Episode 022 – Toronto Blessing & Heaven Bent with Tara Jean Stevens

20 August 2021

Find this episode on your usual podcast player,  on YouTube, or listen here.

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

 

B: Well gidday T, how’re you going?

T: I’m good B. How’s your week?

B: My week has been fantastic, and I’ve been super excited about today’s show, which is Tara Jean Stevens, Vancouver radio and television personality, but also the producer of one of our favourite podcasts, Heaven Bent, that we’ve listened to over the last couple of months. It’s an amazing podcast, and it was something that made us very jealous, because it was so slick, so professional, and here we are coming from our dodgy home studio. So we’re super excited about today.

TJS: Thank you so much. I’ve been listening to your pod too, so it’s great to connect. My favourite is the one where you talked about speaking in tongues, sharing your experiences, how they were different in different churches, just hearing you guys talk about the Australian experience. Something that I experienced, but the Australian version of it, has been a real trip for me.

T: Oh good, I’m glad. That was my favourite episode, too. I adored that episode! Actually, we’ve just aired an episode around healing and miracles and had a really good laugh over that one too. You’ll be able to catch up with that one at some stage soon. 

TJS: Nothing sacred, I guess. We’re just laughing at everything.

T: So could I throw a question to you, because we want to make this all about you. You’ve got so much we want to know, but who is Tara Jean Stevens? 

TJS: Well today, I am a 42 year old mom. As you mentioned, I host radio and television shows, but I do come originally from theatre, so I’m an actress and playwright. I think all these worlds have combined to give me this ability to create a podcast that so far seems to be going pretty well. I didn’t know when I started to make it that I was going to tap into this sort of world, in Australia and the States and England, teenage fundamentalists like you guys, who are deconstructing or rebuilding their faith, reimagining it; I always wanted to be careful that I didn’t make fun of any of my experiences, or the people who are guests on my pod. I wanted to make sure that it was a space where I could talk about our spiritual experiences but also have a laugh, because sometimes the stuff that we did was really weird and odd.

T: Tell us about your teenage fundamentalism, though. Growing up were you born into it, were you converted, what’s your back story?

TJS: Well, from my mom’s side of the family it was very fundamental. My grandma was a Christian, her grandmas before that. My mom was a Christian, but she was a backslider for most of my childhood, so it wasn’t until I was between the ages of eight and 12 when we really started going to church. We started off in a Four Square, we flirted with some Vineyard churches, and then we moved to Prince Rupert, which is way up the BC Canada coast, close to the Alaska panhandle. Very remote community, very isolated, and within that church even more so. I went to the Christian school too, so that was my entire life. The Pentecostal church experience is where things got really serious. It became our entire life, seven days a week of church. It was when I was early teens that the Toronto Blessing movement spread to our church. I was really curious, if I could throw a question back at you guys. When you heard my pod and heard me talking about the Toronto Blessing, the shaking, the falling, claims of gold teeth and gold dust falling from the sky; is that something that you guys experienced in Australia? Did you call it the Toronto Blessing, or something else?

B: Yeah, we did call it the Toronto Blessing, and it was something that caught on. It became quite big actually, in Australia, but my personal experience was when I started to see that and it was coming into the Pentecostal scene, I called bullshit on it. I didn’t really get it, and I didn’t get into it. A lot of people did, a lot of those near and dear to me did, and that’s where I might actually throw to T, because he was near and dear, and he did get into it a bit more than me. 

T: Yeah, I got totally into it. Absolutely immersed in the whole Toronto Blessing thing, 100%. There was an Anglican church that had an outbreak of the Toronto Blessing…

TJS: An Anglican church?!

T: Yeah, an Anglican church where the ministers actually went to Toronto, and caught it like a disease, like a virus, then brought it back and started running meetings in their local church. Funny enough, I actually live in the same suburb now, and if people say to me where do you live, and I say such-and-such, you know – the fall down capital of the city, and people get that. It was huge. Even to the point where I was in the Rodney Howard-Browne choir for the events when he came. I was reading a testimony of a young girl who was saying she was at one of these meetings and it just wasn’t happening for her. Not true for me, totally happened. I was right into it, touched by it, moved by it, thrown around by it. I can remember Rodney Howard-Browne walking behind me, I grabbed his leg and I don’t remember what happened next but I wake up and I’m on the floor. The whole thing, totally. So when you say the Toronto Blessing – me personally? Totally get it, but I think most Pentecostal Australians that were alive and aware at that time, 100% we got it.

B: There was a range of speakers who were wheeled out in Australia. Rodney Howard-Browne was one of them, and quite often did the circuit in the large Pentecostal churches. He would have rallies that would go for a week, and they would pack the house with a few thousand people every night. It was madness over here as well. But it was quite divisive, it did put a bit of a split and some people left and went to more traditional type churches. However, as T said, it really did come in through those evangelical channels, rather than through the Pentecostal church, here. Wouldn’t you agree with that, T?

T: Definitely, it came in through the Anglican and Baptist Charismatics and those kinds of people, and then when it broke in Brownsville, which was an Assemblies of God church, that’s when the Assemblies of God Australia went oh ok, it’s ours now, took over and made it about yelling and shouting, while the Anglicans were very much Let the Lord touch you kind of thing.

TJS: That’s amazing, the subtle and even dramatic differences of all this phenomena and activity and practices around the world, and from different communities. In Season 1 I explored how the Toronto Blessing spread from Toronto to Brownsville to Florida. I was given permission to use the audio from their archives, from year’s worth of revivals that they had in Brownsville, and I watched every single bit of that footage, because I knew there was so much to source from for my pod. What I noticed was hey, the Toronto Blessing did spread there and there is something similar, but it was also different. That depends on the leadership, right. There were different rules at Brownsville, in Florida, than there were in Toronto. There was probably different rules in Australia, or maybe a complete abandon of rules. It’s culture, church culture, really.

T: Yeah, totally. I heard the story you were telling about these giant marionettes that people had, we would have looked at that and gone oh that’s just weird. But it was a very different experience, in Australia, even in this city, between what was happening over there at the Anglican Charismatic church which was having, like I said a Let the Lord touch you, very British, and over there at the AOG it was OH JESUS COME DOWN NOW, very American and very loud.

TJS: The marionettes, the puppets you brought up, that’s a great example of something that was recorded in Toronto during the first couple of years of the Toronto Blessing, 1994-1996, and it’s really an example of the fact that that church did not have rules. You could be as weird as you wanted, and for the most part, nobody was going to judge you. It sounds to me like the only place where it started to get a little strange was when women would be lying on the floor, moaning and groaning, their skirts had fallen up and it seemed almost erotic. As leaders, what do you do then? This woman is claiming to have a spiritual experience with Jesus, but there’s a man in the corner that’s accidentally getting aroused. As leaders, that is (I imagine) some pretty heavy stuff to deal with, when you’re in that kind of an atmosphere. It’s kind of like gossip to me, I just ate it up.

B: Yeah. I’ll have what she’s having.

TJS: Yes please!

T: So on that topic of culture and what was the difference, I want to go back a little bit and quickly ask you, how is Canadian Pentecostalism different to American Pentecostalism? You’re one of those other countries that says g’day, like us we say gidday mate, you’re not American, I know Canadians are proudly not American, but what is the difference?

TJS: Well, there’s lots of different types of Pentecostal sects down in the States, especially in the South. I’m working on a future season right now, which explores the arm of the Pentecostal church in Nashville. I can’t wait to share this one with you guys, it’s going to be really great. But one of the things I’ve discovered down there is it’s very different. There’s the African American Pentecostals, Southern Gospel – dancing in the aisles, speaking in tongues and shaking, then there’s also a much more traditional Pentecostal side of things as well, where they have really long hair and very traditional dress, very restrictive to women, only men are leaders, that kind of thing. It’s been interesting for me to explore in this future season where my Canadian Pentecostal experience branched off in history and where the South took over. Where did it branch off, from Kansas City when people started speaking in tongues in the early 1900s and make its way over to Australia – I mean, I’m not a Christian anymore, why am I still obsessed with this? Why am I still fascinated by it. Why do I still want to sit here and talk to you guys about this, when I don’t believe it anymore? It’s because it was meaningful to me, it meant something to my spirit, and one of the big things for me now is an absence of tradition and ritual. I get emotional every time I talk about it, because I miss that in my life. I miss having somewhere to go where people love me and care for me every week, and I have a tight community around me. I can’t go to any church or do any spiritual practice anymore, because somewhere back in the back of my head, I can’t get rid of what I was taught as a teenager, which was anything that’s spiritual that’s not focused on Jesus is a direct deception from the Devil. So now I feel an absence of any of that.

B: Yeah, that’s certainly something that’s shared by many people, that they go one way or another in this space. If you can no longer practice any other spiritual practice you’re right, it is difficult. For me even, 25 years on from my conversion story, I’m still unpacking it. I think I’ll be unpacking it until the day I die. It’s interesting though, we’ve reflected a couple of times on that connection of people that was provided through the platform of the church of being a Christian, and how irreplaceable it is, to a certain degree. There’s elements of it we miss, and there’s elements of it we don’t like – we don’t like the baggage that came with it, the judgement, you had to conform to certain ways, and you were only accepted if you were a certain person. We don’t miss that, but both of us have reflected on the fact that we really miss that connection. So it’s interesting – it’s obviously quite a pull for people, isn’t it.

TJS: Bringing it back to my research I’m doing right now, in Tennessee, Kentucky and that whole area, I’m hoping borders will open up eventually so I can do a research trip down there, because I’ve caught wind of a group of former Pentecostals, Charismatics, people who aren’t Christians anymore who are like you just described, missing something but not being able to replace it, and they actually have church but they’ve taken the belief part out of it. So they still get together and sing gospel music and support each other, and given encouraging words to each other, but it’s not a prophecy. It’s just hey, I see that you look sad today and I want to tell you something that may lift your spirits today and help you have a good week, and I thought ooh, is there something in that for me? I thought that was maybe something I would like – people who understand the framework of it, but without the trappings.

T: Isn’t that mainstream Christianity? Those sort of denominational, nominal Christians now? A lot of people who are small L liberal, who don’t necessarily believe all the claims anymore, but they like the smells and the bells and the community. Is this just a stage in the maturity of the movement, that people are going you know what, I’m going to claim my historical or ethnic Pentecostalism, however they want to frame it, just like people do with Catholicism. They claim to be cultural Catholic, or secular Jews. Is that what we’re seeing? Are we on the verge of that?

TJS: I wish it was super simple that I could do that, but unfortunately there’s so many negative connotations, for me and for a lot of other people, about being a Christian, and right now that’s getting a lot of attention here in Canada. We’re dealing with a bit of a reckoning with our indigenous people in Canada. I hate to get super dark and I don’t know if you guys have heard of it, but they’ve recently found the graves of indigenous children on the grounds of former residential schools – Catholic and Anglican churches. It’s making people embarrassed here to say they’re part of these churches, the more liberal ones, so those are the people who still have some kind of faith who I think are sort of repurposing it into something that works for them, but for me it’s all a mess. If I could get myself to accept some type of new spiritual practice, I would probably be more into witchcraft than I would Christianity. And I feel terrible even saying that, like the Devil is creeping up on me!

B: Ah ha. Look out! There’s similarities anyway, I think there’s a fine line sometimes, particularly in the gospels.

T: Oh totally.

B: You did touch on Christianity being a bit of a dirty word in Canada. What we saw during the Trump presidency in Australia was that rise of the Evangelical Trump follower. The dogmatic followers of Trump were quite often Evangelicals, and a lot of big name Christians and ministers coming out in support of Trump. Very much like cult worship. What’s your take on that? You’re closer to it geographically and culturally than us – what was with that?

TJS: Well, it’s something that I dove into and spent a lot of time analysing, researching, talking to people for season 2 on Bethel Church in Redding, California. My conclusion, and really I’m just regurgitating things I heard some of my guests say, or books that I read, conservative Christians in America do feel like they’re in a cultural battle right now. They’re in a war against the liberal mindset, against this turn of attitude in their country, abortion, women’s rights, gay rights, LGBTQ community – they feel like the Devil is coming to get them. Trump came in and said I will be your saviour; I will be someone who will lead you out of this. Trump never believed any of that before, he just said that because it was a group of people he could get as voters. It’s so see-through and disgusting. I’m so glad he is not part of the scene right now, and he got kicked of Twitter. Here in Canada we do get a lot of American news, we digest it probably a lot more than we need to, and it got to be way too much during Trump’s run.

B: It was quite frightening. Leading on from that a little bit was the whole QANON thing. That was bizarre to watch from here. As a bit of segue way into that, what’s your take on them? Are they a bunch of crazies, or are they a real threat?

TJS: Well, they are a real threat. They’ve proven that people who believe these conspiracy theories are real threats, but it’s an extension of the Satanic Panic. Did you guys have the Satanic Panic in Australia?

B: Yes.

TJS: It’s an extension – people said for so long that the Satanic Panic started in the 70s, got hot in the 80s and 90s, then sort of went away, but it didn’t. It just retransformed into QANON which is this believe that there is this agenda, these high up people that are Devil worshippers that are hurting and abusing children, it just seems so baffling that people are believing it, but it seems like a lot of people will believe anything that gets served up to them in a dark corner of the internet.

T: I’ve heard it said that the Satanic Panic really started around Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen, The Exorcist, that kind of time which was the mid to late 70s, then it started to express itself around things like backward masking, there’s this Satanic ploy to control the youth, even into the Reagan era, it goes into the Clinton era, then it dies down and we don’t hear much of it. Then right-wing presidents come in, and it’s back. So I agree with you, I think it’s very much a continuation of what you’re calling the Satanic Panic. I want to come back to your podcast, I know a lot of our listeners are really excited about your podcast and have pointed us to you as someone they would really like to hear from. You’ve certainly started to touch on this, but more specifically, how did you come up with the idea for Heaven Bent?

TJS: It was all based on the fact that I had a memory that I didn’t understand, that nobody ever talked about, and I thought is this real? The memory was being in my late teens, not even my early teens, I was maybe 16 or 17, sitting in church, and a group of elders from our church had just come back from a trip to Toronto to “catch the fire”. They stood in front of us, one woman stood forward and she was a mom of one of my best friends. She stood there and said when we went to Toronto, we felt heat in our cheeks and gold teeth appeared in our mouths. We would raise our hands and gold dust fell from the sky. We all lined up after the service so we could all look inside her mouth at this gold tooth. It was weird that such a memory we wouldn’t talk about, but we didn’t. We left church that day, and I don’t remember ever having a conversation about it again, so when the internet came around, whenever that was, my husband – who was an atheist and knew that I was still struggling with (I didn’t have the word deconstruction at the time) but I was struggling with what I believed or didn’t believe, he said why don’t you look it up on the internet? So I googled gold tooth Toronto church, and that was the first time I heard of what was going on there, and the phrase Toronto Blessing. I didn’t know that it was a larger movement. I didn’t know it had something to do with when we would go on road trips to southern British Columbia when I was a teenager and go to these massive youth conventions and shake and fall to the ground, that was the Toronto Blessing. I didn’t know that. I just thought it was something special that happened in Kamloops. It was really shocking to me to slowly, through my research, through books, through interviewing people, realise that this was a greater movement that had spread all around the world. I had no idea what I was getting into when I first started the pod.

T: So it was as if you woke up one day and found out not all churches handle rattlesnakes, and there’s a name for us, we’re called snake handlers. 

TJS: Yeah, yeah. There’s a name for that? What?

T: It’s funny that for you that was the norm, because for us it wasn’t. It came in, we were a little bit older, we were in our twenties. When it came in it was the Toronto Blessing, it was linked to Brownsville, it was linked to Rodney Howard-Browne, etc.

TJS: Yeah, I didn’t know any of that until I started my research. With so many young people leaving the church – just a massive exodus – but you maybe could have kept me around if you told me more about the history and legends and the real life modern stuff that was happening, because I felt like that was really special. It’s still what I’m interested in now.

B: So you were saying that you would go to those rallies as a late teen and get caught up in all of that. Were you subject to that shaking, the falling over, the crying out. Was that something you experienced personally?

TJS: Yeah, definitely. The very first time I shook and fell was at one of those youth conventions. Thousands of people in a massive hockey rink, it came to the altar call and they said come forward, and they told us that there was this thing that was going to happen to us when we came to the front; that some of us might speak in tongues for the first time, if we hadn’t already, that we may find ourselves shaking, not to be scared, that it’s ok, to follow it to its full extent. That if you fall to the ground that you should trust you’re not going to crack your head open, Jesus is going to protect you. That’s still a real weird thing for me too. One time I can remember being in church and my grandma – we called her Fluffy, she was a large woman – she shook and fell, and cracked her head on the piano, and the legend of the story was grandma never even got a goose bump. There was nothing going on with her head. I can’t imagine – something probably did hurt her head, she cracked it on the piano! But at this convention it was very memorable. I still feel sort of like it was a bit of a sacred space in that moment, me and my friends, my tribe, my youth group, all standing together, walking up together, and when I stepped into the area where they’d moved back the chairs and the altar, I remember it felt like walking from cold air into warm water. I don’t believe anymore, but I know that that happened. I know something special happened to me sensually.

T: I can remember being at youth camps and B, I know you were on the same camps, where the Holy Spirit would fall, and it was tangible. It was something you could feel – you’re talking about the warmth, and this is well before Toronto, right. The pastor would get up and manipulate us with his words etc, but like you said, the physical, the sensual tangibility of it was there. You could feel it. I can remember the youth pastor at one of those camps once looking at me saying do you feel that T? That’s God. And I was like yeah, I do.

TJS: Guess what I think it is now. A really powerful drone on a keyboard. And if you hold that drone long enough, it’s going to vibrate something in us that makes us feel that connection – I hate to simplify it, but those drones are powerful. When I went back to Toronto at the 25th anniversary, I flew from Vancouver to Toronto as a witness, a research trip for the first season of Heaven Bent, and I was moved by the drones. Everyone around me was going nuts, I was at first very uncomfortable because I hadn’t been back to church in so long, but I could sit there and close my eyes and feel that vibration in me like it was healing me of something I didn’t even know was wrong. 

B: Yeah, it’s interesting isn’t it. We’ve reflected on this in several episodes, of the emotional experience, and the spiritual experience that music brings. Certainly I can feel very similar things in a church service as I do in a rock concert. If I really connect with that music, that does something to me. It’s really interesting, definitely the drone of the keyboard is something we’ve spoken about before, and the ability to manipulate people through music, building the drum beat, bringing in the keyboard, having a soft keyboard in the background as you do an altar call – all that sort of stuff, absolutely has an impact, there’s no doubt about it.

TJS: They don’t think they’re manipulating people, and maybe they’re not. I don’t want to put that on them, but it is kind of a manipulation of a crowd of people. They’ve learned some skills, right? But there’s some positives that can come out of it too, so I don’t know.

T: Do you think it’s something that the longer you’re in the scene, the more you’re conditioned by this? Someone that’s just stepping in cold – Tara Jean you said the drone, and we call it the heavy strings sound, the oooh ahhh, but that hits people. Certainly people coming in off the street can be influenced, but do you think if you’re in there longer you become more conditioned? You become more susceptible to it?

TJS: I think you can’t generalise it. That’s one thing I’ve learned in talking about things we never talked about with so many people who experienced the same thing, people from the Pentecostal church and the Toronto Blessing spread to their church whether it was in the States or England, or around the corner from me in my same area, everyone has had a completely different experience and journey, so I can’t even begin to generalise everything that way. Sometimes I wonder how come I didn’t go to church anymore? How come my friends married pastors and went to bible school and are still going to church and are raising their kids that way? What was different about me? Is it my brain? I still don’t know what that answer is so I’m not going to all of a sudden spit some wisdom, but it’s definitely something I think about a lot.

B: I think it’s evidence of the Devil, Tara Jean. 

T: You’re making anti-Christian podcasts now, so it’s totally the Devil. Don’t worry, we’re teenage fundamentalists, we get it.

TJS: In season 2 I did an episode called The Devil Himself, and I was finding scary music, I was searching demonic sound scapes – all right, if he’s real, he’s coming for me, I’m opening a door!

B: But I think your DNA and makeup definitely influences the way you experience things. T & I  have reflected on this quite often – in my 12-15 years in Pentecostalism and Evangelical circles, not once did I get slain in the Spirit and fall over. Not once did I experience any of that. I’m not quite sure why, I was open to it, but I didn’t.

T: I can tell you why, because you had bigger demons, that’s why.

(laughter)

T: I had it all the time, every chance I got I was down, but I don’t know if that’s maybe some of the substances I did in between the two different church groups that I was in when I had my backsliding period. I’m serious, I don’t know if that opened me up to being more susceptible, but resonating back to what Tara Jean was saying before about we don’t know why and we can’t generalise, there were people that were raised in the church a long time, from birth, and they would go to these meetings and get nothing, and then you’d get people walk in off the streets and they’re falling down, simulating childbirth, all kinds of stuff. 

TJS: Oh, for sure. For me, and again with all our different experiences, and yours is so valid about that maybe different kinds of substances opened you up to things – for me, I think the reason why I shook and fell is that I’m dramatic. I’m an actress. I loved putting on a show. I can remember the first time I fell it was not voluntary. It was not. I remember having to be very mindful about the fact, and facing my fears even, about falling backwards. I’m sure I bent my knees as I fell that first time. I think afterwards it got a lot more – you know, really giving into it, the more we did it the more I knew how to move my body and do it safely, but it never felt out of control, for me personally.

T: What’s been the reaction from Evangelicals to Heaven Bent? How have they responded to you? Have you got good/bad, hate mail, death threats – what’s going on?

TJS: To start I’ll talk about how I was scared when I first started. The first thing I did when I decided to start researching and that I was going to commit myself to making a podcast, was to call my parents and say are you ok that I’m going to dig into my past and talk about some of the weird things, maybe contact people that we know in our home town, but I’m committed to not making fun of anyone, I’m really just curious. I want to hear about people’s experiences, and I wanted to create a space that was comfortable for people in transition, people who were atheist, people who believed, whatever, but I was scared that the Christians who were involved, especially in my first season, were going to be upset with me in some way. That they were going to regret being involved in it. And no one that’s been involved in either season that I’ve published so far has told me – at least to my face – that they were disappointed. Maybe there was a couple of people I never heard from again, but I honestly think it was because they never listened. Some people don’t want to hear themselves talk. They don’t know that maybe I created something special. I know that I’ve created something special because of all the people I’ve heard from. I know that when I released both my seasons, and it was so thrilling for me to have too many messages coming in to be able to respond to them all. That was like, whoa, there’s something really palpable happening here, and it wasn’t just deconstructed fundamentalist Christians I was hearing from. I heard from the leader of the Toronto church today. He wrote me early in season one and said I just want to reach out and let you know I heard about your pod. I actually really enjoy it, I enjoy hearing your perspective, and he thanked me for not making fun of them. I was like, okay. Maybe I can keep doing this, but I’ve got to be honest, sometimes I feel like I’m being sneaky, like I’m fooling people. I even talked to one of my Christian guests about that, and I said I don’t want you to feel like I’m taking advantage of you, like I’m luring you in, but I don’t believe in what you’re saying. I think what you’re saying is really wild and you might need to see a psychiatrist, but in my podcast I make sure to respect those stories as much as possible. It’s very complicated – I don’t know, I’m still figuring that out.

B: I think you do that well – you give people a voice and don’t make fun of it. There has been some really interesting and amazing guests in both seasons. Are there ones in particular that stick or stay with you? Tell us who were they, and why do they stick with you? 

TJS: Yep, straight up, season 1, her name is Melinda Fish. She was a vibrant member of the Toronto Blessing movement from the very beginning until close to the end. She is a very tall, elegant, in a beautiful way almost like an alien type woman. I’ve seen footage of her back in the day praising Jesus and dancing, and she would take up so much space with her body. She agreed to be a guest and talk to me about all the good things, and all the bad things. She was responsible for the Toronto Blessing newsletter during the bulk of the Toronto Blessing. She was responsible, and had the idea she said, for investigating the gold teeth claims. She said you know guys, this is really fun here and people are getting something, but it’s getting a little weird and I think we need to make sure we’re putting a cap on this, where people are just being silly, and people are actually experiencing something spiritually beneficial. What I loved about her is she saw the good and the bad in it, and could still keep it close to her heart. For me, I did go through a period of time where I really hated Christians. I was very angry, before I was able to make Heaven Bent I had to go through a lot of serious therapy, for a lot of different reasons. If I had to pinpoint it, I was very angry I felt I had wasted a lot of my life focusing on something that wasn’t really real, that I wasn’t educated properly, I was really mad about that. When I got to public high school then into college, I had a lot of trouble understanding “secular” ideas – really just science, honestly. I was really angry about that, but after I got the therapy and I was able to have these conversations with people like Melinda Fish, I realised there are great examples of Christians in this world. I think Melinda Fish is one of them, and I keep her close to my heart for that reason.

T: She was the one that called you honey – was that her?

TJS: Yes, she’s from the South. She would say ohh honey.

T: Yeah, she really stood out. I remember listening to that thinking you just sound like the Pentecostals on the videos and tapes when you used to see them. I bet you’re friends with Kenneth Copeland’s wife. She was amazing.

TJS: Anyone who loves that sort of aesthetic of the Pentecostal church, that’s what’s coming in a future season I’m working on. It’s that Southern gospel Tennessee/Kentucky sort of spiritual vibe. It’s entertaining, powerful and meaningful, and I love it. Up in Canada we were just pretending to be what they are.

T: Can I resonate as well with what you said about being angry for the longest time – that’s something we talk about, we talk about T’s angry atheist stage. I was very much like you, I couldn’t listen to Christian music, I’d drive past churches and almost spit. What was it that you think you had to eventually let go of, or what did you feel you had to put down to really move on and become whole again?

TJS: Man, I wish I had the answer to that. I mean, I know it required acknowledging that I was angry. I think I didn’t know I was angry, that there was some sort of loss. I was 35, I think, when I started to see a psychologist. I went through a period of depression in my life, I’d had a couple of kids, I was working really hard and just sort of hit a wall. When I started seeing her I was like oh I’m just here to get happy again, and the more we would talk, I just kept bringing up church stuff. Then finally it was this doctor that says to me this is a real issue for you, I think we need to go further. I can’t remember what it’s called right now, but it’s like EMT or something like that, it’s these little vibrating things she put in my hands. It was a treatment they used for soldiers when they came back from war and had PTSD. So she would put these little vibrating pads into my hands, I had to close my eyes, and she would ask questions, I would have to talk about an experience or a memory. It was a very emotional and triggering time for me for a couple of weeks. We did several sessions, I remember about a week after the last session, the anger was just gone and it’s never come back again. I let it go, and I knew that nobody was out to get me, nobody did anything on purpose to hurt me. The people from my church who told me things that impacted my life and made me live in a spirit of fear until I was into my 30s, they didn’t do that to ruin my life or make it bad, they really did mean well. I think understanding that’s where their heart was allowed a softening in me, and allowed me to have the conversations that I have now with people, and value their testimonies – not just snort and roll my eyes. No, this was a really powerful moment for you. I want to hear more about it, I want to know what I can learn from your experience.

B: That’s quite gracious, given the obvious trauma that it caused in your life.

TJS: Well, who knows. I could switch things up in a year and be angry again. You never know what’s going to happen, right? It’s this journey we can’t predict. That’s also what happened in season 2 for me, looking into Bethel. When I did season 1 on the Toronto Blessing, I know there was trauma and problems, but it was mostly about ethereal stuff and spiritual experiences, then when I got to season 2 and started looking into Bethel Church in Redding, it was much more American, it was much more political, there was way more trauma. I had people coming out of the woodwork to say hey, I need to tell you my story, and it retraumatised me a little bit, so by the end of season 2 I was a little raw, and felt some of those feelings of anger come back up again. I needed to take a break in order to feel calm again.

B: Bethel seems like a frightening church. It seems incredibly cultish, listening to that. There were certainly some guests on that that seemed to be right into it, and so immersed into that cult life that it made me shudder a few times throughout that season. 

T: There was that young girl you had on over and over again, she was immersed in the Supernatural School of Ministry. My heart went out to her so often, she was dealing with mental health issues, she was separated from her family, she was in the midst of COVID. To be honest, when I was listening to that I was thinking, wow Tara Jean, how did you get her to speak? Does the church even know that she’s speaking? Are they going to silence her? Are you going to come at the end of the season and say and I never heard from her again?

TJS: Any time that I write someone to request and invite them on the show to be a guest, from the very beginning I’ve aways been very clear with people in my original email that I am not a Christian; this is not a Christian podcast, but I make it a point to make it a safe space for anyone to share their opinions, and your opinion would be really valuable to my conversation, to my project. Most often I don’t hear back from people if they’re Christians. The non-Christian ones are usually very eager to talk, especially people who have experienced personal trauma and have a story to tell, so I was shocked when she wrote me back and agreed. I almost wanted to write back and say again I’m not a Christian, this is not a Christian podcast and I went no, let’s just do it. Then again those feelings of I’m conning someone, I’m manipulating someone, I’m using someone for their story. She’s so vulnerable – that is the word I would use to describe her. I was so grateful that she was willing to share her journey with me. She knew what she was involved with wasn’t perfect, she knew it was controversial, she knew there were highs and lows in what she was involved with. I can’t thank her enough for telling her story, and for also having a listen and then writing me back and saying she was so glad she was a part of it. I was like phew! Because that goal of making sure all my guests are pleased and happy with the fact that they were involved is so important to me.

B: So, unlike the current pastor of the Toronto church, I would imagine Bill Johnson hasn’t reached out to you?

TJS: Yeah, no, not at all. I reached out tonnes of times to the general church. I did have a back and forth going on with their communications guy, who I’d heard a lot of good things about from former members of the church – yeah, talk to him, talk to him. I did have a good back and forth going on with him, including the promise at one point, because while I was working on the season, they were dealing with a massive COVID-19 outbreak in their Supernatural school, so he was focused with the backlash from that, and he said after this dies down I’ll get you some interviews, but he just would never write me back again. Once it was up and started they just didn’t want to talk to me anymore. I mean, whatever, maybe that doesn’t mean anything, maybe it just means they were busy and I meant nothing to them, but as I expressed at the end of season 2, I sure would have liked to have spoken with a legit current leader of the church. I did speak with one guest who was a former teacher, but he’s sort of fallen away so it wasn’t as powerful, I think.

T: Yeah, I think there’s very much a behavioural norm with a lot of the Pentecostal, Charismatic or Evangelical churches, that they will cut you off. If they think you’re going to be hostile, they’ll just cut you off. That mirrors a lot of the shunning, like when people leave that’s often times the way they’re treated as well. Maybe it’s not intentional, maybe it is, but there’s definitely that you-don’t-suit-our-narrative. Maybe it’s not just about making sure that they’re not mis-represented. Maybe it’s also about I don’t want to hear from you, because what are you going to do to MY belief system. What are you going to do to my structure and world view.

TJS: I dunno. I feel like a lot of the people I talked to that are still in it, they’re so hardcore. I’m not trying to de-convert people, if there are people who have questions and concerns about the church they’re involved with, I do hope my podcast will help them ask questions, and again have that space and time where they can think about things they were told never to think about.

B: I’m wondering about the School of Supernatural having a COVID-19 outbreak, if the irony of that was lost on the students?

TJS: Well, even the guest we were speaking about, who was a student in year one of their three year programme, she’s a nurse. When she started telling me about her beliefs on masks, that they don’t really do anything, and that the whole social distancing and quarantining is really just the government trying to control us, I thought oh my God, is she learning this in school? Are they literally brainwashing her one month in? But she brought that with her from her own church, so it’s something that manifests there in big ways, and their breakout was so large, it was one of the largest breakouts in schools in the country, it was making national headlines. I do believe it had to do with the fact that some of their leaders were very anti-mask. They may not have been preaching it from the pulpit on Sunday, but their social media, the whole time I was researching this story, was FULL of misinformation. Just full of it. It was disgusting.

B: Yeah, it’s something that definitely has infiltrated the Evangelical/Pentecostal scene within Australia.

TJS: Oh it has?

B: Yeah, definitely about that New World Order being brought in, and the ushering of Satan’s ways through this COVID-19 pandemic. It’s quite frightening, but we’ve seen it before, haven’t we – this kind of behaviour.

T: That’s right, they even call it the COVID hoax. It’s interesting, people who I never would have thought would have responded this way, are responding exactly this way. But it also makes me wonder, if I was still in it, would I be responding this way?

TJS: I ask myself those same questions all the time. It comes back to that, how come me? Why did I walk away from it? Why couldn’t I be there believing that same thing and not wearing a mask? I dunno.

T: You’ve told us about the response from Evangelicals and Ex-vangelicals (people who have walked away) – what’s been the response to the podcast from the broader community? Both in Canada and worldwide?

TJS: The podcast has done really well, in both seasons, it was charting in countries all around the world. Even now, outside the launch period, it’s still charting in lots of different countries. It’s so cool for me, because I’ll watch the charts every day and for example, a couple of days ago I called my husband over and said look, I just started charting on the podcast charts in Nigeria! And then all of a sudden I’ll get hundreds of listens in Nigeria, and I know it’s because one person said to one person, and it spread through a group and they all listened, and the same thing will happen and it’ll be Norway, and all of a sudden there’s this attention being given to it in Norway. I do believe that most of my audience are people who are interested in the dark side of the church, but there’s definitely a strong following of people who are just fascinated with something that they’ve never personally experienced, and that Heaven Bent opened a door to this world that they had only ever seen on television on Sunday mornings.

T: I don’t know if it’s just the Nordic countries, but even we trend in Norway and Finland and places like that. So don’t overthink that one! I don’t know if it’s just the progressive societies listening to our post-religious bullshit.

TJS: But it’s got to spread somehow, right? I just love imagining how it comes up. It shows up on Apple iTunes suggestions and however you want to roll, but I think word of mouth in this case is very powerful, too.

B: It’s like a revival, isn’t it.

T: Yeah, they’re catching the fire, B. They’re catching the fire.

TJS: Yep!

T: Hey, we’re nearly out of time and I wanted to ask you two quick questions. The first one is I noticed that Rodney Howard-Browne was conspicuously absent in season 1 on Toronto Blessing. Was that intentional?

TJS: It was definitely a choice, that’s for sure. It was because there was so many people, I was mentioning so many people, so many places, so many movements. There’s only me working on it, right, so season 1 and especially in season 2 I had a deadline. All of a sudden my network is like okay we have a launch date, and I had to go oh I had 12 episodes planned but I have to condense everything because I only have two months to produce this and get it out. So that’s really why I dropped him. I did tonnes of research, I had audio, I had the story, but at some point I just had to drop off some of those players, and when I extended it away from Toronto, I decided to really focus in on the Brownsville revival because I had got the archives. But I could go back and go oh, that episode I planned on this person or this person, you’ll never know what you were missing. But it’s only people who know, who know what’s not there.

T: Yeah, because the Australian Toronto-ness, if that’s a word, he was very much the key figure.

TJS: Yeah, not here.

T: Obviously that wasn’t true globally, but he really capitalised, came down here and held events at sports and entertainment centres, and filled them. B, you were talking about thousands of people, it was tens of thousands of people turning up to his events. I can remember finding out they were all staying at the Hyatt, even his band, and I was like oh, wow. His offerings must be really working if he’s staying at the Hyatt. Well done guys. But my second question to you, Tara Jean, is what comes next? I know you’re working on this podcast, you’re working on season 3 and it’s going to be this classical Pentecostalism, but what comes next for you?

TJS: Well, I thought when I was working on season 2, especially towards the end and I was feeling really triggered, kind of absorbing everyone’s trauma, I thought I’m not going to do anymore seasons of this. I’m going to have to do some vapid comedy podcast in order to cleanse my palate. But all I needed was a week off, and I was right back at it. That’s because of the requests I’ve got for future seasons. The one that I’ve mentioned that focuses on a branch of the Pentecostal church in Nashville, that’s one that most of you will never, ever have heard of, so I love that I’m able to research something and bring it to the table to a totally fresh audience. The other season that I’m working on – and I’m not promising it yet, but I’ve done some extensive research and outlining on it – will be about IHOP. Do you guys know about that one? The International House of Prayer is a Kansas City, Missouri based church, and I’ve got people lining up around the block to tell me stories of some pretty shocking things that have happened within this movement. Again, it’s all connected. Toronto Blessing, Pentecostalism, Charismatic sort of church, but I think it wades deeper into trauma and the negative sides of the church, so what I’m asking myself is, how long can I carry on this really balanced sort of view of something, when so many negative stories are coming at me?

T: I know a lot of our listeners would be really upset with us if we didn’t suggest to you to cast a glance over at Hillsong, which is uniquely Australian. I don’t know how much you’ve seen of what’s going on at Hillsong, but you’ve got the Biebers, the Pratts, the Gomez’s and all these famous names. We would love to see you do something really balanced and objective if you could.

TJS: That’s definitely the number three request for me. YWAM is another one. The wonderful thing about Hillsong, and it’s definitely a thing I’ve thought of doing in the future, is because it’s all connected with Bieber. Did you know Bieber has a strong Toronto Blessing connection? So Justin Bieber is from Canada, he grew up in a small town outside Toronto, and his mum is heavily involved with the whole Toronto church. There’s actually this wonderful legend of a story, and I’ve got a guest in the background waiting to tell me the story when I’m ready for it, but he was at this church outside of Toronto when the leaders of the Toronto church came there, and a very young Justin Bieber went to the front with his mum, they prayed over him and in front of the whole church they prophesied that he was going to sing and change the world. This legend in his life – I’m sure that prophecy (he’s very Christian now, he’s really come back into the fold) – I’m sure he cherishes that prophecy, because he did become a singer and change the world. But you know, a lot of people received that prophecy, and didn’t become singers and change the world. He did, and there’s something powerful about that. While I was working on season 2 Bethel, was when all the American Hillsong stuff was falling apart. Sometimes I couldn’t even bear to click through to an article, because I knew I was going to end up getting distracted and wanting to start working on something right away. Obviously that traces right back to Australia.

B: That’s right, it’s like Toronto in reverse. I feel like we’ve got some scoops here, that you’re going to potentially be working on IHOP, you’ll be talking about the Biebs.

TJS: A couple of times I’ve reached out to his mom, hoping that maybe she would come join me. I think at this point it’s really not going to happen, but I would love to hear right from them their perspective on the Toronto Blessing and Justin Bieber’s life. He’s one of the people that’s being set up by the church right now, as we talk about in Season 2 with Bethel, they talk about the Seven Mountains mandate, as a Christian deciding which of these spheres you can succeed in and manifest heaven on earth. Justin Bieber is a great example of the world of entertainment. I don’t know when it is but it’s coming up soon, but Justin Bieber, Chance the Rapper, and a whole bunch of other massive artists in the States are holding in LA what’s being described as a volunteer event, but it’s really going to be a worship service, according to the description. They’re going to be trying to convert people at this volunteer event.

B: Sounds like a super-spreader event. 

TJS: Again – connecting a fact. Nice connection.

T: Yeah, two viruses. Spiritual and natural. The other thing I think about this is that it’s not new, right, the use of celebrity. Whenever there’s a famous person they would be lauded out at the tent revivals, or even on television. I remember there was noises about Sharon Stone attending mega churches at one stage, but we really saw Scientology take that to a whole new level, and I wonder if there’s some learning from that, that Pentecostalism or Charismania, or whatever you want to call it, have taken and gone okay, we’ve seen them do it, let’s us do it, take these names and laud them. It seems somewhat different to what it was in the 90s – we joke, because there used to be a famous jockey and a guitarist in Australia and that was kind of it, but now they’ve got the Australian Idol, which is the Australian version of the American Idol. The first winner of that was a former charismatic. We reached out to him to get him on the show, but he’s not keen. I don’t think he wants to alienate his audience.

TJS: Right, and he’s also not walking around being weird, shaking and speaking in tongues. There’s a palatable type of Christian that Justin Bieber has become, but he didn’t start that way. He was born and raised in the Pentecostal, Toronto Blessing, shaking, falling down on the ground bit, but he knows that’s weird. It’s not palatable to the rest of his audience.

B: We are looking forward to hearing more about that, and certainly look forward to next season. It’s going to be amazing, and maybe we can get you back one day to talk about that, because I have absolutely loved today. It’s been amazing chatting to you.

TJS: It’s been my pleasure guys, I’m so happy to connect. I was happy when you reached out, I love listening to your pod and knowing that somewhere on the other side of the world there’s people who know that these conversations are important, so thank you for what you’re doing and it really means a lot to know I’m not alone.

T: Yeah it’s nice to know there are other people halfway round the world just as fucked up, or perhaps even more fucked up than you, right?

(laughter)

T: We’re all messed up. That’s where it’s at.

B: Group therapy session quite often, which is really important! This processing of stuff is critical for moving forward and taking some of the positives, finding the positives, pulling them forward in your life and applying some of the learning we’ve got from the traumatic experiences that we’ve been part of.

TJS: Well, I can’t wait to chat with you guys again, let’s definitely do it. I’ll keep you updated. I’m hoping to have a new season around Christmas time and then another one soon after that.

T: Thanks so much for coming on the show, we’ve really loved having you. We’ll see everybody next week for – I think we’re going to be doing Psychopaths and Narcissists in the church. Just a soft little topic next week. Is that right B?

B: Yeah, no doubt not much to talk about, as they’re few and far between, as we know.

T: It certainly wasn’t us!

B: No! See you later.