Holy Watermelon

The puritanical roots of western colonialism may have obscured this for some, but several religious traditions are tightly tied to the use of hallucinogenic substances. Some may find that their origins are reliant on them. In this week's episode, we explore the phenomenon, as well as a quick survey of those who might protest too much... and this time, Katie's had a bit to drink.

Entheogens are a trippy way into religion--or at least cosmic faith. Religious intoxicants aren't exactly common, but they're certainly not an oddity in the wide array of traditions on this planet. Sacraments can take a great variety of forms, from DMT to mescaline, to cannabis (marijuana), to mushrooms. Who are we to judge what others have believed for millennia? We look at sacraments of the Rastafarians, Indo-Arab Aryans, Wixáritari, and the Greeks. We also examine the American "Religious Freedom Restoration Act" of 1993.

All this and more....

Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt

Join the Community on Discord

Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram

Learn more on our official website

[00:00:01] Katie Dooley: Hey Preston.

[00:00:12] Preston Meyer: Hey, Katie. You look a little, uh, prepared.

[00:00:16] Katie Dooley: I am very prepared for today's episode. Accidentally prepared. Um, I'm so sorry. On today's episode of.

[00:00:29] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon Podcast.

[00:00:32] Katie Dooley: So today we're talking about drugs and religion. I had a cider on an empty stomach, so I'm a little tipsy recording this. Oops. But let's just get. I'm just getting into character. Just getting into character for the today's episode. So sorry. Um.

[00:00:56] Preston Meyer: What's terrible is that if there's going to be positive feedback about. Hey, Katie should be tipsy more often for this show. We'll have so many episodes to record before this actually airs that it'll be a little bit weird going back to it.

[00:01:11] Katie Dooley: I like it. I approve. So people, including Katie have been altering their state of mind for a very long time. And for many different reasons. Some religions are entirely based on drug use, which we'll get into. And every religion has a stance on whether or not you should be taking drugs or alcohol. So I say this episode is about drugs, but we do address alcohol consumption as well.

[00:01:34] Preston Meyer: Yeah, so kind of interesting to go through and research all of this. I've learned a little bit more than I knew before.

[00:01:40] Katie Dooley: Yeah, absolutely. Especially I mean, I knew Christianity was a gray area of religion, but Hindu has a great stance.

[00:01:47] Preston Meyer: Mhm.

[00:01:49] Katie Dooley: Which we'll get into.

[00:01:50] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Let's start taking a look at those religions that are more generally opposed.

[00:01:58] Katie Dooley: Yeah. We're going to talk about, um, just the larger world religions that we talked about last year, as opposed because there's hundreds of religions that would take us forever to go through each stance. But we're going to go through the big, uh, I think big six today.

[00:02:15] Preston Meyer: All right. So Buddhism, if you remember our Buddhism episode numbers, is a big thing. And on the Eightfold Path there is a principle of right livelihood. And there's a few businesses they should avoid to be a quote unquote, good Buddhist.

[00:02:33] Katie Dooley: Yes. So to have your right livelihood.

[00:02:36] Preston Meyer: Yeah.

[00:02:37] Katie Dooley: Now, quick, run through. Don't trade in weapons. Don't trade in human beings. Meat.

[00:02:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It expands into slave trading, prostitution.

[00:02:52] Katie Dooley: And human trafficking.

[00:02:53] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Just generally...

[00:02:55] Katie Dooley: Don't buy and sell other people.

[00:02:57] Preston Meyer: Yeah.

[00:02:58] Katie Dooley: It's terrible. Businesses in meat. Meat referring to the bodies of beings after they are killed. So, or breeding animals specifically for slaughter. So this is where obviously vegetarianism come...

This week, we’re joined by Dr. Glen Fairen, PhD, a religious studies professor at Oklahoma State University, for a thought-provoking discussion on academia, religious history, and the unexpected ways we engage with belief systems. Dr. Fairen shares why some of his favorite moments in the classroom come from students challenging his ideas because questioning is at the heart of academic growth. We also dive into how religious studies can be made more accessible, engaging, and even sexy—because let’s be honest, history and theology should never be boring.

Beyond the classroom, we explore Dr. Fairen’s fascinating research on the Qumran and Nag Hammadi groups, as well as the study of witchcraft—which, despite popular misconceptions, is a legitimate area of religious scholarship. We break down the ways occult traditions and witchcraft aren’t inherently evil, but rather, how societies tend to label unfamiliar or uncomfortable beliefs as “occult.” .

Our conversation with Glen is packed with humor, laughter, and plenty of insights. Dr. Fairen brings both expertise and wit to the table, making complex religious concepts approachable and entertaining. Whether you're a scholar, a skeptic, or just curious about the history of Christianity, alternative spiritualities, or how academia shapes our understanding of faith, you won’t want to miss this episode.

This interview continues on Patreon

Dr. Fairen is the author of As Below, So Above: Apocalypticism, Gnosticism, and the Scribes of Qumran and Nag Hammadi. You can find it on Amazon.

You can find Holy Watermelon merch on our Spreadshop

Join the Community on Discord

Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram

Learn more on our official website

[00:00:11] Katie Dooley: Hi, Preston.

[00:00:12] Preston Meyer: Hi, Katie. It's another great one. We're doing another interview on the Holy Watermelon Podcast.

[00:00:19] Katie Dooley: We're supposed to say at the same time.

[00:00:20] Preston Meyer: You're right.

[00:00:21] Preston Meyer: I didn't lead up to that properly at all.

[00:00:24] Katie Dooley: We're doing another interview today on.

[00:00:26] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon Podcast.

[00:00:29] Katie Dooley: Yeah, it's a little bit corny.

[00:00:31] Glen Fairen: No. It's excellent.

[00:00:34] Katie Dooley: Would you like to give our guest the professional introduction? And then I'm going to tell a personal story.

[00:00:40] Preston Meyer: All right. So, Doctor Glenn Farren is a visiting assistant professor at Oklahoma State University and an adjunct lecturer at the University of Texas, El Paso. Glenn received his PhD in religious studies from the University of Alberta in 2015, which happens to be the year I started at the U of A. He is also the author of "As Below, So Above: Apocalypticism. Gnosticism and the Scribes of Qumran and Nag Hammadi", published by Gorgias Press in 2008, which is long before your PhD.

[00:01:11] Glen Fairen: It was my master's dissertation.

[00:01:13] Preston Meyer: Okay.

[00:01:14] Glen Fairen: Yeah. I don't know how that happened.

[00:01:16] Katie Dooley: Cool.

[00:01:16] Glen Fairen: The reviews have been terrible. So it's been... It's great. Yeah.

[00:01:20] Katie Dooley: Well, thank you so much for coming to do this.

[00:01:23] Glen Fairen: Oh. Thank you.

[00:01:24] Katie Dooley: Interview. I'm super excited to pick your brain on all sorts of religious studies things.

[00:01:30] Preston Meyer: So I'm curious what prompted you to get into religious academia?

[00:01:35] Glen Fairen: I want to say it's something deep and profound, but I actually was failing, not failing, but doing poorly in my science degree. I was in pre-med for a little while and my undergrad then I was I ended up getting a minor in astronomy, I think, but I sucked at the numbers and I to...

Scientology gets a lot of bad press (and most of it is hard to refute), but we're going to shed a little light on the sci-fi religion of L Ron Hubbard, and explore the aspects of this authoritarian cultus that make it so enticing to initiates and so terrifying to survivors.

What happened to Shelly Miscavige? Why is Tom Cruise reported to be leaving the church when he's up to his neck in it with David Miscavige? There's a lot more to this space-age religion than Dianetics, pseudo-science, and alternative facts. It's all fair game, now. Hail Xenu!

They say you can't take your engrams with you across the Bridge to Total Freedom. We can't make you operating thetans, but we can give you the tools to protect yourself from them. These suppressive persons will take you on a voyage that rivals the power of Hubbard's Sea Org.

Check out our previous episode, "Fake Me to Church," to learn more about authoritarian cults.

All this and more....

Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt

Join the Community on Discord

Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram

Learn more on our official website

[00:00:11] Katie Dooley: I'm waiting for you to say hello to me.

[00:00:13] Preston Meyer: Hi, Katie.

[00:00:13] Katie Dooley: Hi, Preston.

[00:00:16] Preston Meyer: Oh, man, what a good day.

[00:00:18] Katie Dooley: Today is a blessed day. If you're a Scientologist,

[00:00:22] Preston Meyer: Right? Yay! Dianetics it's the anniversary.

[00:00:27] Katie Dooley: Happy anniversary, Dianetics! Today on the.

[00:00:31] Both Speakers: Holy Watermelon podcast.

[00:00:34] Katie Dooley: Um, I feel like we should say that we're not actually that excited about Dianetics having a birthday,

[00:00:40] Preston Meyer: Right? I mean, as far as anniversaries of books go, meh. I've never celebrated the anniversary of a book before today, so there is something special about this.

[00:00:52] Katie Dooley: I guess so. And as far as religions go, also meh. Or maybe even more ehhhhh.

[00:00:59] Preston Meyer: It's not so meh

[00:01:00] Katie Dooley: . We're here living in 2022 and Scientology is living in 3022.

[00:01:09] Preston Meyer: Yeah, they they play with a bigger calendar though to. That Xenu business was like 75 million years ago.

[00:01:17] Katie Dooley: Wow. We're gonna get into Xenu. I just have, like, a fun little note that usually we're pretty tolerant about religions, but we're gonna rake this one over the coals.

[00:01:28] Preston Meyer: Yeah. This, uh, we'll try and be pretty objective, but there will be times where it gets really hard to do that.

[00:01:38] Katie Dooley: Yes. But again, so this is the anniversary of Dianetics. It is actually a very important Scientology holiday, May 9th. Um, so yeah, let's get this crazy show started.

[00:01:50] Preston Meyer: All right. Oh, man. Yeah. So being a Scientologist gets really expensive. It's remember how I talked about how Freemasonry and the ancient Egyptian religions and some of the Druids traditions? They're like tiered mystery schools where you got to move up from one layer to the next. That's an expensive process. Here it is.

[00:02:14] Katie Dooley: I've heard. I was trying to figure out how much Tom Cruise in particular had spent on Scientology, and it's estimated about 25 million. But there was a multi-millionaire in Atlanta who has spent 360 million on Scientology.

[00:02:27] Preston Meyer: Okay, that's definitely more than the cost of going through the the Operating Thetan levels. There's definitely some extra donations there and whatnot.

[00:02:35] Katie Dooley: Still far too much money to spend on this organization. Um, so some stats that I thought were interesting and keep this one in mind in particular as we get into the cost of things, is that on national censuses, there's only about 30,000 Members of Scientology. So that's across that was taken from the US, Canada, Great Britain or sorry, United Kingdom. And I think Australia or New Zealand censuses, it only totaled about 30,000 people. And then when we started talking about how much money they have, I think there's a little bit of l...

Everybody collects something; but for the Imperial Tradition Christian churches, that collection has some really weird stuff. Not just the bones of saints and a handful of miraculous statues, but enough "holy prepuce" to fill your cereal bowl, and the miraculous rehydrating blood of the saints of Naples can help wash all that down. This isn't your regular daily mass - join us to see what other strange relics the Catholic Church has been collecting.

Learn more about John the Baptist, Hiram McDaniels (from Welcome to Night Vale), St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the rose petals of St. Catherine, the shroud of Turin, Mary's milk, the True Cross, the Bones of the Magi, the official classification of holy relics, and the veneration (WORSHIP!) of saints.

All this and more....

Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt

Join the Community on Discord

Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram

Learn more on our official website

[00:00:11] Katie Dooley: It feels like it's been a long time since we've been here, but it really hasn't. We recorded last week.

[00:00:17] Preston Meyer: We did record last week, but you know where it is a while since we've been in this place talking about weird things in Christianity.

[00:00:28] Katie Dooley: Yes. If you liked our Saints episode, you're gonna love this episode of

[00:00:34] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon Podcast.

[00:00:38] Katie Dooley: So what are we talking about today? That's...

[00:00:40] Preston Meyer: Well, we're looking at holy relics. There's a lot of relics of a lot of different religious traditions. Today, we've decided to focus on just Christian relics. I think it's interesting, most people really hate comparing churches to Ripley's Believe It or Not! Exhibits.

[00:00:58] Katie Dooley: What? No!

[00:00:58] Preston Meyer: This whole... Because we all know Ripley's Believe It or Not! Is mostly nonsense and weird things pushed together to make cool things to look at. And sometimes religion is a little bit that way. But the parallels go deeper than the inclination to doubt the veracity of outrageous claims. We also do have jars filled with human body parts.

[00:01:21] Katie Dooley: So many jars, so many body parts, so many body parts from the same person?

[00:01:25] Preston Meyer: Yeah.

[00:01:26] Katie Dooley: When you should only have one.

[00:01:28] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Yeah. It's it's really crazy. We've got saints that according to the evidence of if you can call it that, of the claims of various churches around the world, the saint had two full bodies and extra legs and arms.

[00:01:49] Katie Dooley: Yep. So man... And Saint Bernard is gonna appear again just briefly but...

[00:01:56] Preston Meyer: Good times.

[00:01:57] Katie Dooley: If you're a fan of Saint Bernard, our our Discord family sure likes Saint Bernard. So, yeah, there's a relic just for him.

[00:02:08] Preston Meyer: Yep. Uh, relics of religious importance come in all shapes and sizes and a variety of classifications. As I was looking into this, I thought it was kind of cool that the imperial tradition Christians, mainly talking about Catholics and Orthodox Christians, and that tradition that survives a little bit in Lutheranism and a handful of other Protestant groups, the old Protestant groups like the Church of England, um, there's three classes, more or less strictly this three classifications is the Catholic, Roman Catholic tradition, but it's observed a little bit by others as well.

[00:02:46] Katie Dooley: It's also just a nice classification system.

[00:02:48] Preston Meyer: It's handy.

[00:02:49] Katie Dooley: I saw it come up in some of my research.

[00:02:52] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So the first class is literally anything directly connected to Jesus, or in addition to that, the earthly remains of a saint. Their body parts, pretty much.

[00:03:06] Katie Dooley: Their body parts.

[00:03:07] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Uh, the second class is any object associated directly with a saint. Uh, like something they touch, something they owned, something that was theirs. Um, and these...

There's some misunderstanding surrounding celibacy, so we're going to explore why it's such a prominent part of the Imperial Christian Priesthood, and we'll take a look at some of the damage that the policy has caused. We've made a point of keeping the trauma-triggers to the later portion of the show, so everybody can enjoy the more interesting bits of history before we get to the more sensitive content.

We explore some of the history of the celibacy policy, as well as other rules that have been ignored over time. Chastity and celibacy are not the same thing, and they're not mutually assured, but they're not mutually exclusive either. We also take a peek at the work of Vincent Doyle and Coping International.

Trigger-Warning: Halfway through (with deliberate break and warning), we talk about priestly sex scandals around the world.

Catholicism has taken a few hits since the priestly diddlers hit the news, but it turns out that antidisestablishmentarianism is still strong in the American federal government. After the trigger warning, learn more about the statistics around the Catholic sex abuse scandal, and some of the profiling of those priests who have been identified. It turns out an awful lot of external reports encourage the Catholic church to let their priests marry, with good reason.

All this and more....

Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt

Join the Community on Discord

Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram

Learn more on our official website

[00:00:11] Katie Dooley: I'm as ready as I'm ever going to be for this episode.

[00:00:14] Preston Meyer: Yeah, there's some things that I'm not excited to talk about, but it's important.

[00:00:18] Katie Dooley: I mean, we try to laugh here on...

[00:00:21] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon Podcast.

[00:00:23] Katie Dooley: But this episode is no laughing matter.

[00:00:27] Preston Meyer: No, not so much.

[00:00:29] Katie Dooley: Uh, trigger warning. We're talking about the Catholic Church.

[00:00:34] Preston Meyer: Yeah, we're gonna keep it light for a little while. We'll let you know when you should duck out. If that's a thing you feel the need to do.

[00:00:44] Katie Dooley: But we are talking about the Catholic Church.

[00:00:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah.

[00:00:48] Katie Dooley: So I hope that's enough said.

[00:00:51] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I wanted to talk a little bit about the the foundation for the problem.

[00:00:57] Katie Dooley: Yes.

[00:00:58] Preston Meyer: Which is how I built most of my notes in trying to figure out how to put this all together.

[00:01:03] Katie Dooley: Yes, it is such a big thing, it is very hard to make it. I mean, it's hard to make it digestible for a few reasons. One, because it is terrible.

[00:01:12] Preston Meyer: Indigestible,

[00:01:13] Katie Dooley: Indigestible and then it's just...

[00:01:15] Preston Meyer: It's unpalatable.

[00:01:17] Katie Dooley: Yes. And then it's just so it's so big. Like, where do you start and finish?

[00:01:23] Preston Meyer: And yeah.

[00:01:24] Katie Dooley: You don't.

[00:01:25] Preston Meyer: So anyway.

[00:01:26] Katie Dooley: Sorry. Yes. Preamble, this is preamble.

[00:01:30] Preston Meyer: This whole preamble, we actually haven't said anything meaningful, but let's get into it. Celibacy, that thing that a lot of people are familiar with the word. And a lot of people misuse this word a lot of the time. Celibacy is not going without sex. I don't care what version of the dictionary you use. If it says it's going without sex, it's incorrect.

[00:01:55] Katie Dooley: That's abstinence.

[00:01:57] Preston Meyer: Well, abstinence is a big umbrella term. And celibacy is a kind of abstinence. But going without sex is chastity. Chastity is voluntarily refraining from participating in extramarital sex. According to some definitions, or all sex in general, depending on your dictionary, extramarital chastity is explicitly demanded in both the Hebrew and Christian Bibl...