What happens when poverty, desperation, and fundamentalist religion become deeply intertwined? How do entire communities get shaped by fear, shame, and the promise that faithfulness will eventually be rewarded?

Today we sit down with Josiah Hesse to discuss his deeply personal book, On Fire For God, and the realities of growing up poor in rural Iowa during a time when economic collapse and religious extremism were feeding off one another.

We talk about the rise of the Christian Right through the lens of lived experience: prosperity gospel theology, generational dysfunction, purity culture, fear-based religion, and the ways vulnerable people are often told their suffering is either holy or deserved. Growing up in a world where brokenness becomes normalized, where shame functions as social currency, and where faith was both a lifeline a ...