The Bible Uncut and Unfiltered

In 1922, a Baptist pastor stood up in a Presbyterian pulpit and did the one thing preachers aren't supposed to do — he told the truth about what he actually believed. Three years later, it cost him the pulpit and helped set the stage for the Scopes Monkey Trial. A hundred years later, most of us raised fundamentalist have never once heard his name. This week, three former fundamentalist Baptis...

Two weeks after the block party that closes Chapter 8, we turn the page to find everyone fasting through a 12-hour day of scripture reading and communal confession — for sins they didn't personally commit. Along the way we discover a mysterious gap in their timeline, extra details added to biblical stories that weren't there the first time around, and a prayer that never actually asks for...

We're excited to announce a brand new group for people who found themselves no longer welcome in church! Heather Cronk joins us to talk about Project 21:12, her effort to organize and mobilize exvangelicals to tell their stories and reshape the culture that shaped them. Fifteen million Americans gave everything to the evangelical cause, only to find the doors closed the moment they started ask...

Wrong church, wrong school, same Colin and Stephanie! This week's targets include: * Bible colleges that teach information 200 years out of date * Parents who ban Disney movies because they don't understand how character growth works * Fundamentalists who think faith needs a label to be real * People who rebound date churches * Pastors who demand you pray for them but really mean "Pay...

🎬 Jesus movies have been lighting up the silver screen for nearly as long as movies have existed. We all have our favorites (and the ones we’d rather forget) but how often do we stop and ask why we think one portrayal of Jesus is “faithful” and another isn’t? Enter Jeannine K. Brown and John Anthony Dunne, authors of The Greatest Story Ever Retold ! Their book presents a fascinating history of Je...

What if the gospel you were taught was never meant to benefit everyone? This week, Fr. Danny Bryant takes on the “whiteness gospel”—the ways Christianity can baptize privilege, colonialism, shame, nationalism, and the preservation of power while still insisting it is preaching the same good news as Jesus. We talk about: * When patriotism gets twisted into nationalism * Why Calvinism is really just...

When church couldn't hold my pain, metal did. What happens when the music you were told was dangerous becomes the very thing that keeps you alive? This week, Josh Patterson joins us to talk about metal music, faith, deconstruction, identity, anger, lament, and the strange ways a song can sometimes say what a sermon never could. We explore why metal often gets treated as spiritually dangerous,...

You shall not pass… on listening to this episode! The legendary Tripp Fuller joins us this week to nerd out on the spiritual themes of The Lord of the Rings and why he keeps returning to Tolkien’s work year after year. But don’t worry, even if you’re not a fan of hobbits, dragons, rings, or fantasy/Faërie, this conversation is about a whole lot more than just Middle-earth. Through Tolkien’s world,...

Nehemiah 8 might be the most misused chapter in the whole book. Old school Baptists I knew in college pointed to it to explain why you need a big wooden pulpit in church. (It doesn't say that.) Others use it to prove everyone has to stand for scripture reading. (Also not what it says.) It even contains one of the most quoted verses in the entire Bible, but almost nobody realizes it's from...

The math ain't mathing this week! One of the Bible's most skipped genealogies hides within its census one of the biggest challenges to the way many of us were taught to read the Bible. Compare Nehemiah's genealogy with Ezra 2, and you'll discover something surprising: the lists are the same, but the names and numbers only match up about half the time. Throw in the third version pre...

Nehemiah 6 is usually preached as a lesson about avoiding distractions. Ignore the people trying to lure you into the "plain of Ono," stay focused, and finish the work. But what if that's not really what this chapter is about? As the wall nears completion, the battle shifts away from construction and toward something much more familiar: smear campaigns, public accusations, false prop...

The Bible Divas have entered the chat! This week, four top tier Bible scholars—Angela N. Parker, Anna Sieges Beal, Jennifer Garcia Bashaw, and Cynthia Shafer-Elliott—join us to talk about their brand-new podcast and why biblical scholarship is better when women are included. Along the way, we discuss: * Why Al Mohler and the SBC are wrong about women in ministry * How to build a theology bookshelf...

Nehemiah 5 stands apart from the rest of the scroll. For once, the greatest threat to Jerusalem isn't an enemy outside the walls; it's the exploitation happening within them. As famine and predatory lending push the poor deeper into debt, Nehemiah confronts the wealthy in a way that would make many modern American Christians uncomfortable: by forming a mob and publicly shaming them into ca...

This chapter takes a darker turn as opposition to rebuilding Jerusalem grows in direct proportion to the wall itself. Nehemiah swiftly responds by militarizing the worksite. But alongside his confidence in God’s protection is a willingness to call down judgment on his enemies in language that often feels jarring for readers formed by later Christian ethics. The author doesn’t sanitize that tension...

This chapter is a monument built not just out of stone, but out of words. We follow Nehemiah on a tour around Jerusalem’s walls as he pauses at each section to record the names of the ordinary people who repaired it. To modern readers, it can feel like one of those chapters you breeze past during a Bible-in-a-year plan—a long list of unfamiliar names and forgotten places. But ancient authors don’t...

Fox released a new Bible drama this year called The Faithful: Women of the Bible, retelling the stories of Sarah, Hagar, Rebekah, Leah, and Rachel from their perspectives. If that sounds intriguing, don't get your hopes up. Unsurprisingly, this version of female empowerment very quickly became a show about blaming the women for every bad decision the biblical patriarchs make. This week, we&#39...

What if most of the things you've been taught about the Pharisees, the Law, and the Jewish context of Jesus and Paul are completely backwards? This week, we're honored to learn from Amy-Jill Levine, one of the world's leading New Testament scholars and a Jewish expert on the historical world of Jesus. We tackle some of Christianity's biggest misconceptions like: · Did Jesus really...

If there was a miracle drug that could guarantee you’d live a happier, healthier life, would you take it? According to Rebecca McLaughlin’s latest book, there is such a drug, and it’s called regular church attendance. Drawing on the work of a Harvard professor, she cites several studies, hoping to convince you that church attendance could save your life. But when I actually read those studies? Wel...

All Christians believe in Jesus. Far fewer actually follow him. This week, Chris Jones of Spiritual Hot Sauce joins us for a conversation about suffering, philosophy, Jungian archetypes, spirituality outside church walls, and why modern Christianity totally misses the point by pushing belief in Jesus as the primary goal. We talk about: · How common Christian answers to suffering fall apart · The d...

When teenage Colin was spending every weekend playing inline hockey, there’s no way he could’ve known a conversation like this with an old teammate was somewhere down the road. More than a decade later, we may not be quite as sharp on the rink as we used to be, but apparently we still make a pretty solid team, just this time behind a mic. Longtime friend, local college prof, and prolific philosoph...

You know him from our conversations on the uncontrolling love of God, but what happens when theology picks up a camera? This week, Tom Oord returns as a photographer and filmmaker to discuss his brand new film, SEER: A Spiritual Natural Photographer Explores Love. Throughout the film, Tom shares his own stunning nature photography interspersed with deep reflections on love, God, beauty, healing, a...

This week we go off script and share our distilled thoughts on whatever’s been rattling around in our heads. Think Festivus’s “Airing of Grievances” with a few positive notes and several rabbit trails sprinkled in. These are the unfiltered tangents that don’t make it into the regular podcast—hot takes on holy texts, pop culture, church culture, and whatever else demands a mic. Today you can expect...

Nehemiah 2 isn’t the clean, inspirational leadership story it’s usually made out to be. Beneath the surface of quick prayers and open doors is a tense political drama. There is an anxious king with every reason to distrust, a calculated cupbearer waiting for the perfect moment, and a mission that may be as much about empire as it is about faith. There’s even a potential cameo from a fan favorite l...

Nehemiah doesn’t start in Nehemiah. It starts with a prophetic thread running from Jeremiah to Daniel to Ezra—a century-long story of exile, expectation, and an anticipated return that was intentionally written to feel like a new Exodus. The problem? That second Exodus doesn’t quite land the way anyone hoped. So this week, we read Chapter 1 through a trauma-informedlens that accepts and makes spac...

Nehemiah. A corner of the Bible condemned by Christianity to be little more than a justification for church building campaigns or a last-minute devotional at men’s leadership retreats. But what if we’ve been reading his story completely wrong? This isn’t just a book about walls going up. It’s one of the last chapters in the narrative of the Hebrew Bible. It’s set in the aftermath of exile, at the...