Ep. 334: From Baptist Pastor to FBI Agent: Eric Robinson on Faith, SWAT & Loving His LGBTQ Kids

A Baptist preacher who’d never held a gun walks into the FBI Academy, and 24 years later walks out a different man. On this episode of Everything & Anything…and a Bit Gay, Zach sits down with Eric Robinson, author of Irreverend: From Saving Souls to Chasing Sinners in the FBI, for a conversation Zach admits he might have turned down a few years ago.

Eric spent years as a youth pastor, assistant pastor, and founding pastor of his own church in Western New York, where he gave his congregation a “flinch test” to make sure everyone who walked through the door felt welcome. But two years of daily stress headaches pushed him out of the pulpit. He preached his last sermon on Easter Sunday 2002, entered the FBI Academy the next week, and went on to work drugs, Chicago gangs, public corruption, and 15 years on SWAT.

Then his oldest child came out as trans. Then his middle child. Then his youngest came out as gay. Eric talks about the moment that broke him free from the “love the sinner, hate the sin” thinking he’d held onto for decades, and why he calls unconditional love the bare minimum for a parent.

In this episode:

Why Eric reached out to a former congregant 25 years later to apologize

The “flinch test” he used to build a more welcoming church

How chronic stress headaches led him from ministry to the FBI, and stopped the day he was accepted

What investigating gang members, a $20 million fraudster, and child predators taught him about human nature

Why many LGBTQ+ people are wary of the FBI right now

Watching the white supremacist group Blood Tribe target an LGBTQ+ barbecue in Toledo, and why prosecutors couldn’t act

Finding a “flow state” on high-risk SWAT raids

His oldest’s coming out, and the freedom of letting go of judgment