Welcome to Healing is My Special Interest, the podcast at the intersection of late diagnosed neurodivergence and healing from high control environments. I’m SO excited to share this interview with Brad, because he is the PERFECT mix for this newsletter: zeroed in on some traumatic and oppressive patterns—but also with an eye on healing. I hope you listen or read the transcript below, it really has en embodied and hopeful note to it. Please check out Brad’s new book Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism and What Comes Next, and make sure you listen to his podcast “Straight White American Jesus.” He also recently helped launch a podcast network called Axis Mundi, which is a terrific resource for this time of crisis we live in. Check out his Substack here:
I personally have been feeling pretty despondent these days, with Gaza never far from my heart or my mind. But conversations like the one I had with Brad help me so much—grounding me in the gravity of the moment, but reminding me that I am a human being full of complexity. To me as an autistic person there is such a relief to simply NAMING what it is we are experiencing. And what we are experiencing is a moment of crisis, and there is no getting around that.
I’m so glad you are here. And I am so glad that we are going through this together. We are not alone. We can live up to who we truly want to be during these moments. And we can prioritize treating ourselves with the kindness we so desperately wish to see in our world.
“I think there's a way to boil down the book and just to say the 1960s completely unnerved a generation of white, evangelical Christians and some Catholics, and mainly men to the point that they made it their life's mission to reverse the sixties, right?”
Transcript of: Interview with Bradley Onishi
D.L. Mayfield: Welcome to Healing is My Special Interest. I'm the host, D. L. Mayfield, and I'm excited and sort of, you know, anxious, if I'm being honest, to talk to today's guest just because it's a heavy topic that can bring up some feelings, but it's definitely the time to be having these conversations. And Brad is such an awesome person to talk about this with.
I'm going to let him introduce himself and talk a little bit about his book. So here we go.
Brad Onishi: Yeah, my name is Brad Onishi. I am a professor of religion by trade, but, increasingly a podcaster on Straight White American Jesus, been doing that five years. And I also wrote a book called Preparing for War, The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism and What Comes Next. And so I talk about Christian nationalism and the religious right and all this business a lot. I actually grew up, and I'll, you know, we'll get into this, but I grew up and converted to evangelicalism as a teenager. So, I’m not just a... guy who studies this stuff, but it's something I lived in a very deep way as well. [00:01:00] So, I definitely have the insider view like, so many folks, that, are in this conversation.
D.L. Mayfield: Yeah. I've listened to your podcast. It's amazing. And I encourage everybody to go listen to it. I think it's pretty darn popular as well. Listening to your podcast, since I haven't listened to all of them, when I read your book, I think I was pretty surprised at just how all in you were.
You were, like, the youth group kid. You know, you were at See You at the Pole. You were talking about abortion to anyone who would listen. And I gotta say, I was that person as well. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
Brad Onishi: Sure, yeah, so I converted at 14. I grew up in a pretty non-religious home. And I was invited to church by a girlfriend in eighth grade and I was like this is the perfect way to get out of the house. Mom won't say no to this And I'll get to see my girlfriend and I'm 14 and you don't get to do that on like a weeknight usually so I got to church and it was this like a mini mega church, you know [00:02:00] 2, 000 people. and At the time, 1995, I'm deep in the grunge era.
I am dressed like a wannabe Kurt Cobain, Eddie Vedder. And I'm thinking these square church guys are gonna kick me out or think I'm a rebel. And it was the exact opposite. They were like, hey, who are you? What's your name? And they had tattoos and guitars and they all played in Christian punk bands.
And I was just like, whoa, I didn't expect this. And, when I converted, two things happened. A, I found community, like so many people do at church. And B, I found answers to all my existential questions. Like I was that kid who stared at the stars and was like, what's the meaning of life? We're all going to die.
Why am I here? This is dumb. I don't get it. And all those questions got answered immediately. And once they got answered, I was like, okay, intellectually, if those are all answered, then I should live out the answers. And the answers are, if you die without Jesus, you go to hell.
Jesus is coming soon. My goal in life should be to convert as many people as I can.
So I would walk around my [00:03:00] public school at lunch and evangelize. I would stand outside the movie theater on a Friday night and evangelize. You mentioned See You at the Pole. My senior year of high school, I decided one See You at the Pole per year wasn't enough. So, I invented my own. So, every Friday I went to Pray at the Pole.
And sometimes one or two people joined me, but a lot of times I was just praying by myself, which, you know, people would ask me like, hey, why were you praying to the flag today by yourself? Um, which, I'm just, uh, just a weird little guy and that's who I am and that's what I did. So yeah, I can give you way more examples if you want, but I'm sure people are already horrified enough about listening and hearing about youth group Brad.
D.L. Mayfield: No, I love it. So I've also been a very intense Christian throughout much of my life. And so I just really, truly love hearing stories of people who had some similar things in their backgrounds. And, you know, another thing in common you and I have is we're no longer Christians. I think [00:04:00] I'm saying that right for you.
I deconverted just this past year. I think you've deconverted for much longer. And now you talk about religion from a totally different standpoint. Do you want to just talk about that just for a second?
Brad Onishi: So basically, the rest of the story is I became a minister by age 20. I was a full time minister. I was married to my high school sweetheart. I was going to a Christian college and then I went to seminary right after college. So I was, I, you know, I didn't stop in high school. But by age 23, 24, I had been reading so much theology and philosophy and history that the bottom was starting to fall out. I was realizing that the coherency of the evangelicalism I converted to wasn't going to hold. The center was not going to hold. And by this point, it's really hard to extricate myself from my community. I'm a pastor in my hometown. I've never been an adult and not been in ministry.
So everybody wants me to start a church, become a senior pastor, go be a missionary. And so my soft way out was like, well, I really [00:05:00] love reading and scholarship, I'm going to go to grad school and become a theologian. And then I'll teach at a Christian college. That was my thought. And that was acceptable to the people at my church, you know, it was a soft landing. Yeah, we'd rather you be a missionary. But okay, you want to go teach at some Christian college. We'll accept it. That's fine. Okay, good for you. And so I went all the way to England for graduate school. And, when I got there, I thought, okay, for the first time in 11 years, I don't have to be somewhere on a Sunday.
I'm going to take a break. And then I'm going to jump in. I'm going to find the social justice Methodists or the high church Anglicans. I'm going to go take part in the smorgasbord of Christian denominations and find out which is mine, and I'll be ready. And I won't adhere to this strict evangelicalism anymore, but I'll still get up on a Sunday and be part of God's kingdom.
And, you know, within six months, I got divorced. It was a very amicable divorce. We were different people at age 24 than 14. My ex wife went back to the States. I no longer [00:06:00] was a Christian and I was just sitting in a dorm room 6, 000 miles from home, 24 years old, thinking I have no idea who I am.
I have no idea how I got here. I don't know what I believe. I don't know what's good and what's bad anymore, and I'm totally alone and in some ways it was so freeing because I could go anywhere, do anything and nobody was watching me. I didn't meet people at the grocery store like I did at home and have them ask me stuff or, I would go to the Christian coffee shop like we all, I don't know if you had one of those, but I would like go to there and have my books, you know, and it would be like some saucy theological books like Karl Barth, and people would kind of frown at me like, well, this guy's getting a little crazy over here reading Karl Barth, or who's this Wolfhard Penenberg?
We don't know who that is, but it sounds European and Europe scares me, sounds sinful, right? And so, like to be in England and just be like, I can read and write and do whatever I want and it was amazing. It was also so terrifying. Cause I had no idea who I was. I had no idea what to do with my life and I had to start from scratch.
And that all happened 2005, 2006. [00:07:00] I stayed with religion. I became a religion professor. I still love having conversations with so many religious people. I love speaking in churches, mainline churches, affirming churches. I have so many colleagues who are rabbis and who are Muslim and Buddhist.
And I take part in all those, but I do so as a secular person who himself doesn't really participate anymore.
D.L. Mayfield: Wow. Thank you so much for just laying it out like that. For me, I get a teensy bit jealous when I hear your story, just because based on my own background and how I was socialized, I didn't have that moment till I was 37 years old. And there's a lot of people like me out there and I'm sure you know that and, you know, they could even be listening to this podcast and it's never too late to discover who you are. But with people like us, it comes with a lot of baggage because of the amount of indoctrination we have received under the guise of community. And of course, there's real elements of community there too, but there's also so much pressure. So yeah, I know that's a part of your story and you definitely talk about [00:08:00] that and we're going to get into that more.
But we do need to talk about your book and it has a very intense title.
Brad Onishi: It's aggressive. It's very aggressive. I know that. I know some people are like, no, this is too much. I don't need to be reading this.
D.L. Mayfield: Yeah, I mean, so I'll just read it. So it's Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism—and What Comes Next. So that is such an intense title and it's a really intense topic. This is sort of a two-parter question, but how do you sort of take care of yourself as you're immersing yourself in the extremism of Christian nationalism, especially in the U. S.? And then how do you get people to a place where they can start to absorb some of this information? And I'm sure it's different for different groups of people, but I'm just curious.
Brad Onishi: Oh, it's such a good question. I really had to recalibrate my intake. And what I mean by that is, we do [the podcast] Straight White American Jesus three times a week. So I'm always just immersed in that [00:09:00] work. And then with the book, it's just a lot. And then of course, so much of it is personal.
So much of the book is personal. So much of this work is personal. And you know, I used to be the kind of person that at night, you know, my partner and I would be like, okay, let's get ice cream and watch some hard hitting documentary or let's watch the Duggar series or let's watch the Jerry Falwell documentary on Hulu.
And now I'm definitely the guy who's like, okay Bob's Burgers it is, because I can't handle any more of that stuff today and I think that's just really important for me and for anyone who does this work. You know, you are putting in the hours to really digest these things. It's getting into your body.
It's in your system. It's in your mind. And so if you do not find ways to get away from it, you will burn out and it will have a negative effect on you. I've found that. And I think a lot of us are the kind [of people] that are like, I need to do as much as I can for all that I can and help as many people and do the work.
And that's all true. But you won't be here to do the work, if you don't do [00:10:00] self care. And so I think for me, I've really given myself license to say, at the end of the day, I'm not gonna watch the news like everyone else. Or I'm not gonna maybe be the first one to watch the Duggar documentaries, or the, you know, the new thing that's out.
Because I've been immersed in this all day today, and I do need to watch Bob's Burgers, and, just kind of, you know, hang out. Or go read a novel—like I read so many French detective novels. It's not even funny. And so, I just think those things are really important. And I think if you are somebody who wants to do the opposite, you're like, well, I'm not sure I'm ready to get involved and start reading that kind of stuff or listening to that kind of content.
I would say, just start small. And, maybe even focus on one issue because I think that it's easy to think, well, I need to learn about the entire sinister apparatus that is really destroying our world from, climate change to, ending reproductive rights to systemic racism. And I would just say, you can handle what you can handle and, you know, you need to just be aware that the goal is not to digest everything, the goal is just to learn as much as you can handle [00:11:00] right now, to expose yourself to new things, new truths, new histories, new events, and take the time you need to digest those, to understand them, to maybe share them with others and, work that out together with friends and colleagues and others, and then come back when you're ready for more. And last thing I'll say on this is like, I have people all the time email me, they're like, hey, I want to be honest with you, I stopped listening to your show. I listened for two years straight, but I just can't right now. It's really too much to listen to straight white American Jesus and you talk about Christian nationalism twice a week. So I still love you, but I'm not going to be listening for a while. And my response is always just like, yes.
I love this. Please take care of yourself and when you want to learn more, come back. But if you're not ready right now or that doesn't work, it's okay. Like, this is the best email to get is this email that says you're taking care of you as you kind of try to heal and learn and grow.
D.L. Mayfield: Oh my god, I love that so much! Thanks for saying that, because as I was reading your book, it's hard not to think [00:12:00] about climate change as a similar kind of topic where it's in the headlines every day and so you're getting sort of triggered, even your nervous system can get triggered just by scrolling on Instagram, because the AP News, the New York Times are going to be talking about that topic. But then if you actually want to dive into that topic you have to learn a lot of history and there's a lot of, it's hard for me to think of another word besides like conspiratorial things in history, and so I just thought, wow, climate change, Christian nationalism. These are two topics it's so hard to write about, so hard to have a podcast about, so hard to communicate about. And yet you're out here, you're doing it. And we are giving people agency to tap in and out as they are able to, because long term, yeah, we just want to keep people able to do what they can.
So I just really appreciate you saying that.
Brad Onishi: Yeah, I mean, I think you said it, you said it. That was amazing. Just tap in, tap out. And [00:13:00] I know, like I know for me, climate change is the perfect example of like, I've read a lot. I've digested a lot. I kind of, I have an understanding of what I think, like, where we are based on, you know, experts and data and science.
So, there are a lot of times I opt out of the climate change article that comes on my, radar or the NPR segment on it because I'm like, I can't do this right now. I'm trying to make it through today. I'm trying to pick my daughter up from daycare, be a good dad. Be a good partner, not be totally triggered and have my nervous system out of whack.
So I'm going to turn it off for now and I'll come back when I can.
D.L. Mayfield:we live as if we are human beings alive in a very complicated world, and we're here today. We're going to keep going. So I sense that, in your work as [00:14:00] well, which I really resonate with. So, okay. As we're diving in, I know this is an odd question to ask at the beginning, talking about your book, because your book has been out just, it hasn't even been out for a full year. It was basically published almost two years to the day of the January 6th riots , and you write really well about that. I have found so few places to truly process that. So I thought your book was really helpful. But even knowing it came out in January of this year, I wondered if there was something you're like, man, I wish I could have put this in the book or oh, I would have added this.
You know, I like to ask authors, like, what would be your bonus chapter? You know, you would add a year or two after it, it came out.
Brad Onishi: The end of Roe [v. Wade] for sure, right? Like the overturning of Roe not to get into another topic that is really hard to discuss and is really big. You know, this, this pertains to climate change. It pertains to January 6th. It pertains to the Trump presidency. It pertains to the [00:15:00] overturning of Roe.
We need to get to a place where we no longer have it in our mind, “Oh, that could never happen.” Like, I think that sort of barrier is still there. And I just think we're in a time right now where. Things are gonna happen that aren't normal and are not precedented, to use a word that's all over the universe at the moment.
And so, even leading up to the months where Roe was overturned. I think a lot of people are like, nah, nah, they can't do that. They wouldn't do that. They wouldn't dare. And of course they would. And you can, there's a whole history of the Supreme court. There's a whole history of Christian nationalists organizing.
A lot of people know about Ginni Thomas, but there's so, so, so many more layers to it, and I just think that, as a chapter, it goes right to the idea in the book that, you know, the 60s and 70s in the minds of Christian nationalists are when the country lost its way. And they will point to Roe v. Wade as one of the, [00:16:00] significant markers of that. So overturning it in their mind was 60 years of organizing. Right? And so, anyway, I think that's a big one that will always be with me in terms of the book and the chapter I didn't write about it.
D.L. Mayfield: Yeah. It's like they, they would and they can and they will, if we let them. So one question I had when I was reading is, you call the white American evangelical movement, the new right, and you define it as Christian nationalism, and I've been really interested in listening to people who are calling it Christian fascism.
And I'm not a historian. I'm not an expert, just somebody reading that. And so I'm just curious what your thoughts are on that and, and sort of how terms are kind of changing, and I think we're seeing in real time right now, I'm seeing a huge increase in people talking about fascism. What are your thoughts?[00:17:00]
Brad Onishi: No, it's a great question. Great. It's a great thought. So I think that a couple of things, you know, my colleague Matt Taylor always says all Christian nationalisms are not created equal. And you know, if you read Perry and Whitehead or others, there's this idea of a spectrum of Christian nationalism.
So if we start with this idea of Christian nationalism. It’ss the idea that Christians should be privileged in the United States somehow, that they should have a privilege when it comes to like our elections and politics, the policies that we pass in the country, our culture, you know, who's prioritized, do you say Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays. It’s in our economics, right? Stuff like that. So if you are a Christian. If you're a person who wants Christians to be privileged, you're a Christian nationalist in my mind, okay? You're a person who thinks this is a Christian country somehow, at least to the extent that you want to be privileged.
And I would even put this so far as to say, you really want it to say, in God we trust, on our money. Or you really want to say, one nation under God in the pledge, right? That's Christian nationalism, period. There's a lot of folks in my [00:18:00] mind who are run of the mill, middle class, suburban, or rural folks sitting in churches who are Christian nationalists in the sense that they really won't vote for somebody who's not Christian.
They really want there to be a Christmas tree out there at City Hall, okay? Now, I'll be honest, I don't think a lot of those people are necessarily Christian fascists, okay? But I do think they're Christian nationalists and I do think the things I just described are harmful to the United States and its public square.
There are, however, Christian nationalists who are Christian fascists, meaning they want to enact a form of governance and culture that means fascism and fascism legitimated by Christianity. And so, I'm with you. I think that we are now in a place where there are so many folks veering into Christian fascism.
D.L. Mayfield: Mm hmm. Mm
Brad Onishi: And I'm, I'm totally on board to call it that. And the scary thing, there's many, [00:19:00] many scary things about that. One of them though is that those Christian fascists are now oftentimes sitting in the pews with that sort of, I'm gonna use words here that are gonna, like, get me in trouble. That Christian nationalist who does not [want to be] part of a militia, who doesn't want to put gay people in jail, who doesn't want to say that unless you're a Christian you can't vote, that Christian nationalist is often sitting next to someone who might think that,
“Hey, we should just have a fascist authoritarian government. Hey, we should just put non Christians in jail if they won't go to church Sunday. Hey, we should just make sure that queer people, right, don't exist, and if they do, they're punished.” They're now next to each other in the pews and they're swimming in the same water.
They're breathing the same air and the influence is really sort of going one way. The Christian extremist, the fascist, is really able to bring with them so many of those run of the mill--I'm not in a militia. I'm not really into all this stuff that you all do [people]. But you're kind of convincing me, right, that trans people are really [00:20:00] pedophiles.
And so, yeah, I'm with you. Let's do it. What do you need me to do? You want me to sign or give money or vote a certain way? I'll do that with you. So, anyway, what do you think? How does that hit you as you're thinking about Christian fascism?
D.L. Mayfield: That just made my stomach drop, you know, because I think that's so spot on. I think not everyone is a Christian fascist, but I agree. And your book really lays this out that as much as people even in their own minds might like to be like “Well I'm not as extreme as so and so in my church, I'm more just a compassionate conservative” when shit hits the fan, who do they vote for when they get triggered by some Fox News story?
What do they do? They go to these places of fear and of protecting whiteness, right? And so that's I think you're so right that This is where we're headed and this is what has momentum in those spaces. [00:21:00] Now, I don't think those are the majority of America. Okay. And I'm coming from a very interesting perspective where I'm surrounded by lots of people who are like me, you know, I'm 39 years old, my parents would never call themselves Christian fascists, but are much more headed in that territory, right, than they are coming towards my viewpoint.
And so a lot of us are like, what do we do with our parents? What do we do with our aunts and uncles and, and people who are pretty caught up into fascist ideology and this is why I encourage people like look up what it means if you've heard your parents and people express their ideal vision of society like just see does that match up with authoritarianism or democracy, you know? So sorry, I talk too much and, uh,
Brad Onishi: No.
D.L. Mayfield: this is about you. I just think it's so interesting, even how these terms are sort of shifting and I even think people like my parents would say, [00:22:00] “What's wrong with being a Christian nationalist?” Now they would take a lot of umbrage at being called Christian fascist. So that's another interesting thing. Because I think societal shame is important in defeating fascism.
So that's why I'm sort of like, I'd like to use that term going forward if people's views actually line up with that.
Brad Onishi: That's great. I think you're right. I think societal... I think... Being called a fascist is going to get you the same reaction as calling someone a racist. It's like, what? No, me? No, I don't, you know, I don't think so. We're Christian nationalists. Yeah, I think, I think for various reasons, there are folks who are like, Christian nationalists?
Yeah, probably. And, and here's what they're going to tell you. They're going to be like, well, “[I’m] Christian? And I love America. So, Christian nationalists, right?” And, and that's where Christian nationalists has become benign in their eyes. But if you say Christian fascists, you're right. Full of shame.
Full of shame.
D.L. Mayfield: Okay, so this goes to another thing I want to talk about, which is, I was so, like, when I was reading your book, I was just so happy because you center it in Southern California, and this is something I've really not seen done very much, but there are so many elements of, like, the [00:23:00] political, the social, the psychological, the cultural elements of making Christian nationalism or Christian fascism palatable to the masses coming from Southern California.
Would you like to tell us your thoughts on this and why you centered your book there?
Brad Onishi: Yeah, I would. So that's where I come from. So that's an easy answer. But, you know, I think one of the things that happens is, we think of Christian nationalism of white evangelicalism as conservative Christianity in this country as a southern phenomenon and then Midwestern and yeah, you know, there might be some of those folks up there in the North, New England, but not not a ton.
This is really about Georgia and Louisiana, and it's really about Missouri, right? And it's really about Indiana. And if you do the history, there's really a way that Southern California is the South and is the Midwest. And you're like, well, what does that mean? So in the mid 20th century, the defense industry after World War II was centered in Southern California.
I'm talking LA [00:24:00] and Orange counties. So if you're a family in 1955 and you can get a job at one of these defense contractors making bombs and missiles and stuff, you're going to get a really good paying upper middle class job. You're moving to a place that at the time was so cheap, you could buy a house so easily.
Great weather, right? No humidity. No winter. Beach is right over there. Hey, let's do it. Six million Southerners moved to the Southwest in those decades. By the 70s, more Southerners live in California than in any Southern state.
D.L. Mayfield: Oh my gosh.
Brad Onishi: So, like, my mom is from, West Tennessee / Boot Hill, Missouri.
Her family went in 1958, from those places to Southern California where she raised me my whole life, my mother, my grandmother spoke with a Southern accent in California when we would go to Grandma's house, we would eat biscuits, gravy, you know, grits, hash browns, ham, all that [00:25:00] business that that I eat when I go to like Memphis or visit my cousins and in the South, right?
What's the point? Southern California is full of folks that you think are in the South or in the Midwest. And it's not a liberal bastion, it's not like, “Hey, let's get to kindergarten and I'll read Marx.” You know, we just don't, that's just not how it works there. Then when you start examining the influence, it gets really heavy because on the church side, the mega church phenomenon is really a Southern California phenomenon.
That's where Robert Schuller does the Christian Cathedral. A lot of people are going to know Rick Warren. A lot of people are going to know Calvary Chapel and Chuck Smith, right? So when I grew up and I converted to evangelicalism at a 2 000 person church, that was a small church, right? The 2000 person church was not the 20,000 person church, and therefore we were one of the little guys, okay?
So the megachurch phenomenon is really a Southern California phenomenon, and that has taken the nation by hold, right? In addition, the [00:26:00] political conservatism, and this is going to surprise people, but I promise you that if you read the historians on this, Lisa McGurr, Darren Dochuk, others, John Compton, they will tell you that 20th century American conservatism had its epicenter in Southern California.
So you don't get Barry Goldwater, and I know a lot of you listening, are like, who the hell is that? But you don't get the 1964 GOP candidate for president who's an extremist, who wants to drop bombs on Vietnam, who says, extremism is the way to go for the Republican party. You don't get him without Southern California.
Where did Ronald Reagan's political life begin and grow? Southern California. Where did Richard Nixon come from? My hometown and my church. My church was Richard Nixon's church. We went to, yes, so my church is the church where the Nixons actually helped to build it in the early 1900s. Where do you get cultural icons of conservatism like John Wayne?
Well John [00:27:00] Wayne was so popular in Southern California, the Orange County airport is named John Wayne airport. Right? Here's my point. I could go on and on, but Southern California's influence on American conservative Christianity is immense. Where did James Dobson start Focus on the Family? 20 minutes from where I grew up.
Right? Okay? Biola University, the Bible Institute of LA, that's where my brother went, that's 20 minutes from where I grew up. So, all of that to say, It's an overlooked region and it has had an outsized influence both in church and politics going forward. And so I really wanted to bring that story to life, for, for folks.
D.L. Mayfield: And I think that's so good, because Reagan's such an interesting point, right, because if you know history, you know what Reagan's about. If you don't know history, you think, oh, a movie star guy from California who didn't do a whole lot. And that reminds me of how people, I mean, it's getting better, but like, I'm working on a book project about Dr. Dobson, and a lot of people are like, oh, he was just a crackpot [00:28:00] who wrote some books. And I was like, he got his doctorate of psychology, he started working with the most famous American eugenicist who started the first marriage and family therapy center in Los Angeles as a form of positive eugenics.
Like, all these movements, they come back to Southern California. Which brings me to the Jesus Movement, because that's a part of my own family's narrative and story. I'm like, is there any, is there a more successful branding of like, a totalitarian movement than the Jesus Movement? That's what I think about sometimes.
I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.
Brad Onishi: Oh, I got so many. Wait, how long, how long do you have? So I... So I grew up 20 minutes from Costa Mesa. Costa Mesa is where Calvary Chapel started and Chuck Smith and Lonnie Frisbee and all those folks. And I grew up also like, so when I converted, I would go to my church on Sunday morning and Sunday night.
Then I would go to my church on Wednesday night, but then I would go to a Calvary Chapel on Thursday night. And I always, yeah, I know. [00:29:00] I’m just a little weird little guy. But Calvary Chapel was even more hardcore than my church. There was none of the like older folks who seem to just be going through the motions.
Calvary Chapel was like, we're in it. We're devoted, right? It was a younger group and they were just really devoted. And they did everything you just said. Calvary Chapels all across Southern California were like, come in your sandals. Wearing a Hawaiian shirt if you want we're, you know, we're really a new thing.
We're not even a denomination, even though we're Calvary Chapel. We're gonna have great guitar music, and it's gonna sound like you know, sort of 70s acoustic guitar, contemporary Christian music stuff, right? But then you start getting into Calvary Chapel's structure, and it's just a Moses model. One man at the top, no accountability.
You can't get rid of him. There's no denominational oversight. The deacon isn't going to come in and be like, “You're out of here. You did something wrong.” It's just one person who has complete control over their fiefdom, and their theology is stringent and narrow. I mean, there is no room for any kind of [00:30:00] understanding of scripture or Christian life beyond inerrancy and beyond a really, really myopic view of gender and marriage and I could go on and on.
So the branding is so perfect for Calvary Chapel. We're younger. We're friendly. We're, we're cas[ual]. Come on in, right? This isn't your dad's Methodism. This isn't your mom's Presbyterianism. And then you realize this is authoritarian. This is like, this is oppressive in the way that they are practicing this faith.
So, I mean, does that line up with your family's history at all? Yeah.
D.L. Mayfield: Yeah. I mean, I just think about my mom coming from a very traumatic background, finding a lot of good news in Jesus, you know, she was somebody addicted to drugs and found Jesus instead. And, she was the target demographic, and my dad, his family moved to Southern California from the Midwest, the rural Midwest to start over.
And so that's where they met and married. And, and so that's, you know, my story when really, The slogan of the Jesus [00:31:00] movement was one way. One way. There's one way, and it's through this hippie looking white guy named Jesus. And all you have to do is follow everything Chuck Smith says, the Bible says. So once you're ready to do that, you can move on from Chuck Smith to other people who say they know what the Bible says.
And you will only read the books they say to read. You will vote for who they say to vote for. And, you know, that's... That's how it goes, right? That's an authoritarian movement in the making. And I just don't see people going for Southern California.
And here you are, here you are. I love it.
Brad Onishi: I mean, part of the benefit of me moving to England, as I talked about earlier, was getting really far away from Southern California and being able to heal. And then I went back to do my PhD at University of California, Santa Barbara, which is about three hours, two and a half hours north.
It's up there north of LA. So that really demanded [00:32:00] of me that I reconfigure my relationship to my home, and I still, when I'm in Orange County, I still get the sort of like, you know, tinglies in my nervous system because I'm like, I don't know if I want to be here. This is too much. This is like, you know, I don't know how to breathe here because it really is thick in the air.
I could go on and on. But I'll stop. We need to talk about other things, but I just think that you're your description of the Jesus movement is so insightful and my friends went to Calvary Chapel Bible College and they, they would always tell me like, yeah, it's, you know, it's not a denomination, Calvary Chapel.
It's against all that. And I'd be like, cool. So what do y'all do in a Bible college? Like, well, we have to listen to Chuck Smith preach on every verse of the Bible. That's the first year curriculum. So I was like, okay, so you need to listen to one man's interpretation of the Bible, right? They're like, yeah, but it's, it's biblical teaching.
It's not theology. I'm like, yeah. Okay, but like, okay, so you're not just reading the Bible, like you're, you're reading the Bible according to Chuck Smith, right? And just there was this dissonance of like [00:33:00] them replicating all the trappings of, Christian denominationalism and Christian, you know, theological second order reflection, blah, blah, blah.
So anyway,
D.L. Mayfield: Yeah, no, I love it. I think this all is connected to your book because Christian nationalism, right, covers a wide variety of people. And there are some true believers like myself, like you when you were younger, right, who get caught up into this. And part of what we really need to be able to reckon with is how this figure of Jesus, I think, has been used sort of as a symbol in an authoritarian movement in a very strategic way, and I just don't think people are quite ready to talk about that, which is fine. But people like Chuck Smith and... You know, along with, like, the Goldwater campaign, all these things, they were extremely strategic, and that's the other thing I think people don't tend to realize.
They're not just a bumbling bunch of conservatives out there. I think the 60s scared the shit out of them, right? I mean, you could probably put it in better terms than [00:34:00] me, and you already mentioned this a little bit, but if you want to talk just briefly about what were all the things scaring white, evangelical, conservative men in the 1960s, I think that'll be helpful.
Brad Onishi: Yeah, no, I think you're right. I think there's a way to boil down the book and just to say the 1960s completely unnerved a generation of white, evangelical Christians and some Catholics, and mainly men to the point that they made it their life's mission to reverse the sixties, right?
There's just a way you can look at it that way. So in the 1960s, what happens? Well, let's just talk about the legislation we have. At the hands of the civil rights movement and on the backs of the civil rights movement work, you have the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act.
Okay. So that's an effective end to Jim Crow. You also have sweeping immigration reform. So people forget that in the mid 1960s, you know, Lyndon Johnson signs into effect immigration reform that really, changes who comes to the country. So, like, as an Asian American, I can tell you that Asian Americans talk all the [00:35:00] time about how 1965 meant that people from Korea, people from China, people from Southeast Asia and other places were going to be coming to the United States.
That is a big marker in the country's immigration history. 1963, The Feminine Mystique.And that is a sort of marker and we get no fault divorce. We all of a sudden get to a place in the country where I don't know, women can say, I want to get divorced. And they don't have to have some sort of criminal reason that their husband did something to them.
They can just say, I just don't want to be married anymore. Well, that's scary if you're a patriarchal man who wants control over your partner. 1967, the Loving Case in the Supreme Court is decided. The Loving Case basically protects interracial marriage in all 50 states. And you're like, wait, what?
And I'm gonna say yes. In 1966, there are states that are like, yeah, interracial marriage, not really sure you can do that here. Right? So think about all those changes. Immigration, civil rights, voting rights, women's liberation. And we [00:36:00] have not even talked about queer liberation, right? We haven't talked about things like Stonewall, and other movements that are happening.
And so you put all that together. And if you're a white Christian nationalist man, and you're like, wait a minute, you're telling me that Black and brown and Asian people are not only going to be here, but they're going to be able to vote and organize and be represented like me. You're telling me women can just say, “We don't need you, I'm going to go to work and have my own income.” And gay people are out here just sort of demanding that they be recognized and given full rights under the law. There's no more Jim Crow. What's going on here? I am scared to death. And so what happens is this whole sense of the 1960s, and you can still see that I was actually watching—this tells you the, you know, the sad state of my life—
I was watching a sermon by John MacArthur today, where he was talking about—I know, it was for a project—but, where he was talking about the 1960s, and [how] that ruined everything. And you can still get that messaging from Focus on the Family. You can still get that messaging from the Family Research Council.
So... They want [00:37:00] to overturn all the progress that was done in those decades so they can return to when America was great. When they say America was great in the 1950s, they're telling on themselves. That's before the Civil Rights Act, before immigration reform, before voting rights reform, before women's liberation, before no fault divorce, before the Levin case.
You're telling me it was great for you, one small group, and for everyone else, they just had to deal with it, right? They just had to deal with your privilege and a second tier or third tier status. Well, that's just unacceptable. So if that's your viewpoint, thank you for telling on yourself.
Now we know, but we're just not going to let that happen. That, I think, should be the response.
D.L. Mayfield: Oh, yeah. Okay. You just did a great job of summing all that up because it's a lot. And one thing that really stood out to me in your book is you have a whole chapter on purity culture, which, you know, at first I was just like, how does this fit into Christian nationalism? And I felt like your chapter on that did such a good job of showing those through lines because something in my [00:38:00] research that I just don't understand, and I don't have the knowledge to fully understand, but fascist movements, in general, are obsessed with the repression of sexuality. Like, absolutely obsessed with it. And I was like, what? What is happening here? So, do you want to talk about this a little bit?
Brad Onishi: For sure. And you know what fascist movements are totally obsessed with too is like body structure, right? So there's a sense of fascism is regulating the body. It wants only bodies that look a certain way. And we all know if we talk about fascist movements such as, as, you know, Nazi Germany, we all know about the desire to eradicate Jewish bodies.
Okay. But the Nazis were also really into, like, ability/disability. Right? They were also, like, very much, if you're queer, forget it. Right? So, going back to Christian, purity culture, here's my argument. I did Christian purity culture. Right? I don't know about you, but I was really into [00:39:00] it.
D.L. Mayfield: Oh, I was so good at it. Oh my goodness. Yeah.
Brad Onishi: I had a purity ring. My high school sweetheart and I, who eventually married, we vowed not to kiss before we got married. You know, we were that youth group couple. And as I started to write this book, I realized something that I had never thought about before, which is Christian purity culture wants to create an America through the flesh of teenage bodies. So if we can get teenage bodies to be chaste and then monogamous, and in that monogamy, they are patriarchal—the man's in charge. Okay. And if they are, only straight, there's no queerness allowed at all. And we're gonna, subtly, if you look into the political, and you know this more than me studying Dobson, we're gonna subtly hint at interracial marriage.
Not really so much a fan of that. You might be unequally yoked, you know, like you're gonna marry someone from like another culture. I don't know if it's gonna work out. Do you?
Like, they eat [00:40:00] kimchi in that house, you know, it stinks, and that's, you know, that's how my house is, we eat kimchi and, you know, so. Here's the point, if you follow purity culture to what it wants to accomplish, you have households that are of heteronormative, patriarchal, childbearing coupleswho go to church, and then they build churches that look like them, and then they build a nation that looks like them, okay? Christian nationalism is the original purity culture. What Christian nationalism wants in its most distilled fascist form is a United States that is white, Christian, patriarchal, native born, speaks English, right, as a first language, and sees the United States as divinely ordained by God.
Christian nationalism has been trying to turn the American body, the entire body of the nation, into a straight, white, patriarchal, heterosexual body since the beginning. That's what its desire has been. So purity culture is just launching all of those desires onto the canvas of young [00:41:00] teenage flesh and saying, if we can mold your bodies into this, model, then we can get the America we want.
And if, and you know this more than I, if you go back and read Dobson, and it's never just about, well, if you save yourself for marriage, you'll have a better marriage, right? That's part of it. It's also like, you're gonna renew America. You're the key to America's future. Purity is national renewal. And that's why Christian nationalism is the original purity culture.
D.L. Mayfield: Okay. So that was just like the analysis I've felt was missing. And I don't think it's wrong that people are processing the impacts of purity culture on an individual basis, because that's huge. My partner's a therapist, like, he knows all of that, but then I'm also like, it's nice to hear from a historian who's like, and it's also a part of this bigger picture. And honestly, they're telling on themselves, purity, culture, like how can we have missed the racial connections, the disability connections, right? [00:42:00] Like it's... wild and we were teenagers and we know that again authoritarian movements understand if you get the youth into this actually, you know, if you can go one step further. This is Dobson's whole thing.
You can beat your kid when they're young and get them to instantaneously obey you have a pretty good framework for building up kids who will replicate exactly what you want. And I just want to be aware. People listening to this are probably people who have experienced this firsthand.
Like, you got married very young. I also got married very young. I'm one of the few people who, gosh, it worked out, but that is such a rare story, you know? So I just want to hold all this, like, we're talking these big pictures, we're talking politics, but like, these are our actual lives that people were trying to exploit and manipulate for political aims, and there's a grief to that, that we [00:43:00] don't often get to discuss, and that's why I hope people who are listening, if you're able to listen to this, if you're able to read Brad's book, this is grief work.
This is not just learning one more horrible thing that's happened in America or whatever. This is processing our actual lives. You know, our past, but also our, our present. So sorry, that's my little soapbox.
Brad Onishi: No, part of the reason I wrote the book was to put my body in historical context. And I hope it helps other folks locate their like, “Oh, my body was subject to all of these forces on it. And now I'm living with it.” Because I live with purity culture every day. I think about it every day. It affects me every day.
It affects my marriage, it affects the way I love, the way I express my sexuality, my sense of gender and all that. I mean, it's all like you said, I'm one of the people you're talking to. It affects me every day. It's something I think about every day.
D.L. Mayfield: Yeah. And again, we are at this place where as we learn about these things, even learning about purity culture, right? I just want to say, like, there is this expansiveness to [00:44:00] keep learning, to keep growing. I'm having a great time. I came out as non binary, you know, and I'm like, I've been this way my whole life, but I was so sheltered, so repressed, you know, and I'm like, it's a terrible time, honestly, but it's also a great time, right?
Isn't that, how it goes, you know, for all these things?
Brad Onishi: I have a saying, you know, there's that Dickens line about it was the best of times; it was the worst of times. And I just think, especially for those of us who've deconstructed, it's like, you have to keep that in mind. Like the best of times are always going to be accompanied by grief. And the most challenging times are hopefully accompanied by feelings of liberation and growth and discovery.
And they unfortunately go together, but you know, that's how it works. And so I can look back on any stage of my life and be like, Oh, I wish I could be that age again. And then I remember like, yeah, but I was like facing that. Yeah. Right. I was like, this was happening and that, and this whole thing.
And, Oh no, I actually, that was a really hard time. You know what I mean? So it, that's just how it
D.L. Mayfield: Yeah. [00:45:00] And so one thing about like, just bringing this conversation to, you know, slowly wrapping up, but we are in a time where I get the sense that the overtly fascist elements of Christian nationalism are going to ramp up because the 2024 presidential election is happening. This is a big question, but do you have any advice for people who like, we want to be aware, we want to actually be combating fascism. But how do we deal with the social media, the 24/7? Like, don't you think that's a huge difference between, like, Goldwater's extremism and now? I can go from TikTok to Instagram to Facebook trying to find something that'll make me giggle without making me feel like the world is ending.
You know? And, so how do we kind of do this?
Brad Onishi: Totally. So I think number one, I think you're exactly right. Everything you just said, I think is exactly right. So we live in a time of crisis. We just have to admit that. And it's hard to accept. But I think whether it's climate, whether it's [00:46:00] politics, whether it's democracy, we live in a time of crisis.
So that's going to be hard. How do you manage that? You know, if you live in a time of crisis, you also have to live it. In a state of managing your survival of it. Okay. So my my advice is a couple things. One, find the ways and the sources that you are going to ingest current events and news and limit yourself to that. I am the same way—I can scroll Instagram and honestly, it makes me feel worse. And I know that's not everybody. Some people have like gamed to the Algorithm and their TikTok is just cats and funny kid videos, and that's awesome. So if that's you and that makes you feel better, makes sense.
It personally does not make me feel better. And so I look forward to every night when I'm gonna like shut off all that stuff, go read a book, go practice a language, go talk to my partner. Something that means I'm turning off the crisis and I'm going to, do something that resets my body, resets my system, refills my [00:47:00] capacity to fulfill the roles I need to fulfill as a parent, as a partner, as a human, as a colleague, whatever it may be.
I also think that if you're somebody who's like, well, I want to help, I want to do something, but I'm recovering, I'm healing. My response is, do one thing. It's really tempting to sign on to Instagram or TikTok and be like, well, we got climate, we got reproductive rights, we got mass incarceration, we've got voting rights, we've got gerrymandering.
We can talk about it all. We've got school curricula, we've got school boards, we've got banning books, like, we can just do the whole panorama of issues. Alright, what's yours? Right? Ask yourself, what is mine? I can't do all those. And if I try, I will get burnt out and I will end up not doing anything.
Or I'll just end up under my covers, doom scrolling, and getting more and more full of despair. That doesn't help you or anybody.
D.L. Mayfield: That's me.
Brad Onishi: Yeah. This is why I don't have Instagram on my phone. I don't have TikTok on my phone. And so, what's your thing? Like, what is your thing? Are you somebody who for two hours a week [00:48:00] you can volunteer at a reproductive rights center giving people advice on how they can get help?
Are you somebody who can support a candidate who's running for school board that will mean that the Christian fascist doesn't win? Can you do that for two hours a week or like every other Saturday? Can you help out that candidate making phone calls or something? Are you somebody who can go into prisons and like help folks with with reading programs? I'm naming all kinds of stuff, but I'm saying to you, One thing. One thing. And then support your friends and others who are doing other things, because you can't do it all and doing one thing is way better than doing nothing.
It's way better than despair and it's way better than burning yourself out trying to do it all. So take a moment, take a walk, ask yourself, Hey, two hours a week. What am I going to do? What's my thing? Okay, I'm going to get involved. It's going to be kind of awkward. It might be cringy. I got to reach out to a person I don't know and be like, Hey, how do I volunteer?
Or, I don't know [00:49:00] anyone, but I really want to be part of this group that's like helping undocumented migrants. Or I really want to be part of this group that's like helping trans kids in our community. I don't know anyone. I feel awkward. I feel weird. I'm an introvert. I don't want to be here. But I'm going to do my best to find a little spot in a little group that's fighting back.
And... that's how I'm going to help because one thing that you talked about organizing the other side, the Christian fascist side, they have out organized everyone by millennia, by galaxies for the last 60 years. And you know what they understand that we don't, they understand that the national is the local and the local is the national.
They are fighting. On the school board, the mayor, the county supervisor, the dog catcher, they are like, we want all of it. We want all that power. And you know what? A lot of people used to think, well, who cares? That stuff doesn't matter. And guess what? It does. School boards matter. Mayors matter. County supervisors matter.
State legislatures might save democracy, right? So who's your state rep? Can you help [00:50:00] them? Can you call them? Can you put pressure on them? Can you support them? The local is the national and your two hours a week and your local place is the way you exercise the muscle of democracy and you do everything to make sure we don't lose it.
D.L. Mayfield: I love that. That's such great advice. I would say that no matter where you live, there are people who are committed to democracy in your community, in your town, in your neighborhood and see how you can support them. Because that's where I'm at right now, I'm interested in organizing, but there's people who are already doing it, you know, so go help them. They will tell you what to do and you don't actually have to use a lot of your brain space and that's also what the Christian fascists do, right?
They make it easy to get whipped up and respond out of these triggered states. And you and I are not saying that's not what people should do, but we should commit to the long term local stuff. And so I love that. I'm sure people ask you that all the time because your book [00:51:00] kind of ends on an intense note.
People are armed and they're preparing for battle and it's true. But there's also these folks that have been doing the organizing work. We can commit to helping them. I hate to try and end this on like a positive note because I've actually felt like this is a great life giving conversation and not, you know, we didn't get into the nitty gritty of how scary it is, but I think people are getting a sense of that already. And, they can listen to your podcast, right, if they want to be weekly updated. Which I think is a great service you do. I really, I really do. You're like my Greta Thunberg.
Brad Onishi: Oh, no, no, no.
D.L. Mayfield: Just,I trust you're doing the work. It's great to have a public person out there doing this stuff. Sorry, maybe that was weird.
Brad Onishi: No, no. I'm flattered.
D.L. Mayfield: I love Greta.
Brad Onishi: Huge compliment. I'm like embarrassed. That's like, yeah,
D.L. Mayfield: So what is giving you some hope or joy or pleasure these days? We'll try and end on, on this [00:52:00] note.
Brad Onishi: So I'll do hope and pleasure. I think hope is, you know, after writing the book, I've gotten to visit so many parts of the country and talk to so many different kinds of groups, atheist groups, churches, all kinds. And I can tell you that, in the communities, across the country where you would expect there to be very little happening in terms of organizing and activism, people are doing just that and they have been but they're more and more people are joining up. And so I was in Fort Worth, Texas at an atheist event and there's people just doing their best and saying hey I need to get involved. And you know their emphasis as atheists is not how can we prove once and for all God doesn't exist?
You know what their emphasis is? Reproductive rights, protecting trans kids, you know, making sure everyone can vote. That's what they want, right? I interviewed a young student at Vanderbilt who's of South Asian descent. And after the Tennessee Two were expelled from the legislature, the two Justins, she's like, this can't stand.
And you know what she did? She joined up with Black churches and ministers. And her and a lot of other students who are not [00:53:00] Christian, and who are not Black, were like, we're going to listen to these Black organizers. And we're just going to join in and learn from them and, and get part of a movement. And so here you have a coalition building, right, of people who are Black Christians, students, students of color, BIPOC people, in where? In Tennessee, one of the reddest states where we hear so much bad news all the time. I just yesterday was on a call with a church in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, which is, if you know anything about Idaho, it is kind of one of the epicenters of Christian fascism.
We talked about Moscow, Idaho, and Doug Wilson, and there's people in that church that are like, we're doing our best, right, to fight back. So, when it comes to hope, we see that there are people who care all over. There are students who are like, we need to do something about reproductive rights. There are people that are saying we want a gay governor.
We want in Boston, an Asian American woman to be our mayor. We want in Wilmington, North Carolina, there to be a Black woman as our mayor. There is hope. We have transgender politicians, state level politicians in places like [00:54:00] Delaware, so there's reasons to have hope. And I think the reason I bring all that up is to say, if you organize, if you do that two hours a week, it's not for nothing.
It may feel like, well, we're in a room, there's 19 of us, what are we really doing? Does this help? And the answer is, it does. It really, really, really does. And it means that all over the country people are doing the same thing. In terms of pleasure, I think everybody, especially those of us who did purity culture, and did, the whole Christian nationalists evangelical thing is as young people, um, we always need permission just to enjoy the moment for no reason, right?
And I just think if you're listening, you have permission. Enjoy being you. Enjoy your body. Enjoy your life. Enjoy your friends, your connections, your people. I'm old and boring. I've always been kind of crotchety. So, you know, I cannot wait at night to eat my rice pudding and read a French detective novel or, I put
D.L. Mayfield: I feel seen, thank you.[00:55:00]
Brad Onishi: the kids to bed. I'm like, yes, here we go. Rice pudding. Maybe a French detective novel. Maybe I'm going to read another novel. And, it just feels really good to turn everything off and to do that. I also just think, everybody needs to find that. I love to surf and surfing is something that gives me immense pleasure.
Why? I get to be alone. I get to exercise and I get to be in nature and my body never feels better than when those three things are happening. So I encourage everyone to try to find that too. You need pleasure. If you're going to be an activist, you need joy. If you're going to fight back and you need hope if, if you're going to do this work.
So don't overlook yourself.
D.L. Mayfield: Wow. I love this. That was so great. And also, you're so right. I mean, even tying it back to purity culture, how it even messes with our ability to retain hope and pleasure and joy. So thank you. I thought your book was going to really depress me. It was hard to read. The end [00:56:00] is also intense. But at the same time, there's some relief in just naming.
We are in a moment of crisis. This is going to keep happening for the next while, so let's have some fun, be in our bodies, and basically embrace the moment we're actually in. Not the one we wish we were in, right? But the one we're actually in. So thank you so much for your work. I really encourage people to listen to your podcast, Straight White American Jesus.
It's, you know, not really about any of those things, except it is, but you know. And please, if you're able to, you know, maybe just in small chunks, you can get, Bradley's book, Preparing for War. And, part of me really wished I could like. Maybe I'll just give it to my parents as a Christmas present as a, you know,
Brad Onishi: There you go.
D.L. Mayfield: We’ll see how that goes.
Brad Onishi: Yeah, that might work.
D.L. Mayfield: But thanks so much, Brad. Where can people find you on social media and all that?
Brad Onishi: Yeah, so, the big project I'm working on right now is Axis Mundi Media, which is a network of [00:57:00] shows that are research based, and they're all about safeguarding Democracy against authoritarianism and extremism and religious nationalism. So if you go to www. axismundi.us, we have a whole slate of shows that we're releasing that are really designed to give you the tools to do everything we talked about today, to be informed and to fight back.
So today's the launch of Inform Your Resistance. It's a podcast that really is all about experts on the far right who are sharing their expertise. Today's episode is on the abortion abolition movement. We have a series coming up with Sarah Mosner on the historical development of purity culture in white supremacy.
So basically white supremacy and purity culture are linked. We have one dropping with Andrew Whitehead, who is a sociologist who's basically, sharing his journey of remaining Christian by leaving Christian nationalism behind. So that's the big project, www.axismundi.us. You can find me, Bradley Onishi, on the social media places that I sometimes like being.
Most of the time I don't. Just if you want to talk, email me, [00:58:00] bradonishi. com. Love to hear from you and talk more and thankful for everybody. And thank you so much for the invitation. I really appreciate it.
D.L. Mayfield: Yeah. Thank you.
Interview with Brad Onishi