Context and Conviction

How textbook battles, history wars, and book bans turned the American classroom into a political battleground. Description What children learn has never been a neutral question in America. Long before today’s fights over banned books, classroom libraries, and history lessons, powerful people understood that controlling education meant influencing how the next generation understood the country, its...

What happens when disagreement is no longer treated as disagreement, but as evidence that someone is dangerous? In this episode of Context & Conviction , we examine America’s history of turning political fear into public suspicion. From the Palmer Raids and the deportation of immigrants after World War I to congressional investigations, Hollywood blacklists, loyalty tests, and Senator Joseph M...

In this episode of Context & Conviction, Steph takes a deeper look at the Black Panther Party beyond the headlines, fear, and political labels many of us were handed. The Black Panthers were not only known for armed self-defense and monitoring police brutality. They also built community “survival programs” that served real needs in Black neighborhoods, including free breakfast for children, fo...

In 1954, Guatemala’s democratically elected president, Jacobo Árbenz, was overthrown after his government pushed land reform in a country where land was concentrated in the hands of a powerful few. His reforms affected major landowners, including the U.S.-based United Fruit Company, which held significant power and influence in Guatemala. What followed was Operation PBSUCCESS, a CIA-backed covert...

In this episode of Context & Conviction, Steph breaks down one of the most important government investigations in American history: the Church Committee. In the 1970s, after years of secrecy, scandal, surveillance, and abuse of power, the United States Senate opened an investigation into the nation’s intelligence agencies. What they uncovered was not a conspiracy theory. It was documented hist...

In this episode of Context & Conviction, Steph breaks down the 1953 coup in Iran, when Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was removed from power after he challenged British control over Iranian oil and pushed for national sovereignty. This episode walks through who Mosaddegh was, why Iran’s oil mattered so much, how Britain and the United States became involved, and how Cold War fear was used t...

In this episode of Context & Conviction , Steph takes a deeper look at John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, two brothers whose influence helped shape the modern American empire. One brother became Secretary of State. The other became Director of the CIA. Together, they stood at the center of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War, where the language of freedom, democracy, and anti-communism w...

In this episode of Context & Conviction, Steph takes us into Bohemian Grove, the private redwood retreat in Monte Rio, California, owned by the Bohemian Club, where powerful men in politics, business, media, finance, and culture have gathered for generations. This is not an episode built on internet folklore or wild claims. It is a careful look at documented secrecy, elite access, ritual, netw...

In Episode 19 of Context & Conviction, we step into one of the most misunderstood parts of American founding history: Freemasonry. Were some of the Founding Fathers Freemasons? Yes. Did Masonic symbols, rituals, and fraternal networks shape parts of early American civic culture? Absolutely. But does that mean America was secretly built by one hidden organization controlling everything from beh...

In this episode of Context & Conviction, we are talking about one of the clearest double standards in American life: how quickly powerful people receive grace, protection, excuses, second chances, and soft language, while poor people, vulnerable people, and ordinary families often receive consequences with no cushion at all. This is not an episode against mercy. It is about selective mercy. We...

America has a strange habit of deciding whether violence is dangerous based on who committed it. When some people protest, they are called rioters before their pain is even understood. When others break through barriers, attack police, threaten public officials, or try to stop a democratic process, the language can suddenly become softer. They are frustrated. They are misunderstood. They are patri...

In this episode of Context & Conviction, we are talking about one of the most powerful labels a government, media system, or society can place on a person or group: terrorist. This word is not neutral. It carries fear. It carries punishment. It shapes public opinion before people ever hear the full story. And throughout history, the label has often depended less on the act itself and more on w...

In this episode of Faith in the Chaos, we sit with one of the most beloved passages in Scripture: Psalm 23. This is not just a psalm for funerals, hard seasons, or moments of grief. It is a reminder for everyday life, for anxious hearts, tired minds, weary souls, and anyone who needs to remember that God is still leading. Together, we reflect on what it means for the Lord to be our Shepherd, why s...

In this episode of Context & Conviction, we are talking about digital policing, surveillance, and the way control often gets renamed as safety. Across the country, technology is being used to watch, track, predict, identify, and monitor people in ways many of us do not fully understand. Facial recognition, license plate readers, phone extraction tools, biometrics, data brokers, protest monitor...

In this episode of Context & Conviction, we look at Haiti through the lens history rarely gives it: not as a nation that simply “fell apart,” but as a nation that dared to become free in a world built on slavery. This episode walks through the deeper story: the violence of French colonial slavery, the uprising that changed the world, the leadership of figures like Toussaint Louverture and Jean...

After Episode 12, where we talked about the crisis in Congo today, I wanted to take a step back and look at one of the names we cannot afford to forget: Patrice Lumumba. Lumumba was the first prime minister of the independent Congo. He came into leadership at a moment when his country was supposed to be stepping out of colonial rule and into freedom. But independence on paper did not mean true fre...

In this episode of Context & Conviction, we turn our attention to the Democratic Republic of Congo, a nation rich in minerals but scarred by decades of violence, exploitation, displacement, and silence from much of the world. Congo’s crisis is not just a headline. It is a human tragedy. Millions have been displaced, families are living through hunger and instability, and armed conflict in east...

In this episode of Context & Conviction, we look at what happens when a nation starts defending cruelty by calling it order, safety, law, or necessity. Episode 11 focuses on the realities surrounding current ICE detention centers, private detention contracts, health concerns, lack of transparency, protest responses, and the way immigrants and detainees are often framed as people who deserve le...

Mercy sounds beautiful until God gives it to someone we think does not deserve it. In this episode of Context & Conviction, we are digging into why Jesus’ mercy so often offended the religious leaders of His time, and why that same tension still shows up in modern Christianity today. From the Pharisees criticizing Jesus for eating with sinners, to the older brother resenting the prodigal son’s...

After the Civil War, America had a choice. It could have rebuilt with justice. It could have protected newly freed Black Americans. It could have confronted the violence, fear, and white backlash that tried to drag the country backward after slavery ended. But instead, America chose compromise. In this episode of Context & Conviction, we are diving into Reconstruction, one of the most misunder...

In the first episode of Faith in the Chaos, we begin with a verse many of us know, but often struggle to live: “Be still, and know that I am God.” This episode is for the weary heart, the anxious mind, and the soul that feels like it has been fighting battles God never asked it to carry alone. We’ll sit with Psalm 46 and talk about what it really means to be still, not as a passive surrender, but...

Episode 8: Useful Evil: Operation Paperclip and the Nazi Scientists America Put to Work After World War II, America helped defeat Nazi Germany and stood before the world as part of the moral victory over one of history’s darkest regimes. The world saw the concentration camps. The world heard about the war crimes. The world was forced to reckon with the evil that had been carried out under Hitler’s...

In this episode of Context & Conviction , I’m diving into one of the most fascinating ancient texts connected to the biblical world: the Book of Enoch . This is not an episode about replacing Scripture. It is not about chasing confusion or building doctrine on a book many Christians were never taught. This is about context. After I got saved, I wanted to understand the Bible more deeply. I am...

Episode 6 of Context and Conviction is here: The Stories America Buried. This one is heavy, but it matters. I’m talking about the parts of American history that were softened, skipped, romanticized, or buried because the full truth makes the story harder to tell. We were taught about freedom, opportunity, expansion, and survival. But we were not always taught who helped settlers survive in the fir...

What if the way some Christians talk about prophecy is not making us more faithful, but more numb? In this episode of Context and Conviction, I’m talking about the danger of using biblical prophecy as a reason to stop caring about suffering. This is not an episode mocking prophecy. I believe Scripture. I believe Jesus is coming back. I believe God is sovereign. But I also believe prophecy was neve...