On Fire for God Quotes

“I do not believe...as the Bible commands me to, that Jesus died for my sins, or that God raised him from the dead. I think the Bible is a politically infected, historically inaccurate, poorly translated mess. I do not believe in any of this and will no longer fear an eternity of torture in Hell, because I can find no evidence that such a place exists. I will live by reason, science, and observation, not on faith or fear.”
― Josiah Hesse, On Fire for God: Fear, Shame, Poverty, and the Making of the Christian Right - a Personal History

“I could dismiss it all as propaganda, a creation of the atheistic, liberal, government-run education conspiracy machine, secretly manipulated by a campaign of demons to sway children toward evolution, mind control, and eternal torture in Hell.

Or I could accept that I'd been fed a load of bullshit, and had a great deal of work to do to provide myself with a proper education.

Kent Hovind once said, 'Seventy-five percent of kids from Christian homes who go to secular schools lose their faith after one year.' And I suddenly understood why,”
― Josiah Hesse, On Fire for God: Fear, Shame, Poverty, and the Making of the Christian Right - a Personal History

“Gipper. “You got elected on themes.”
― Josiah Hesse, On Fire for God: Fear, Shame, Poverty, and the Making of the Christian Right - a Personal History

“On average”
― Josiah Hesse, On Fire for God: Fear, Shame, Poverty, and the Making of the Christian Right - a Personal History

“public school would often lead to a spiral of questions I couldn’t square with my evangelical beliefs—which was how I knew they were traps of Satan.”
― Josiah Hesse, On Fire for God: Fear, Shame, Poverty, and the Making of the Christian Right - a Personal History

“The libertarian icon—and failed 1964 GOP presidential candidate—Barry Goldwater famously despised evangelicals: “If and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party…it’s going to be a terrible damn problem.”[*] But Billy Graham had never shied away from politics,”
― Josiah Hesse, On Fire for God: Fear, Shame, Poverty, and the Making of the Christian Right - a Personal History

“Following Graham’s efforts”
― Josiah Hesse, On Fire for God: Fear, Shame, Poverty, and the Making of the Christian Right - a Personal History

“they represented a split that occurred in American Christianity in the twentieth century—the working-class”
― Josiah Hesse, On Fire for God: Fear, Shame, Poverty, and the Making of the Christian Right - a Personal History