Pulling Back the Curtain: Josiah Hesse’s ‘On Fire for God’ Unpacks the Christian Right and Working-Class Trauma

In January 2026, beloved Denver author and former OFM journalist and Suspect Press owner Josiah Hesse will release his book, On Fire for God: Shame, Poverty, and the Making of the Christian Right, a deep dive into his experience as an ex-evangelical and a searing analysis of the Christian right’s impact on working-class families over the past century. Hesse, known for his previous works including the Carnality series, books that touch on the same topic from a fiction angle, and Runner’s High, a nonfiction book about cannabis and exercise, is back with his most honest book to date. 

The book’s origins began unexpectedly, focusing initially on class and the “disposable jobs” Hesse held in his 20s and early 30s. “Me and my agent were talking about all the minimum-wage jobs I had in my 20s and early 30s, minimum wage jobs in factories, construction sites, restaurants, retail around 45 and all,” Hesse recalls. This discussion quickly spiraled, necessitating an exploration of his religious upbringing.

“I had a lot of religious trauma,” Hesse explains. “Growing up, I was preparing for the end of the world. I was more concerned about avoiding hell and not being left behind the rapture than I was about algebra or history.”

Hesse, raised a fundamentalist, felt compelled to “shut down those critical thinking skills” because “your salvation, your ticket to heaven, is based on your belief. So you have to maintain that belief in something (that) it’s very difficult to believe in if you have critical thinking skills.” The book expands on this foundation, tracing the evangelical influence back through the ages, using his family’s story as “a through-line to talk about how the Christian right has impacted working class families going back a century.”

Understanding the MAGA Movement and the ‘Con Man’ Archetype

Hesse notes that a constant question since 2015 has been, “How can evangelicals support Trump? He is so clearly not a Christian.” For Hesse, having grown up in that world, it was not as mystifying. He uses the classic American play The Music Man, set in his Iowa hometown, as a key analogy. The story features a con man who “comes to town and is looking for something to stir up trouble with, to spread fear and outrage among the people.”

“He swindles people out of their money by drumming up fear of the other, and I was able to weave that story into the 100 years of history, showing how these con men have been doing this over and over, generation after generation,” says Hesse.

He sees this manipulation through fear and shame at work across political figures, noting how people can be manipulated “to surrender their values, be very flexible with their beliefs based on this cult of personality.”

The Visceral Experience of an Evangelical Youth

Hesse hopes the book serves a dual purpose: a historical/journalistic pulling back of the curtain for intellectual understanding, and a memoir to create a “visceral understanding of what young evangelicals go through.” He shares that he believed with an intensity that led to a “feverish preoccupation with sin and what was called supernatural warfare, or spiritual warfare.”

As he went through puberty and realized he was attracted to both boys and girls, he viewed his identity through a demonic lens. “I viewed it through a supernatural lens,” he says. The preoccupation extended to current events. Recalling the 1993 David Koresh Waco, Texas standoff, he says, “I really believe that there was something prophetic happening.”

Hesse’s diagnosis with Autism Spectrum Disorder and ADHD provided further insight into his childhood hyper-vigilance. While his brother “just didn’t really believe it,” Hesse admits, “I thought about it every second of every day.” He lived in a state of constant high alert, being told, “you probably won’t live to see adulthood. The tribulation from the book of Revelation will probably transpire around the year 2000.”

The Economics of Evangelicalism

The book highlights the economic exploitation intertwined with religious life. “Economics are just as much a pillar of this book as religion and politics, and then also mental health,” Hesse states, detailing how institutions prey on poor people.

Hesse’s family was caught in the “prosperity gospel,” the belief that donations would yield a “tenfold harvest.” He recounts his parents, who ran their own businesses, tithing on their gross income, “and one year, they ended up giving as much money to the church as they took home as a family. 

Beyond money, the church demands labor, aligning with what he calls the “Protestant work ethic”—a convoluted theology where “enjoyment of hard work” became an identifier of one “predestined for heaven.” This led to a culture where people were “taught to fetishize exhaustion,” with his own mother working herself “into a kind of literal madness, working around the clock and volunteering for everything.”

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On Fire for God promises to be a timely and essential read, offering a rare look behind the curtain of a powerful movement, one that may help explain the political and economic fractures in modern America.

Photos courtesy of Josiah Hesse