Holy Heretics: Losing Religion and Finding Jesus · The Sophia Society

Ministers of Propaganda w/ Dr. Scott Coley

·50 min·3 clips

A Confederate reading of Genesis 9 turns Noah's curse into a defense of race-based chattel slavery.

Gary Allen begins with the claim that one of the Bible's central questions is which humans should have authority and which humans should submit. He uses that frame to set up a conversation about power, obedience, and the way scripture can get pressed into service for domination. Scott Coley offers a direct account of how interpretation can turn into a legitimizing engine. He points to a pattern in which readers keep finding reasons in the text to justify the social order they already want. The discussion links that pattern to white evangelicals in the antebellum South and their use of the Bible to defend race-based chattel slavery. Allen then widens the frame to the current political moment, bringing up an election next week in the United States and the fear that democracy and authoritarianism are both on the ballot. Coley agrees that political power is not a side issue for many white evangelicals. He argues that the desire to gain power and the willingness to threaten violence are related, but not the same thing. From there, the conversation moves into hermeneutics. Coley describes a hermeneutics of legitimization as a way of reading scripture that reliably produces support for existing power arrangements. He says it works through familiar habits like proof texting and motivated literalism. He gives the example of readers insisting on a rigid reading of Genesis while brushing aside Christ's admonitions. The point is not simply that people make interpretive mistakes. It is that interpretation can be organized around social self-defense. Gary keeps pressing on why this mode of reading feels so strong in white evangelical spaces. Coley answers by tying together theology, identity, and political ambition. He presents the impulse to seize and keep power as part of a wider interpretive culture. The exchange stays plainspoken and morally clear throughout. It treats coercion, violence, and propaganda as religious problems, not just political ones. By the end, the episode has drawn a line between ancient text, modern power, and the habits of Christians who use the Bible to protect hierarchy.

As heard by us

A clear look at how scripture gets used to justify power.

This episode treats the Bible as a source of authority and follows how religious language can be bent toward domination, from slavery-era justifications to present-day authoritarian politics.

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Why you'd press play

When scripture is used to justify power, this is the conversation to hear.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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