Cultish is Culty: An Extremist Right-Wing Church Starts A Podcast

The creator of Cultish is Jeff D, who is also the minister at the Baptist Apologia Church in Mesa, Arizona. Apologia is not a conventional Baptist ministry as the church preaches Calvinism and Theonomy, checks notes, “a hypothetical Christian form of government in which society is ruled by divine law. Theonomists hold that divine law, particularly the judicial laws of the Old Testament, should be observed by modern societies.” This gets dangerous in a hurry as it’s used by pastor Jeff D (who also spearheads End Abortion Now) to spread violent concepts including the very strange idea that Jesus believes in Stand Your Ground and is pro-war and the idea that doctors who perform abortions and women who recieve them should be put to death. It’s classic manipulation of concepts that the human Jesus never actually talks about in the book, and it’s reminiscent of the kind of thing you’ll find in other Baptist cults.

The church leader responsible for Cultish also engages in culty behavior that’s beyond the standard twisting of scripture to convince believers his own agenda comes straight from God. Jeff is fond of secretly recording his members confessing their sins and then using those recordings to smear people who disagree with the way he runs the church. That’s not the kind of behavior a church that isn’t a cult would ever engage in. Another thing that sets off the ol’ cult-o-meter is that Jeff D requires new members to sign contracts upon entry, which again, you won’t find in any legitimate church. In the Apologia contract is an oath to be “faithful unto death.”

More information about Apologia can be found at checkmychurch.com and it’s noteworthy that Jeff D does not like Check My Church at all. When the fact based website made inquiries about Apologia, Jeff refused to cooperate and decided to instead go on a long tirade against the site and other critics on another Apologia podcast.

In episodes of Cultish, a podcast about cults with absolutely no intellectual value, you’ll find the hosts Jeff installed identifying many “cults” that are not actually cults, and the minister himself responded with the same tactic when his feeling were hurt by the evil, godless monsters at Check My Church. In Jeff’s eyes the website, which is a legitimate resource that is not a cult at all, is the real cult to watch out for. What’s funny is that after listening to his shitty podcast, you can almost give Jeff the benefit of the doubt and imagine he’s saying all this because, like the hosts of the show, he has no idea what a cult is in the first place. The author at Check My Church responded to the minister’s dumb smear with a fun article you can read here.

In the recent press release outing Cultish, Apologia is referred to bluntly as “a dangerous right-wing Christian extremist cult.” It’s hard to disagree with that assessment the more you learn about what Jeff D preaches at Apologia and the inner workings of the church, per former members. What’s more, there are signs in the actual product of Cultish that seem to indicate the presence of a cult leader behind the scenes.

Jeff D and his ideas are front and center, and he’s the mastermind of a show that’s full of very unconventional and dishonest views on cults. And again, when the show isn’t baldly hateful, it’s riddled with outlandish conspiracy theories. You might imagine that because there are other “hosts” and “guests” on the show there might be some descent from Jeff’s fantasies every once in a while, but that never happens. On the occasions where Jeff fills in as the proper host, nothing about the show changes. Control is the word that springs to mind. Also, if you’re looking for a sign of narcissism, well, the actual sign that lives behind Andrew S, the loudest voice on the show, speaks volumes.