Holy Heretics: Losing Religion and Finding Jesus
81 episodes - English - Latest episode: 22 days ago - ★★★★★ - 114 ratingsHoly Heretics seeks to foster honest conversations about the state of religion in the 21st century. We interview experts, spiritual seekers, scholars, and activists in our quest to examine just exactly how modern-day Christianity lost the Way of Jesus while also discovering how it can be regained through subversive thought and action.
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Episodes
Ep. 74: My Life and Faith After Evangelicalism w/Jonathan Merritt
April 04, 2024 15:16 - 49 minutes - 68.2 MBEpisode Summary: Interviewing Jonathan Merritt felt like having a conversation with myself. His journey out of white evangelical subculture is an almost mirror-image of my journey. My guess is, you’ll find a lot of correlation as well. Jonathan was a card-carrying evangelical who left his Southern roots and evangelical home to find faith, family, and freedom outside the confines and cult-like community of evangelical Christianity. His journey led him from certainty to contemplation, from ...
Ep. 73: Rewilding Christianity w/ Gary Alan Taylor
March 05, 2024 14:05 - 31 minutes - 44.5 MBEpisode Summary: Do you feel spiritually and physically domesticated? Are you struggling to free yourself from the long-term impacts of spiritual colonization? Do you feel disconnected from the natural world? Are you longing for something more than merely reconstruction? If so, spiritual rewilding might be the next step in your faith seeking journey. Though an environmental term—meaning letting nature take care of itself and referring to conservation strategies that reintroduce species to ...
Ep. 72: Nice Churchy Patriarchy w/ Liz Cooledge Jenkins
February 13, 2024 16:37 - 48 minutes - 67.6 MBEpisode Summary: Author Liz Cooledge Jenkins joins us on the show to discuss the harmful effects of patriarchy on men, women, families, LGBTQIA persons, culture, nations, and spiritual communities. With its ties to domination, violence, aggression, militarism, and white supremacy, patriarchy centers white, heterosexual men at the expense of everyone else. Patriarchal communities often tolerate or even condone violence against women, including domestic violence, sexual assault, and honor ki...
Ep. 71: Reconstruct Faith Your Way w/ Angela J. Herrington
January 29, 2024 16:27 - 50 minutes - 70.3 MBEpisode Summary Have you ever wanted someone to sit with you by the fire and watch your old religious beliefs go up in flames? Maybe you’ve longed for a guide or a coach to help you navigate all this wandering in the spiritual wilderness. If so, then this week’s episode is what you need right now! Faith deconstruction coach Angela J. Herrington joins me to talk about life after evangelicalism, and in particular this tender time in your spiritual journey when you feel alone, bewildered, ang...
Ep. 70 This is the Way: Contemplative Christianity w/ Father Brendan Williams
January 15, 2024 11:52 - 1 hour - 88 MBEpisode Summary Have you ever paused long enough to consider why you continue pursuing the spiritual path? After all the scandals, abuse, religious trauma, and oppressive theology, why are you still here? This same question hit me last week during church and I didn’t have a profound answer. For whatever reason, I just can’t quit my search for the Sacred. I bet you’ve asked a similar question, or at least had the honesty to wonder just what the hell you are still doing in a movement that h...
Ep. 69 We Don’t Have to Live This Way w/ Derrick Jensen
December 12, 2023 14:00 - 49 minutes - 68 MBEpisode Summary: Living in the United States is a daily dose of trauma. Our nation is philosophically and pragmatically built on injustice, coercion, lies, oppression, exploitation, violence, dehumanization, and planetary destruction. Do we ever stop to think about how messed up the world is? The answer, of course, is an overwhelming no. We are living in what theologian John Dominic Crossan called a domination system—shorthand for a way of organizing society in a hierarchical, patriarchal, ...
Ep. 68 Finding Your True Self w/ Heather Hamilton
November 28, 2023 13:28 - 1 hour - 85.7 MBEpisode Summary Have you ever paused long enough to consider that maybe, just maybe you are living a lie? Is it possible that your outer shell, or your outer identity isn’t really you after all? What if all your coping mechanisms that have come to shape your identity isn’t the real you? Maybe you’ve spent your life operating out of your false self based purely on survival, but is that who you were born to become? I hope not. At some point, if you don’t examine your false self, the real yo...
Ep. 67 What is Christian Mysticism? w/ Keith Giles
November 06, 2023 14:15 - 53 minutes - 74.2 MBEpisode Summary One of the paths available to you post-evangelicalism is mysticism, a spirituality that in many ways is almost the direct antithesis of evangelical Christianity. If evangelicalism was all about certainty, apologetics, Biblicism, and defending your faith at all costs, Christian mysticism can be defined by unknowing, mystery, paradox, and direct experience with the Sacred. Mystics know something the rest of us don’t know. God is right here with us, right here inside us, right ...
Ep. 66 Saving Democracy From Her Christian Enemies w/ Dr. David Gushee
October 16, 2023 14:21 - 51 minutes - 71.5 MBEpisode Summary Authoritarianism is on the rise all across the world. Here in America, the leading proponents of anti-democratic ideology are evangelical Christians who have been swept up in the cult of Donald Trump. Driven by a dominator theology and good old-fashioned white supremacy, conservative Christians can be counted on as the leading supporters of dictatorial politics. As Dr. David Gushee writes in his book Defending Democracy From It’s Christian Enemies, “Our current democratic cr...
Ep. 65 Jaded: A Reckoning with White Evangelicalism w/ Marla Taviano
April 25, 2023 14:38 - 1 hour - 88.3 MBOK, I'll admit it right up front, this is a heavy episode. This one feels like a therapy session processing through the anger, the rage, the bitterness, and all your past complicity in white evangelical Christianity. If you haven't noticed yet, one of the pit stops on the deconstruction road is animosity. You finally wake up to all the harmful ways evangelical Christianity has impacted your life and the lives of others and sometimes all you can feel is resentment. It's easy to get stuck here...
Ep. 64: What Are God’s Pronouns? w/ Gary Alan Taylor
April 04, 2023 17:29 - 34 minutes - 48.3 MBEpisode Summary In the second-part of our conversation about the Divine Feminine, we look at the ramifications of believing God is a guy. Institutional Christianity has given us God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, a triune male God with “He/Him” pronouns. And this male dominated theology has created a male dominator culture that manifests itself politically, socially, sexually, religiously, and economically in pragmatism, patriotism, persecution, capitalism, greed, aggress...
Ep. 63: God Our Mother w/ Gary Alan Taylor
March 21, 2023 18:44 - 33 minutes - 46.8 MBEpisode Summary Have you ever paused to wonder why it was always God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit—a trio of divine beings known only as “He” and “Him?” This should cause us to ask a basic question. Why is God so overwhelmingly referred to as a He in institutional Christianity, as well as in Judaism? Did you know that from ancient times God was first known as our Mother, and sustainer? Over the next two episodes we’re going to discuss what I believe is one of the most imp...
Ep. 62: Resisting American Apartheid w/ Dr. Miguel De La Torre
February 21, 2023 13:56 - 45 minutes - 62.6 MBEpisode Summary We continue our march toward the marginalized this week with another conversation with Dr. Miguel De La Torre about the future of American political identity. As a Lantinx scholar, Miguel sees a future in which American society is run by white Christian nationalist elites at the expense of everyone who is 'the other.' Much like South African Apartheid, America could become a nation controlled by a very powerful and violent minority all supported by white evangelicals. After ...
Ep. 61: We Resist: The Power of Nonviolent Resistance w/ Gary Alan Taylor
February 07, 2023 14:24 - 42 minutes - 58.6 MBContrary to what many assume, peace isn’t meekness in the face of evil it is the courageous and oftentimes creative task of disarmament. Active peacemaking is a way to fight against injustice without using violence. It is using the transformative force of love to resist oppression. It says that the means are the ends, that the way to peace is peace itself. “Love of enemies does not necessarily ease tensions; rather it challenges the whole system and becomes a subversive formula for true pers...
Ep. 60 (Part Two): Transgender and Christian? w/ Natalie Drew
January 24, 2023 15:53 - 49 minutes - 68.8 MBEpisode Summary In the second installment of our conversation with Natalie Drew, we move deeper into her gender transition and how it impacted her marriage, career, and spiritual journey. If you haven’t checked out Part One, go back and listen now before moving forward into this episode! We answer several questions including, can you be Christian and transgender and what might it look like to transcend the false gender binary that pervades our social and spiritual spaces? I know you will ap...
Ep. 60: Transgender and Christian? w/ Natalie Drew
January 09, 2023 16:49 - 43 minutes - 60.1 MBCW: We discuss trauma, addiction, suicidal ideation, abuse, and other topics that may be triggering. Please listen at your own discretion. A lot of times on our show, we discuss theological matters that mostly reside in your head, but this episode is altogether very different. This conversation is personal, it’s raw, it’s painful, it’s the deeply transformative work of an individual who fought to save her own life by becoming who she always knew she was. It’s not only an episode about gende...
Ep. 59: Queer Jesus w/ Maki Ashe Van Steenwyk
December 27, 2022 16:33 - 56 minutes - 77.8 MBCW: Adult Language. Christians were never meant to be normal, we've always been "holy troublemakers" who do not accept the world as it is but who insist on the world becoming the way God wants it to be. In the words of our friends at The Center for Prophetic Imagination, “A world where all walls of alienation are torn down as we live justly with one another.” From the very beginning, Jesus called us to be a beloved community of resistance to the brutal normalcy of a world dominated by the p...
Ep. 58: Becoming Fully Human w/ Barbara Brown Taylor
December 13, 2022 14:23 - 49 minutes - 68.2 MBEpisode Summary Barbara Brown Taylor is who you want to be when you grow up. Her life is a legacy of wisdom and wonder, walking the long road toward becoming fully human. In this intimate conversation that is more memoir than interview, she looks back on a long pilgrimage of faith while sharing some of the secrets she’s found along the way. As she reminds us, “This is not the life I planned or the life I recommend to others. But it is the life that has turned out to be mine.” Along the wa...
Ep. 57: Meeting Jewish Jesus For the First Time w/ Dr. Amy Jill Levine
November 29, 2022 14:01 - 57 minutes - 79.3 MBOne of the great ironies of the Christian religion is that the person Christians worship isn’t a Christian. Jesus was born, raised, and died a Jew. He might even find it odd that an entire new religion grew up out of his short life and painful death. He is without question, the most popular person to have ever walked the earth. But what do we really know about this first century Galilean? If we are honest, not much. He was born to humble parents under sketchy circumstances, he grew to become...
Ep. 56: Being Transgender in a Binary World w/ Dr. Roberto Che Espinoza
November 15, 2022 14:19 - 39 minutes - 54.6 MBEpisode Summary "In the Beginning, God created male and female." Evangelicals have used this one verse as a weapon in their war on transgender individuals. But a closer look offers a far more inclusive interpretation. It is true that God made both male and female. God also made light and dark, the land and sea, skies and earth, and guess what? God also made EVERYTHING in between like rivers, lakes, valleys, hills, and mountains. The diversity of life that lies in these in-between spaces is...
Ep. 55: God is a Black Woman w/ Dr. Christena Cleveland
November 01, 2022 13:44 - 55 minutes - 75.9 MB“The Spirit of God, She has made me, and the breath of the nursing God, She gives me life.” - Job 33:4 When you close your eyes and envision God, who do you see? Like me, you probably envision God as an old, white male sitting on a throne looking down from on high with an air of judgment and anger toward the world. This is the god of authoritarianism, patriarchy, domination, and purity culture and he’s been entrenched in our hearts and minds for years. But what if we’ve gotten God wr...
Ep. 54: Finding God in the Margins w/ Gary Alan Taylor
October 18, 2022 12:59 - 26 minutes - 36.3 MBWe're excited to drop the first episode of Season Three of Holy Heretics with host Gary Alan Taylor! We are dedicating this year to marginalized voices who have either been muzzled by conventional Christianity or who have been pushed to the periphery of faith. People whose voices, bodies, race, gender, or sexuality make them dangerous to the status quo. In this introductory episode, we invite you to go on an adventure into the borderlands of faith, where we seek the real meaning of the s...
Ep. 53 Do I Stay Christian? w/Brian McLaren
June 28, 2022 15:25 - 46 minutes - 64.1 MBAt some point in your deconstruction journey, you are probably going to be faced with the question, "Do I stay Christian or do I walk away from this movement altogether?" If that is where you are today, this episode is for you. It's been a minute since Western Christianity has looked anything like Jesus. For the last 1,700 years Christianity has been known more its violence, patriarchy, domination, nationalism, and racism, instead of love and compassion. Christianity jumped the religious tr...
Ep. 50 White God, Brown Jesus: Decolonizing Christianity w/ Dr. Miguel De La Torre
May 31, 2022 13:05 - 56 minutes - 77.5 MBThe vast majority of Americans worship the white god—the god of Christian nationalism, white supremacy, domination, patriarchy, wealth, power, and colonization. The god of guns and empire, the god that exists to make white men great again. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that powerful white people created a god in their own image, in the image of white men has this god been created. As Dr. Miguel De La Torre responds, “What we say is Christianity today is really an ideology of white supremacy a...
Ep. 52 White God, Brown Jesus: Decolonizing Christianity w/ Dr. Miguel De La Torre
May 31, 2022 13:05 - 56 minutes - 77.5 MBThe vast majority of Americans worship the white god—the god of Christian nationalism, white supremacy, domination, patriarchy, wealth, power, and colonization. The god of guns and empire, the god that exists to make white men great again. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that powerful white people created a god in their own image, in the image of white men has this god been created. As Dr. Miguel De La Torre responds, “What we say is Christianity today is really an ideology of white supremacy a...
Ep. 51 Abortion: Beyond Pro-Life or Pro-Choice w/ Gary Alan Taylor
May 17, 2022 13:22 - 58 minutes - 80.2 MBCW: We discuss abortion and other topics that may be triggering. Please listen at your own discretion. The majority of Americans have consistently held nuanced views about abortion. However, in the early 1980’s white evangelicals suddenly discovered that the abortion debate could unify their movement and thereby secure political power for decades to come. Thus, the birth of the “pro-life” movement. Since then, the debate around abortion has centered around saving babies or killing babies, b...
Ep. 50: The Making of a Mystic with Kevin Sweeney
May 03, 2022 13:04 - 53 minutes - 73.7 MBIn the 1960's, Jesuit priest Karl Rahner made a bold claim about the future of faith. "The Christian of the future will either be a mystic, or nothing at all." Who could have guessed that sixty years later the deconstruction community would turn his statement into reality through the modern pursuit of mysticism. Apologetic, rational, belief-based Christianity can only get you so far. In fact, in many ways it's gotten us into the mess we are in today. It could very well be true that the mos...
Ep. 49: ReWilding And Refugia: Healing Our Sacred Earth w/ Dr. Debra Rienstra
April 19, 2022 13:10 - 1 hour - 83.8 MBPeople have been sounding the alarm for climate change for generations. The earth is permanently altered by human hands. But if we have the power to hurt the earth, we share the power to heal her. Drawing on our spiritual tradition, Dr. Debra Rienstra encourages us to adapt our spiritual practices and faith to life on an altered planet. From consuming to healing, stewarding to co-creation, our task is to no longer objectify the earth but to care for her as living members of this sacred bod...
Ep. 48: Why I Deconstructed Evangelicalism w/ Dr. David Gushee
April 05, 2022 13:14 - 54 minutes - 74.4 MBThose of us in the deconstruction community have been accused of many things over the last few years by individuals and institutions in the evangelical establishment. We've been accused of deconstructing our faith because we want to sin more, or that we have a rebellious nature, or we just want to have sex with anything and anyone, or that we've been corrupted by a liberal agenda. None of these claims are true. In fact, from all the countless conversations we've had with fellow deconstructio...
Ep. 47: Saving Jesus From Evangelicals w/ Dr. Robin Meyers
March 22, 2022 15:17 - 55 minutes - 76.4 MBIt's really hard to call yourself a Christian these days. But when you are a minister in conservative Oklahoma and call yourself a kind of “atheist,” well that’s a whole other issue! Reverend Dr. Robin Meyers is one of many progressive voices that laid the groundwork for the deconstruction movement. And for him, it all started by asking one question: “The question isn’t what is a Christian, but rather how is one Christian?” Unfortunately, the answer to that question has changed dramatically ...
Ep. 46 God is Not in Control: Open Theism w/ Dr. Thomas Jay Oord
March 08, 2022 13:49 - 53 minutes - 73.6 MBWhen bad things happen, I often hear people say "Well, God's still on the throne," as if that is some kind of balm or solution for the pain, evil, and uncertainty the world is facing. But here's the problem: God was on the throne during the Holocaust. God was on the throne during segregation and Jim Crow. God is on the throne as thousands of innocent Ukrainian citizens are currently dying from Russian invasion. If God really is in control, then God is doing a terrible job keeping us all safe...
Ep. 45: Rethinking Biblical Womanhood w/ Dr. Beth Allison Barr
February 22, 2022 13:52 - 58 minutes - 80.5 MBEpisode Summary Men are in charge and women submit. Men lead and women follow. Men have a biblical mandate from God to lead the Church and the home while women are ordained by God to be silent and submissive not only to their husbands, but every other male leader they encounter in the Church. These are the lies many of us grew up believing. These are the lies keeping so many women in abusive relationships the world over. These are the lies "theobros" want you to believe. Well, thank God f...
Ep. 44: Black Liberation: My Journey out of White Evangelicalism w/ Dante Stewart
February 08, 2022 15:30 - 1 hour - 83.9 MBLeaving white evangelicalism is one thing. Leaving white spaces and white theology is quite another. Writer and activist Dante Stewart joins us today to discuss his new book Shoutin In the Fire: An American Epistle. and how he escaped slaveholder religion in his quest to uncover the heart of Christianity. His journey as a black, Christian, American out of predominantly white spaces offers a path forward for all of us who are longing for liberation from the oppressive subculture that is Amer...
Ep. 43: Inventing Whiteness: How Race Broke My Family & The World w/ Lisa Sharon Harper
January 25, 2022 15:26 - 57 minutes - 78.6 MBThroughout this country’s history, the hallmarks of American democracy – opportunity, freedom, and prosperity – have been largely reserved for white people through the intentional exclusion and oppression of people of color. America’s original sin is white supremacy, born and bred into the first laws of our land and fully endorsed by the church. Am I right Southern Baptist Convention? Yesterday’s segregationists are today’s Christian Nationalists. But what is “whiteness?” If you are deconst...
Ep. 42: The Enneagram: Your Number, Your Needs w/ Suzanne Stabile
January 11, 2022 15:58 - 45 minutes - 62.5 MB“Few people can teach you the Enneagram with the genuine insight, humor, and potential for real growth and change better than Suzanne Stabile, writes Father Richard Rohr. And after this incredible episode, we agree! Stabile is one of the world’s most sought-after gurus when it comes to all things Enneagram. Today, she joins us to discuss what it means to know your number, to live a balanced life within your number, as well as to recognize when you are either in excess or unhealthy in your ...
Ep. 41: DeColonize Your Faith w/Dr. Randy Woodley
December 28, 2021 16:29 - 1 hour - 82.5 MBThere are some episodes that defy description, that cover so much ground that it is difficult to describe. This conversation with theologian, poet, activist, and historian Randy Woodley is one such episode. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again for those in the back: evangelicalism is a dominator religion. It seeks to dominate the earth, women, black and brown bodies, those on the fringes of faith, and anything or anyone that falls outside of its white supremacist worldview, and the co...
Ep. 40: How Buddhism Changed My Evangelical Mind w/ Danielle Shroyer
December 14, 2021 15:25 - 58 minutes - 81 MBIt's been said Christianity is heavy on teaching and light on praxis. You could argue the last two thousands years of Church history has been one long, and often violent, conversation about right beliefs but not right action. Thus, you can believe all the (supposedly) right things about God, the virgin birth, the resurrection, and the Bible and still be in bondage. But what if there is another way that actually leads to spiritual and personal transformation that doesn’t try to find answers t...
Ep. 39 Heart Burnin’, Still Yearnin’: The Future of Faith w/ Brian Zahnd
November 30, 2021 13:11 - 1 hour - 92.8 MBDeconstruction has become a dirty word in evangelical circles. Some people think all we want to do is burn Christianity to the ground. Others worry that the deconstruction community isn’t doing enough to shed itself from fundamentalism. We will just be honest, most days we’d rather just let evangelicalism go up in flames, purging the entire super-structure that is modern Christianity. We know that’s not the end goal of deconstruction, but it just feels easier to sit back and watch it burn. M...
Ep. 38: Recovering From Evangelicalism: The 5 Noble Truths of Deconstruction
November 16, 2021 01:42 - 36 minutes - 50.9 MBLeaving evangelicalism feels a lot like recovering from an addiction. “For a species wired for survival, we have an odd habit of getting hooked on things that can kill us,” writes science journalist and professor Michael D. Lemonick. Much like an addictive substance, evangelicalism felt good until it didn’t. Most of us began deconstructing evangelical fundamentalism with one goal in mind: to end the suffering that got us here in the first place. In this introductory episode to season two, Ho...
Ep. 37: Deconstructing Trumpism with CNN’s Kirsten Powers
October 31, 2021 18:55 - 56 minutes - 77.1 MBAccording to CNN’s Kirsten Powers, the United States is headed toward a constitutional crisis. Led primarily by white evangelicals and their cult-like worship of former President Donald Trump, American democracy is on the verge of collapse. How do we move forward? How do we have healthy conversations with our friends and family who continue to believe conspiracy theories and parrot the lies they hear everyday on FoxNews? In this candid “Election Day” episode, Kirsten draws on her deconstruct...
Ep. 36: Reflecting on Season 1
September 14, 2021 10:00 - 34 minutes - 47.4 MBAfter 30 interviews and 35 episodes, Gary Alan and Melanie look back, reflecting on what they’ve learned, what surprised them, where they hope to go with Season 2, and more. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and a review 🙏 Show notes: https://www.sophiasociety.org/podcast/reflecting-on-season-one Follow us on social media! Twitter: @holyheretics | Instagram: @holyhereticspodcast | Facebook: @holyheretics Advertising inquiries: [email protected] Support our wo...
BONUS: Cussing, Smoking, & Tattoos—Oh My! w/ The Space Between & Uncertain
September 08, 2021 18:32 - 47 minutes - 65.1 MBWhy are we so offended by “cussing”? Is someone really “going downhill” if they smoke tobacco or have tattoos? Melanie joins Katherine from Uncertain Podcast and William from The Space Between Podcast to discuss the morality, legalism, and taboos surrounding these behaviors in the Evangelical Church. How and why did they become such a marker of one’s status with God? And are there more forces at work than simply sin and holiness? Follow The Space Between on Instagram: @TheSpaceBetweenUK Fo...
Ep. 35: Do I Have Religious Trauma? w/ Dr. Laura Anderson
September 07, 2021 14:34 - 1 hour - 100 MBCW: We discuss trauma, sexualized violence, abuse, and other topics that may be triggering. Please listen at your own discretion. Religious trauma is sneaky for so many reasons, perhaps none more so than the fact that trauma of any kind was minimized or delegitimized by religious leaders. So many of us who call ourselves ex-vangelicals find it hard to even believe that we have trauma. But do we? Have we let ourselves really consider that? In our last interview of Season 1, we talk with Dr. ...
Ep. 34: When Racism and Compassion Collide (pt. 2) w/ Deconstructing Black
August 31, 2021 10:00 - 55 minutes - 76.6 MBContinuing our conversation from last week with C Davis, we hear more about her faith journey, as well as chat about why she is able to have so much compassion despite everything she’s experienced and seen and able to see beyond rhetoric to the truth. Follow her on Instagram: @DeconstructingBlack and @DeconstructingColors; and consider supporting her work: https://cash.app/$DeconstructingBlk If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and a review 🙏 Show notes: http://www.sophia...
Ep. 33: When Racism and Compassion Collide (pt. 1) w/ Deconstructing Black
August 24, 2021 10:00 - 56 minutes - 77 MBFrom being raised in a predominantly Black church to finding herself in predominantly white megachurches to calling herself a spiritualist today, C Davis has had quite the faith journey. Though many who hear that might feel sadness over her losing her faith, she has gained such immense compassion and empathy that she doesn’t see it as a loss. In this first half of our interview with her, we dig into why ignorance doesn’t bother her and why she works so hard to bring people together. Follow ...
Bonus: Responding to Joshua Harris & “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill” w/ Uncertain Podcast & The New Evangelicals
August 23, 2021 14:26 - 1 hour - 85.3 MBRecently, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill (a Christianity Today podcast that looks into why Mars Hill church met such a quick demise) released a bonus episode. In the episode, host Mike Cosper spent time looking at how Mars Hill’s pastor, Mark Driscoll, and Joshua Harris, the I Kissed Dating Goodbye author and former Sovereign Grace Ministries prodigy, had many similarities, despite having wildly different personalities. But then, because Harris no longer identifies as Christian and considers...
Ep. 32: The Discipleship of Decolonization w/ Ched Myers
August 17, 2021 10:00 - 1 hour - 86.5 MBWhen your entire understanding of God, Jesus, and faith is filtered through the lens of the colonizer, it changes everything. But as today’s guest points out, it’s to the detriment of not only ourselves, but to everyone and every thing. Author Ched Myers talks with us about “radical discipleship,” how that relates to decolonizing our white American evangelical faith, and how a decolonized reading of Jesus offers us a truly wholistic, abundant, life-giving faith. Note: We apologize for Ched’...
Ep. 31: Reclaiming Christian Politics w/ Charlie McCallie
August 10, 2021 10:00 - 58 minutes - 80.6 MBWe all hate politics. With every politician and candidate seemingly corrupt af, voting has turned into an exercise of futility and despair. But our guest today, Charlie McCallie, is a pastor who sees politics very differently. In this episode, he walks us through what politics are at their best, why Christians should be involved, and why it’s about so much more than partisanship and nationalism. If you’ve ever wanted even just a glimmer of hope for the U.S.’s political future, don’t miss thi...
Ep. 30: Does the Evangelical Church Need to Die? w/ The New Evangelicals (Tim Whitaker)
August 03, 2021 10:00 - 1 hour - 97.5 MBIs the American Evangelical Church worth saving? Or is it beyond repair? Many ex-vangelicals are ready to let it die and build something new in its place, but in this episode, we chat with Tim Whitaker, creator of The New Evangelicals, about how he’s fighting to rebuild the American Evangelical Church in a more loving, Christ-like image, despite great pushback from within the Church itself. Follow Tim on Instagram (@TheNewEvangelicals) and Twitter (@NewVangelicals), and check out his podcas...
Ep. 29: Why Purity Culture Doesn’t Work (in More Ways Than One) w/ Talk Purity to Me (Blair)
July 27, 2021 10:00 - 53 minutes - 48.8 MBAfter growing up in the south in the heyday of purity culture, Blair of @TalkPurityToMe recognized that she needed to relearn how to relate to herself and others. Once she healed from the harm she endured through purity culture, she decided to start speaking out against it so that others could heal, too. We talk with Blair about how she came to recognize how unhealthy purity culture had made her, how she healed, and what hope she has for the future of sexual education in the evangelical chur...