with, would never say that.
So yeah, take it, take it for what it is, but I’m, I guess I’m still in process.
Is that where, where you would say your mom is too? She’s still in process at this time. She’s not where I am, but she’s still in process. Or, she said, I like where I am.
Kristen Irving: Well, I sure hope she’s still in process.
It’s interesting when you, when you have documentation of part of your process, because it’s a time capsule and the last time we filmed together was. At least three years ago.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow. Okay.
Kristen Irving: And so the process and the growth that you see on camera has an end point, [01:00:00] whereas my process and my mom’s process has continued.
There are things that I wish I could go back and change. There’s language that I would use in the voiceover. There’s my understanding of decolonization, particularly through taking some of the courses at Freedom Road and some other places, has expanded as it should. And my mom has always been down to take whatever course, read whatever book, you know, I learned something and then I go to her and say, hey, here’s this thing. I think you really, you know, I think this would be really interesting for you.
And she always does it. And, so she’s not where you are. She’s not where I am. She’s where she is, but she’s still growing. And, a lot of people say to her, you know, you’re really brave in this movie and I don’t want to give anything away yet [01:01:00] about her process in the movie.
But, I think back on my childhood and on certain experiences that we had as a family. And I wonder how much processing there’s been.
Because for me, making space to dismantle a colonized faith, making space to dismantle white patriarchy in my own life, meant cleaning house a little, meant, meant interrogating, meant going back in time in order to get present in order to be able to go forward.
And. I hope, I hope and wish that for her.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah. Can I ask you, what did you learn about how to minister to someone who is beginning to wake up to the cost of white Christian nationalism in their life through this process?[01:02:00]
Kristen Irving: I’m not, I’m actually not great at this. I’ve impatient and I’m judgmental and I’m critical. And sometimes I forget where I was. And I can be critical of people who are where I once was.
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s a lesson in itself.
Kristen Irving: Yeah. So I have to be really mindful of that because I can forget, I can forget that I was once trying to evangelize my gay friends who for whatever reason still loved me and remained as an example.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Kind of amazing when we think about it, right? Like, Oh my gosh, how much grace they had.
Kristen Irving: Oh my gosh. Wow. Undeserved.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Kristen Irving: So in terms of Ministering to folks sharing my experience with folks. My, my husband said something recently because he was asked that on stage after a Q and A after a premiere. And he said, and he’s a little bit closer in proximity to [01:03:00] Christian white nationalism because of where his family’s at versus mine.
And he said, I try to lead with vulnerability.
He said, if I can touch somebody and leads… and reflect my vulnerability, that’s where we have an opportunity to connect as human beings.
It’s not in, it’s not in rattling off facts. It’s not in trying to harken back to some version of Christianity that it no longer exemplifies, which I think a lot of us try to do.
If we can just reform this thing and make it look like it did in, you know, the earliest, you know, the 20th century and early 21st century, whatever, um,
Lisa Sharon Harper: You’re gonna go back to Constantine?
Kristen Irving: Right.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Probably not, no.
Kristen Irving: Exactly.
But if we lead with story, and that’s why I made the film, that’s why I made True Believer.
For me, that’s all I can do, is I can lead with story, I can lead [01:04:00] with experience, I can lead. But I think for me, you know, because I’ve been making this film for so long and been in this process, that some folks called deconstruction for so long. I purposefully don’t use that term in the film because it’s become commodified.
But I’m also very cautious about who I enter into relationship and conversation with about these things, because I can only reach the person who’s a step or two behind me, not five and six and 10 and 20 steps behind me in the same way that I need a teacher that’s a few steps ahead of me, not miles beyond me, or else I’m unreachable and they’re unreachable and I’m unteachable.
And so that’s been part of the wisdom and the learning and the discernment of. Who am I [01:05:00] responsible for? Who am I interested in? Who can I actually reach? And who are my teachers? Because I don’t ever want to stop learning.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah. Let me just say you assembled an incredible group of teachers for this film.
I mean, Randall Balmer. He is so awesome. He was the reader for my… I think I told you he was the reader for my master’s thesis at Columbia, interestingly enough, Columbia, while he was at Barnard, no less.
Kristen Irving: Right.
Lisa Sharon Harper: And so, um, yeah. And, you know, just all of the people that you have that have spoken into your life and into your process are just gems.
So it really is a gift. I mean, what you’re, what you’re offering in this film is a true gift to people who are themselves on that journey. It really is. And I also just want to point out, like, When I asked you, what was your process? How did [01:06:00] you find your way out of white Christian nationalism? It was the actual seeking process that you named.
It’s this making of the film. Well, not everybody’s going to get to make a film, but everybody can ask questions. Anybody and everybody can ask questions, hard questions, and go to sources that are reliable to sit down and listen to. And especially now with podcasts, you know, it’s just, you just have. Like infinite number of people that you can sit down and listen to and learn from.
So I applaud you, and I thank you because even, you know, we sat down, we did an interview. I shared some truths that I had learned along the journey, but I honestly, watching your film, learned a lot. I learned a lot. And I think that’s part of the reason, come to think of it why I cried for like [01:07:00] 30 minutes after your film was over.
I was still crying because I was thinking about different parts because it brought so many pieces together.
Can I ask you what gives you hope?
Kristen Irving: About what?
Lisa Sharon Harper: What gives you hope about the world, about people’s capacity to heal from toxic faith about America and American democracy, the ability to survive white Christian nationalism and PRRI today just came out with a new study that showed that I think it’s 55% of white Americans… Is it white? No white Christian Americans are sympathetic or adherence to white Christian nationalism, 55, as in the majority. And that’s not a new stat. It feels like, [01:08:00] honestly, almost every month somebody is coming up with some study, a sociological study or a poll that demonstrates that.
But once again, that’s demonstrated. So what gives you hope that we can actually come to the other side of this in the United States of America and that it won’t swallow us up, swallow us whole as a nation?
Kristen Irving: Well, I’m a little bit of a revolutionary, so I have hope, but I also firmly believe that there needs to be complete reform of every system.
And as I’ve learned from you and others, I believe that those reformations need to be led by people who are not white, who are not at the center of current systems of power, and what gives me hope [01:09:00] today–I don’t know when this will be released–are the students organizing on campuses across the country.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yes.
Kristen Irving: In support of Gaza and Palestine. Um, I get chills in my body when I see them organizing, when I see staff and faculty surrounding them to protect their bodies. I think it’s going to require those of us who are in proximity to power to use our bodies, to use our resources, to make the art, to do the thing, whatever it is that you have access to put that on the line.
And especially if you’re a Christian, that is what Jesus commanded us to do.
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s exactly right. Because we’re not talking about anything less than the world being swallowed up by authoritarian governance and fascism, literally, or the opportunity to find a new way to live together in the [01:10:00] world.
We literally are standing at a crossroads right now.
Kristen Irving: Yeah.
Lisa Sharon Harper: And so I love how you have called us to use our bodies now is the time when it’s not enough to tweet.
Kristen Irving: Yeah. There has to be risk because there are great stakes.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah, there are.
The conversations leaders have on the road to justice. This is the Freedom Road Podcast. Thank you for joining us today. The Freedom Road Podcast is recorded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and wherever our guests lay their heads that night. This episode was engineered and produced by Corey Nathan of Scan Media.
Freedom Road Podcast is executive produced by Freedom Road, LLC. We [01:11:00] consult, coach, train, and design experiences that bring common understanding, common commitment, and lead to common action. You can find out more about our work at our website, freedom road dot us. Stay in the know by signing up for updates on Substack.
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