46. Bill Angus on Divorcing Jesus: Finding Authentic Community Beyond the Church

“If humanism is anything, it’s self-education. It’s progressing, becoming more educated, more enlightened.” - Dr Bill Angus

Dr Bill Angus takes us on a provocative journey through his transition from devout evangelical Christian to secular humanist in this candid, thought-provoking conversation. After 30 years of committed faith, Angus found himself re-examining the foundations of Christianity, leading to what he calls a “divorce” from Jesus. With humour and clarity, he challenges us to rethink what religion offers – and what humanism makes possible instead.

Connect with Bill & Resources:

• Divorcing Jesus: Atheism for Absolute Beginners – Bill Angus (2024) – Amazon
• Website – billangus.com
• Bluesky – @billangus.bsky.social
• Humanists New Zealand – humanist.nz

Topics we cover

 ✔︎ Why Bill felt “divorcing Jesus” was the right metaphor for leaving faith
 ✔︎ Jesus as historical figure vs. fictionalised character of modern Christianity
 ✔︎ How religion can stunt personal growth through “instant salvation”
 ✔︎ Humanism as a practice of continuous learning and self-education
 ✔︎ Rethinking forgiveness, love, and moral values outside divine command
 ✔︎ Finding authentic community beyond the church
 ✔︎ Building strength and integrity through secular humanism
 ✔︎ The wide horizons of life after religion

Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Dr Bill Angus & why "Divorcing Jesus"
• 6:22 From Evangelist to Outspoken Critic
• 7:29 Best Arguments for Christianity
• 12:35 Religion Arresting Personal Development
• 15:01 Evidence, Miracles and Christian Testimony
• 17:31 Reinterpreting Christian Values
• 21:22 Finding Humanist Community in New Zealand
• 28:18 Friendships in 'Unfaith'
• 32:32 Who Should Read Divorcing Jesus
• 34:58 Changing Minds on China

Transcript

James Hodgson: 0:01

Welcome to Humanism Now, a podcast about secular ethics, curiosity and compassion. I'm your host, james Hodgson. Our guest today is Dr Bill Angus. Bill is a writer, academic, musician and humanist based in New Zealand. After 25 years dedicated to teaching Shakespeare, bill now writes about his life beyond religion. I'm delighted to welcome Bill with us today to discuss his latest book, divorcing Jesus Atheism for Absolute Beginners, which maps a journey from evangelical Christian faith to embracing secular humanism, mixing insight, clarity and a good dose of humor. Angus, thank you for joining us on Humanism Now. Thank you for having me Pleasure Angus, thank you for joining us on Humanism Now. Thank you for having me Pleasure. Divorcing Jesus is quite an emotive title and it's not really a term I think we hear used in that context very often. So I wonder if we could start by just running through your personal journey, your journey through faith and eventually to humanism, and why the phrase divorcing felt like the right title for your personal journey yeah, thank you, thanks for having me.

Bill Angus: 1:09

It's why divorcing the book was originally going to be called over the wall, because it carries a metaphor of one of those ruined abbeys that we have plenty of in the uk. We don't have any of them in New Zealand, and I remember visiting these places when I was a kid in the North of England and finding that some of the plants of the garden were still there, but it was very sort of vague territory outside the outskirts of the complex, and I was always seemed to be drawn to those areas to find the remnants of what life in those places would really have been like. And so when I was thinking about what might make a metaphor for the kind of journey that I'm talking about, I was thinking of the church as a kind of ruined abbey and the people who were drifting towards its outskirts, in other words, people like me, no-transcript, and there's a bit more philosophy, and you meet other people there who are also looking at the flowers, and from that position we look over the wall and it seems like an arid, dry place. Oh, there's a mist beyond. We don't see much beyond, and that was my vision of atheism for a long time. So the reason I shifted to divorcing jesus was just because I felt that there was although the book still carries that metaphor, because it's really it's a useful metaphor I just thought there was something a bit more personal involved and it reminded me of something that a guy used to say.

Bill Angus: 3:07

I was thinking about this idea of being attached to a religion, and being attached in Christianity is to be, essentially, you're the bride of Christ. The church is the bride of Christ. And I know guys that used to really struggle with that idea, guys that might have been slightly homophobic maybe and really struggled with this idea of being the bride of Christ, because it is quite a disturbing image. The Bible goes into quite some detail about what Christ and this bride are going to do.

Bill Angus: 3:38

I remember this guy, this older guy, who used to run a church near where I was from, and he said that women have to cope with being the sons of God because there's no real provision for daughters of anything in the Bible. Daughters don't get anything. So if they can do that, then we can be the bride of Christ. And he was clearly really uncomfortable with it, really uncomfortable. A big sort of masculine guy used to be a laborer and coming out of that sort of northern culture of toxic masculinity. And I just thought I wonder if there are any other books called divorcing jesus. I don't know where it came from the phrase, just popped in there, searched it no other books now and just thought actually that's a much more compelling, disturbing and provocative title.

James Hodgson: 4:19

So it was just that but is that the level of personal separation that you feel is involved when leaving or, in your personal case, in leaving the church, in terms of the, I guess, the amount of struggle or emotional difficulty that there is coming to that point?

Bill Angus: 4:36

yeah, there's a huge amount of emotional connection with this character, this fictional character. You know, jesus as we know him in the west is a fictional character, but we're very familiar with this fictional character. You know, jesus as we know him in the West is a fictional character, but we're very familiar with this fictional character. It's a deeply understood, deeply studied, speculated upon. More than any other character in fiction. This is a character we really know. You know, we know him more than we know Hamlet or Jane Eyre or any of the great characters of fiction. And I know personally a lot of people who feel they know him personally and have a daily encounter with him. And I felt that a long time myself. So it is extremely personal and it took quite a shift of thinking to get to the point where I realized actually this is a fictional character, we don't really have any knowledge of what he was like.

Bill Angus: 5:25

We can read between the lines of some of the things the Bible says. There is no external evidence. Despite what Christians will claim, there is no external evidence of this character outside of the Bible. So when I say he's a fiction, I mean the character is a fiction, but the person clearly existed. I think most historians are agreed. And yet we've got this attachment to a construction of a character that is the later construction. It was simply written many years after he died and has, I think, very little to do with the original character. So fascinating character, but yeah, to shift away from that is quite a shift. It does feel a bit like a divorce.

James Hodgson: 6:03

Yeah, and the book is quite. You're quite openly critical, sometimes pointed in your criticism, particularly christianity in the book and the other parts, using humor to demonstrate some of the I guess some of the areas that you now find impossible to believe. Do you see value in taking quite a direct approach when being critical of religion or being that honest about your own experiences?

Bill Angus: 6:30

Yeah, completely, because really the book is written to me the me of 20 years ago, 15 years ago maybe, when I was still hanging on to these ideas. So I feel like I can slap myself in the face quite happily and take that and I do. I still know quite a lot of people. Also, my family is still very involved. It's nothing that I wouldn't say to them in to their face and nothing that I wouldn't say to myself.

Bill Angus: 6:56

If I couldn't meet myself coming back in time somehow, I would take a direct approach because, as a Christian, I always took a direct approach. I would just tell you you were wrong. A Christian, I always took a direct approach. I would just tell you you were wrong. You don't know Jesus like I do because you haven't met him like I have. You hadn't had my experiences. But if you did have my experiences, if I could share them with you, if I could show you the miracles I'd seen and the evidence, then I think you'd be pretty compelled to take it seriously. So I always took a very direct approach to evangelism. I've been a good evangelist.

James Hodgson: 7:28

So that's quite interesting then. So when you were at your most devout and as a believer, you would say if I understand you right, you would claim you had met Jesus and that you'd witnessed miracles. If I was having this conversation with you 20 years ago, what would your strongest arguments have been?

Bill Angus: 7:44

Well, let me try and convert you, james. My argument was essentially this I don't know if you've seen a film called the American Whale in London. It's one of the sort of classic horror films and there are two guys, two American guys, and they're wandering across the wilds of the north of England. One of them gets bitten by this creature and they don't quite know what it is. It turns out to be a werewolf. It's a fantastic film. You've got to see it. It's one of the ones that hasn't really aged, great special effects.

Bill Angus: 8:12

And the guy who's bitten comes back as almost like a zombie at first and he tells his friend who's also been bitten. He meets him in a cinema and we're not sure whether this friend is just having visions, but anyways, essentially meeting a zombie and doubting what's happened to him. And his friend turns around to him in the cinema and just says you've got to kill yourself because you've become a werewolf. And the guy goes of course I haven't become a werewolf. It's ridiculous. Something attacked us, it's just a dog. And the guy says no, and this is my point, it's just the supernatural. God, demon, angels, all of that. It's all true and it's a sort of it's quite a sort of spine.

Bill Angus: 8:53

You think, actually, either this is all true or none of it's true. And I came to that realization in my own life and I felt very clearly that it was all true and that I'd seen evidence of it Not werewolves, but other sorts of unusual things and so that was the message I used to tell people. Look, you might think there is no such thing as gods and angels and devils and demons and that, but it is actually literally all true and there's an invisible battle going on. You just don't know it, and I could give you the gospel, but let's not do that. I can tell you about the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ and how you have sinned, because God is perfect. Okay, we're doing it now. God is perfect. You can't be perfect. You've sinned. Therefore, he sent his son to be the sacrifice for you so you don't have to die. So he's prepared to do that for you, even though you don't deserve it. And if you want me to show you the evidence that God is real, I can show you that.

James Hodgson: 9:50

And what were the things that you would point to as that?

Bill Angus: 9:53

evidence. We have this thing I don't know if you ever had any experience of christianity or the evangelical sort, but we have this thing called a testimony, where everybody who's converted has to have a story and you tell this whenever you get up and everyone says, yeah, what world have you come from? What have you seen? What made you become a christian? And for me it was a number of things, but, but partly because my whole family became Christians at the same time. So I've got four sisters and parents and all of the related spouses and kids.

Bill Angus: 10:26

It was quite a big family at the time and everybody became Christians within the same two years, from zero to born again. It was a crazy time, but one of the things that happened at that time was my dad, who was riddled with rheumatoid arthritis all his life. After coming back from the war and spending time in the trenches of Monte Cassino working in the steelworks, developed this really debilitating disease. And so all my life because he had me quite late in life he was what he would call a cripple. He would have to drink a pint with two hands, you know, so bent. And then he went to a prayer meeting and one of his grandchildren rather one of my nieces prayed for him and he was healed of his rheumatoid arthritis to the point where he could ride a bike, kick a ball, jump in a swimming pool, drink with one hand, etc. Some physical transformation definitely occurred.

Bill Angus: 11:25

So in the context of being a Christian, of course you just say, well, that's obviously a miracle. How can that not be a miracle? It's a miracle and everybody that saw him would have thought it was a miracle. It stunned people so it was quite a hefty thing to carry around that event and I don't deny it. Now something astonishing happened. Some incredible placebo effect happened to the point where it caused him pain relief for a number of years. It lasted about five years and then he deteriorated and then died. But it was a definite something physical, psychosomatic, we might call it literally happened. So in that context it seemed very, very plausible and many people who knew him had to think really hard about whether this really was a miracle or really had to think about the church and messages that we were presenting them with at the time. So I can give you miracles, but that doesn't prove anything that jesus said really is true. I can show you miracles.

James Hodgson: 12:29

It doesn't really connect with the messages of this iron age creature and you mentioned the book, or you speak a lot on how you feel Christianity can arrest personal development. I just wonder if you could unpack that a little bit in terms of what you mean by that.

Bill Angus: 12:50

One of the things I found after leaving the faith was that I lacked certain things, certain skills, and I was not young. When I left the faith, I found that, yeah, there were certain things that I couldn't do well, that other people could, who hadn't been a member of this organization. And I was talking to various people one including a friend of mine who's a pastor who just said look, it's absolutely true that what happens is you get saved a certain age I was 21 when I got saved so you're saved, which means that you don't have to make any more progress now because you're done. Saved, in the evangelical tradition, means you're going to heaven, you've been forgiven, and you'd have to do a heck of a lot to get rid of that. So whatever you do from that point on is forgivable. And the tendency then is to want to try to be like Jesus. And what everybody does is they form a Jesus in their own image, because the biblical Jesus doesn't have any real substance. They form Jesus in their own image because the biblical Jesus doesn't have any real substance. They form one in their own image and then they try to be like that. So what they're doing really is they're reinforcing their own desires and prejudices and then over-determining that by the way they try to live. So it's not a means by which you can progress very well. So it's not a means by which you can progress very well, very easily. And the idea of instantaneous salvation is, I think it's pernicious in that sense that it is going to infect the idea of you wanting to be a better person. You don't have to be a better person, you're good enough now, and that's the christian message. Really, it's instant and it leaves you immature. I've seen it. I was a Christian for 30 years, so I've seen plenty of people stuck in their immaturity, not needing to change, not needing to mature themselves, because they're already finished, they're already done and yeah, so my pastor friends would agree with me that in counseling people, they find that a lot of Christian men, especially men, are very immature because they don't have to progress any further than that initial repentance and forgiveness.

Bill Angus: 15:17

England for the job in New Zealand. I was simultaneously getting divorced, so I ended up in New Zealand on my own. I'd expected to bring family with me, but I was on my own and suddenly, at the age of 48, I was single first time again and I'd been married for 30 years, more or less simultaneous with my Christianity, and so my experience was or less simultaneous with my christianity. And so my experience was I don't know if you can quite imagine this, but being 48 and dating for the first time because I'd never dated before in my life, just had a girlfriend got married, blah, blah, blah so that was quite a vulnerable time.

Bill Angus: 15:49

You start to realize that, oh god, I don't function well in these ways and I'd have a person say to me, look, you're not very good at that. And I go, oh, am I not? I don't know. And we these ways. And I'd have a person say to me, look, you're not very good at that. And I'd go, oh, am I not? I don't know. We talk about the kind of things that people talk about in relationships when you haven't been married for 30 years, and so that, for me, was part of the impetus for wanting to become a better person, was just that. I actually thought I was fantastic. I found out, I wasn't that good.

James Hodgson: 16:14

Really. It's always an ongoing journey for everybody, isn't it? But yes, if you have that influence that says no, you've done everything you need to do. There's a lot of unlearning and relearning that needs to take place. I can understand that.

Bill Angus: 16:26

It's the antithesis of humanism, because if humanism is anything, it's self-education, isn't it? It's progressing, becoming more educated, more enlightened, and if humanism is similar to the Enlightenment, a personal enlightenment has to be ongoing. And to see that as a global struggle, as part of the global struggle for human rights, and to mirror the globalization of production and the globalization of trade with a globalization of human values, is really the best we can hope for. We can't do that if each individual person is stuck in a place that they attained at the age of 22 and didn't really progress that much until they were in their 50s. It hampers the progress of the collective if every individual person thinks they're okay.

James Hodgson: 17:14

I think that's such a powerful way to think about it. I've not heard humanism described in those terms before, but I think that's very true, that it is about the humility to keep learning and to keep adapting and evolving to better understand the environment and each other as well. More broadly, in your transition from Christianity to humanism, are there any values which you found to be very similar, or are there some areas where you actually think that there are some advantageous elements in how you see the world now?

Bill Angus: 17:46

There are very few values that originate in Christianity that I took with me that are kept, very few. Some vaunted Christian values are very, very highly overrated, for instance, individual and conditionless forgiveness. So forgiving people, whether they deserve it or not, I think is a terrible idea. I think forgiveness is a good thing, but it's a gift. It's a very precious gift you give to somebody who's wronged you. I think, for instance, in order for the Christian to be forgiven, he has to forgive. It's enjoined as part of it Forgive as you would be forgiven. In other words, if you don't forgive, you won't be forgiven. That's a threat. So you're telling me I have to forgive a person that's done me wrong or I go to hell. That's not forgiveness. Then that's an inauthentic version of something that's beautiful. Real forgiveness is a beautiful gift.

Bill Angus: 18:46

Much of what Christianity presents as morality can be found operating the same way. It's a moral injunction that comes with a deep sense of threat and foreboding, often actually introduced by Jesus himself. Not there in the Old Testament. Jesus is the one that's going to threaten you with hell. Hell wasn't really a concept in the Old Testament, so there's a lot of Christianity that I've left behind.

Bill Angus: 19:11

Or taking a concept like forgiveness, and just had to rethink it for what it really is, what it really values. Take another concept. I mean the basic, obvious one is love, isn't it? Why do we love each other? Why are we to love each other? In Christianity, that, again, is enjoined upon you. You must love your neighbor as you love yourself. It's not possible to do that. It's literally not possible to do that, not in a general sense. It's a false hope that people could do that, and it's also not a good idea to do that. It is a good idea to love your neighbors in proportion. Love yourself first, because otherwise you'll have nothing to give. Then give as much out as you can to people who deserve it, and maybe even to people who don't deserve it. Give them some as well. See if it helps them. Loving them as much as you love yourself is not possible. So it's a pointless injunction, it's not a moral ideal. It's not an ideal. It doesn't work.

Bill Angus: 20:13

So, in fact, in all the major cases in terms of the moral things that we value, it's been a case of bringing them out, discovering them again, figuring out what I wanted to do, what I wanted. I wanted to be an honest person, I wanted to have integrity. I wanted to be a loving, giving person, a person that loves community and values that. So I sort of worked out which I really did want to have as part of my life and then I put them in place. But most of them had to be reconfigured around the idea of pure desire, rather than there's no carrot involved really A carrot is. I still think doing good will generally bring good things, but there's no threat involved, there's no hell involved if you don't. Yeah, most of it had to be reinterpreted. There are odd little things that I'd pull out of the Bible that I occasionally think of, sometimes Think of yourself with sober judgment, something like that but it's only very occasional. Most of it is useless, paranoid nonsense and very little of it is of general human value outside the system.

James Hodgson: 21:26

Have you found a humanist community in New Zealand? Have you found a suitable group to replace that element of being part of the faith?

Bill Angus: 21:50

immediately fit in with a bunch of people who think, like you, it's one of the greatest networks humans have ever invented. Especially if you're a bit of a traveler and a gadabout like me, it's really. It was nice to come to new zealand and pop into a church and kind of you know what's going on, meet a few people. I met a couple of my good mates there in new zealand, one of one of whom was a pastor who has followed a similar trajectory to me since then. But when I came out of church, when I decided I'll tell you the story of why I decided, if you like, I think it's in the book but when I decided to come out, I just felt an immense sense of relief. Didn't want to get involved in anything else, no community, I didn't feel the need for a community really. I had a couple of mates, as I say, that I'd rescued from church or they'd rescued me from church and we hung about for a bit and I hung about with a few colleagues and all. But I've recently connected with the New Zealand Humanists. Something very strange happened to me, but I'll tell you that as well. So I've got two stories for you now you can choose. Let's hear both, we have time, okay. So I for you, now you can choose, let's hear both, we have time, okay. So I go to church in new zealand and it's a big evangelical church, maybe 200 people in the place, and I'm fairly I'm obviously very new I'm sitting there thinking, is this a church for me? And I'd met this nice guy, the pastor, very cool person who is now one of my best mates, but he wasn't there this day and I was having all these things. I don't know if I really want to be here and anyway. So I turned up and there's music and the music was awful, as it very often is. But then this guy got up to preach Nice guy, youth pastor. Now, he wasn't young himself, but he was in charge of the youth and he and his wife had been in one of the Pacific islands which are quite close to us here, tuvalu or somewhere like that, because they wanted to adopt a child. So all very lovely, very worthy work, you know. And they were having trouble with the bureaucracy in Tuvalu, because the Pacific Islands operate differently to the rest of us. Things are notoriously difficult in terms of bureaucracies there. So he's struggling. And he said, you know?

Bill Angus: 23:49

So I was in my room and I was just praying and, uh, then, as I was praying, the room started to fill up with all these little demons and they ran and ran all the way around the room. Some of them were in the wardrobe, some of them were under the bed and I had to run after them all and as I caught them, I prayed them out and I prayed them away, all these demons. I exorcised them and he finished his thing and I was thinking that's one of the more crazy things I've heard in church. I've heard similar things, but not many that specifically bonkers, and so what normally happens and I'm sure it would have happened if my good friend was there is somebody will get up at the end of church and say that's an interesting way of looking at spiritual warfare. There are obviously other ways we can think about it.

Bill Angus: 24:35

It was a nice metaphor. They will soften that kind of message somehow. But this was a person in authority and the guy just got up at the end and went right coffee and everybody went after coffee. Nobody was talking about that at all and I was looking about thinking I'm done with this, this is it. I was ashamed to be there. To be honest. I thought it's ridiculous that human beings can say that and nobody even questions it. So that was it for me, and I walked out and thought great, I never have to go to church again. I've had enough of that.

James Hodgson: 25:09

And how about your experience meeting the humanists of New Zealand?

Bill Angus: 25:15

So we have a thing called. There's a little house in town near the university called Rationalist House. It's an old house that was donated to the humanists and rationalists some years ago by a doctor that lived in New Zealand. Nice old house in the center of town, most of which has been redeveloped, but this beautiful old Victorian house full of books, full of libraries, little cafe at the front, and so I got to meet them because I thought, well, I've got this book and you know people might be interested to hear about it. So I thought I'd connect.

Bill Angus: 25:47

And so I went up the stairs, met the first person who introduced me and took me into this library and they asked me where I was from and I said I'm from Middlesbrough in the UK and they said that's interesting. I've never heard of that place. And I said what's the book about? And so I was telling them about the book and, just as I told you, I said the central metaphor of the book is of a ruined abbey. There's a number of them in the UK, in the North, especially Whitby and Reval and Jerval and other kind of ex-abbies and monasteries, and I use that as a metaphor for the church. And so we got talking about that and one of them said I'll go make you a cup of tea. I said thanks, oh, that's great.

Bill Angus: 26:30

So I was just browsing the library and a fair-sized library, not huge but probably 10,000 books in there. So I look up and I see a few bound volumes of something that looked nice and interesting, so I just picked it up. I didn't look at the title, just picked it up. It was about this thick Flicked it open to the first page and the page that I looked at there was only one entry on that page. It was Middlesbrough and the picture was of a ruined Abbey.

James Hodgson: 27:02

Someone sending you a sign.

Bill Angus: 27:08

Exactly. If I was a believer, that would have been an absolute sign. People build lives, lives on less than that. If I told my loving family that who were still believers, they would think it was a sign. But obviously it can't be from god, can it? Why would god be confirming my atheist book? It has to have. My hands must have been guided by the devil himself if we believe in such things. So, speaking of miracles, if anything was a miracle, in other words a very unusual event that is statistically very unlikely. I asked my friend ChatGPT how unlikely that would be, given the fact we might have been talking about anything we couldn't, you know. They happened to ask me about Middlesbrough and about the metaphor in the story of the book. Could have been talking about anything, but given that we didn't know what we were talking about, and then to pick one book off the shelves that had exactly that entry, just one page, very strange. Chatgpt reckoned it was about one in four trillion. I'll happily take it as a humanist miracle, thank you.

James Hodgson: 28:05

A beautiful coincidence that is essentially meaningless but illustrates something else I think, and you talk about this concept of unfaith and finding community and friendships in this state of unfaith, as you say. How have you found that, as opposed to you say, your previous life within organized religion?

Bill Angus: 28:27

Yeah, thanks. I mean you don't get that instant acceptance and cushioning that you get in the church. If you're a Christian or active Christian in a particular denomination, you can go anywhere in the world and find people in that denomination and you'll have similar interests and you'll immediately be welcomed in. You get that in religions. You get it in some small interest groups. There are many other interest groups where you can find similar things. You will not get it in the same way as the church immediately, but the thing to bear in mind about the church is those connections are incredibly shallow. So you might be welcomed into your local church body and then you might be welcomed as a brother, but you leave that church body. Nobody will call you, they won't care. You go from being a brother but you leave that church body. Nobody will call you, they won't care. You go from being a brother to an absolute nobody. If you move to a different congregation, never mind if you move to a different denomination or leave the faith altogether, nobody cares, nobody's interested. They're not your brothers anymore. So that cushioning is very illusory, whereas if you find authentic human connection in a real interest group of some kind, then that's really authentic, isn't it?

Bill Angus: 29:39

I found it. So I do a martial art called aikido, which I've done since I was a kid. So if I go anywhere in the world and going to an aikido club especially, especially of the particular kind of Aikido I do, I get exactly that same thing. We speak the same language, we immediately connect. But it's real, it isn't going to go away, it isn't going to fade because I go to a different Aikido club.

Bill Angus: 30:02

So I found that and I think if somebody is listening to this and is interested in getting out of the church, leaving Christianity, I would just say there is so much more out there than you think. It looks bleak from the inside. It looks like well, there'll be no fellowship and there'll be no charity and there'll be no fellow feeling in the world. You'll find that in other ways. You've just got to find people who are interested in similar things. There are humanist groups all over which you can connect with. If that helps, I recommend all kinds of practical clubs like the martial arts, any martial art you're interested in, any fitness thing you're interested in.

James Hodgson: 30:40

There are so many community groups. Any interest?

Bill Angus: 30:42

group, throw yourself in.

James Hodgson: 30:43

It's healthier to have a network of communities, isn't it Not just be fixed within one, as you say?

Bill Angus: 30:57

be part of different groups that can provide in different ways and support. Absolutely. Yeah, a real network works like that. Yeah, what church tends to do is it cuts you off from all of those networks and it says now we're the only one that matters, yeah, and then you end up not going to aikido or not going to pilates or whatever it was that give you real sustenance and the church will take everything from you. In that sense, it will take everything. All your interests will go. If you're interested in art, that will somehow be subsumed into what they do. They want everything, which is one of the reasons it's really unhealthy.

James Hodgson: 31:25

Yeah, you're right, it has to be a various life, touching many different groups, touching many different circles there's a support there if you do decide to leave one of those groups or you know particular activities not working for you anymore.

Bill Angus: 31:39

You've got plenty of other areas to be fulfilled and also, you know, we have to be strong on our own. The church cushions people and stops them from becoming mature, and one of the things we have to do as human beings is make sure we're all right if everybody fails us, if everybody fails you, you still have to be all right in yourself. Find the strength, find ways to be strong when everybody goes, because then you're up, then you can walk into any congregation, any group, you can do anything and you're going to be all right because, essentially, in yourself, you're all right. And that, I think, is the essence of humanism, which is the real thing that's missing, which is why a lot of Christian people are very immature, because they don't ever have to do that.

James Hodgson: 32:25

The book Divorcing Jesus is out. It's just been released globally. If you're interested, please do find Divorcing Jesus Atheism for Absolute Beginners by Bill Angus, who, do you hope, reads the book.

Bill Angus: 32:37

I think there are a lot of people out there like me who are on the peripheries of the faith. So I was very much a fundamentalist for years and years and years, and then I've probably spent 20 years on the peripheries with other like-minded people who wanted to have interesting conversations about spirituality but were not really very committed to the central message. So I feel, and I'm absolutely certain, that of the billions of Christians on the planet, there are hundreds of millions probably that are in that same position. So I very much hope all of them buy the book. But I think that there are so many people who are attracted to this message. It is an attractive message that I gave you earlier of instant salvation.

Bill Angus: 33:22

Wow, that's a game changer for most people. If they want it. It's a fantastic discovery. There are so many people then that get very quickly disillusioned and find themselves on the outskirts of an organization that doesn't really work for them but find it very hard to get rid of. But they will be much, much happier. If they can, They'll be happier, They'll have more integrity, They'll be stronger if they get out. So it's for them.

James Hodgson: 33:48

And if anybody would like to contact you what is the best place to reach you?

Bill Angus: 33:56

I have a website which I've just set up. It's very basic, just billanguscom. I've also gota. I started the book, put it on substack first to test out various things. So I am on substack. If people are interested in connecting there, that's a good place to go because I'll be posting more writing there. I am writing a historical fiction called the Cunning Courses and Lamentable Lies of Griffin Flood the Informer, which is about an informer in Shakespeare's London which draws on my earlier academic work and I'm cracking through that. So maybe next year that I'll be what's the word? Word querying, that I'll be querying that with with publishers. See if anybody wants it. The cunning courses of lamentable lies of griffin flood, an actual historical informer of that name. But I just I brought in the backstory yeah, it's a great name for for fiction.

Bill Angus: 34:44

Yeah yeah, it's good name for informer. Yeah, griffin. Yeah, very much. Yeah, that's, that's the project.

James Hodgson: 34:51

And our standard closing question what's something? Well, it seems odd to ask you about something which you've changed your mind on recently, bill, given the subject of our conversation. But is there anything you know, apart from our sort of grand topic for today, anything else which you've changed your mind on recently, and what inspired that change? I suppose?

Bill Angus: 35:09

it's a fairly big topic. I would say China my partner's Chinese and recently been to China and it's just a beautiful, lovely place full of lovely people. Whatever their struggles are with government or whatever, people I think do not need to see them as any kind of threat. It seems to be the default position in the West now that China are the big threat. China don't want your things, china have got what they need. They don't want your property, they don't want your land, they just want to be a normal nation like everybody else. It's more a discovery than change my mind on. I've had my mind changed by visiting China, so I'll say that.

James Hodgson: 35:46

Oh, that's wonderful. Thank you so much, and thank you very much, bill, for joining us today on Humanism Now, and all the best of luck with Divorcing Jesus on its release.

Bill Angus: 35:57

Thanks, james, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you.

James Hodgson: 36:01

And thank you for listening. If you like what we do here at Humanism Now, please do leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast app. It really helps more people find the show. We're also building our supporter network. If you would like to consider supporting us, please do sign up, and you can find us on all social media at humanismnowpod you.