Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - March 11, 2025


Ep 1154 ｜ Ex-New Ager Reveals Cults’ Secret Invasion of the Church ｜ Guest： Melissa Dougherty


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 3 minutes

Words per Minute

176.66653

Word Count

11,244

Sentence Count

867

Misogynist Sentences

6

Hate Speech Sentences

22


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.860 From the new age and gender confusion to freedom in Christ, Melissa Doherty is an apologist
00:00:07.020 and she just wrote a book called Happy Lies about how the new age and the new thought
00:00:12.220 have infiltrated the church, what we need to look out for as Christians.
00:00:16.400 Her testimony from being raised in the world of Christian science and the new thought that
00:00:21.980 surrounds that ideology is just fascinating and super encouraging.
00:00:26.180 You guys are going to love this episode of Relatable.
00:00:30.000 Melissa, thanks so much for taking the time to join us.
00:00:41.940 If you could tell everyone who may not know who you are and what you do.
00:00:45.340 Sure.
00:00:45.700 I am Melissa Doherty.
00:00:47.000 Some people might know me mostly from my YouTube channel.
00:00:50.860 I'm also on all kinds of different social medias, but I talk mostly about new age, new thought.
00:00:56.120 I do some pretty mediocre satire, if I say so myself.
00:00:58.480 Um, but yeah, it's good.
00:01:00.540 It's okay.
00:01:02.120 Um, but yeah, it's, uh, it's, I just kind of call myself a mixed bag when it comes to touching
00:01:08.220 on different topics, but those are my fortes.
00:01:10.380 Which is why you wrote this book, Happy Lies, how a movement you probably never heard of shaped
00:01:14.900 our self-obsessed world about new age, new thought, this kind of movement.
00:01:21.560 That's really not new at all.
00:01:23.620 Before we get into the core of your book, I want to take us back into your life.
00:01:29.480 How did you start studying the new age?
00:01:33.460 How did you start knowing about it, caring about it, talking about it?
00:01:36.700 Sure.
00:01:36.980 Yeah.
00:01:37.180 So my story is, you know, two, threefold, I suppose, but I grew up in what I thought
00:01:43.460 was a Christian household, but really it was more intertwined with new thought, but I didn't
00:01:50.760 know that's what it was called at the time.
00:01:52.280 And what is that?
00:01:53.160 New thought, which I'll get to, but basically, uh, well, let me define it now.
00:01:58.020 Um, it has more influence than recognition.
00:01:59.760 That is what the book is about.
00:02:01.920 And I've never seen anybody write about it.
00:02:04.420 And once I saw really what this was, that it's not the same as new age, that it's not
00:02:09.940 under this canopy and where it is everywhere, not just in society, but in the church, I had
00:02:16.300 an epiphany.
00:02:16.860 I'm like, why is nobody talking about this?
00:02:18.840 And it was very personal to me because I grew up with these beliefs.
00:02:22.700 Um, in a sentence, I would say that it's the positive thinking movement in America with
00:02:27.940 Jesus as its mascot in two words, I would say it's metaphysical Christianity.
00:02:33.240 And I challenge that it's much more deceptive than the new age because it's made to look
00:02:39.100 Christian, Christian terminology, uh, same terms, quote scripture.
00:02:44.020 And that's really why I thought it was, it was Christian.
00:02:47.540 It was just more spiritual.
00:02:49.260 And define metaphysical.
00:02:50.740 Great question.
00:02:52.060 Um, yes, because my seminary professors, they get like a twitch in their eye when I say that.
00:02:56.340 Um, there is a proper, uh, use for it in the Christian world, uh, classical theism, uh, where
00:03:03.100 metaphysical is just the non-physical attributes of God.
00:03:06.660 You know, you're looking at omnipresence, his all power, you know, the, the things about
00:03:12.740 God that make him God.
00:03:14.920 Sovereignty, omniscience, all of that.
00:03:17.480 Why does he reveal himself in the way that he does?
00:03:20.300 Why must he act in certain ways?
00:03:22.520 Because that's the metaphysics in theology and Christianity.
00:03:26.600 I mean, they have seminary classes after that.
00:03:28.560 So not all metaphysics is bad.
00:03:30.460 That's not what you're saying.
00:03:31.660 No, no.
00:03:32.480 And it's interesting you mentioned it because almost every chapter in this book needed a,
00:03:36.480 a, uh, caveat.
00:03:37.880 Yeah.
00:03:38.220 Because it's like, okay, well you hear this like affirmations, affirming something
00:03:42.020 doesn't always mean, you know, that, oh, I need affirmation in this.
00:03:45.980 Some people might hear that and think, oh, that's bad, but really it's just really defining
00:03:52.040 the term, but in new thought, they would describe themselves as in the movement anyway, as metaphysical
00:03:59.160 Christianity.
00:04:00.140 What that means is beyond the physical and to hash that out a little bit more, think of
00:04:06.900 everything around you, everything you, me sitting here, our bodies, words on a page, our cup
00:04:12.980 sitting here, it has a spiritual counterpart.
00:04:16.160 So what you do here in the physical realm affects the spiritual realm.
00:04:20.600 So if you're trying to fix something in the physical realm, you fix it in the spiritual
00:04:23.740 realm and how you do that is with your thoughts, words, and, and feelings, especially feelings.
00:04:29.000 Feelings are very important, but it means that there's always something more beyond the
00:04:34.160 physical that you're seeing and reading and experiencing.
00:04:37.380 That's why looking for signs can be so important.
00:04:40.100 Is this like, okay, if you're sick, there must be something going on corresponding in
00:04:46.640 your spirit or in the spirit world that is making you sick?
00:04:50.280 Is it that kind of idea?
00:04:51.720 Yes.
00:04:52.280 And it's very interesting that you use the word correspondence because there's a very
00:04:56.560 interesting figure in the new thought world called Emanuel Swedenborg.
00:05:01.100 He's one of the fathers that I talk about in one of the beginning chapters, and he's a
00:05:06.080 fascinating figure, but he has something that he called the law of correspondence, which
00:05:10.740 is basically what I just said, that the material world is built on your mind.
00:05:16.160 It responds to your mind in that if you want to move things in the material world, you move
00:05:23.020 them first in the spiritual world, done through your thoughts, words, and feelings.
00:05:26.300 And so sickness, health, wealth, things like that.
00:05:29.440 I mean, we're talking about a movement that paraded the health and wealth prosperity that
00:05:34.780 we see, and we see a lot of that in the Word of Faith movement, of course, too.
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00:07:05.200 Okay, so I know we're kind of zigzagging, which is fine, because we're starting with
00:07:15.080 your story, and then you use this term, New Thought, to say that you were raised in this,
00:07:18.920 but we had to define New Thought, which took us where we went.
00:07:21.480 But let us go back, since now we kind of have an idea of what New Thought is.
00:07:25.980 I'm guessing some of this is name it and claim it, prosperity gospel, which people will be
00:07:31.680 familiar with. Tell me how you were raised in this world. What did that look like?
00:07:36.780 Well, I grew up with a lot of old, dusty books from my great-grandparents that were fascinating
00:07:41.460 to me, because they were old and seemed ancient and had all this wisdom in it. And so they grew up,
00:07:49.940 or well, they adopted it, rather. And then my mom grew up in it, and then I grew up in it. But it was
00:07:54.940 always a mixture. We went to a Presbyterian church. I think that my mom, I think they grew up in a
00:08:02.400 Lutheran church. And so the ideas were there, but it wasn't like they went to a separate church that
00:08:09.020 taught these things. And so, yeah, I grew up with these beliefs that your mind really could control
00:08:16.880 your reality, that if you believed hard enough, you could actually create whatever it was around you.
00:08:23.720 And this is something that Jesus taught that's very important, is that everything was always like,
00:08:27.700 hey, Jesus is the way-shower. He was showing us our true human spiritual potential. What he can do,
00:08:35.780 what he did, you can do as well, and more. He's an archetype.
00:08:39.480 Yeah, yeah. And then Christ consciousness is a big new thought word. Everybody thinks that's
00:08:44.480 new age. It's not. It's new thought. And Jesus would have been the example of obtaining the Christ
00:08:49.920 consciousness. Remember how I said before, everything's metaphysical?
00:08:52.960 That has a metaphysical definition. We would hear that and think, oh, it means Messiah. It means,
00:08:58.980 in its proper context, that's exactly what it means, but not in new thought. In new thought,
00:09:03.400 it's a metaphysical definition. It's a higher meaning.
00:09:05.620 That you can attain to. So is this Christian science?
00:09:08.740 Good question. Yeah, actually. Christian science would be a cult of new thought.
00:09:12.520 Okay. And was that, were your parents and grandparents Christian scientists?
00:09:16.060 Yes and no. They were kind of both. We had all kinds of books on the shelves from Unity, which is
00:09:22.080 one of the largest new thought denominations, religious science, and then Christian science.
00:09:28.160 And I remember, I still have it. It's in a bag. It's all broken apart, but it's Mary Baker Eddy's
00:09:34.980 book, but translated into English from German. And so I still have that book and see it. But yeah,
00:09:41.500 the history is very interesting, but Christian science, the beliefs are very new thought. But
00:09:46.720 Mary Baker Eddy was, she made a lot of people upset. She was not, she was very cultish. And the
00:09:53.040 movements, her teacher, Phineas Quimby, wanted to move away from that. And so, because she went down
00:10:01.160 a more dogmatic path, they wanted to get away from that. They wanted Jesus without the dogma.
00:10:05.860 It was really your heart's desire. And that's the other thing is that what you felt from within is
00:10:12.620 what was true. And if you're reading something in scripture and it doesn't resonate with you,
00:10:17.240 well, then it has to be translated through the lens of love. And so that's why you get like people
00:10:21.940 like Oprah Winfrey who can say she's a Christian, but she-
00:10:26.080 Or even Jen Hatmaker. I heard her saying, you know, when she came out, I think it was 2014, 2015,
00:10:30.760 saying, I'm pro-LGBTQ. I've heard her say multiple times since then, if your theology is hurting
00:10:37.080 people, if your theology is superseding your relationships, I saw someone say the other day,
00:10:43.060 which this is such a form of horrible emotional manipulation. If your theology makes someone want
00:10:47.820 to kill themselves, then it's not good theology. And it kind of sounds like a similar idea that you
00:10:55.740 have to put on the lens of, will this make someone mad or does this fit the worldly definition of
00:11:02.260 loving? If so, if it does fit that worldly definition, I'll take it. If not, then I'll
00:11:08.340 throw it away. Kind of like cafeteria Christianity.
00:11:10.880 Yeah. Cafeteria Christianity. It makes you the sovereign. And because ultimately what New Thought
00:11:16.520 teaches, again, and it's so tricky because it's in a Christian context, is that you are divine.
00:11:22.440 You are the creator of the universe. You are a co-creator with God. And so I'm hearing all this
00:11:28.900 stuff growing up in a Christian context, not really thinking much of it, if I'm honest. I didn't really
00:11:34.020 think much of spiritual things until I was 16. And that's really when I became a Christian. No doubt
00:11:39.420 in my mind, I gave my life to the Lord. And how'd that happen? I actually was at a very, very low,
00:11:45.660 dark place. And I was suicidal. And I just happened to be at a party one night with a
00:11:52.260 friend that, I mean, he was drinking, but he had just gotten saved. Brand new baby Christian. And
00:11:58.760 he's there telling us that we're doing something terrible, like we need to repent. And it was very
00:12:04.120 interesting. But yeah, he's there telling the gospel and I believed it. And I went home that night
00:12:10.760 completely different. I woke up the next morning and I remember sitting up alley and I'm like,
00:12:15.840 man, this is different. I mean, the light shone brighter. Smells, smell different. Colors look
00:12:21.460 different. I felt new. I felt born again. And I'd never even heard that term before. And so I felt
00:12:27.540 like a new creation. But the biggest thing was a hunger to know more. I wanted to know the Bible.
00:12:33.600 Yeah. And that actually was where the problem started because I discovered that there's maybe
00:12:40.900 an anti-intellectual vein within Christianity that's like, they don't want to think about
00:12:45.920 those things. They don't want to ask or answer hard questions. And I'm talking Christianity 101
00:12:51.520 questions. Tell me about hell. I have issues with that. What's going on? How can a good God,
00:12:56.440 hell? All the things that we've always asked. Yeah. Things that we've asked for thousands of years in
00:13:01.620 Christianity. Good question. Yes. How did we get the Bible? What's up with the violence in the Old
00:13:05.640 Testament? Tell me about this God that I believe. And it was really there at that point that I
00:13:11.180 discovered, okay, a lot of Christians don't like this. And were you asking your parents? Because you,
00:13:18.220 I guess at the time, maybe thought that they were a Christian. Were you asking a pastor?
00:13:21.500 Well, my parents split up. So my mom, they split up when I was little. And my mom, I was asking
00:13:26.760 everybody. I was so hungry. And of course my mom, I mean, we grew up with these types of beliefs. And
00:13:32.380 so I'm hearing one thing. And then we had the books on the shelf that I grew up with. Those were pretty
00:13:36.400 pivotal because they talked about Jesus. They were talking about these tough questions with a very
00:13:43.860 open mind. And so, and then I remember asking pastors and other Christians. And I remember being
00:13:50.040 told once that I was actually stumbling them in their faith. And it just kind of turned me off.
00:13:54.520 Because of your questions. Oh no. Yeah. And it kind of turned me off a little bit. And so I started
00:13:59.720 exploring elsewhere. And what ended up happening, it was a long thing that took a long time, but I
00:14:07.240 ended up blending a lot of the new thought beliefs that I grew up with, with my Christianity, just not
00:14:12.840 realizing that's what I did. And I thought it was new age, which would be appropriate perhaps to define
00:14:18.740 at this point. Because new age is its own bucket. I would say that new age is more Hindu, Hinduism,
00:14:28.260 Buddhism, Eastern mysticism. And then new thought is more Gnostic in origin. So you have these competing
00:14:35.080 spiritualities that ultimately say, yeah, you are divine, but how they get there is different.
00:14:39.680 And I had my friend, I have a friend, his name is Carl Teichrib, brilliant man. He helped me,
00:14:44.800 he helped peer review a few of my chapters. And he put it this way. He said that the new age is really
00:14:49.240 external, like tarot card, psychic readings, transcendental meditation, Reiki, reincarnation,
00:14:57.680 karma, you know, star seeds, light work, you're taking all these things that you're outwardly doing
00:15:03.100 something. He said that new thought is more internal in that regard. So, and I have a whole chapter about
00:15:09.100 that. I go into more detail about the difference between new age and new thought and why new thought
00:15:13.120 is in its own bucket. But I thought I was in the new age, but it was, it was really funny because
00:15:18.480 when I did end up getting out of it, which was after I had my first child, and of all people,
00:15:23.420 it was two Jehovah's Witnesses that challenged me and I'm researching them. And as I'm researching
00:15:28.100 them, I'm realizing, oh, what I believe is wrong. Because if the Bible is true, then what they believe is
00:15:35.120 wrong. But if the Bible is true, what I believe is wrong. So it was, it was kind of a rug that got
00:15:40.600 pulled out from underneath me. But after I got out of it, I'm like, yeah, I'm an ex new ager. And
00:15:46.400 people would come up and they'd ask, oh, sacred geometry. Is that, is that new age? I'm like,
00:15:51.120 I didn't know math could be sacred. What's happening here? I didn't know that. Reiki, never even heard of
00:15:56.880 it before. I had no idea yoga would have been considered new age. And I realized as time went on,
00:16:02.040 maybe I was in something a little bit different, heard the word new thoughts, thought it was the
00:16:05.900 same thing. And it wasn't. It turns out that new thought is made to look Christian. And that's
00:16:10.900 really why I wrote about it, is that I think that there's, there's an infiltration, a hiddenness
00:16:16.360 that it's been hiding behind the leg of new age. Yeah. Yeah.
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00:18:14.920 Okay. I want to dig into some of the details of your story because testimonies are some of my
00:18:26.800 favorite interviews. Oh yeah, absolutely. And there are some of our most popular people just
00:18:33.080 never tire of hearing people's testimonies. It's just rejuvenating and strengthening for my own faith
00:18:38.900 and for other people to kind of hear similarities in other people's stories, I think is also really
00:18:44.260 helpful. You mentioned when you were 16 that you were in a really dark place that led you to the
00:18:49.600 point, you know, you were at a party drinking, but it sounds like you were kind of ripe for a
00:18:54.260 message of hope, which is what you heard that night. What got you there? Oh, that's so interesting
00:18:58.280 you ask that. It was God's love. There was something about the forgiveness and love of God that I had
00:19:05.080 never heard. I'd gone to church. I'd heard about Jesus. I'd heard all about the power. I've heard
00:19:12.120 about the power that humanity can have, supposedly, but I'd never really heard it quite like that,
00:19:20.760 where there's nothing you've done, nothing you've done that he will not forgive. And there was
00:19:27.620 something in that moment when those words were said that I felt the Holy Spirit, like I'd never,
00:19:33.940 I'd never felt that before. And I can think of it now. Even how I was sitting, I was holding a
00:19:41.400 bottle of Strawberry Boone's wine, I mean, because I'm lame. And there's this warmth, like this feeling,
00:19:48.100 I guess, but it was more of a feeling. It was just this completion. I believed. I believed.
00:19:55.380 I believed what he said, and it changed my life. I'm like, this God, tell me more. And I did start
00:20:03.300 going to church, and I did learn some things. It was just my insatiable hunger, I suppose, to want
00:20:09.300 to know more. And then if I wasn't satisfied in it, I wanted to pick at every corner and dig through
00:20:17.180 everything to figure out exactly how to understand hell or the problem of evil from every angle,
00:20:24.120 because it helped me understand, maybe through my doubts. I didn't realize that at the time,
00:20:28.640 I was kind of an apologist. I liked digging into that stuff.
00:20:32.440 Yeah. And you said it was God's love. At that point, did you feel unloved? You said that your
00:20:38.440 parents had split and you were in this dark spot. What was that dark spot? What was going on in your
00:20:44.440 life?
00:20:45.400 Well, I was, I can honestly say, I don't think I was a very good person. I was very, very insecure.
00:20:51.020 I told a lot of lies. I told, you know, I mean, here I am this teenager that just, I don't
00:20:56.660 know what I'm doing. I have no direction. And I ended up hurting somebody pretty badly.
00:21:01.340 And I felt really bad about that. But it was more than just feeling bad. I was not a good
00:21:08.200 person. I didn't love myself. I didn't like who I was. I didn't see anything good in the
00:21:14.200 fact that I could give anything to this world. And I don't think that there was anything anybody
00:21:23.340 could have said, any person that could have come in my life to say anything that I needed
00:21:29.100 to hear other than the gospel. It was the gospel that really just brought me out of that place.
00:21:34.740 But yeah, the suicidal thoughts like that, it was the darkest I've ever felt at all. And
00:21:41.060 that's the thing is that when I woke up that next day, it was gone. Yeah, it was gone. Like
00:21:46.860 I felt like this new person, brand new. And just, I remember thinking like, as I sat up,
00:21:53.460 like whoever that person was last night is dead. Yeah. And it was just really interesting. I
00:21:59.400 experienced that. Yes. And what's interesting also about the feelings that you had before believing
00:22:05.000 in Christ was that that is the exact opposite message that the new age, especially, but I
00:22:11.000 suppose also the new thought tells people that you are inherently good and powerful, or at the very
00:22:17.180 least, it sounds like new thought would say you have the potential to be powerful. If you aspire to
00:22:23.040 this Christ consciousness, new age would say you've got this, like God is deep down inside. All you have
00:22:27.740 to do is find her, love yourself until you get to that point, then you'll be satisfied. But you felt the
00:22:33.960 opposite of that. You had kind of grown up around some of those messages and you felt, no, I'm not
00:22:39.440 good. I can't save myself. And so it actually, I'm a horrible person. Yeah. It makes me think that
00:22:45.740 it's not just a wrong message when these new age messengers or self-love, self-help people tell
00:22:51.640 everyone you're beautiful and perfect the way you are. That is actually an impediment to the gospel
00:22:56.860 because you needed to get to the place where you are like, I am not perfect. I am not a savior. I am not
00:23:03.240 God and I need help. And that is really what made you vulnerable in the best way to the message of
00:23:11.160 Christ. It's funny you mentioned that too, because I have a whole chapter on the self-help movement
00:23:15.020 and I quote your book in it because there's this, exactly, you have this idea that you have this
00:23:22.140 inner divine spark and the only sin is your ignorance to it. It's like you're good. You are inherently
00:23:28.820 good. And you got this and you just have to see it within yourself. And that is so,
00:23:34.740 it's a crutch. Yeah. It's the opposite. And then, and then you have a further problem there.
00:23:40.980 And I say that this is like the problem with like the gospel of Oprah Winfrey, for example,
00:23:45.440 is that if you don't think that you need salvation, if you don't think that you're a bad person
00:23:51.520 or need a savior because you're the savior, that is a block to accepting, hearing, understanding the
00:24:01.680 gospel. And so it begins with that. Another lesson I'm hearing from your testimony is that you were
00:24:07.800 truly saved. You were justified at that point, but the sanctification process didn't look exactly like
00:24:14.780 maybe the outside world would expect it to look or want it to look. You still believed some ideas of
00:24:24.160 the new age and new thought. And from the outside looking in, someone might believe that girl's not
00:24:30.980 a Christian. She doesn't have the right theology. It's just a reminder for us to be gracious and
00:24:36.500 patient with people who are new Christians. It might not mean that they're not really Christians.
00:24:41.020 They might be prodigal. They might be. And here's the thing. This is kind of my way of understanding
00:24:47.080 where somebody stands. How do you respond to truth? Because when I discovered it, I leaned into it.
00:24:54.100 I was like, oh, I'm sinning. This is repent. I need to repent. I need to fix this. Because once I
00:25:00.600 understood, and that's the thing is I was really hungry for it. But once I understood, I shifted.
00:25:06.620 Whereas other people, they justify it. They justify their sin. They want to stay in where they're at.
00:25:13.100 And there is no coming out of that in that regard. And so I think that that's one way to
00:25:18.180 kind of look at it. But I'm glad you mentioned that. Yeah, like giving the grace and thinking that,
00:25:24.320 okay, that person might be going through something. But I think that's one reason I think I've become
00:25:29.060 very careful of kind of calling out somebody's salvation unless it's very obvious.
00:25:33.400 Yeah. But I think that there's a difference with how they accept truth being told. And I think that
00:25:41.060 there's ways to kind of be mindful of maybe how we're speaking. But I think that that really has
00:25:46.800 been a weird litmus test for me. Like, how are you going to take this? Because here's objectively what
00:25:52.520 the Bible says. Objectively. Yeah.
00:25:55.200 And you just don't like that. Okay. All right. That's where we stand. Okay.
00:25:58.800 Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a little bit tough. And I don't know if I'm willing to make this like a
00:26:03.100 hard and fast rule that if you're a new Christian, you shouldn't have like a social media platform
00:26:07.580 about theology. I don't want to say that for sure, because I don't know if that's always the case. But
00:26:12.020 I do think it's tougher. Like, I'm glad that I didn't have a microphone when I was first,
00:26:17.800 you know, learning because you're just, I mean, we're always going to be wrong about certain things
00:26:23.240 until, you know, we reach glory and then we'll understand fully. But I don't know. It's a very
00:26:30.060 difficult time after you become a Christian to then start preaching online.
00:26:36.060 Yeah. It's scriptural. I find that there's wisdom when you wait. There's wisdom in waiting in that
00:26:43.200 regard. And for obvious reasons, obvious reasons. And I think that I look back now and I wonder, man,
00:26:50.540 if I had a platform and I was saying that stuff, I'd have to not just backpedal, but I would have
00:26:55.120 hurt other people's theology. I would have harmed their walk. And there's no way 10 years, that point
00:27:01.260 and then 10 years later, my theology is definitely stronger. But I think there's responsibility that
00:27:07.160 goes with that for sure. Yeah, I agree with you.
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00:28:30.420 movement that people have never heard of but they need to know about? Might not have. New thought.
00:28:34.940 Yes. Okay, let's flesh that out even more. The differences between new thought and new age. You
00:28:41.400 give three big differences between these two things. Can you talk about that? You might have
00:28:47.080 to refresh me if I gave three. Yes. New thought claims to be Christian. New age is more associated
00:28:52.140 with numerology, astrology, etc. New age might be more pantheistic in their worldview. Yes. Yeah. So
00:28:58.560 new thought would say that they are more panentheistic, which I just think is a fancy way
00:29:05.520 of cheating because, I mean, you have theism and pantheism and there's probably a seminary
00:29:10.880 professor that's much smarter than me that could hash that out a little bit more. But they would say
00:29:15.760 that God is in everything, not that everything is God. And how I understand that they would hash that
00:29:23.660 out is kind of how I explained before, that if God is in everything, we're all one. And it builds on
00:29:31.580 this belief called non-duality, which is the opposite of what scripture teaches, that we're
00:29:35.860 separate from God. This is really important, actually, because the Christian worldview says that
00:29:41.240 God is not us. He is holy. He is separate from us. He is Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac,
00:29:49.480 and Jacob. He is not a human being and he is separate from us. We need to be made right with
00:29:56.300 him. That's where Jesus comes in. Non-duality, panentheism says, no, we're already all one with
00:30:04.220 God. We are not separate from him. And your sin is your ignorance to that. And when you realize that
00:30:13.240 you are one with God, that's really when the spiritual awakening can happen. And it's really
00:30:19.920 interesting because you can talk with people that have had maybe what they would consider a
00:30:25.900 spiritual awakening and they see the world in this non-dual sense. And what I've noticed is that
00:30:33.260 it's almost like they have to shut off their mind a little bit. And this is one of the issues I had with
00:30:37.840 New Thought is that it kind of, the first name for New Thought was mind sciences. And I thought it was
00:30:45.360 just a way more intelligent version of Christianity, just smarter, more open-minded. But the irony is,
00:30:51.180 is that it really does teach you to kind of shut off your critical thinking. Critical thinking is
00:30:55.600 negative thinking. So you kind of dance between these names and all, but really what that, what it
00:31:01.380 does is that it, it makes it so that your, whatever happens to you, whatever is brought into your
00:31:08.440 world, whatever you're thinking about, you're in essence creating whatever you feel about something
00:31:13.600 you are bringing into your reality. So, but yeah, I think that, um, you named a few things that would
00:31:19.340 put those two things in their own little buckets, but New Thought and New Age, they are not the same
00:31:24.200 thing. And I think that's, that's really, uh, one of the things that I think people kind of struggle
00:31:30.780 with is defining that. But I, uh, yeah. Which one do you think has seeped more pervasively into
00:31:39.120 the modern church? Which New Thought teaching? New Thought or New Age? I would say New Age, I would say
00:31:46.380 that is more obvious. If you have a church like Bethel, for example, they are very open saying,
00:31:51.780 oh, look, look at that, those tarot cards. Maybe there's some truth here in astrology or numerology
00:31:57.120 or whatever. There's been a Bethel pastor specifically to say that? Oh, Physics of Heaven
00:32:02.820 is actually one of their most damning books that they've written. Have you read that book? Is that
00:32:05.880 by Bill Johnson? It's by, uh, oh, who's it by? Two women. Um, okay. Yeah. I mean, it's endorsed by
00:32:11.880 Chris Vallotton and Bill Johnson, but their names are escaping me. I haven't actually thought of it for a
00:32:16.500 while. They took the book off the shelf though. Yeah. Oh, really? Okay. They took the book off the
00:32:20.720 shelf, but Physics of Heaven was very disturbing because you see, I saw it and I'm like, wow,
00:32:29.740 this is a lot of what I used to believe. You know, you have quantum mysticism and metaphysics
00:32:34.740 and all these things that they're trying to- Ellen Davis and Judy Franklin. Very good. And I don't know
00:32:38.460 anything about them or if the book mentions tarot cards, but I know it does. I've read about the book
00:32:44.800 and I know it does mention a lot of like almost paranormal superstitious things that are not
00:32:50.620 founded in scripture. Yes. And that is kind of this idea of correspondence that what is happening
00:32:55.880 in heaven corresponds with something here and we can make manifest- Yes. Kind of- Yeah. All those
00:33:03.860 things. The kingdom of heaven different than how Jesus, you know, tells us to advance the kingdom here
00:33:09.700 on earth as it is in heaven. It's much more, I don't know. It sounds a lot more like witchcraft to
00:33:14.680 me. Yeah. It's, it's, it can get very witchcrafty and that's the idea is they look at that and they
00:33:19.100 think, hmm, we can redeem that. There's power there. New thought I think is a little bit more,
00:33:24.640 I mean, they would probably be, I use them as an example because they're probably the ones that
00:33:28.380 would be more open to rolling out the red carpet to pretty much any weird thing because they don't want
00:33:33.580 to miss out on a blessing from God or a power from God or something like that. New thought I would
00:33:38.820 think is more hidden in that regard. So, I mean, we're talking affirmations, manifestation,
00:33:46.060 visualization, health and wealth prosperity teachings. I even have a whole chapter on the
00:33:51.920 very questionable roots of the seeker friendly model with Robert Shuler, who was a new thought
00:33:59.120 pastor who mentored many pastors that are still around today. I mean, we have, you know, these,
00:34:04.560 these issues with this movement, Norman Vincent Peale, he's a new thought pastor.
00:34:09.440 And the power of positive thinking. And we, we have these things where what makes new thought
00:34:14.980 very difficult is that you can say, okay, I need to think positive about myself. And then somebody
00:34:21.480 might think, oh, well, that's new thought. Well, hold on. We need to kind of hash that out a little
00:34:26.860 bit. What do you mean by that? Yeah. What do you mean by being positive to yourself or loving yourself?
00:34:31.560 What does that mean? And so is there some sort of innate power with your thinking? If you're
00:34:38.020 thinking positive, are you thinking that there's a frequency or vibration that goes with that, that
00:34:42.440 somehow is creating the world around you? And so I think that that's kind of where we can see that
00:34:51.060 in the church. But I have a whole chapter, for example, on like the word of faith movement,
00:34:54.260 where when I got out of these teachings, I just got done doing law of attraction, speaking things
00:35:02.500 into existence, co-creating with God. And then I see it in the church. And at first I was confused
00:35:07.840 because I didn't know, I didn't know what the word of faith movement was. I didn't know what
00:35:11.560 prosperity gospel was. And I experienced it first and then I saw it and took me years to kind of put
00:35:18.100 those two things together. The question is not if new thought teachings are in the word of faith
00:35:24.180 movement. They are. Yeah. And tell me what the word of faith movement is. The word of faith movement
00:35:29.500 is, it's a name that they gave themselves. Think of, it's synonymous with the prosperity gospel.
00:35:34.440 It's the idea that God always wills you to be healthy and wealthy and you can speak and create
00:35:44.020 as God created as well. This is very simplistic way to describe it, but some teachers that are very
00:35:50.460 prominent in the word of faith movement, Kenneth Hagen, he's, he's the father of the word of faith
00:35:54.200 movement. Uh, Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, uh, you have Creflo Dollar. I could go on and on. Uh,
00:36:01.380 these Joel Osteen, you have Joyce Meyer. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot, all of them are teaching the same
00:36:09.960 philosophy, theological philosophy. Uh, I would say the Kenneth Copeland is probably the most outspoken,
00:36:16.600 but Joel Osteen is probably the most new thought word of faith pastor that I could, that I could
00:36:21.680 name. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, new thought reverends ministers look at him and think, wow, he's teaching
00:36:29.140 a new thought message. Yeah. Good for him. He weighs a Bible around. We don't like that, but
00:36:32.680 yeah. Yeah. They kind of seem like that. Well, he uses, it seems like Bible verses to
00:36:37.100 bolster his, you know, self-help speech, basically the points that he's making about self-empowerment.
00:36:45.200 Yeah. The I am affirmations. Yeah. It's just, they have no answer for what's going on with the
00:36:50.900 Christians in Syria right now. Yeah. Or what's going on in the Christians, you know, in different
00:36:57.020 parts of Africa that are beheaded for their faith. Exactly. And the ironic thing is that
00:37:02.660 a lot of, uh, prosperity preaching is actually imported into places like Africa. Yes. Unfortunately,
00:37:10.860 because some of these people have, you know, worldwide ministries that's funded by billions of
00:37:17.760 dollars and we're going to these poor countries and preaching this heretical message, which not
00:37:24.080 only cannot save their soul, but will not save their body. So they're left with feeling when they're
00:37:30.340 still, you know, getting persecuted by the radical Islamist, there's, they're left feeling that it's
00:37:36.580 their fault, that they didn't declare it enough, that they didn't have enough faith. Yeah. That that's
00:37:41.700 why they're not rich. That's not why they're not saved when really they're supposed to be serving
00:37:47.460 the Jesus who says in this world, you will have trouble and all who desire to live a godly life
00:37:52.560 in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Um, and so there's such a danger to this. There's such a
00:37:58.120 danger to this message. It's not just, oh yeah, we kind of disagree. No, this is anti-gospel and
00:38:03.360 an impediment to saving faith. Yes. And then they take the critical thinking I was saying before,
00:38:09.780 you can't do that. You can't think critically because, oh, that's Satan, right? Like that's
00:38:14.320 Satan trying to bring doubts into my mind. And so you end up not thinking critically about the
00:38:19.960 teacher or what you're being taught, even though you're commanded to. And so, yeah, it creates this
00:38:24.720 whole mess. It's, it's very messy, but you know, if I were to describe word of faith, I would say
00:38:32.340 it's a soup of Pentecostalism, the faith cure movement of the 1800s and new thought. And so there's
00:38:39.760 faith cure movement of the 1800s. Can you flesh that out? I wish I could actually. I mean,
00:38:43.860 the faith cure movement was, um, I actually just did an interview with Rob Bowman about it,
00:38:48.580 about the whole word of faith movement. And he would probably know a lot more about this,
00:38:53.120 but the word, the faith cure movement was what EW Kenyon adopted and got into, which is that God
00:39:00.540 always wills you to heal, always wants you to be healed through faith. Physically on this side of
00:39:05.580 heaven. Yes. And so a lot of those teachings that you see transported over into the word of faith
00:39:10.380 movement come from the faith cure movement. And so, uh, I think, I think one faith cure teaching is
00:39:16.540 that Jesus had to go to hell. I believe that's one of them that he had to go to hell and, uh, you
00:39:22.480 know, preach the gospel, uh, that he, he, there's like a teaching. I know that, excuse me, like Joyce
00:39:28.740 Meyer, a few other people teach these, these teachings. He had to go to hell for three days, uh,
00:39:33.640 certain aspects of that movement have been introduced into the word of faith movement.
00:39:39.200 And what I attempt to do is like, okay, well, what's new thought? Yeah. What, what are those
00:39:43.060 lines that I can draw? Yeah. Um, okay. Tell me a little bit more about how these things manifest
00:39:51.560 themselves, not just in the like big Joel Osteen churches, but kind of in all seeker sensitive
00:39:57.760 churches and preaching, there's a part of this. And I kind of understand this temptation
00:40:04.740 to tell someone who you want to be a Christian or who was in a really low place. Like you
00:40:10.480 were to be like, Oh no, you're good. You're not a bad person. You're actually a good person
00:40:15.700 and it's okay. Like you're going to be fine. God's going to help you. Like I see the temptation
00:40:22.360 behind that. I see that like, even as a parent to my children, like that's the, that's what
00:40:28.480 we want to tell them. So tell us how this shows up in different kinds of evangelical churches.
00:40:34.200 Sure. Yeah. And it's not just seeker sensitive. I think that there's many seeker churches that
00:40:38.080 are biblical, but I think that there's dangers of course, um, when it comes to these kinds
00:40:43.120 of teachings, the positive minded teachings, the teachings that make you want to be attractive
00:40:51.300 to the believer or to the unbeliever. Um, I mean, and unoffensive, unoffensive. Yeah.
00:40:58.540 And I think that there's a danger there, of course, because the first thing you want to
00:41:03.360 mess with is offending people. You always want to mess with the message of the cross. And
00:41:07.660 I'm like, don't do that. You're taking away the stumbling block, the very thing that's supposed
00:41:13.040 to offend somebody. You're taking it away. And so you get a lot of false converts who feel
00:41:18.200 really good every Sunday. They, they, they hear about how to manage their stress and they hear
00:41:22.960 about how to maybe handle their marriage. Yeah. But whatever you win people with, you win them too.
00:41:29.160 Exactly. Exactly. And so the most nuanced chapter, the hardest chapter to write was the chapter on the
00:41:38.300 seeker model because of this nuance, because it's, it's a, it's a cheap shot. You can't just cheap
00:41:44.220 shot one way and say, Oh, all secret churches are bad. And then you can't cheap shot the other way
00:41:48.580 and say that there's nothing wrong. You have to have this conversation. And so I start with Shuler,
00:41:53.820 the, one of the creators or the creator, the, the main face of the seeker model. Why was it created?
00:42:00.720 What were the intentions there and what new thought beliefs from Shuler informed that model?
00:42:07.280 And I just, I can't unsee it. You know, once I see it, it's just, okay, well you're creating a space for
00:42:14.320 the non-believer. And then you have this possibility thinking that he, that he taught the, the, this
00:42:21.260 positive thinking kind of aspect, which some of them do, but really what it, what it caters to
00:42:27.080 can be an in-house conversation that we need to have, you know? And so, but yeah, that now you asked
00:42:34.660 how like other dangers though, can get into these churches. And one of the problems I'm seeing is
00:42:39.520 that there is a lack of being able to understand bad theology. There's a lack of discernments in the
00:42:52.160 church. And one of the questions that I asked is, okay, how does that get there? But also I see a
00:42:57.000 shift where people are, we're fed up. We're fed up. We're like, okay, can we start thinking critically
00:43:02.820 about our faith? And one of the problems that I see, okay, personally with specifically new thought
00:43:09.280 teachings, let's take affirmations. Affirmations, a lot of people are going to hear that right now
00:43:14.200 and think, oh, okay, yeah, I do affirmations. What a lot of people don't realize is what affirmations
00:43:19.120 are is new thought prayers. They were created by the new thought movements to speak affirmative prayer
00:43:26.880 in the now in order for you to basically manifest what it is. You don't ask. In other words, you,
00:43:32.940 you, you, you say it as if you had it. And then your feelings are very, very important.
00:43:38.960 Feelings are everything. Um, in new thought it's, that's where your power is. If you feel like you have
00:43:45.580 a relationship, if you feel like you're rich, if you feel that you can have that job, according to
00:43:53.700 these laws of the universe, you must get it. And so I'll be having conversations with, with Christians
00:43:59.880 about these beliefs and they're like, oh yeah, yeah, I believe that. And so I, I have to pull out
00:44:07.140 of them a little bit more, you know, like, where did you get that from? Who have you read? You know,
00:44:11.640 because if you're reading the Bible, it's, you don't just get that black and white message. You don't
00:44:16.560 get this message of, oh, if you speak it, believe it. If you, you have these kinds of, you know,
00:44:22.440 that faith is a power or that, that you can speak affirmative prayer instead of asking and,
00:44:30.240 and trusting, like there's no model there. And so I'm just wondering where does that come from?
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00:45:59.040 How does this influence progressive theology? How do we see this? And I mean, it's a paradoxical
00:46:12.180 term, but the progressive church. Yes. Yeah. That's another chapter. That's chapter eight in
00:46:18.060 the book because Elisa Childers, a mutual friend of ours, me and her have a joke that a progressive
00:46:26.360 Christian and a new ager, really a new thoughter would go into a coffee shop and realize that
00:46:31.080 they're best friends because they basically believe the same thing. And I would joke with
00:46:34.660 her. I'm like, but why? Where does that come from? Why is there, you have universal Christ,
00:46:39.760 Richard Rohr. Richard Rohr is a hodgepodge, but he talks, he says very new thought things sometimes
00:46:45.900 and other times he doesn't. And then you have other progressives talking about the Christ
00:46:51.100 consciousness, the divine mind, these really new thought words. And so I attempt to explain
00:46:59.140 that parallel, how that happens, why does that happen? And again, a lot of it does have to do
00:47:07.240 with the overall fact that new thought as a movement is interwoven throughout America,
00:47:12.680 but it's also something that is adopted within many churches by many Christians. And it gives
00:47:18.720 you this alternative Jesus. It gives you this alternative gospel that sounds a lot like the
00:47:24.060 progressive gospel. These are two different movements to be sure. But the fact that I can
00:47:29.660 find so many new thought beliefs among progressives is very interesting to me. Let me give you one of
00:47:36.960 your true authentic self. That's a huge progressive word right now. That's a very big new thought word
00:47:44.620 too. Your true authentic self, your true self is your divine self within. And you have two parts of
00:47:50.220 yourself, your false self and your true self. Your false self, and this would be a new thought idea as
00:47:55.800 well, also progressive, is built, is what society tells you what it is, right? And so your false self
00:48:01.920 is something that needs to be deconstructed so you could uncover your true self. This is why
00:48:08.740 there's this constant drone of uncertainty. And well, at least I believe that's why. I think that
00:48:15.560 that's one reason why is that you can never be absolutely sure of what you believe because then
00:48:21.520 you're rebuilding your false self. Is that from society or is that from my true self? And so I don't
00:48:26.480 know. I'm just going to... Yeah. And then truth. Truth is redefined completely. I have a whole chapter
00:48:31.640 on that. That's really interesting too because I did a lot of interviews for this book. A lot of
00:48:37.140 them made it into the book. Face to face, boots on the ground, made calls, interviews. And I always
00:48:42.940 wanted to start with truth questions. And there was this one reverend, and it's in the progressive
00:48:48.980 chapter. And my friend Greg Kokel, he and Frank Turk, both of them, if you're asking a truth
00:48:55.940 question, push it as far as you can. See what you can get away with just to see where they're at.
00:49:00.860 How far will they move the goalposts? And this one reverend, I was asking him, well, okay, I believe
00:49:07.060 my true self says that tobacco is a vegetable. And he's like, that's dumb, right? Like, that's just,
00:49:13.340 why would you believe that? I'm like, okay, well, I believe that though. That's my truth.
00:49:17.080 And through a series of questions, by the end of the conversation, he was believing, yeah,
00:49:21.600 okay, it's your truth. Tobacco can be a vegetable. I'm like, how far are you going to move these
00:49:26.220 goalposts? And so yeah, these little dances with all these things, with progressive Christianity
00:49:30.840 and new thought, I say that has way more in common with new thought than new age,
00:49:38.720 progressive Christianity does. I'm not saying that there's none, but I think as far as that belief
00:49:43.960 goes, as far as those, the actual ins and outs is more new thought.
00:49:48.060 And so much of what you said, we can see manifested specifically in a variety of ways in progressivism,
00:49:54.780 but gender is the first one that comes to mind. And it's this kind of, you know, Nancy Piercy
00:49:59.300 writes about this so beautifully and love thy body. And I talk about it some, and you're not enough
00:50:05.300 when you serve the God of self, or I called it the like cult of self affirmation, where you're serving
00:50:10.560 the God of self, the two highest values are autonomy and authenticity, which can both be good things
00:50:16.580 when they are in submission to Christ. But when they're not, when they are your highest values,
00:50:22.820 then autonomy justifies doing whatever you want in the name of controlling yourself. So abortion would
00:50:28.640 be one example. Authenticity justifies doing whatever you want in the name of being yourself.
00:50:35.380 So if your true self, as you said, and your true inner self is who you really are and informs
00:50:41.360 physical reality rather than the other way around, then of course you can declare that you are a girl,
00:50:47.440 even if you were born male, because you have that power. And it's also connected because you have the
00:50:54.700 power of speech to declare a new reality that everyone else must then submit to. And I'm so curious
00:51:02.320 about this part of your story. I haven't heard you share about it before, but you also had some gender
00:51:07.900 confusion, gender deception when you were growing up. Can you talk about that?
00:51:12.140 Yeah, that was very difficult to write that chapter because it's very vulnerable. And to be honest,
00:51:20.520 I'm still working that out myself on many levels, but the spiritual beliefs that I grew up with,
00:51:29.820 what I believed about my inner self really fed into that. This is really who I am.
00:51:37.560 And I'm a nineties kid. You know what I mean? Like there was no social media. There was nobody
00:51:41.580 feeding me this. There was nothing happening. It was just, I had a very strong dislike for being a
00:51:49.480 girl. I didn't like, I thought boys were smarter. They were funnier. They, everybody listened when
00:51:54.860 they spoke. Uh, they had better positions, uh, better. They were leaders. They were powerful,
00:52:02.380 you know, all these things. More athletic. Yeah. Yeah. And it was actually Abigail Schreier's book.
00:52:06.840 I cried. I cried when I read that book at the end because of her first book. Yeah. Her first book,
00:52:11.620 reversible damage. I quote her in that book. I actually, at the end of the chapter, because
00:52:15.460 it made me cry. It's like, you're not a deformed version of a male, you know? Yeah. And I,
00:52:21.100 I loved that. Not that she said that, but it was the, I wrote it in the book and I quoted her on that,
00:52:26.180 but in a certain aspect or a certain section of her book. But yeah, the, the, the worry there,
00:52:32.840 the concern that I had though, is that I grew out of it, but I still struggled a little bit with
00:52:39.380 seeing men equal to me. Okay. Cause a new thought and new age, men are not equal. You as a female are
00:52:49.820 superior to them. And that was very attractive. Yeah. Because then it's like, Oh, I'm better than
00:52:57.440 you. There's no equality here. I'm, I'm a female and I have all these qualities that you don't. And
00:53:03.600 so it came into this competition, but when it comes to the, the element of the spirituality that
00:53:11.740 I had to deal with that, especially as a young kid, I'm, I'm this tweenager teenager kind of
00:53:16.860 dealing with who am I and what am I? Why does my body and why does my heart say two different things?
00:53:22.960 I had no context for, however, what I did have context for were like, I had a lot of Ralph Waldo
00:53:29.160 Emerson. He's one of the fathers of new thought and your true authentic self. He had this.
00:53:34.980 I did not know that. Yes. And we read a lot of him in high school. I mean, obviously he's a,
00:53:39.780 I didn't know either. An amazing writer. He's an incredible writer.
00:53:42.540 But I didn't know that he had any association with new thought. Interesting.
00:53:47.140 He, um, he is one of the fathers of new thought and he wrote a very famous essay called self-reliance.
00:53:54.260 Hmm. And in that essay, it's basically everything we're talking about who you are on the inside.
00:54:00.240 You do you boo. Like it's you, that's who you are. And he's also a transcendentalist, right? So he's
00:54:05.340 one of the main figures in the transcendental movement. I was reading Carl Truman's book and
00:54:10.340 in reading his book, I'm like, man, this sounds a lot like what I grew up with. Why does this sound
00:54:14.340 like new thought? What is going on here? He's talking about romanticism and the origins of the
00:54:19.260 sexual revolution. Yeah. Rise and fall of the modern self. Yes. Is that what it's called? That's
00:54:24.000 the thicker version. I read the lay person version, which is a strange new world. Okay. Carl Truman.
00:54:29.600 Carl Truman. This is recent, by the way, you're not talking about while you were a teenager.
00:54:32.920 You're talking about in the last few years as you've, as you've learned. Yeah. Yes. And I'm reading
00:54:37.200 his book and I was struggling because I'm like, why does this sound like new thought? Expressive
00:54:43.260 individualism, all these things. And it was in doing the research on Emerson that I realized you
00:54:49.840 have these corresponding movements of romanticism and transcendentalism, where if I could describe
00:54:56.280 romanticism in a word, it would be emotions. If I were to describe transcendentalism in a word,
00:55:00.880 it would be self. And both are authoritative in who you are. And I think I understood at that point,
00:55:07.960 I'm like, oh, okay. I kind of see where this kind of comes from. And I actually did a little bit more
00:55:12.700 of a deep dive podcast on the transcendental gender stuff and the connection there with
00:55:19.400 cultish on a podcast with them. Because you're right. It's not a topic that I've talked about very
00:55:24.180 much, but I'm very fascinated with this whole, it's not just gender. This is the other thing.
00:55:30.220 It's not just gender. In new thought spaces or these spaces where you have this freedom of identity
00:55:37.740 and that whoever you are on the inside is not just, oh, I feel this way. Whoever you are on the inside
00:55:44.300 is divine. So it makes talking to them a very different experience. You're not just talking to
00:55:50.820 a person who might be gender confused, which there are those. To this person, they think that whatever
00:55:56.900 is telling them and forming them of their identity is God. So you're going against God. If I'm going
00:56:03.440 against them, I'm going against God. And so I've had to kind of take a position where I have to
00:56:09.560 understand that I'm talking to somebody that actually believes that this is a divine thing
00:56:15.080 that's happening within them. Can I ask something? It's going to be controversial. And I don't know if
00:56:19.460 you've talked about this because a lot of the theology, obviously we see it in all different kinds
00:56:24.240 of churches, all different kinds of places. This seems to be especially prevalent in majority black
00:56:30.000 churches. There's a lot of prosperity preaching, but a lot of, as you're talking, I'm like, I've heard
00:56:35.580 that a lot. You are divine. You are a queen. You are, you know, some goddess, something special. And
00:56:42.360 I don't know. I don't know if you've ever talked about the roots of that or why that is.
00:56:46.740 It's interesting you bring that up. That is a controversial question, especially today's
00:56:50.680 political climate. But I guarantee there's a lot of people watching that are like, Ali's not wrong.
00:56:55.620 You know, there's something there. And I was reading Kate Bowler's book. Do you know who that
00:57:00.180 is? Yeah. And there's a whole section on this that she talks about with the black church and the
00:57:07.300 prosperity gospel and all these other theologies that kind of entered into the black church. I mean,
00:57:14.380 Carlton Pearson is one of them. Carlton Pearson was a Pentecostal Word of Faith preacher, Reverend Ike.
00:57:21.020 And both of them were very off when it came to a lot of their their teachings. That's like an origin
00:57:27.140 there in that regard. I haven't looked too much into it, but you're not wrong. Yeah, I have friends.
00:57:33.760 I have a friend. In fact, we've talked many times. She's black and she talks about this a lot on her.
00:57:40.440 She's in ministry as well on her channel. And that's one thing I asked her. I was like, so
00:57:46.100 what's up with this? You know, like how does this, how do you, how do they square this circle? How do
00:57:52.280 they make it so that, you know, maybe in some of their churches that aren't black have a different
00:57:57.340 view on these things, but for the black church is very different. Tell me about that. Yeah. You know,
00:58:02.820 so I wouldn't say that you're wrong in that. A lot of the prosperity preachers that I see,
00:58:08.260 like we played a clip the other day and it was like kind of a funny clip, but it was this older,
00:58:12.540 she was this older white lady. I had never heard of her or seen her before, but she was
00:58:17.440 her, she's using a food analogy. She was like, when you need oil in order to fry all of these
00:58:24.460 things, but when you, yeah. Okay. If what oil do you use to fry bacon? Yeah. You don't need it.
00:58:31.380 And it was like, you are your own anointing oil to give yourself power. So it was this older white
00:58:37.180 lady, but almost the entire congregation was black. I don't know if people know who like real talk
00:58:42.260 Kim is. She's got like over a million Instagram followers. She talks like that very prosperity
00:58:47.940 preacher, same thing. And she's just this like, you know, 47 white lady, almost her entire
00:58:55.080 congregation. It seems like it's black. And so I don't know. I just think that that is
00:58:59.160 interesting. And I wonder what's the correlation there. Yes. I wonder why specifically in majority
00:59:05.680 black churches that seems to be very prevalent. I don't know. I don't know either. That'd be an
00:59:09.820 interesting thing to look into though. Yes. Next video for you. Okay. Tell us anything else you want
00:59:15.480 to say about this book? What do you hope people walk away with? What's the main thing you hope
00:59:20.320 people learn? Well, first of all, I never wanted to write a book. Oh yeah? No. You have so much
00:59:31.460 material though to work with for a book. I'm so glad you did. I, um, put everything I had in this
00:59:38.160 book. I, you put your life on hold for so long and it's, this is the biggest project I've ever
00:59:46.420 worked on. So it's just a little bit about, you know, it's like having a child. It feels like you
00:59:51.060 give birth. It is. It's like you give, you give birth on paper and especially it depends on what
00:59:56.360 you're writing about, but this was not an easy book to write. Yeah. It's a lot of research.
01:00:01.040 It was. And with all that, that to be said, the reason I say that is because I didn't do it for
01:00:09.200 myself. I want people to read this and know that what it is, what is this? Why has nobody talked about
01:00:16.400 this? What's the history of this? Where is it? What are some conversations that we need to have?
01:00:21.820 And then I kind of leave a call to action at the end. Um, an example, a real conversation I had with
01:00:29.080 a woman who was reading Emmett Fox, who's a very well-known new thought author. And she's like,
01:00:33.640 oh, I'm loving this. This is great. I've never heard scripture like this before. And I'm like,
01:00:37.000 oh honey, we need to talk, you know? And her response was, oh, tell me more. Like she leaned into it.
01:00:44.400 And that's kind of what I want to leave people with is that if you're, if you're reading this,
01:00:49.460 I was very careful in, in making it so that it was conversational and informative, but I'm hoping
01:00:56.180 that it leaves people with a sense of, okay, I know what this is. I know how to deal with it.
01:01:01.620 And now I need to maybe make shifts in my own theology. And so I hope they lean into it.
01:01:07.260 Yeah. Awesome. Happy Lies, how a movement you probably never heard of shaped our self-obsessed
01:01:12.700 world. So good. So much information in here. You can get it on Amazon or anywhere books are sold,
01:01:19.040 right? And everyone needs to subscribe to Melissa's channel. It's not only informative,
01:01:24.140 makes you think, but it's also very entertaining because these are serious topics, big topics,
01:01:29.360 and you could be like, you know, very serious and grave the entire time, but you do it in a way
01:01:35.460 that is very watchable, very enjoyable. Thank you.
01:01:37.720 So your channel is just Melissa Doherty, right?
01:01:39.740 Yeah. Just my name.
01:01:40.740 Okay. So everyone go find her. If you don't subscribe, a lot of you probably already do
01:01:45.120 go ahead and do that. Melissa, thank you so much for taking the time to come on.
01:01:48.540 Thank you for having me.
01:01:54.180 Before we head out today, I just want to remind you, if you have not gotten your tickets for
01:01:59.340 Share the Arrows 2025, now is the time to do it. We are continuing to sell,
01:02:05.080 even though all of those early bird tickets and the early bird discount are over that ended after
01:02:11.880 about 24 hours, even less than that. We are still selling these tickets like hotcakes. And I'm just so
01:02:18.420 thankful to the Lord for allowing me to be connected to such an engaged audience that wants to come
01:02:25.920 together with like-minded women to worship together, to hear clear teaching together, to be edified and to
01:02:32.920 be challenged. So I want you to go ahead and make your plans right now, because once it's sold out,
01:02:39.360 it's sold out. You want to get a good hotel room. You want to make sure that you could get good flights,
01:02:45.020 nail down the logistics so you don't have to worry about it and you can get the best prices on all of
01:02:50.340 those things. Go to sharethearrows.com. When you do, you'll see where to get your tickets. Bring your
01:02:56.620 small group, bring everyone that you possibly can. If you want an opportunity to meet me,
01:03:01.180 to meet the other speakers, there are VIP options that you can purchase too. We've got a lot of fun
01:03:06.660 in store for our VIPs the night before the event. Go to sharethearrows.com.
01:03:31.180 Thank you.
01:03:36.660 Thank you.