We Don't Own the Force or the Faith with John Fugelsang

On this episode, Chief Operating Officer ⁠Elena Azzoni⁠ is joined by New York Times bestselling author, actor, and comedian ⁠John Fugelsang⁠ to discuss his book ⁠Separation of Church and Hate⁠. From spiritual trauma and the separation of Jesus' teachings from organized religion to addressing heavy topics with humor, this episode will have you going from crying to laughing and back again in just moments.

Automatically Transcribed Transcript

From the ladies of Rise Literary, welcome to Write the Good Fight.

On today's episode, we have Chief Operating Officer, Elena Azzoni, Moi, joined by John Fugelsang. He's been murdered on CSI, interviewed two Beatles on separate continents in the same week, and famously once got Mitt Romney's advisor to call Governor Romney an Etch-a-Sketch on CNN. Actor, comedian, and broadcaster, John Fugelsang hosts Tell Me Everything weekdays on SiriusXM.

His film Dream On, A Road Trip in Search of the American Dream was named best documentary at the New York Independent Film Festival. He is also the author of the New York Times bestseller, Separation of Church and Hate, A Sane Person's Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock Fleecing Frauds. Hi, John.

Hello, Elena.

It's so nice to spend time with you.

I'm so honored that you would lower your standards enough to have me right here, so thank you.

They're pretty low. I hate to break it to you.

Oh, no. I don't believe that. As a longtime fan.

We are called Rise, but we go low.

When they go low, we step on them. That's what I say.

That's what Jesus would say to according to your book.

No, Jesus would not say that, unfortunately.

That was a test.

He put up with all manner of trifling fools, but he was nonviolent, but the dude had a temper.

Yeah. I would like to just take a moment to tell you how much I appreciated your book, because it is called, this is John Fugelsang, folks, and he wrote Separation of Church and Hate, A Sane Person's Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock Fleecing Frauds. It's a good thing I took out my crest white strips before we-

Thank you. It's a good thing I accidentally dressed like a priest before I came to do your show. This was not planned with the white t-shirts.

Sorry, folks.

It's fitting. So-

We'll see.

I mean, the book certainly is exactly what the subtitle suggests. I love how you break down the claims and then the scripture and what is actually in the Bible. It's beautiful.

I really tried to make it a guide. In my pitch for the book, I said that I'm not writing literature. I'm trying to write a book that people will use.

Yeah. And it very much is. And I love how you talk about this is how to talk to your racist cousin at dinner.

I thought it was a good framing device. There's lots of theological treatises out there about politics and about the politics of Jesus. There are many of them.

Most of them are written by comedians whose parents were ex-clergy. And I also just thought like I didn't want to just write a political screed attacking people because we live with these people. Most of us, they're not nationalists or zealots.

They're that uncle who's kind of racist, but he's nice sometimes too, and we don't want to set the house on fire. And I find when dealing with extreme right-wing Christians, I'm not talking about your nice conservative folks, but the really right, you know, the ones who think vaccines make you gay, those guys, I find asking questions is better than confrontation and asking questions about what this Bible that they wave around so bombastically actually says. Because usually they haven't really read the Jesus parts too much, and they're counting on the rest of us not having read them.

Yeah.

And I will admit, I hadn't read them. So I want to tell you that on a very personal level, I was raised Catholic and I was also deeply wounded by someone affiliated with the Catholic Church. And so as soon as I turned 12 and was confirmed, I was like, peace, I'm out of here.

This has done nothing good for me. And reading your book deeply healed me actually, because I didn't realize I hadn't reconciled within myself. When I step into a church, when I go to a Catholic mass for a funeral, usually it's an event like that, not by choice, tears stream down my face.

And it's always been this strange experience for me of like, but mainly I came away from that experience feeling like if I breathe the wrong way, I'm going to hell. Yeah. You know?

I understand that feeling. That's spiritual abuse.

It is.

And it's not really discussed. We talk a lot about getting out of religion. We talk a lot about deconstruction, but we don't talk about spiritual trauma.

We'll talk about the physical trauma, sexual trauma, emotional trauma, but not the spiritual trauma that comes from the weak men and women too. It's mostly men, but there are women who do it, who weaponize this faith, not as a means of controlling populations, but as a means of controlling young people and controlling people that trust them.

Yeah.

And when you do that and you've used the authoritarianism of religion to somehow make someone believe that their abuse is justified, that's how the institutionalized toxicity of imperial religion manifests in our souls, in our families, in people.

Right, and then when we caught off ourselves, it's so painful. And so when I say I stepped into churches and I smell the frankincense and I feel the moisture in the room of those churches, and the tears are streaming down because I feel love. And I look at the image of Christ in the stained glass and I feel filled with love.

And it's the cutting off of that love that I like to say throughout the Baby Jesus with the bathwater when I left Catholic religion.

It's easy to see why it feels like it has to be all or nothing.

Right, but your book really validated for me like, no, this is love. And this is, he did stand for all of the things I also stand for. And so it helped me kind of reclaim those pieces for myself and understand why I feel that love when I walk into a church, even though there's also so much pain that came as a result of that place.

I think that is probably something that a lot of people find resonance with. I always say when it comes to your parents' religion, try to keep the best and drop the rest, and recognize that we're all raised in whatever frameworks we're raised in, our parents were as well, and we all do the best with what we can do. And the whole idea of deconstructing from the religion that's imposed on you is historically a very recent concept.

And we're all still figuring out how to navigate this, but it was so important with me for this book to separate Jesus as a teacher from his many unauthorized fan clubs. Because I got tired of, I think millions of us were raised in this Christianity that's about service. And however you treat the lowest is how you treat Jesus, and go to the margins to help the marginalized, and the last shall be first, wash the feet of your own followers.

That's the humility that Jesus talked about. Not about total right-wing domination of a school board. It was not about power.

Religion is about power. And conservative Christianity generally is about power. Right-wing Christianity does not seek to fight for any of the teachings of Jesus.

They fight for right-wing Christian control of society and culture. They fight against the things Jesus actually talked about, because the teachings of Jesus are as threatening to authoritarian power today as they were 2,000 years ago. The children aren't taught that.

We're taught miracles and obedience and magic tricks and Christmas. Honor thy mother and father and accept a top-down patriarchal hierarchical structure that doesn't acknowledge the love of Jesus, that doesn't see rankings and importance and eminence in people, that we're all brothers and sisters, that's not about control and male control. I think your story is so universal and I wanted to speak to it because to that whole dynamic of people who've had to recognize that Jesus and religion aren't the same.

And they say the largest growing religious demographic in our country are Mormons. Sometimes you hear it's Islam and lately you hear it's none of the aboves. I think the largest growing religious group is people who were raised religious and now consider themselves spiritual because they are so turned off to the cruelty and the hypocrisy.

And the trauma they themselves received. You know, I quote in the end of the book from Ryan Johnson's movie The Last Jedi where Luke Skywalker says, the Jedi don't own the force. And I stood up and screamed in the movie.

I was the one guy who did. To me, it was like the most important. I met Ryan Johnson and I told him this.

He came on my show and I'm like, that is spiritually the most important line in a movie in so long. The religion doesn't own God and they don't own Jesus and they don't own faith and they don't own America and they don't own you. And I think there's no greater compliment I could get than what you just paid me because I wrote this book for believers and atheists.

I wrote this book for anybody who wants to be able to stand up to the authoritarian Christianity just like Jesus did.

Yeah. Well, I do want to talk a little bit about how you came to write this book because we've known each other for a little over 20 years now and we've both had our windy paths. And I like to plug here that we share the same birthday.

We do. We do. But she looks good doing it.

Me, it's a tragedy. For her, it's just like, wow, September 3rd, okay. Like, wow, look at Elena, September 3rd, that's the kind of Virgo I want to be.

You look at me September 3rd and it's like, oh, I see why World War II started on your birthday. Okay, so.

Yes, I just had better disguises.

Mm-hmm, which is such a Virgo thing to be.

You must have Scorpio rising or something.

No, but I don't mess with those. No.

I do too.

Really? I love Scorpios. I do.

They're great. But no, I'm one of my Sagittarius rising. But you know what I say about Virgos?

They're a lot of work and they're worth it.

It's true. Yeah.

I was going to say we're the most advanced sign of the Zodiac, but Jesus didn't believe in hierarchies, so. Hmm.

The most advanced sign of the Zodiac. Wow.

It's a fact, but we do have one. Oh, it is?

Oh, okay. Well, we've reached the point of astrological eugenics, folks. You got here just in time, you know.

Let's talk about those Geminis, those swarthy Geminis. They're just not like us. They're just not.

We're the most advanced.

No, but I've seen your trajectory over the years and I've known your familial history and your humor and your deep knowledge of the Bible. And when I read this book, I was like, by the way, can we show off my very Virgo Post-It notes and highlighted lines?

That's an honor.

I really just highlighted all the lines, which made me laugh out loud and it's many.

I'm a first-time author and I never knew how sweet that could feel.

So thank you. Yes. Thank you.

Usually people highlight my stuff for the more offensive parts of the legal proceedings.

Well, those are all the ones that made me laugh out loud.

Yeah. Usually a paralegal has assembled all my awful quotes for someone to present as a case for a corporation to fire me or something. So this is really nice.

Thank you.

Thank you. But I'm curious as someone on a similar parallel path of having done many things and coming around to when I read this book, I was like, oh, why didn't he do this sooner? This makes all the sense.

It really wraps up all of the unique parts of you. I'm curious how you came to write this book. Do you feel that way about it too?

Like, oh, yes, this is me on track. I'm just curious what led you.

Well, there's two stories there. There's the story of how long it took me to write and sell this book. And then there's the story of what this book is and regarding in terms of me and what I'm expressing here.

And I did spend a long time. I mean, I've spent a lifetime accumulating the thoughts. I was a very good Catholic kid.

You know, we went to church all the time, all the holy days. I did everything, not that big on confession. But when you're raised by an ex-none and an ex-Franciscan brother, it seems very normal to have tons of ex-nones and ex-clergy in the house and to go to church all the time and to, you know, like, my mother became a head nurse at a convent for her old order, so there were always nuns in my house.

Like, you know, older nuns from all around the world, and I was baptized by a priest my mother knew in the jungles of Africa, who used to ride around on a motorcycle from village to village, and he baptized me in my parents' living room in Long Island. Like, it all seemed very normal to me at the time. And, you know, some kids got piano lessons.

I got organ lessons. Organ lessons, folks. It seemed very normal.

And my parents were also very politically progressive. The first time I really began to understand Christianity, beyond Jesus as the first great Jew magician, which he was, by the way, long before Houdini or, you know, Teller or David Blaine or David Copp. A lot of amazing randy, a lot of great Jewish magicians.

But Jesus started that long before, you know, before that. I mean, we aren't taught Jesus's teachings. We're taught his divinity as kids.

He healed the lepers. You know, we're taught all the magic tricks. But for many of us, Jesus is the manger, the miracles and the cross, not the three years he spent traveling and teaching and preaching.

And when I was a kid, I tell the story briefly in the book. My dad yanked me out of bed late one night to watch Jimmy Carter sign the Camp David Peace Accord between Israel and Egypt. He couldn't believe an American Christian president had helped bring peace to a corner of the Middle East, a lasting peace.

And he wanted his kid to witness it because to my dad, this was everything that Christianity and America could and should be. I was too young to appreciate what was going on, but I could tell by my dad's face how important it was to him. And when I got a little older, it seemed, in Congress, it seemed like, wait a second, I turn on the TV and these Christians aren't like us.

The Christians they showed us on TV were Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. And they weren't talking about helping the poor or making peace or welcoming the stranger. They weren't talking about the stuff Jesus actually talked about.

They were talking about welfare queens and bums taking hands outs. They were talking about aids, patients being a threat. They were talking about the homosexual agenda and feminist and abortion, foreigners and a lot of other garbage that Jesus never mentions.

And for me, and I talk about it in the book, when the fundamentalist Christianity in America lost on civil rights, they had a decade in the wilderness after Nixon and Voting Rights Act. And then abortion was what consolidated their power. And for two generations, we've had people raised in this country to think that Christianity is about men forcing women to be pregnant against their will, which is not reflected anywhere in the entire Bible.

And I spent many years being mad about this and arguing about this. And as a comedian, I began doing material about this. And my manager said, please don't talk about this.

Religion is a third rail. It's not commercial. You're hosting America's Funniest Home Videos.

We don't want to hear this. And I didn't care. I had, I just, I was mad about it.

And, you know, the more I talked about it, the more I did material about it, the more I meet these incredible people from all around who said, yeah, I was raised Christian too, but I can't raise my kids in this thing. These people are just mean and hateful now. And a lot of people look at Christianity and think it's a mean, hateful little tax-free clique.

And that's not because of the liberals, and it's not because of the moderates or the nice conservatives. It's the fundamentalists of all religions, the fundamentalist Muslims and Jews and Hindus. They're the ones ruining religion for everybody else.

They're the ones who have always throughout history given it a bad name. You never see the liberal Christians, Jews and Muslims on the TV news because they're getting along right now, making businesses and going to schools and having families and not starting violent shit. They just don't.

It's always the extreme right of every religion. And this is what no one gets. And I have this debate with Bill Maher and my atheist friends all the time.

And so when I first started writing it, it was a while ago, it was about the Iraq War. I mean, it was mostly like focused around that 15 years ago. And my first publisher was like, what would, no, this is, no one cares.

I met with a publisher back in 2010 for my first proposal. And she was like, I don't know a major house. I don't know any of these fundamentalists.

This doesn't affect my life in any way. Others were like, it's a book for atheists and believers together about how to deal with right-wing, who's going to buy that? And I always thought there was an audience.

So it was 13 years from the time I first pitched it until I sold it. And to have it hit the New York Times Best Seller List for several weeks was really gratifying because I always believed the audience was out there. The folks who raised religious, considered themselves spiritual, still loved the faith of their parents, but could do without the hate of so much of organized religion.

Creatively, to the second part of your question, I always tried to avoid being myself. I wanted to be an actor to not be myself. It was great to be someone else.

As a stand-up comedian, I could be part of myself, but didn't have to really be myself. And even doing broadcasting and doing a political radio show, it's like it's a hat you wear, you get into that voice. I don't think it's about finding your voice as a creative.

I think it's about finding which one of your voices you're going to use for a particular project. And when I began writing this book, the hardest part, because I knew everything in it, I could recite you. The Bible's not anti-gay.

Let me tell you why right now. Off the top of my head, I could tell you every Old Testament and New Testament verse they use. I could tell you every Jesus teaching, but I didn't know how to express that without coming off as a pontificating propagandist and bore.

I had to make it funny. In the early drafts of this book, I remember I was reading it to my wife, my first couple of scratch drafts, and she was great. She would just say, I'm bored.

I'm not laughing. It's not funny. I'm bored.

My wife said, you're talking like you're writing like one of these academics or professors you interview on your SiriusXM show. You don't talk like this. It was brutal and it was great because she was right.

I couldn't. I had to get it into my voice. I'm like, well, who's the character for this?

Who is the narrator? It's me, but which part of me? I realized, no, it's me as a guy on a bar stool, tugging on your jacket about what the Bible really says.

I don't pretend to be an expert, but I name drop, I know lots of real experts, and I interview them throughout the book. Once I had who the guy was, then I could just do it and vomit it out and then chisel it and refine it. The greatest part of this experience for me was reading the audio book because by the time I got there, it was so fun.

I'm a performer, I only write to perform things. I've never written something to put it out as just prose. It was so terrifying to me for years, I never thought I could do it.

I have to be there to add a joke if it doesn't work, if they don't like it, how can I have the text speak for me and I'm not in the room? That was my phobia of this. Once I got to the point where it wasn't jokey, but it kept the comedy ball in the air, and I would read every single page out loud.

I finished my first draft, I was in Chicago the night before the Democratic Convention started in 2024. I was writing till 6 a.m. in my hotel room to get it sent in before I had to go to the convention. And I tell you-

You're very Virgo of you.

Oh my God. I mean, it was like, and I tell you, it's the most Virgo thing I ever did. And even more Virgo than that sounds, I'm literally 6 a.m. in Chicago reading every page out loud.

I had to make sure it had the flow, that it sounded conversational, that I had my own bullshit detector, because it had to pop. It couldn't sound like I was trying to write like Spaulding Gray or someone smarter than me. And so when I got to the audio part of recording the audio book, it was so easy, because I had already said it out loud a hundred times, and I knew where I'd take a breath, I knew where I put the emphasis on certain parts of a sentence.

It was already innate to me. But it took a long time getting there, and I think, and a lot of fear to get over. But for me, it wasn't about finding my voice.

It was about finding the right voice that would work for this book. A different kind of book, a memoir, a more tragic story, a love story, that wouldn't work. And this is also very political.

So I am kind of going after the right, but I try to only go after those in power and those who are mean. So keeping my insult meter as a comedian properly calibrated throughout, because it's a book about not being a dick to people. I don't want to be too much of a dick to people.

So a lot of it was really just about turning the knobs. Once you've vomited out what Anne Lamott says about the shitty first drafts, once you vomit it out, then it's just chiseling and figuring out where it's going to go. But you have to go through it to realize it.

And I hope someday to write a book in a very different voice that will be just as authentic to me, because I do think that we get hung up on finding my voice instead of realizing you already have so many voices, no matter who you are, you contain multitudes. And there's angry you and there's academic you and there's gentle you and there's lover you and there's goofy drunk you. And it's finding out which one of those versions of you is going to narrate this.

Wow, I love that. Because when I listen to it, which I did, I listened to the audiobook while reading. Oh my, wow.

Well, because, you know.

You are a masochist. Maybe you are Catholic, after all, these years.

I wanted to do it right. So I love your voice in the book. And to me, it felt like sitting down with you and having a conversation at the bar.

Thank you.

So it really works.

That's really what I was going for. And there was lots of like really clever little bits in there that I had to take out because it was just like, oh, that's not how this guy talks.

Okay. I have a question on that note.

Please.

The lesbian gym teacher.

Yeah.

Is there a dodge ball joke they made you cut out?

Oh no. I just thought you want to just skip it?

Yes.

I feel bad now for bringing it up.

You're sure you want to cut it out? The lady, in case you decide, in case you or someone overrules her, her mom died and the obituary mentioned her partner and she taught at a Catholic school and a parent read the obituary and got her fired. And I was like, okay, Jesus never says a thing about women with women.

The entire Bible never says a thing about women with women. Jesus is very specific about how we're supposed to treat each other. Women's mom just died.

And then her union wouldn't support her. Her union wouldn't support her. Her teacher's union wouldn't support her.

And to me, it was a great example of a Christianity that's all about the power and control and completely forfeits the teachings of Christ. You contrast that with right now with this Pope who's willing to have all these right-wing Christians not put money in a basket by saying, no, mistreating these migrants is an insult to Jesus. This new Pope is willing to cut into the church's bottom line in terms of donation time.

That's his whole job is to make people, you go around this country in conservative areas, it's conservative priests. You know, and then I went to the NYU Catholic Center, it was the liberal priest welcoming the gay couples. And I'm like, it's all marketing.

You're just trying to get people to give you more money. So for this Pope to actually take an unpopular point in the name of Jesus and talk about mistreating these migrants, holy crap, the balls on this guy. So that's the point I'm trying to make, but you can cut all this out.

Because, you know, lesbian gym teacher.

If I had written a hack joke about lesbian gym teacher, you would have called me out on it.

I know, I highlighted either way, so.

If, you know, I had a few in there and none of them, they all just felt like they felt like I was trying to force something in. Okay, cut out lesbian gym teacher.

I forgot her mom died.

I swear to God, I look like I'm going to go like, like fight vampires, any myth. I really should have, I've dressed so well for this, I know.

Okay, so I've got a question.

Please.

Since we're here, comfortable and good company. Is there a question you wish you would be asked on a podcast that no one's asked yet?

Well.

Or is there something you would love to talk about that you haven't really found an opportunity for yet?

I mean, your questions are already, you know, more about craft. Most of the interviews that I've done are about, you know, like, why isn't the Bible against abortion? Where is Jesus, say, being gay is okay?

Like, they're all about doctrinal stuff and scriptural stuff. I have not really done a lot of interviews that talked about craft, that talked about the process.

Well, then I've got another question for you.

Please.

A little prompt. You talked about, you know, folding in some of this into your standup, and it kind of sounds like it was a bit of an organic process of starting to write the book in 2015.

Yeah, there's parts of my standup act that's here. There's like bits of commentaries I did on Current TV back in 2012 they were in here. Like I had already written a lot of it over many, many years.

Yeah. So I have a question, and this comes from me personally, my own experience. So I'm projecting, and I want to hear your September 3rd answer, which is, do you feel like at a certain point in your life trajectory, your career trajectory, if you were at one point seeking fame and you kind of pivoted and started to seek purpose instead and landed on writing this book?

Could you speak to that a little bit if that is true for you?

Yeah, that's a great question. Sure, it's very true for me. I mean, I never really cared about fame per se.

I wanted to be a working artist. I grew up doing regional theater and I was in a production of Hamlet when I was 12 and it just changed my life. I spent four months of my seventh grade around grownups every night rehearsing Hamlet.

I couldn't really go back to Atari games after that. When I began doing stand-up, I was so influenced by George Carlin. He's the reason I got into it because Carlin was the first comedian that ever made me feel less alone as an audience member.

I'd never had a comedian make me feel less alone in the world before I saw him live and I considered him to be a shaman. I started doing a lot of stand-up and very fortunately and quickly, I was offered television work and I did a lot of interesting things. I went to work for VH1 as a VJ for a few years because they came to me and said, they wanted to more or less offer me a broadcasting graduate school.

That's really what it was. I learned how to interview and read prompter and I learned on camera skills and I got to work with Paul McCartney and George Harrison. I went up getting offered all kinds of game show host jobs and dating show host jobs and reality show host jobs.

I look like a weatherman from Omaha to begin with. I was offered weatherman too. One of the big news morning shows offered me to be their weatherman.

I actually said to the executive producer, do you want someone who can spell meteorologist? But when you're a bland white guy, you learn in TV, it's like Greg Brady on the Brady Bunch with Johnny Bravo. You fit the suit.

When they asked me to audition for America's Funniest Home Videos, I was just like, come on now, please. I was shooting in Greenwich Village that day with VH1 and I blew off the audition. And they said, look, she's staying late and she's going to get a later flight to read you.

You got to go do it. And I had just done a live special with Paul McCartney. So I was like a little bit hot for five minutes.

And so I went and auditioned and I just walked into the room. It was the end of the day. It was like six o'clock in New York City.

I was in my 20s. I was so obnoxious. And I just made fun of America's Fun.

I'd never watched a single episode of this show. And I just, you know, laughed at the concept of old people slipping on ice for entertainment and dad getting whacked in the crotch with a whiffle bat. Yeah, no, I wasn't doing any Jesus.

I didn't do any Jesus talk until well after this. This is before I did that, because when I was coming up, my mother and father would never allow me to tell people about my past.

Oh, interesting.

I was not allowed to tell people my mom had been a nun. Right. That's a whole other story.

It wasn't until I debated Jerry Falwell on Bill Maher's show years later that my mother gave me permission. And once my mother gave me permission to start telling the story, creatively the floodgate came out. But for me, with Funny Home Videos, they, I'll make it quick, I made fun of it, they flew me out to LA.,

I came out and made fun of it. And I told my manager and agent at the time, I'm not going to do this, I don't want to become famous for this. This is not what I got into this to do.

I want to be Daniel Day Lewis when I grow up. I want to be George Carlin. I want to act, I don't want to.

And they said, you do this and you get set up and you'll be okay. I had guys who had dollar signs for eyeballs. I didn't know.

They didn't, when you're a young actor, they don't care what you do for the paycheck. They care how big the paycheck is. That's their job, not making you happy.

And I didn't know this. So I was offered the job and I'll never forget, they called me and they said, well, you gave it your worst shot. That's exactly what my agent at the time said.

Well, you gave it your worst shot. I was in Florida. I picked up the phone.

It was a conference call and I just heard two voices and I thought, oh no, and they gave me the job. And I flew out to LA and it was with Daisy Fuentes, who I already knew. We worked together at MTV.

And it was the most wonderful group of people I ever worked with in my life. I learned a lot. They compensated me very well.

It was very high profile. I was told that they were going to be making the show a lot hipper and geared more towards young people. And they hired some writers from Mystery Science Theater 3000.

And I'll tell you the truth, that's what convinced me to go. When I heard they hired Mystery Science Theater 3000 writers, that's when I took the job at Funny Home Videos. And still to this day, the greatest group of professionals I've ever worked with, but I was not the guy for this and I knew it and I told them I wasn't.

And I thought it was going to be for half a season. I signed on for half a season and it wound up being for two years. And I'm very grateful for all that it gave me, but when you pick up a newspaper and you read a negative review and you agree with everything the critic says because you were saying it to your friends last night, I couldn't argue with it.

And I realized that if you're not proud of the work, it doesn't matter how famous or how well compensated you are. The first month or so, my parents down south, they got a big kick out of writing checks at the store and someone would recognize my unwieldy last name. My dad, after years of the bird of being named Fugelsang, yeah, Fus and Galagia, Farfagna, what is that thing?

Anything beginning with F-U, you'll mispronounce it. And suddenly people knew my dad's name or were saying, are you related to that fella? For the first month, my parents were really tickled.

And then they were like, oh, this isn't you. And that's nothing like, I could do that job now really well. Now I'm a dad, I don't care about being cool.

I can be breezy. Tom Bergeron is so good hosting that show. I love how good he is at it.

I was 27. I was angry about politics. I wanted to rant about all this stuff.

And it wasn't organic. I wasn't the right guy. And they didn't take any of my jokes.

And they wanted me to stand there and smile. And it made me kind of crazy for a few years. It got me into therapy.

And it taught me that my definition of success was not the same as my representatives.

Yeah, that's what I'm getting at. Because you used the word, you said it didn't make you proud.

No.

Which, then we come to this book, and I used the word purpose earlier.

Yeah.

How does it feel to have this book in the world and have the response you're getting to it?

Oh, this book, I'll tell you, it's been beautiful because it took so long. I mean, it's 15 years of my life in this book. And it's really my whole life.

And it took all the things that were so, it's different from any kind of artistic project, because this is spiritual life and my parents and my childhood. And I wanted this book to be like all the stuff I wished someone had told me when I was 17. And I couldn't understand how my parents' religion seemed to be suddenly so mean and cruel.

And I wanted to put something in there and say, that's religion, that's not Jesus, that's not your mom and dad, and that's not how it's supposed to be. That's how men have evolved this thing. It's supposed to be about love.

So this is, I'll never write anything this personal again, I don't think, but what's strange, Elena, is that it was also the most, it's the most controversial thing I've ever done, and it's the most mainstream thing I've ever done. To me, this is much more mainstream than America's Funniest Home Videos, because I think it appeals to more people. And I am proud of it in ways I haven't been in previous work, because here's how I'll phrase it, and this is what I learned as a writer that I never had before in broadcasting or in theater or anywhere.

I've had jobs where I had no freedom and a lot of guidance, a lot of control, no freedom. And I've had jobs where I had a lot of freedom, no guidance. I did shows for VH1 UK and my producer, I'd be like, was that okay?

Brilliant. Everything was brilliant. I'm like, no, really, it can't all be brilliant, please.

It was in writing a book and the team of editors that I had that I've never had this much freedom with structure, freedom with guidance. And that was something, a part of the author experience that I wasn't ready for. And it was good.

I was there to learn. I wasn't going to burn the house down for anything. I was ready to fight for the stuff I wanted because my editor thought a lot of it needed to.

And my first draft was 160,000 words. My contract was 80,000 words. And I told them up front, I'm like, look, I'm trying to figure out what this is.

I've been writing this my whole life. You can help me cut it down. So a lot of personal storytelling came out.

A lot of history came out. A lot of Donald Trump came out to get it where it was. But to me, it was all growth and it was all finding the voice.

Yeah. Well, I love the structure of it. I love how it's broken into chapters, but also sections.

And I will say that I'd be like, okay, I have to go do this, but let me just finish this section. And I'm like, the humor throughout is like little lily pads because it's heavy material. And you stay light by keeping us laughing.

Thank you. I've described this book. My goal with it was for it to be light and dense.

It is.

At the same time. And I give all credit for my editor, my first editor. I had that experience midway through my process.

My editor left Simon & Schuster to go work for another house. And I got a new editor who I didn't know. And it was, it wound up being a wonderful experience, but it was terrifying for a few minutes.

But my first editor was the one who, when I submitted text and paragraphs and you know, and in one section of the book, in my chapter, Thou Shall Not Hate the Gays, where I go through all the Old Testament arguments and all the New Testament arguments. And I would have a breakdown. I would say the claim, the scripture, the debunking.

And she was the one to say, let's extrapolate that to the entire book, not just the gay chapter. And I was like, okay. And then she was like, also she wanted me to make it more like a magazine article, more like break every chapter down into bits.

Let's have a piece here, a piece here. And she just kept pushing me, give me a sidebars, give me a box where I can put a box here and a box here with content there and break it all up. And my brain had to learn how to think in these terms and construct in these terms.

And once I wrapped around it, it was wonderful because then you have these little orphans that can't organically fit into the text and you don't have to. They get a box, they get their own table at the wedding right here.

And they get little dings on the audiobook for the bullets.

That was my idea. We were recording that. We did like 10 hours of recording at Simon & Schuster and a lot of it is like, there's little lists.

And so I finally said, you guys allow us to do sound effects in an audiobook? Or is that like, I'm just trying to fucking direct the whole thing. And they were like, well, can I just get like maybe for some of these lists, can I get a bell, a little ding?

And then they did, but now apparently I haven't listened to it. Some people really like the ding, but a couple of audible reviewers really object to the ding. But I tried to get a little bit of sound effects because for me, I just thought, I don't want to listen to just my voice the entire time.

Let's again, break it up. And for me, learning and writing my first book to visually break it up, that's something I couldn't do in a memoir. But in a book like this, it can have pieces and it was really liberating to, made editing a lot easier too.

I was editing lots of short chapters within every chapter.

Right.

Yeah. And it makes reading it a little smoother too.

Yeah. I mean, again, I'm talking about like Old Testament scripture and translations into Latin and how evil men 1500 years ago twisted the Bible to justify murder. And it's pretty heavy.

There's a lot of rape, there's a lot of abuse, there's a lot of slaughter, and a lot of shame. And so I want it to be not again, not the comedian, but I'm the guy in the barstool tugging on your coat and it was more keeping the comedy ball in the air. Like I had sketches in this book and I had to come out.

It just didn't fit in the end. But it made it so much easier to strip stuff out for future use when you once I found the voice and found the format. Once I knew it wasn't just going to be pages of text, but it had to be boxes and sections and blah, blah, blah.

And that discipline made this kind of heaviness easier to render palatable.

For fun, should you just pick a random place that I bookmarked and read what I highlighted?

Sure. Sure. I'll put my glasses on.

I'm scared.

Oh my God. Just a random one?

Yeah.

Okay. No, that's one we've already talked about.

Oh, see, I did read it.

That's the Lesbian Gym Teacher page I opened up to talk about serendipity.

All right.

No, Christians can't hate Muslims and still be Christian. So if you hate Muslims or Jews because they reject Jesus, then it's actually you who's rejecting Jesus. Real followers of the Nazarene are required to love both Palestinians and Israelis equally.

Try that line at the cookout, which I do recommend.

Not too close to the barbecue.

I'm glad the one random page I got to Israel and Palestine, just to offend somebody out there.

Yes. We hadn't done it yet, apparently.

Thanks. This is so much fun.

Is there anything else that's so much fun? Anything else you want to talk about that was like spurred by this or you want to go?

No. I'm enjoying this more than just about any interview I've done.

That means so much to me.

Well, it's nice because I don't have to keep on throwing out jokes, and I don't think I've done anything that's just like a two-shot like this. So it's actually, it's inherently more human. I don't have to justify my presence by having a dick joke at the end of my preachy sentence and things like that.

Well, speaking of dick jokes, we do have a segment on all of our podcast episodes called Just the Tip.

I know the lore.

So we would love to hear your one tip for others out there writing the good fight, or in any way creatively trying to find a voice to work with, the way you worded it.

I actually have a segment in my book about St. Paul, when he was getting Gentiles to convert to early Christianity. And one of the selling points was that you don't have to get circumcised and that chapter is called Keep the Tip. So I feel like I'm a member of a good club.

Speaking of members.

Yes.

If there's only one tip that I can offer, it's just don't give up. I mean, just keep refining it. You're looking at somebody who made the New York Times bestseller list 15 years after he submitted his first proposal.

My dad was in hospice in Florida, and I went down to spend a couple of months with him. And in my dad's hospice bed, I brought him the email and he hit send to submit my first ever book proposal for this. And a few years later, my mom was dying, and I tried to do it again.

And I had my mother hit send. So for me, this book's kind of like that new Beatles single that just won the Grammy, because George and John aren't here, but they were both a part of it. And both of my parents aren't here, but they had a role in submitting this proposal.

They both helped me get here. And they've both been gone for a while. So it's bittersweet, but it reminds me all the more.

It's been a long time for me to get this one done. But if you know the audience is there, if that voice inside of you tells you you have to do it, and it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter if it sells. What I learned on this that was incredible was I didn't give up and I just thought, I'm gonna keep at it, I'm gonna keep at it.

And yeah, it's great that it was a success. I knew there would be an audience, but what I didn't expect, what I didn't dream on, what no one could have told me, it would have sounded like a cliche. It was after all the rewrites I did, and so many rewrites after so much time, that I eventually felt so proud of the work and I thought it was so rock solid.

When you get to the end phase and you're like, okay, today I've got to cut 2,000 words. You know, like when you're like 89,000 words and you got to get it down to 80, but maybe 83,000, they'll let me get away with it. And it becomes like a math problem.

And you're just like, it's like editing video, you go into a trance and you're just like, cut. And it's that sort of discipline and hunger and buzz that when you get it and you read it and it's like, oh, there's nothing here I would cut. I'm used to reading my stuff and then two months later, oh, why didn't I cut that sentence?

That's tacked on. Oh, man, you got some lube to squeeze that joke in there. But the greatest satisfaction of it, even beyond the fact that it was commercially successful because I never gave up, is that, and I never experienced this, I was so satisfied with the work.

I knew the work was done so much so that I didn't, a part of me didn't care if anyone ever bought it because I couldn't believe how proud I was of what I had done. I couldn't believe, not even proud, I couldn't believe how I just knew this was it. It felt like, yes, I don't need to be in the room for this.

I can send this out without me there to dance around it and sell it. This stands on its own. And that feeling for me as a performer who always needed the applause and the laughs from the audience right away, that was what I didn't plan on in the process.

So never, never give up. But also, when you get to the point where you've just done it so much that you know it's right in your heart, there's no kind of praise from an outsider that will ever give you and give your soul what your own approval will give you. And maybe as a Catholic, you understand that.

Because I was raised to equate humility with self-loathing. And the more I'm hard on myself, the more God will like me because I'm not bullshitting myself. And I know I'm a fraud.

I know how bad I am. Sin, sin, sin, they teach you. And you think it's virtuous.

And my mother, as a nun, was programmed with this. And to get to a place where it's like, oh no, man, this is good. I like this.

This is of me and I like it. I'm not going to change anything anymore. That's the gift.

For me on my journey, that was the gift.

That is awesome and inspiring. Thank you for sharing that.

And getting to talk to you on your podcast. I've admired this lady for so long. To sit here with you in the shadow of Bob Dylan's self-portrait and Grogu is culturally a great honor for me.

Another Star Wars Easter egg.

There we go.

Well, thank you so much.

Thank you, Elena.

I wish we could do this all day.

I'll come back anytime you can tolerate me. Thank you.

Awesome.

Peace.

Peace out.

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From Write the Good Fight: We Don't Own the Force or the Faith with John Fugelsang, Dec 12, 2025

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