BROADCASTS.com

\nThis Is My Story is a special season of Impolite Company focused on telling the stories of women who have made voting an act of faith. In this first episode, we talk with Megan Westra, a Milwaukee-based pastor and author of the new book Born Again and Again: Jesus' Call to Radical Transformation.
\n
\n You can find Megan online at meganwestra.com and buy her book by supporting independent bookstores.
\n
\nContinue the conversation with us at facebook.com/thisismystoryproject
\n
\n EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:\xa0\n\n\xa0\nAMY SULLIVAN: I\u2019m Amy Sullivan, and you\u2019re listening to This Is My Story, a special season of Impolite Company.\xa0\n\xa0\nEach week, we\u2019ve be joined by a woman who was once solidly rooted in the world of conservative white Christianity, but whose faith and politics have since shifted. She\u2019ll tell us that story, about what convicted her to see loving her neighbor as a commandment to shape not only how she lives her life, but also how she votes.\n\xa0\nIn this first episode, I\u2019m talking with Megan Westra, a Milwaukee-based pastor and writer. Megan grew up in Appalachia, in the kind of evangelical community where sometimes kids rededicated themselves to Christ before they were even out of elementary school\u2014because you can never be too sure. She\u2019s the author of a new book called \u201cBorn Again and Again: Jesus\u2019 Call to Radical Transformation.\u201d It takes a hard look at the stories so many of us were taught about Christianity, unravels them, and then puts them back together with refreshingly practical suggestions for both churches and individuals who are looking to embody a different kind of Christianity.\n\xa0\nAs Lisa Sharon Harper says in her foreword to the book, \u201cMegan invites those disillusioned by a white Jesus to be born again, again.\u201d\n\xa0\nAnd in Megan\u2019s case, that may technically be born again, again, again. But I\u2019ll let her tell it. This is her story.\xa0\n\xa0\nMEGAN WESTRA: I was born and raised right on the West Virginia/Virginia border, so in the Appalachian mountains. A little bit further north than the heart of the Bible Belt, but still definitely in that part of the country. The very first church experience I had was we went to a United Methodist congregation for the first ten years of my life that my great-grandparents had helped found. I was super-super-churched\u2014going to the United Methodist church on Sundays, but then I went with a friend to an Awana program at their Baptist church. I was a kid of the South in the 90s! If there was a church thing, I was there. Church camp, church whatever.\xa0\n\xa0\nIn my book, I talk about how I got saved for the first time when I was four years old, apparently. I don\u2019t remember that, but that\u2019s what my mom always told me. From the get-go\u2014I do not have memories outside of a life that was steeped in some kind of faith.\xa0\n\xa0\nNow, granted, growing up it was this very traditionally evangelical\u2014like, altar calls at the end of every service, \u201cIf you were driving home from church tonight and you got in a car accident, do you know where you would go?\u201d Right, that kind of rhetoric. And very much defined by all of the markers that we\u2019ve become familiar with since 2016, as far as, what are the things that evangelicals care about. Well, we want somebody who says that they oppose abortion. And I want to be real clear\u2014they say that they oppose abortion.\n\xa0\nAS: And were those messages, in terms of what the political priorities were, cultural priorities\u2014were those explicit? Or are those things that you just pick up from being part of the community?\n\xa0\nMW: That we should support pro-life candidates, and only pro-life Republican candidates, was pretty explicit from really early on in my life. I remember being in elementary school, and I was watching Nickelodeon with my cousins at my grandparents\u2019 house, and there was a kids\u2019 election poll. I don\u2019t even remember who was running\u2014it was one of the Clinton terms, though. You still called in on your landline phone because cellphones weren\u2019t a thing yet. And you pressed \u201c1\u201d to vote for one person and \u201c2\u201d to vote for the other. My cousins both called in and voted for Bill Clinton. And I was like, \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u2014what? What? That\u2019s not allowed.\u201d That was my framework, even as a young child. You\u2019re not allowed to do that and love Jesus.\n\xa0\nAS: I love that you write about rededicating your life to Christ by the age of, what, 12?\xa0\n\xa0\nMW: Yeah! The ripe old age of 12!\n\xa0\nAS: You are not the first person I\u2019ve talked to who felt like they must have erred at some point and had to rededicate themselves at age 8 or 10 or 12. What was your sense of what was required of you as a Christian?\n\xa0\nMW: I don\u2019t even know if I had a really strong sense of what that would have looked like. If someone had sat 10-year-old me down and told me my life: Megan, you are in church three days a week and you help your parents with things and you go visit your grandparents. All the little things that kids do to try to be good little humans. If somebody had sat me down and said, what else would the Lord require of you? I don\u2019t think I could have answered that question. It more came down to this constant image of God that I was being fed, by faith leaders from the pulpit on Sunday mornings, in Sunday school lessons.\xa0 That God was angry and needed to be appeased. You had to accept Jesus into your heart. And God killed Jesus so that you could be\u2014not even okay with God, but God wouldn\u2019t burn you forever because God killed God\u2019s son.\xa0\n\xa0\nThat\u2019s such a horrible story. That\u2019s a terrible story!\n\xa0\nAS: Well, it\u2019s definitely not an uplifting story, that\u2019s for sure. You know, I really connected to the kind of Catch-22 that you write about, that if you\u2019re a child who grows up in the church, there\u2019s a pretty good chance that you\u2019re already on the straight and narrow. And yet the church places such an emphasis on having a story of transformation. What do you do if there\u2019s no turnaround that has to be effected? I\u2019m wondering\u2014so you\u2019re a self-described super-church kid, you\u2019ve been saved multiple times. What was your thinking as you approached the end of high school?\n\xa0\nMW: I\u2019m feel like I\u2019m kind of a stereotype because I came up through youth group in a period when the assumption was: \u201cWhen you get to college, your faith is going to be challenged. You\u2019re going to have to work really hard to not let the \u2018liberal\u2019 professors pull you away from God. So be prepared. Be prepared to have to stand for your faith. Going into the university, be prepared to be persecuted. Be ready.\u201d\n\xa0\nSo I went a small Christian college in part because that was, \u201cWell, if you don\u2019t want to be completely dragged away, you should go to a Christian college. It\u2019ll still be hard! You\u2019re still going to be pulled by the influences of the world and of academia! But at least you\u2019ll have some strong Christian professors who will be helping you.\u201d\n\xa0\nI went to a small Christian college there in my hometown, both because that seemed to make a lot of sense and my parents really encouraged that. I didn\u2019t give a whole lot of thought to it beyond, I need to be prepared to defend my faith, even on this small Christian college campus. And just assumed that was what I would have to do, that I would get there and there would be some professors that would be really supportive and there would be professors who would try to \u201clure\u201d me away. I remember in my freshman year, all of us from a fundamentalist background whispering about a professor who didn\u2019t believe in inerrancy.\xa0\n\xa0\nThere would be some professors who would try to lure me away. I remember in my freshman year, all of us whispering\u2014those of us who were coming out of a more fundamentalist background: \u201cOh, watch out for this one professor. He doesn\u2019t believe in inerrancy. You have to be careful in his class!\u201d And I just laugh about that now, because I\u2019m like, \u201cOh, man, I probably should have paid more attention in his class. I probably would have learned some really great things.\u201d\xa0\n\xa0\nAS: But it turns out that your faith was challenged in college. Just not in the way you had anticipated...
\n\xa0
\n\xa0Link to full transcript of This Is My Story, Episode 1\n\n\xa0