Brian Recker is a former Marine Officer, the son of a Baptist preacher, and an alum of the fundamentalist Bob Jones University. Brian spent eight years as an evangelical pastor before deconstructing his faith to find a more inclusive spirituality. He now speaks about following Jesus without the fear of hell, and has written about this in his new book, HellBent: How the Fear of Hell Holds Christians Back from a Spirituality of Love.
We talk about why he deconstructed his faith and what spirituality looks like to him now. He shares why he believes that hell isn’t real and that love should be radically inclusive, as demonstrated through the life and teachings of Jesus. The conversation also covers why men need an authentic spirituality, why the Western world has “an empathy problem”, why a spirituality of hell creates a divided self, and why the Sears catalogue made him question his faith as a teenager.
As someone who also grew up in an evangelical church and used to be a pastor, I found this conversation–and Brian’s book, HellBent–to be a very refreshing and liberating take on what true spirituality is and what’s really important in this life, not just as a man, but as a society.
Find Brian Recker & 'HellBent' Here:
Website: https://www.brianrecker.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/berecker
