SUMMARY:
In an extended, deeply personal “double-stuffed” episode, Scott sits down with Ethan Sweetland-May, the Democratic candidate for Indiana State Senate District 47 (Washington, Harrison, and most of Floyd counties in the Kentuckiana region), for a conversation that ranges far beyond typical campaign talk. Homeschooled as one of 11 children in an intensely Christian, working-class family, Ethan traces his own journey from a teenage flirtation with the charismatic New Apostolic movement, through a decade-plus on the back of a garbage truck in southern Indiana, to a theological and political awakening shaped by Quakerism, Anabaptism, and Black liberation theologian James Cone. He and Scott dig into how the religious right fused Christianity to Republican politics and American empire, why that fusion is a betrayal of Jesus’s own radicalism, and how Ethan is trying to reclaim the language of “freedom” for the left — grounding it in concrete stories from the campaign trail, including a Washington County mobile home park where lot fees nearly tripled in four years. The conversation closes with a clear-eyed look at the uphill electoral math Ethan faces against incumbent Gary Byrne in a heavily red district, and how people can help before Election Day.
Progressive Indiana Network: https://progressiveindiana.net
HoosLeft: https://hoosleft.us
Ethan Sweetland-May: https://www.ethanforstatesenate.com/
WHAT’S INSIDE:
00:00:22 — Introduction: Faith, the GOP, and the Working Class
Scott recaps last week’s conversation with Joseph Trost and reflects on how effective GOP messaging, alongside a decades-long courting of Christian voters (Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, the Moral Majority, George W. Bush’s “Compassionate Conservatism,” Trump and the New Apostolic Reformation), convinced many working-class and religious voters that Republicans represent them.
Notes recent movement among religious voters, citing 2026 Senate candidates Pastor Adam Hamilton (Kansas) and seminarian James Talarico (Texas) leading in historically red states.
Introduces Ethan Sweetland-May: raised in an intensely Christian, homeschooled family, a former sanitation worker of 11 years, now running for State Senate District 47 (Washington, Harrison, and most of Floyd counties).
00:03:52 — Welcoming Ethan Sweetland-May
Ethan joins the show; the two catch up, having appeared together on HoosLeft This Week and at a “No Kings 2” rally in Salem, but never done a full one-on-one sit-down.
00:05:25 — Growing Up in a Family of 11, Homeschooled
Ethan’s background: lives in Floyd County near Louisville, Kentucky; moved there in 2009 to be with his now-wife Aberlyn.
Born and raised in Terre Haute, one of 11 homeschooled siblings; his father, a Rose-Hulman-trained mechanical engineer, declined a corporate relocation to Wisconsin to become a self-taught piano tuner instead.
Describes a scripture-memorization-heavy household, learning to read by memorizing Luke 8 on a cassette tape at age eight, and a family ethos built around service — his dad pulling the kids out to help stranded drivers or shovel snow for neighbors.
00:12:33 — Homeschooling: The Good, the Blind Spots, and the Abuse Risk
Scott raises concerns about oversight and accountability in homeschooling and private/charter education generally.
Ethan describes a “polemic-heavy household” built on critical thinking and sourcing claims, but also acknowledges homeschooling can be used as cover for neglect or abuse, and says the practice deserves more scrutiny and conversation in Indiana than it gets.
00:16:38 — Wanting to Fit In, Homeschool Socialization, and Meeting his Future Wife
Ethan explains he lucked into a built-in peer group as the oldest of a middle trio of brothers, plus a local homeschool group of 15-25 families in Terre Haute.
Says he met his wife Aberlyn through a statewide homeschool organization their families were both involved with, and cautions that homeschooling isn’t an excuse to skip building real social opportunities for kids.
00:22:36 — Considering Seminary and Charismatic Roots
Ethan describes attending a practical-ministry school in Northern California in his late teens/early 20s, heavily charismatic and Pentecostal — a rebellion, he says, against his family’s strict Calvinist determinism.
Talks about actively seeking visions and direct religious experience there, and the decade it took him afterward to unpack what he did and didn’t actually experience.
00:25:46 — Sarah Palin as “the New Esther”: A New Apostolic Reformation Memory
Ethan recalls a speaker at his ministry school, during the McCain-Palin campaign, framing Sarah Palin as a modern Esther sent to save her people — a moment of real cognitive dissonance for him.
Reflects that what people believe is rooted in values, not argument, and that “polemics” alone rarely change anyone’s mind.
00:28:33 — Canvassing Story: The Trump Voter Who Wants to End Corruption
Ethan shares a door-knocking story: a woman tells him her top issue is ending corruption in government — which is why she voted for Trump. Rather than argue, Ethan validates the underlying concern (real corruption, real capture by insiders) and makes the case that fighting the “old boys’ club” is exactly his campaign’s pitch too.
00:31:55 — From Ministry School to the Back of a Garbage Truck
Ethan connects his time questioning ministry school to moving to southern Indiana to marry Aberlyn, whose father had started a small garbage-collection company.
00:34:07 — Eleven Years on the Garbage Truck
Started on the trucks at 22; says the job taught him the district better than almost anyone else running for it, having covered nearly every county road in the area.
Married Aberlyn in December 2009; describes garbage work as both grueling and formative — “this is what hard work feels like.”
00:38:06 — Quakerism, Anabaptism, and Confronting Whiteness
While riding the truck, Ethan immersed himself in audiobooks (The Body Keeps the Score, How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr, The Jaguar Smile by Salman Rushdie) and became drawn to Quaker and Anabaptist theology, especially the Quakers’ early, unanimous embrace of abolitionism.
Describes a turning point: a Minnesota preacher challenging listeners to name the last book they’d read by an author of a different race, which led him to James Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree and a reckoning with his own racial identity.
Credits his wife Aberlyn as a major catalyst in his ongoing “deconstruction” and theological growth.
00:45:17 — Christianity, Republicanism, and Ethan’s Libertarian Father
Scott and Ethan discuss how popular culture has flattened “Christian” into “Republican,” despite many Christian traditions saying otherwise.
Ethan credits his father’s honest libertarianism for being an early dissenting voice against the Afghanistan and Iraq wars in their homeschool circle, which planted seeds for Ethan’s own political independence.
00:47:01 — Civil Religion: How Empire Corrupts Faith
Ethan geeks out on early church history: before Constantine, Christians rejected the fusion of religion and state power (Rome’s emperor-worship), and the Book of Revelation was written largely as a coded condemnation of Roman empire and economic exploitation.
Argues nonviolence and no class distinction between rich and poor were non-negotiable for the earliest Christians, and that Constantine’s conversion inverted that entirely — faith married to conquest.
00:52:08 — The Moral Majority, Backlash, and the Religious Right’s Origins
Ethan traces the rise of the Moral Majority in the 1970s-80s to a backlash against the countercultural and civil-rights reckonings of the Vietnam era, led by figures like Jerry Falwell and James Dobson (of Focus on the Family, which Ethan notes now runs outreach for parents estranged from the adult children they raised under its own teachings).
Frames the marriage of Christian identity to political power as corrosive to both governance and faith, tracing a line to today’s Christian nationalism.
00:58:02 — Jesus as Dissident: What Would Actually Happen to Him Today
Ethan argues most people who claim Jesus wouldn’t recognize or like the version of Christianity practiced in his name today, invoking Kierkegaard’s critique that calling oneself “Christian” in the West has become an empty conceit.
Scott and Ethan agree Jesus would be a dissident against the modern American empire, ministering to transgender kids and outcasts — and would likely be persecuted again for it.
01:00:22 — Reclaiming “Freedom” From the Right
Scott asks Ethan to talk about freedom, a word the right has claimed as its own.
Ethan, citing the Epistle of James on exploiting laborers, argues that having endless consumer choice at Walmart isn’t freedom if you can’t afford healthcare, own a home, or escape credit-card debt — pointing to a $150,000 starter home at 12% interest meaning something very different than the same rate on a $280,000 mortgage today.
01:03:56 — Knocking Doors in Washington County: A Mobile Home Park Story
Ethan describes being warned not to canvass as a Democrat in red Washington County, including an incident where canvassers were threatened with violence.
Tells the story of a disabled woman in her late 60s whose mobile-home lot fee rose from $180 to $460 a month in four years after a private-equity firm bought the park — netting the new owners hundreds of thousands in extra profit while she can’t afford to stay or leave.
01:09:54 — Who Actually Stole Your Freedom
Scott connects the mobile-home story back to the earlier Trump-voter anecdote: people correctly sense something was stolen from them, but the right misdirects that anger toward immigrants, minorities, and women rather than the capitalists actually responsible.
Both frame consumer “flair” as decoration on economic chains, not real freedom.
01:11:46 — Can This Race Be Won? Gary Byrne and the Plus-33 District
Ethan is clear-eyed that SD-47 is a heavily Republican (+33) district, and that incumbent Gary Byrne has refused multiple requests for a debate, telling Ethan’s campaign manager directly, “I don’t have to.”
Describes voter anger over high diesel prices, the Epstein files, the Iran war, and the economy, and lays out Byrne’s record: voting for SEA 1 (cutting $180 million from public school budgets) and SB 518 (which would have required equal per-pupil funding sharing with for-profit charter schools).
01:13:55 — Showing Up Where Votes Have Been Assumed: Livonia, Salem, and Campbellsburg
Ethan describes his door-knocking strategy of showing up in communities the incumbent takes for granted, including walking with newly unionized workers at MPP in Campbellsburg, whose plant was bought by out-of-state private equity and now pays rent to a shell company under the same owners.
Cites a favorite Wendell Berry quote — that rural America functions as a “colony economy” with its land, labor, and resources sold off cheap — shortly after Berry’s death.
01:16:35 — Gary Byrne’s Record: SEA 1, SB 518, and Kitchen-Table Fixes
Lays out Byrne’s voting record: SEA 1 (cutting $180 million from public school budgets and pushing local referendums) and SB 518, which would have required public schools to equally share per-pupil operating funds with for-profit charter schools.
Cites concrete policies from his own campaign: banning utility reconnection fees and capping insulin at $35/month statewide.
01:24:39 — How to Help: Fundraising, Ads, and Turnout
Ethan says the campaign has already raised nearly double what the 2022 race for this seat brought in, funding its first campaign ad spots.
Notes only about 43,000 of the district’s 133,000 residents voted in 2022, framing the race as a turnout opportunity; his website is ethanforstatesenate.com.
01:30:06 — Closing: Show Outro
