Graduate Students

Diego and Sam introduce themselves and discuss their religious upbringings. Diego grew up in a religious family and was heavily involved in church activities, while Sam grew up in an evangelical community and was active in a megachurch. Both had positive experiences and saw religion as a central part of their lives. In college, Sam pursued pastoral ministry and was deeply involved in youth ministry, while Diego initially planned to pursue teaching but switched to pastoral ministry and attended a Christian college. However, their views on religion changed over time. Sam experienced a crisis of faith during the 2016 election, as he saw a disconnect between his faith and the support for Trump at his university. He felt called to speak out against this and engaged in discussions with the press and organized events to challenge conservative evangelicalism. After graduating, both Diego and Sam continued to be influenced by their religious backgrounds but also questioned and challenged certai Hello. I'm here joined with Diego Rodriguez and Sam Herman. Would you guys take a second to introduce yourselves? Diego, do you want to start us off? Sure. So my name is Diego Rodriguez. I'm originally from Mexico, but I grew up here in the U.S. and I'm currently a graduate student here at Penn. Lovely. What is your graduate degree? So I'm in the School of Education and doing my Master's in Education, Culture, and Society. Beautiful. Sam? Cool. I'm Sam Herman. I'm from Ohio originally and am a third-year Ph.D. candidate in the Religious Studies program here. Anything that you're interested in specifically? Yeah. I study evangelical Christianity and the cultural politics of adolescence in the post-war period. Post-war period. Yeah. So like 1945 to 1960. Interesting. So I guess that will be the end of the first question. We can start with you, Sam. But what was your religious upbringing like? Yeah. So I grew up in a small town outside of Dayton, Ohio, in an evangelical community. I went to a few different churches but landed most of my time at a United Methodist church, but it was a megachurch, so it functioned a lot like a kind of evangelical non-denominational megachurch. And I was really involved there. I played music, so I was in like the praise and worship band. And then I also, you know, was hoping to go into pastoral work at that time in high school, so I interned with the church. And so it was just, you know, my religious upbringing, I was always at church many days of the week, either rehearsing for performing praise and worship at some point, or just there for, you know, the community events and things like that. So yeah, it was a huge, huge kind of structuring part of my upbringing. Yeah. Go ahead. Dagan. Yeah. So my dad's a pastor. And so from the moment I was born, everything was Jesus, God, everything was church. And it was really the center of our lives. So my dad was a pastor in Mexico. And so, yeah, like every Sunday, every day, we were at church. Every time there was something going on, we were there. My dad was super involved. He was also like the director at this camp. And so every summer we were just there all summer long. And then we actually moved to the U.S. because my dad was called to start a church here in Reading, Pennsylvania. And so everything in my life really revolved around religion, around faith, around church. And it was very beautiful. You know, it was not, yeah, it was a very beautiful experience in the sense of everything was very cohesive. Everything was very beautiful. And life had a lot of meaning. You know, life, according to my parents, you know, they shared their deep religious faith with me and just their love for God every day. And it was something that was very, very beautiful. That's really nice. That's really nice. So then from there, once you left your family the first time and started your undergraduate degree, how was your relationship with religion then? Yeah, so I, because of this really beautiful experience growing up in the church, you know, I worked at Christian camp. I just was super involved also in the praise and worship team growing up. I mean, my dad was a pastor, so I kind of had to be there all the time and help out. Yeah, I was just very, very involved. And that, you know, that raised a passion in me to pursue that eventually. So when I went to undergrad, I originally wanted to get into teaching, but at that time our church needed some people to step up in, like, youth ministry and youth work. And so I did that and loved it, like, so much. Loved just being involved with the youth, really being intentional there. And so I switched my major in my first semester to pastoral ministry. So I went to, like, a Christian college in Pennsylvania, Lancaster Bible College. And so I switched my major and pursued ministry. So, you know, once I left, I mean, I didn't leave home because I was commuting there, and very involved at church and pursuing ministry at school. And, yeah, I was very much in tune with how my parents viewed the world and how our church viewed the world and was very much looked at as, like, kind of like the future of our community, you know, like I was going to be, like, maybe the next leader. And it was something my dad didn't really, like, enjoy. Like, he didn't want to make it look like nepotism, and it really wasn't. You know, it was something that was coming from me. He even told me, like, are you sure you want to do this? Like, don't pursue ministry. Like, be sure about this plea. But I really was sure about it and really loved that community and all that work that I had been doing and that I was still involved with. Yeah, so I actually started college at the University of Cincinnati. You know, and like I said, I, in high school, had been kind of interested in pastoral work as well. And, you know, that dream kind of, like, faded a little bit as I began college. And I was just, at the time, thinking, okay, I'm going to get, like, a business degree, and then that will be, like, the backup, depending on how ministry works out. And I got a semester in, and I just had a really hard time, like, in my first semester at Cincinnati. And I think a big thing, like a big kind of realization was I, like, ended up at this, like, huge public university. There's, like, 42,000 students or something at UC. It's a huge school. And I had grown up homeschooled, spent a ton of time, like, in this really insular, you know, although an insular religious community, I say, but, you know, there's 2,000 people who went to the church. So it's, like, a big insular community in a way. And I, like, had experienced a lot of social acceptance in that place, but transitioning into this massive public school where, like, there was a bunch of people who had different faiths or, like, no faith, and I didn't really know how to interact with those people because, yeah, like, my interactions so much in, like, high school and younger were centered around, like, my religious community and, like, our shared, you know, values and beliefs about things. And so, you know, I just, like, kind of couldn't handle it at UC and was, like, you know, maybe I'll just, like, look at a Christian school. And so that's what took me. I ended up finishing the, you know, the vast majority of my time in college was at Riverton University in Virginia just because I had some friends who had gone there. And they were really liking it, and I went and visited them at one point. And at the time, my now wife was there, like, a semester before me, and we were dating, and she was really liking it, too, so I was, like, all right, I'll go check it out. And so it took me. So I guess in some, you know, there's a way in which the story is me just chasing a girl to Liberty University. But, you know, I went into Liberty still like a, you know, I ended up with a degree in advertising and public relations, so I kind of had transitioned away from thinking about ministry but was still very much a Christian while I was there. Or I guess an evangelical, I should say. We can get to the term Christian later. But I was an evangelical at the time. And, you know, while I was there, though, the 2016 election happened, and, you know, I grew up in a pretty conservative space politically, but my family was a little bit more, like, liberal. And I just always kind of saw, like, my faith as something that was, like, rooted in a care for the poor and, you know, something that was supposed to, like, reach out to the oppressed rather than something that was, you know, based in what, you know, at Liberty kind of really quickly became a defense of Trump for a lot of reasons that were more socially conservative, and that didn't make a lot of sense to me. So that built a lot of tension, and that was where, like, a big crisis of faith happened for me. And I felt, you know, called in some sense, like, in a religious way. Like, I felt called to, like, speak out against what was going on at Liberty and participated in different, you know. I mean, there was no protests or anything like that that were happening there because Liberty is a place that, like, really has, like, a really strong thumb on, like, any sort of, like, dissent. But the best thing that we could do was, like, talk to the press because there was a lot of press who was interested in people who went to Liberty and didn't, you know, believe in the kind of, like, you know, typical doctrines and things like that. And so, yeah, you know, it was just, like, talking to reporters a bunch in the last couple of years of my time there. But doing it for, like, you know, because I was, like, this is my faith. And I even, the last, like, the last semester that I was there, we had, I helped coordinate with some more, like, liberal evangelicals, you could call them. One of them actually lives here, Shane Claiborne, in Philadelphia. They have a group called the Red Letter Christians. And they came and, like, held, like, kind of, like, a conference in Lynchburg, Virginia, like, outside of the campus as a way to kind of speak back to toxic evangelicalism, as they called it at the time. So, yeah, you know, it was really, like, very much a part of my faith throughout college to kind of engage in a bit of, like, contestation with the powers that be, following liberty, yeah. Wow. And then from there, where has religion been with you throughout, before joining your graduate degree and since then? Sure. So, yeah, after graduating from undergrad and, you know, being very much in tune, I would have been very much against a lot of what you were doing. I know what you were thinking. I remember, like, yeah, that first election. I don't think I could vote back then. But I was very much in tune with what liberty was doing. I remember, you know, in high school, like, talking to people about that and, yeah, very interesting. But after my undergraduate career at Lancaster Bible College, I went back to church and was there full time. So, yeah, at Lancaster, also working for our denomination and getting really involved in church planting, especially Spanish-speaking churches in the Pennsylvania area. Church planting, you define that. Yes. So, church planting is basically just, like, starting a new church. And, yeah, it was very, very fulfilling work, you know, getting bigger churches to support these people that wanted to start a new one or sending groups out to start a new church. And, yeah, a really very intentional way of, like, spreading the message of Christianity, you know, and of starting new congregations. And so, you know, I was involved with that. I was involved at church, with the youth ministry, with the music ministry, and just also starting to work on, like, my ordination process within our denomination. And so we had to learn all of our, what we call the articles of faith, and we had to, like, memorize them and really, like, be in a relationship with them. Yeah, I mean, yeah, a little bit. I was wondering what it was, like, how long it would take you and stuff. But, yeah, it's interesting. It's similar in, you know, I mean, I think every denomination has its own kind of ordination process, but it's interesting to hear. Yeah, basically you have to, like, memorize and then you have to be interviewed by a group of men about your beliefs. And I entered into this period of probation, which is where you would be involved in ministry, but then also, like, your moral character, your life would be kind of put to the test, you know, depending on how you did in that. Yes, you're a pastor. No, you shouldn't be a pastor. And so I was in that process and, you know, very involved at church and with all these ministries, as I was saying. But during that time, I began to find things out about myself or just come to terms with things about myself that were not in accordance with what was going on in our denomination, my church. I thought I was going to leave. What did I say? Yeah, so during that time, I realized that I was gay, basically. I had been dating a beautiful girl for a long time and things were going very well. It was a great relationship. Were you engaged? I was engaged. I was almost engaged. I had the ring. Oh, man. So it was just very serious at that point. Some things happened surrounding me. One of my mentors, someone I really looked up to, left his family. It was a very dramatic moment, a very crazy thing. One of the things that had been going on in their life was that they got married super, super young and were kind of pressured to get married. They had a bunch of kids very early on. I guess their foundation, I don't know. It was just very, very messy, but it made me reflect on my situation. I realized I never want to do that to someone. I was also coming to terms with these realities about myself and my sexuality. So I came to this point where I was like, I have to make a choice. If I stay here, I'm going to have to be faithful and put these things very far deep down inside me. No one knew. No one in my life knew. I hadn't talked to anyone about my struggle. It had been going on for years inside my mind. I wouldn't even name it, but it was there. But it just got to this point where I was like, I'm going to be marrying this girl soon. I really like her, and I don't want to hurt her. I never want to hurt her. I was just scared of myself, and that's a very evangelical thing, to be scared of your sinful self. I just didn't want to do what this person had done to his family. So that inspired me to do something similar, but sooner. So I decided to tell my family, tell people in my life that I was gay. At that point, I didn't know what I was going to do with that. It was the first time that I had come to terms with it for myself. But I still very much was debating whether I held on to the Christian belief that this was a sin, that this was something that I had to suppress and what we would call put to death. I wasn't sure what was going to happen. There was a process of six months almost of me almost going back and forth in my mind and talking to counselors, talking to my family. I was still involved in ministry, but I had told my parents, we need to transition me out of this so that I can figure things out. I don't know what I want to do. I don't know if I want to stay within our faith tradition. I don't know if I want to do something else. I just know that I need to figure this out without the pressure of having to do all these things for other people. I have to teach things that I don't know if I agree with. At that same time, I began to read other voices that I had been scared of reading or hearing. A lot of my views on a lot of different things began to change. Just an example was the belief around hell and eternal damnation was something that had always been very jarring to me. It's a big one. I remember being younger and talking to my friends about it. It never felt right. How could God do that to people? Especially, I would ask questions like, what about the people in other countries that had never heard of Jesus? I think that's a question that a lot of people ask. Obviously, you can relate. It just didn't feel right. Why would God do that? People that suffer their whole lives and then they die and then they suffer forever and ever because they didn't accept Jesus. I'm doing quotes right now. Accept Jesus into their hearts. A lot of things didn't make sense to me. By accepting these things about me, by starting to open my heart, my ears to different voices, my whole conception of faith, of Christianity, of myself began to shift. Eventually, I came to the point where I broke up with this wonderful girl. I left the ministry. I felt free. I felt free. I no longer held on to those beliefs. At that point, I didn't really know what I believed. I don't. It was the first time that I rejected a lot of these things that were core to my being, core to my family's beliefs. It was very hard. I don't know how much you want me to talk about that. We'll try to get into it more, but I appreciate all the context. Yeah, yeah. Just to get to the point of the change, this whole process, this whole dramatic story was really the catalyst of this change. Also, I will say, it was around 2020 when all this started. Four years later, you'll be president. Around that time, there was the George Floyd protest and everything that happened around there. I had been very much in tune with conservative evangelicalism and very much like, yeah, this is the right thing. This seems right for the most part. Always feeling queasy about it, but then at that point, I was like, okay, there's something really wrong here. Hearing some of my heroes in evangelicalism have such a lack of tact and empathy for what was happening in the world and the country at that time. I was like, okay, there's something kind of wrong in here that I don't vibe with. All those things together just kind of moved me to shift away from where I was. Wow. Heavy. Really heavy. Thanks for sharing all that. It's one of the books you read, Love Wins, by Rob Bell. I didn't read the whole thing, but I watched a YouTube video about it. Love Wins is a book that came out. I want to say I read it in high school, and it's about this question of hell. Rob Bell wasn't necessarily an evangelical pastor, but evangelical adjacent, and the book kind of rocked evangelicalism for a while. In my situation, I left Liberty just kind of in a really bad mental state, mostly just because it felt like such a fight at the end. It was something that stuff had really escalated. Like I said, we had done the two-day conference with the Red Letter Christians. We had brought in another pastor to kind of just have literally like a prayer on campus. We wanted to do a prayer session with someone who had been outspokenly against Jerry Falwell Jr., who was the president of Liberty at the time, and just the large evangelical support of Trump. He was like the police took him off campus and made him sign a restriction notice saying that he would never come back to campus or else he could be held in prison for two days and fined $1,000. Liberty police, yeah. These kinds of experiences in college— I know, but Liberty police does sound very oxymoronic. No doubt about that. No doubt about that. So I left in a kind of tizzy, feeling really complicated about whether I would call myself an evangelical. I think at the time I was still pretty comfortable with the term Christian, but I sought out one of the people who I kind of met through the Red Letter Christians and kind of like this group of liberal evangelical adjacent Christians. I called him the summer after my senior year and was just like, do you have any suggestions of a retreat center? I just need to kind of get away and be somewhere where I can just think about what I just experienced and what its relationship to my faith is. He recommended a spiritual director actually, which is technically a spiritual practice within the Catholic Church, but it's become more popular across Protestantism and Catholicism, but it's also now an interfaith practice. He recommended a spiritual director who specializes in spiritual direction for activists. And so I met up with her and was like, which retreat do I go to? And she was like, I don't think you need a retreat. I think you just need to meet with a spiritual director on a somewhat frequent basis. And spiritual direction is kind of like therapy for religion in a kind of way, where you sit down and you talk about where you're at spiritually, and the director's role is really to help you hear God. It's kind of like a collaborative effort to hear God in your life. And this spiritual director in particular, who I still see today actually, like we've met every month for I guess it's been six years. She's great. She's Catholic, but she does interfaith spiritual directing, and she directs people of many faiths. And through meeting with her, I had kind of like what you're describing, like the political climate made me question so many more things. I mean, I went into liberty, for instance. I went into liberty feeling like it really was against the Bible to be gay. And then kind of toward the end of my time there, I had started reading also and listening to podcasts from different people who were making really compelling cases for like affirming theology, as we call it, of LGBTQ people. And so I think what I was trying to figure out was the line between like, at which point have I gone beyond the pale and I'm just like no longer a Christian, or are all of these beliefs a part of just a more capacious Christianity? And that question, you know, I don't think I ever answered it because I'm just, you know, and I feel like this is quite deeply Protestant of me, but it's just like, you know, it really has become my own thing. And so, you know, Protestants, we just break away from each other continuously and fragment continuously until it gets down to just you. And you're the only person. So, I mean, maybe I'm just a denomination of one at this point. But, you know, yeah, it's still something that like spirituality is something that's quite important to me still. And I think that a lot of, you know, my politics and what I study, as we'll get to later, and like so much of my life is still very much rooted in a lot of the core stuff that I like grew up with, just in quite a different context that has quite a different context to the point that I think I've become unrecognizable to some of the people who I grew up around. But I think a big part of that process was just becoming okay with that because it can be quite, you know, destabilizing to get the rug ripped out from under you. Sounds like you've experienced it as well. And now, finally, at Penn, you guys, Sam, this is your third year here. Diego, your first year. So after being here for a little bit, how has your relationship with Christianity, with religion in general, kind of been shaped through the environment that you found at Penn? And within that, how have your studies been impacted there? And have you found community? You're joking that you're now a religious one. Have you found a religious community that can affirm your beliefs while here? Yeah. So one of the most beautiful things that I have found here on campus is there are other Christians, actually, who affirm me as a person and who affirm me as a Christian and don't have buts to it, you know? It's just like, yeah, okay, you're you. You're gay. You're Christian. Cool. And it's not, like, a big deal. And that has been really, really beautiful. I'd say, like, in the School of Education, there are a good number of people who identify as Christians and who go to different churches and are involved in the community in that way. And, yeah, I've really found a place with a lot of them. And, you know, I've been to different churches. Right now I'm also, like, I'm not really part of a religious community at the moment, but I've visited different churches with different people and I've gotten a lot of beautiful experiences out of that. And so I would say that, you know, after all that process and, you know, that little dramatic story, now I'm at this point of, yeah, like, I still love a lot of this and I still hold on to a lot of this faith and a lot of this tradition. Now I'm looking for it more broadly, not just in my tradition, but I guess as you were saying, like, kind of grabbing things from here, grabbing things from there. And, like, it's okay, you know? It's okay. And before, I think I was scared of that. I don't know if you can relate to that as well. Like, there was a lot of fear, because where I grew up, you know, if you don't believe the right thing, like, your soul is in danger of eternal damnation. You know, that goes along with the healthy mind. Yeah, it is. Like, if you believe the wrong things, like, you're going to go to hell. And no one wants to go to hell, right? And so, yeah, there's always been that, like, almost, like, tension of, like, it's almost like, how far can I get, but still, like, just in case this is real, not be outside, you know? Like, I have a little fire insurance, you know? But I think I'm at the point, and being in this community has really helped that, of, like, finding people who are Christians who are more open in their beliefs and their acceptance to different traditions, different types of faith, and feeling at home with them, and, like, I can belong. I've also been, I go occasionally to the Christian Association, and that's a really healing space for me, I would say, to be able to just fully be myself there and not have to, like, hide anything and kind of go there as a Christian who isn't really sure about what he believes at the moment. But I think the thing is, like, I don't need to be sure about what I believe anymore. Like, I used to have to be, like, okay, this is, about this doctrine I believe, this is XYZ. But now it's, like, I don't really know, and I just feel like I don't care that much about it, you know? In the sense of, like, it's not, it's not, like, a dangerous thing anymore. And so it's really beautiful to have that openness and to have, and to know people who also share that same openness, and especially in an institution like this where there are people that are doing really amazing things, and just seeing how they can, I guess, how their faith complements that, and how, you know, what they're doing complements their faith, and it's just, like, this beautiful harmony, you know? It doesn't have to be, like, faith over here, and, like, what you're doing, and, you know, loving the world, and being part of a great institution over here. Like, it can all flow together. Yeah, I like that. I like that. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of interesting to be in a religious studies department, you know, because it's something that, like, you know, draws a lot of people who grew up religious naturally, and yet, like, the work that we're doing is supposed to have some sort of, like, critical distance from it. But, you know, in the midst of, you know, outside of, like, the papers we're writing or the dissertations or research that we're doing, you know, the department I found here, and this goes for, like, the broader community at Penn, but the religious studies department is kind of like a hyper-concentration of this for me, where, you know, I get a lot of exposure to people of all different, like, faith backgrounds, not just which religion they adhere to, but also, like, a geographical difference as well, which, you know, there are vast differences between Christians in the U.S. and Christians in Africa or something like that. And so that has just been, like, such a rich experience for me, kind of coming, you know, it can kind of feel sometimes when you, like, leave a particular tradition, like you're walking out, you know, of a dense forest, and all of a sudden there's this, like, pasture that just, like, opens up, and now you can see, you feel like you can kind of see everything, but you don't have such, like a, there's not a path the same way that there was before. That's beautiful imagery. And so it's, like, you can feel aimless. You can feel kind of like, and it's nerve-wracking to, you know, not have the path, and yet it's really, like, it's such a good place to do that, to walk into that kind of pasture at a place like Penn, at a place like the religious studies department, because I've learned so much about, you know, the faith that my friends have, you know, and it's so kind of, like, random. Like, some of my best friends here are, like, South Asian Muslims, and I've learned so much about, like, their faith tradition and what matters to them and how they, and also, you know, what's so great is that, like, you talk to someone of a different faith and you realize, like, the kind of inconsistencies with their belief and practice, too, you know, and that was something that was always so central to evangelicals and my evangelical upbringing, which was kind of, like, how do I align my practice? How do I be, like, a good evangelical Christian? How do I wake up in the morning and, like, pray and read the Bible and have quiet time, as many evangelicals call it? It's, like, a really important part of, you know, the practice, and, you know, I have Muslim friends who are, like, they're always, like, oh, we have Muslim shame, and I have Catholic friends who are, like, we have Catholic shame, and evangelicals are, like, we have evangelical shame. Jewish guilt is a term. Jewish guilt, right. Totally. So, it's, like, you know, you find things like that and you're, like, okay, there's, like, a universal thing here that we're all experiencing, which is kind of, like, how a human pushes up against a tradition, a community, and those things kind of become, like, more beautiful when you can, you know, make them a little less serious, kind of like what you were saying of, like, you know, it's, like, when the stakes are not as high as, like, eternal damnation, it becomes, like, such a more rich conversation to just, like, some other religious experiences between friends at a dinner table. And this is a place where I've found, like, the ability to do that, which is so different from the kind of dinner table conversations that I was experiencing in an evangelical context where there's so much performance of who is the best version of that. I think in an interfaith context, there's a little bit less competition because I'm not trying to be the best Muslim, you know, or the best Jew. So I can listen to a Jew tell me, like, their struggles, and I'm not like, you're, like, not doing it right. Yeah, I'm not, yeah. So it's been really great, yeah. Wow. You guys are such great storytellers. It's great to hear the whole, like, start to finish this right here. So we're going to take a break for a minute or two, and we'll be right back.