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Hello, welcome to the introduction of “Jenkins Unfiltered” with me your host David Jenkins. Before we begin with the concept of the show, allow me to tell you who I am and what events in my life prompted me to create the premise of this show. I started writing for Talon Marks in the fall of 2016. Since then, I’ve been the Arts & Entertainment editor, news editor and Editor in Chief. As of now I’m a freelancer and I’m finishing up my classes here at Cerritos College. People, who know me, come to understand that I love talking about ideology. Whether it is political, religious or philosophical I’ll talk about it in both agreement and disagreement. However, becoming that way wasn’t an easy task. If I may, allow me to turn the clock back to more than ten years ago. In 2006 I was a sophomore in High school, through a friend I was converted to an Oneness Pentecostal church. It was Christian, however it had a couple of unusual things about it. It was a small congregation of no more than 100 people, maybe even less. It believed in speaking in tongues and without irony, the pastor claimed to be a prophet of God. And the word “prophet” was not in light-use. He literately believed he could hear the voice of God. I of course as an impressionable 15-year-old, I believed him and took his word for it. Hell, everyone in the church believed him. There were lot of rules I had to abide by in both my private and public life. For the first two of the fives years I was there, I was ok with the life style and I enjoyed it. My parents didn’t know what to make of this. They disagreed with me going to that church and the more they fought against it the more I desired to go. By the time I was getting ready to turn 18, I began to come to the realization that this was a cult. And I say this now with full confidence. Every time I left my home I would get a call from either the pastor or one of the chruch members and they’d “where are you going?” If that sounds freighting, well, that’s because it was. In the last three years of attending that church, I became miserable, until I began to actually read the bible. You see, this church had a lot of young people in it and all of the young men were training to be preachers. Sadly, not so much the women, the church didn’t believe in women preachers. But, it was through reading the scriptures that I became aware that a lot of what was taught in that church was not scripture. So, while studying the bible in depth I became curious to what other religions believed and why, so I did what others would never do, I meet up with members of other religions and asked questions. Something I learned on my own was that if you wanted to know about a certain belief, simply ask someone who has that belief. It was in these hours upon hours of discussions with Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses and other Christians of denominations that I’ve learned I was in a ideological prison that I needed to break out of. When members of the church found out that I was meeting with religious members outside of the church, they weren’t too happy about that, however, the pastor saw that it kept me reading and learning. What he didn’t know was that a few of my views were changing. It was through this that I became a fan of literature. I began to read all sorts of works of theology. With that, I was finally brave enough to leave that godforsaken church after contemplating for so long. The church unsurprisingly excommunicated me, as they’ve to others before me, and I continued to read and talk to people with different viewpoints. I have abandoned the church life style and started going to school and picked up literature in politics and philosophy. It was here where I knew this is what I wanted to do. Discuss these things in an open forum and allow my mind to be changed upon new information. Changing one’s mind on something in that church wasn’t allowed unless it was the pastor that was changing his mind on certain issues. I know detest that I find it fraudulent. I have since promise myself to never surrender to groupthink again. And thus, the premise of this show is to continue that and have guest on every episode of this podcast with different worldviews, different life style and different ideological positions. This podcast will discuss current events, religion, culture, philosophy and politics. I will do my best to not allow this show to become an echo chamber, I’ve been in one and frankly I find it boring. So, be prepared to have my individual thoughts freely expressed, along with others who disagree with me. I’m David Jenkins, and thank you for listening.