Are We in the New Holocaust? Dr. Lucas Wilson joins us to discuss the parallels and his experience with conversion therapy

In this powerful episode, Dr. Lucas Wilson—SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto Mississauga and editor of Shame-Sex Attraction: Survivors’ Stories of Conversion Therapy—shares his journey of deconstructing faith, reconciling identity, and exposing the harm of religious fundamentalism.

We dive deep into:
🔹 His personal journey from evangelicalism to leaving the church
🔹 The role of Holocaust research in his faith deconstruction
🔹 The history and impact of conversion therapy on LGBTQ+ individuals
🔹 How white Christian nationalism fuels oppression and political extremism
🔹 The evolving rhetoric around queer identity in religious spaces

Dr. Wilson’s work challenges dominant narratives and uplifts marginalized voices, making this an episode you won’t want to miss.

🎧 Tune in now and join the conversation!

📲 Connect with Dr. Lucas Wilson:
📸 Instagram & Threads: @lukeslamdunkwilson
🐦 Twitter/X: @wilson_fw
🔗 LinkedIn: Lucas Wilson
📘 Facebook: Luke Wilson

🔗 Learn more & subscribe: leavingthechurchtofindgod.com

Transcript

1:15

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Aloha, God Pod! I am so happy to be back after a few weeks of a little break, and today we have an amazing guest. He is a powerhouse in the world of scholarship and advocacy, formerly the Justice, Equity, and Transformation Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Calgary. Dr. Lucas Wilson is currently an SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Please forget my pronunciation. His work examines the intersections of memory, trauma, religion, and social justice, particularly in the LGBTQ plus space and Holocaust studies. Dr. Wilson is the editor of Shame, Sex, Attraction, Survivor Stories of Conversion Therapy, amplifying the voices of those who have endured and resisted harmful religious and cultural practices. He is also the author of At Home with the Holocaust, Post Memory, Domestic Space, and Second Generation Holocaust Narratives, which won the Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Award. Additionally, he co-edited Emerging Trends in Third Generation Holocaust Literature. And beyond academia, Lucas is a passionate public intellectual with his writing featured in The Advocate, Queerty, LGBTQ Nation, Religion Dispatches, and other platforms. His work challenges dominant narratives, pushes for justice, and uplifts marginalized voices. And that's what we're all about on here. So welcome, Dr. Lucas Wilson. What's your leaving the church story? Oh, shoot. It's a year's long story, but I'll do my best to condense it. Yeah, into a bite size, you know, When did things start to kind of crack for you from, from the indoctrination to? You know, I would say that a big part of it initially started with my sexuality. I knew that I was gay since I was, you know, super young. But I didn't, I wouldn't ultimately say that that was, you know, what, what pushed me out of the church. But it was the beginning of, of what, you know, opened my eyes to the fact that I didn't fit within this religious tradition that like, definitionally, because according to evangelicalism, you can't be queer, you know, obviously, I think, you know, that is possible. But that's not my sort of question at this point. And I don't really desire to be a, you know, a Christian, I'm not a person of faith anymore. But at the time, I, you know, I knew, I was told that I wasn't able to, to be both queer and Christian. So that, for me, really sent me on a journey initially to reconcile my faith with my sexuality. And, again, it poked a lot of holes in the cosmology or sort of the worldview of evangelicalism. But really, what pushed me out of the church ultimately was my research. And most of my research up until this point has really focused on the Holocaust. And so I was, you know, reading a bunch of Jewish authors, specifically Holocaust survivors, and one in particular, Elie Wiesel. And I remember reading his protests against God. And of course, you know, it's ironic that so many of us were part of a Protestant tradition, which, you know, initially was, you know, a tradition that was protesting or pushing against the Catholic Church. However, for those of us, you know, who were in this tradition, anytime recently, protest is not really something, you know, that we we connect to our relationship with God, like we are told to submit to obey and just to follow orders. But I started reading these authors, particularly, again, Elie Wiesel, and was coming across, you know, these accounts of people saying no to God. And that for me was wild, like, it really pushed my comfortability and pushed me and my comfortability. And I realized that, you know, it's okay to say that I don't think that certain things that have happened through history are okay. It's okay for me to then say that it's not okay that God did nothing or did something or whatever the case might have been. And so for me, it was researching the Holocaust, where ultimately, I decided that I couldn't really believe in a good God, if I were to, you know, be honest with the realities of so many people, myself included, that really would preclude me from believing in a good God, because there's so much, to put it academically, shit that happens in this in this world, that I simply would not be able to live with myself and live comfortably, if I were to say that God was good, and, you know, allowed these things or did these things. And so, for me, it was really research, it was study, it was encountering voices that were different from my own, that ultimately pushed me out of the church, even though oftentimes, I think a lot of people, particularly those who are still within the church would love to say that it was my sexuality that pushed me out, it was my, you know, my sin nature that really I had to go pursue. But no, it was it was more of an intellectual thing for me, where I simply just, and also a hard issue as well, like, it's a moral and ethical question as well, you know, I simply would could not live with myself and remain an evangelical. Yeah, that makes sense. I'm gonna take a real, a pause, getting some feedback on your microphone. Do you know what might be happening? No, I'm like, I'm closer to the, is it okay if I come closer? Does it work? Yeah. Okay, does this? Yeah, does this work better? That helps. I think that helps. Okay, we'll see once we get going. But okay. So I need to back my train of thought there. Yeah, I completely understand that. I know for me, it was a lot of things not adding up, like God is love, and all of these beautiful things that Christians are meant to be, and everything, so much, not everything, but so much of what I was being taught, and what was being enforced was just in contradiction to that, specifically, like the way that we, we treat others and marginalized people, and those on the, on the fringe, right? And how it was not a reflection, because I remember learning, I think it was my mom that told me, you know, I'm like, what does it even mean to be a Christian? And she's like, Oh, it means to be Christ-like. And I'm like, well, I feel like the actions that I'm taking and the compassion that I have is aligned with Christ. And these things that you're telling me are right or wrong, or should be doing or should not be doing are not aligned with Christ. So I don't even know. So I feel like, in that definition, I would consider myself a Christian. By any other definition, most definitely not. So it's interesting, the cognitive dissonance that happens, you know, especially within the evangelical church, but within a lot of these oppressive, like religious systems in general. So I think it's interesting. I didn't expect to go in this direction, but talking about the your work with the Holocaust and everything, I was thinking about this earlier, and what we're experiencing right now in the United States. What can you see, as far as the way that the church is aligning in the political spectrum and history repeating itself and such? What are your feelings about that? Yeah, you know what, and I'll preface everything, and then I'll jump into what I'm about to say. So I'm always very skeptical when anyone makes any claims like, oh, what we're seeing today is what's happening, what happened in Nazi Germany. And I always say that history doesn't repeat itself, but history rhymes, right? And we can see so many parallels between what happened then and what happened today. Again, I think it does. There is some nuance, obviously, and we need to be sort of, careful with exactly what we are saying, because again, that's a pretty extreme sort of comparison to make, but it is a comparison I think worth making. You can see so many of Trump's recent actions mirroring or, again, rhyming with what we saw during the rise of Hitler and then ultimately there's reign of terror from, say, 1933 to 1945. And so I think that really when we're talking about what's happening today, I think we can use one example of what we're seeing as sort of, again, being a continuation or sort of a similar sort of occurrence is that queer folks are some of the first to be targeted, right? If we think of during Hitler's reign, there was this queer sexologist who had this whole body of work, this library of work, and that entire body of work was burned, right? And that was the first sort of book banning and protest, or not book banning, but I guess protest against ideas. And we see today who were some of the first folks who had been targeted by Trump. And even in his inaugural address, he was talking about queer folks and how it's, again, by omission. He wasn't saying, he didn't say queer folks specifically, but he said there's only two genders, right? And of course this is an indirect allusion to trans folks. And so gender non-conforming and queer people are the first to be targeted. Again, there are multiple other people and groups of people who are targeted as well, but that's just one example, right? There's so much that we can see that, again, rhymes with what we've seen in the past. And this is terrifying, and this is a wake-up call. You know, if you even, if for anyone, you know, to name another podcast, you know, the Straight White American Jesus, they've been covering some of this as well, looking at, you know, again, the echoes from the past and how we're seeing these reverberations today. And so all of this to say is that I 100% agree that there are so many continuities with what we're seeing today that we saw, again, specifically in Nazi Germany, as well as other, you know, dictatorships throughout, you know, the recent past. Again, there is, you know, necessity to nuance these things, and there is, you know, a necessity to make sure that we're, you know, not making sort of bold or histrionic claims for the sake of making histrionic claims, but when the shoe fits, put it on, right? Wear it. So I think that, to your points, I think you're on target. And how do you feel, like, as far as the, because I don't know, I know you're in Canada, but how much you're following American politics, but I do know that it kind of filters out worldwide, especially coming from the United States, but as far as, like, I've just seen, like, a lot, especially in the right wing of this, the evangelical church, really taking a foothold. Do you feel like it's more of taking advantage of a moment or an alignment with the ideals, like, at any cost, let's get this indoctrination further, like, let's further indoctrinate the people, no matter the residuals, or, like, what do you feel about that? I think that, I mean, white Christian nationalism, which is, of course, what we're seeing today is textbook white Christian nationalism, right? Like, this is sort of, like, the culmination of so many years of white Christian nationalists working against the best interests of the majority for their own interests. And I think that that history in and of itself speaks to how so much of evangelicalism is not about Jesus, and, you know, going back to how you defined as an almost Christian, right, like, to be Christ-like, that's not been the goal for a number of years. The goal has been power, right? And these, and I don't necessarily mean every single evangelical or white Christian fundamentalist or charismatic or whatever, I'm talking about the leadership. This has been a targeted plan for years, and we can trace this back throughout the past 60 years, right? This is really going back to around, you know, the 70s, when we see the rise of people like Anita Bryan, Phyllis Schlafly, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, these morons, to put it again academically, these are the people who are the intellectual, and I feel so disingenuous using the phrase intellectual to describe them, but nonetheless, they are the intellectual sort of front runners of this movement that we're seeing today. Again, not to say that there weren't white Christian fundamentalists before, there were, but they were in their nascent stages, and really these bigwigs within the new Christian right were the ones who were creating the conditions and setting up the blueprints for what we're seeing today. So this has been in the making for decades, and so seeing what we're seeing today shouldn't be a surprise to so many of us, and for a lot of us, it's not, right? Like a lot of us know, we've seen this for years. It's simply that the rest of the world is now waking up to the fact that, you know, the church and, you know, the Protestant church as well as the Catholic church, and of course, when we're thinking about Project 2025, we're talking about a document that was, again, created by a number of Christians, a lot of them evangelical, but also a number of Catholics, and we can think about J.D. Vance and his connections to the Catholic church and to these Catholic organizations, these rad trad, again, morons. All of this to say, these people have been working in conjunction for years to execute what is happening today, and of course, you know, I'm hoping that there's going to be some sort of resistance, you know, from Christians, you know, who profess the name of Christ as their Savior, or profess Jesus as their Savior, but also from politicians, right, and from grassroots organizations, and we are seeing that resistance. However, the question is, how durable is democracy? How durable is, you know, the Constitution? Again, we're going to see probably in the next few months, which sounds very doomsday to say, but I do think that what we're seeing right now is going to be leading to some pretty scary consequences unless people step up and, you know, start acting. We'll see what happens, and it's terrifying to say that, and for me as a Canadian, you know, watching this from the outside, it's scary for us too, because so much of what's happening in the U.S. bleeds over into Canada, so much of what happens in the U.S. bleeds over into other countries, and again, what happens with the U.S. is going to affect Ukraine. What happens in the U.S. is going to affect Palestine. What happens in the U.S. is going to affect so many different countries, right, and so it's not exclusive to the U.S. It is something that certainly has numerous geopolitical consequences for the rest of the world, and so we watch onwards are terrified. Yeah, yeah, that's understandable. We are too. Yeah, no, of course. I feel like, you know, I have this false sense of being in a bubble because I live in Hawaii, so there is a little bit of a, like, progressive, like, protection to a degree, but I also know that, you know, 90 miles off our coast, like, Cuba has, you know, nuclear weapons just ready to go. So, I mean, not Cuba. Sorry, I say Cuba because I was taking 90 miles off the coast, but Russia has nuclear weapons 90 miles off the coast, you know, of the islands. So, you know, it's a false sense of security. I do understand that, but I do feel like, you know, I have seven nieces who live in the state of Georgia, and I feel much more frightened for them and their future than I do for mine right now because they are in the deep south of the United States, and there's just a lot. We can do a lot of, like, future tripping and catastrophizing, and like you said, you don't want to, but if the shoe fits, it's, like, there are a lot of warning signs, and it's ignoring the warning signs and downplaying them that leads to, you know, further disaster and change. So, back to the queer community, I have this, I'm neurodivergent, and I've really just learned, the more I learn about myself, like, everything is on the spectrum, like sexuality, gender identity. There is no binary. Everything is on the spectrum, and I believe that, you know, I'm also of Native American descent, and being transgender is a blessing, and you're considered highly spiritual and in touch with, you know, both the masculine and feminine energies, and that's, it's the same in Hawaii. We have the mahu that, it's just very accepted culturally, and I know that that goes on in other cultures as well. So, I don't know. I feel like, you know, some of the most marginalized people, being the queer community, the transgender community especially, and, like, Black women are typically the most powerful and the most tuned in people that I've met, as far as tuned into the pulse of humanity and moving humanity forward in a progressive way, being in touch with the spiritual realm. Like, how do you see that connected to this agenda with the far right? Do you feel like there's a correlation, or that it's just, like, a personal, like, denial of their own spectrum for them? Like, I don't know. I'm just curious how you feel about that. No, I, if we're talking about people, you know, if we're talking about trans folks, we're talking about Black folks, we're talking about women, we're talking about queer folks, I think all of these folks, we, and I'm not obviously most of those things, I'm just a gay man, but, you know, for those of us who are on the margins, I think, you know, to talk about how you're saying, like, they're most, these folks are most tapped into reality, that they're able to see the sort of the contours, and, you know, what's happening, perhaps in a clearer way than a lot of other folks. I think that's because we're not blinded by our privilege in the same way that straight white men are. Again, I'm a white man, I'm not straight, but I think that queerness de-centers me in a way that allows for me to look onwards, and have a critical distance from the majority. I think for women, you know, this is, of course, the case. I think for Black folks, this is, of course, the case. For trans folks, this is, of course, the case, right? Like, we are not privileged, and we, in the same way that straight white men are. And so I think that it only makes sense that there is some sort of vision, right? There is some sort of alternate understanding, and perhaps clearer understanding of the world. Because these are folks who have come from perspectives that are not dominant, and therefore, we see from below, right, in a lot of ways. And of course, our identities are intersecting, and there are certain parts that perhaps, you know, as a white man, I'm blinded to, for sure, and there's no doubt there. But what I will say is that it only makes sense that these are the folks who are visionaries. And if we think about, you know, artists, right, and authors, and you know, musicians, dancers, whomever, some of the most beautiful art really is not coming in fact, the vast majority of most beautiful art is not coming from straight white men. Not to say that that isn't possible, but it's perhaps not as likely. So I think what you're saying is, is spot on. And it only makes sense. Because I think these positions afford us the vision that we wouldn't have had if we were from the center. Yeah, yeah, that's, I like that perspective. I, you know, because I often wonder, like, what, it's like a chicken or the egg, you know, are, are these groups marginalized because of their internal power? Or is their internal power because they're marginalized? Maybe it's a little bit of both, but it's nice to see it from both sides. I, yeah, I feel like there's a lot of fear, people fearing their own shadows and their own parts of themselves that they're afraid to see, especially within the straight white male community, because I don't know that there really are straight white males. I know, you know, I think that inside, there's always a curiosity or a desire in any person. And it's this idea that they're meant to be this, this trope of this straight white male, but have this thing inside of them that they're fighting so hard against. And if everybody could just realize that and get on the same page, then we could all just like, take a deep breath, a sigh of relief and just be ourselves. I think about that, you know, again, I think when we think about those who are in opposition to us, and oftentimes, straight white men, um, you know, there are other groups too, but it's, it's quite common for it to be straight white men. And, you know, just look at, um, well, the president, look at his, the vice president, look at the other president or whatever you want to call it at this point. Um, and then, you know, those in the Senate and the House and all that, um, these folks, you know, are, I find it funny, the folks who are most vocal against queer, you know, the queer community or queer communities more accurately, I should say, um, are, you know, the question is why, you know, it begs the question, why are they so vocal? Um, and, you know, you can think of a number of politicians in the past who, uh, it later came out that they were queer. Um, and these were the most sort of, um, angry, uh, impassioned people against the queer community. Um, and so I think that, uh, oftentimes it's, uh, the hatred that they spew is really hatred for themselves. Um, and they, what they hate is, is what they see within themselves. And so I, I'm with you. I think a lot of times these folks, you have to wonder like, what's their investment in, in anti-queer politics? Why are they so passionate? Um, I think it's because oftentimes it's a, it's a reflection of their own biography. Yeah. Yeah. I see that for sure. I mean, just like during the Republican National Convention and like Grindr, like went off the charts and like usage during the Republican National Convention, you know, there's no like coincidence to that. And, um, I don't know, part of me, like a big part of me feels like this is just kind of like that, like Custer's last stand. Like it's that last fight against like the opening and the awakening of humanity and this, um, unity that we are all working towards, hopefully, and that this is patriarchy and these oppressive systems kind of just trying to grab as much power as they possibly can, because they know that it's coming to an end. Um, hopefully it will come to an end in our lifetimes. I don't know how long this takes or what the process is, but I, I can only hope that this is working towards a better future and not, not towards a worse one, you know, even if it is worse, like temporarily, but yeah. So, um, going to your work, what are you most excited that you're working on right now? Um, I know that you, like you said, you switched from this Holocaust conversation to queer conversation. What do you feel like you're really passionate about right now? Yeah, so, you know, while, while I was, right now I'm in my second postdoc. Um, I did my first postdoc at University of Calgary. Now this one's at University of Toronto Mississauga. Before that, uh, I was a PhD student and while I was in my PhD program, I realized and was told that I needed to switch gears. And the reason was, uh, as one of my dissertation committee members said, uh, he said to me, Luke, the world doesn't care about Jews anymore. And up until that point, and he was a Jewish man. Um, my entire committee was Jewish. So up until that point, I had devoted all of my time and attention to, to most of my time and attention, I should say, uh, to Jewish literature, specifically Holocaust literature. Um, and so hearing that kind of freaked me out and I was like, well, gosh, I need to pivot. Um, and I had up until that point, I had started to also consider the possibility of doing research on evangelicals just because I knew at that point that, you know, because, you know, through a number of conversations with different academics and archivists and whatnot throughout my research, um, people were pushing me and saying, Hey, you should do more work about, you know, uh, your experience as an evangelical. And I didn't really know at the time how to do work about myself, um, and do, you know, some sort of auto analysis that for me was very much new. Um, but I started thinking about it. And when my dissertation committee member said this, it solidified the idea that I need to get my, you know, a button gear and start, uh, figuring out an alternative academic path. And so I decided that I waited again, focus on, um, evangelicals and, and, and particularly, or more broadly, the new Christian, right. Um, because it's the world that I knew, unfortunately in a personal way. And so I had insight already. And so I thought, you know, I'm not going to start from scratch and go into a different field, um, that I had no knowledge base, um, in which I had no knowledge base. So I decided that I was going to, you know, focus on the new Christian right and its relationship to gender and sexuality. And so that's where my first book, um, shame, sex attraction, or my first edited collection, it's actually my second edited collection, but my first public facing edited collection, non-academic edited collection, uh, came from, uh, and it's looking at, you know, conversion practices largely within the new Christian right, but not exclusively looking at, um, you know, conversion therapy. Uh, and, and it was again, very much a literary representation or exploration of conversion practices. Um, and so that one, you know, it's come out and that's, uh, in a large part, probably actually why we're even, we're even chatting, uh, because that book is now out and I'm excited about it, but, um, to answer your, to actually answer your question, what am I working on now? Uh, it is, uh, currently another edited collection, but this one's going to be about queer experiences at Christian colleges and universities and seminaries. And so looking at, you know, what it's been like for so many students and there are, uh, there is a significant population of queer folks at these schools and who have gone to these schools over the past, say 60, 70 years. Um, or really there've always been queers at these schools. It's just a matter of, um, folks have started talking about it more, more recently. And so that's what I'm working on right now. Um, again, for me, I'm fascinated by, uh, evangelicals and fascinated by white Christian fundamentalists and how they understand sex, how they understand gender. And again, how much it really is a reflection of their own appetites and desires. And so that's the project right now. Um, but it fits into this larger constellation of, of, uh, research on, uh, queer folks and their relationship to the new Christian right. So let's get a little more into, cause I, I've had, um, lots of queer guests on the podcast. Obviously it comes, it comes into the conversation quite often, but let's get more into the nitty gritty of how that happened, like how the church kind of adopted this idea and it became part of the doctrine. So 1946 is when the word homosexuality first enters the English, uh, Bible. Um, before that it was translated in a bunch of different ways, um, most commonly sexual morality, um, but other, you know, uh, words were used in its place. Um, and so this, you know, oftentimes I think a lot of Christians and folks in general think that the word homosexuality, you know, has been in the Bible since, you know, for, since the beginning, uh, it, it hasn't, uh, the word homosexuality didn't even come into like any lexicon until the 1800s. Um, it wasn't a conception of human sexuality until the 1800s. Um, and so this is really a modern, uh, invention within the past what, well, I'm not good at math, but since the 1800s. And so, uh, all this to say is that, um, you know, obviously there was anti-queer, um, theology before 1946. And, uh, you know, there were condemnations of queers before 1946, um, again, based on the interpretation of scripture before this modern translation. Um, but really a lot of this anti-queer, you know, rhetoric, um, really amped up, uh, in more recent decades. Like this has not been something that people are, you know, obsessed with in the way that they are obsessed with sexuality and gender today. Um, of course, you know, even in thinking about the difference between say the 1980s and today, you know, what was the conversation in the 80s? It was against gays, right? It was against, and they used the word gays. They didn't use the acronym. And I don't think a lot of folks actually use the acronym LGBTQ, right? This was more, it was targeted against gay men and under that umbrella or gays. And under that umbrella was largely gay men, but of course, you know, lesbians as well. They weren't talking about gender non-conforming people really. I mean, yes, there were certain instances and yes, there were moments where they talked about it, but it wasn't the obsession that it was until after, um, you know, gay marriage was legalized, right? You can think about like how the focus really shifted, um, once gay marriage was legalized. Again, there were conversations before gay marriage was legalized. There was conversations about which bathroom, you know, you know, folks should use and all this kind of tomfoolery. However, again, anti-trans rhetoric specifically really is, you know, a product of the past 20 years. Again, there were conversations before, um, and there, you know, and there will be conversations after about, you know, anti-gay teachings. But again, right now we're really talking about anti-trans teachings. So when we're talking about, uh, these, like the sexuality politics and we're talking about gender politics, like a lot of what we're seeing in the intensification of these conversations really starts in the 70s, 60s, 70s. Um, but really in the 70s, if we're talking specifically about anti-queer, uh, politics in relationship to the new Christian, right, we're talking about our girlfriend, Anita Bryant, right? She's the one who really starts, kickstarts this conversation in a way that no one had before her. Jerry Falwell picks up on it, um, really quickly. He jumps on the bandwagon. Well, Anita Bryant gets a divorce. She sort of falls out of favor, um, and Falwell continues with it, right? Again, amongst a number of other, you know, prominent, uh, uh, well at the time white Christian fundamentalists, but eventually evangelicals, he turned sort of new neo-evangelical afterwards. Um, and so again,