Theology In Pieces

Send us a Question! Pastors say wild things.  Some ignorant.  Some harmful.  Some just terrible theology... and harmful.  We hear 1 story that impacted slim early on and chew on how pastors speak with a borrowed authority that is easily corrupted when it stops pointing to Jesus. We respond to a question from our listener mailbag about the constant flood of degrading content, distributism in contra...

Send us a Question! What do Dave Ramsey, College Football, Charles Darwin, and the Nicene Creed have in common? Apparently, they’re all part of one podcast episode. In this episode of Theology in Pieces , Slim and Malcolm continue their journey through the Nicene Creed with the words: “Maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.” But first, we have some nonsense to deal with. W...

Send us a Question! Robots Olympics .  New Way to Stop Smoking . And ICE #'s are UP!   Cruelty is the point.     Chaos abounds.  But that's why today's discussion matters.  There is not one God for Americans and another God for immigrants.   Today, we open the Nicene Creed again and slow down on a dense, beautiful line: “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty. ”  Why Just 1 God?...

Send us a Question! “Why should we believe anything you say?”  Today, we explore the limits and necessity of truth and the helpful boundaries it gives.   To begin though, we use three very different stories to surface that tension, from a high-fashion brand whose name translates to “ Fecal Matter,” to a massive meetup of people named Ryan, to a heartbreaking report of a Venezuelan family detained...

Send us a Question! Immigration talk can make Christians defensive fast, but we wanted to slow down long enough to ask a better question: what if “migration” is not a fringe issue, but a core Christian theme woven through Scripture and human life? We’re joined by Alexis Busetti, host of That Makes Total Sense and a PhD student in intercultural studies at Fuller Theological Seminary, to help us reb...

Send us a Question! The Lord's Supper.  What it is.  & Who it's for.   On today's podcast, we catch up on Malcolm’s sabbatical highlighted by his time at monastery, chanting psalms, and rereading big chunks of the New Testament), then we pivot to some annoying Low T shenanigans, The Odyssey, and finally we wrestle with: The Holy Table/ Communion/ Eucharist / Lord's Supper....

Send us a Question! Calling a political opponent “demonic” feels bold until you realize what it does to your soul. In this episode, we begin with a provocative question that's been circulating in some corners of Texas politics and Christian social media: "Is James Talarico the Antichrist?" From there, we zoom out to wrestle with a much bigger issue: how Christians talk about other C...

Send us a Question! What the World Cup, the Knicks, Politics, and Chris Farley Have in Common... After talking about the dangers of patriotism in our last episode, Slim confesses the conflicting feelings found in the joy he found in a world cup victory. That emotional swing matters, because it helps us name the real issue. The problem is not affection but... elevation.  An idol is when a good thin...

Send us a Question! With America heading into a 250th anniversary, we sit with an uncomfortable question Christians tend to dodge until it’s unavoidable: is patriotism a sin? With Malcolm on sabbatical, Slim goes solo and names why this topic feels so spiritually charged right now. We start with the emotional pull of national pride, the summer nostalgia, the stories we tell ourselves about home an...

Send us a Question! Pastors w/ guns. Screens robbing our attention. Families losing income, homes, and loved ones through detention and deportation. If any of that makes your stomach drop, you’re not alone.  We need Sanctuary as christians!  We need Shalom.  We need Jesus.  Today we sit down with Dianne Garcia, a Mennonite pastor in San Antonio who founded Iglesia Cristiana Roca De Refugio . Diane...

Send us a Question! Today, we continue: " Theologians in SUV's Coming Back from the Airport ".  Listen in on an unfiltered conversation with Sho Baraka about creativity, Christian hip hop, and the hidden forces shaping the modern church. We start light and personal, talking Atlanta culture and the “many hats” Sho wears as a writer, cultural critic, speaker, and artist. From there, h...

Send us a Question! “Christ Is King” is everywhere right now and that’s exactly why we needed to slow down and ask what we’re actually confessing. We’re recording during Holy Week, and we feel the tension: the Resurrection is the center of Christian faith, but the name of Jesus keeps getting pulled into arguments about power, violence, and national identity. So we put the slogan on the table and a...

Send us a Question! “Christian socialism” can sound like a contradiction if you’ve been taught that Christianity and capitalism belong together. We slow the whole thing down and ask a better question: what does the gospel actually announce, and what kind of economic life should that announcement produce? Along the way, we respond to a debate clip that tries to shrink the gospel into “Jesus’ finish...

Send us a Question! Is this it?  Are we now living in the endtimes?  Has America kicked off Armageddon?  Recently some commanders are framing this war as part of God’s endgame . We take a hard, careful look at how Armageddon is being invoked to bless violence and ask what Revelation 16 actually means. Drawing on Israel’s story at Megiddo in Judges 4–5, we show how John’s apocalyptic imagery points...

Send us a Question! Mortality on the forehead. Stories in the bones. That’s the current we ride as we swap ash-streaked reflections, step behind the scenes of a first Ash Wednesday service, and welcome Dr. Sorina Higgins —editor, teacher, and scholar of the Inklings—into a wide-open conversation about imagination, power, and the words we use on each other. We start with the tactile: making ashes f...

Send us a Question! **As you may be able to tell...Malcolm's mic wasn't on for today's episode. You'll still hear him through Slim's mic, but its noticeably worse.   All Apologies** Now, for the Episode... When the Empire Demands Your Gaze, Fix Your Eyes on Christ.  We start with the killing of Minnesota nurse Alex Pretti by ICE agents and the rush to label, excuse, and mo...

Send us a Question! A tour is on the calendar, a new book is brewing, and our inbox lit the fuse: what happens to your faith when you step off social media and start searching for unspun news about Gaza, empire, and the stories we’re told? We open the year by taking a hard look at propaganda, grief, and how easy it is to let a nation define “we” for the church.  Then we head to the movies, where a...

Send us a Question! The Winner of 2025's best episode this past year was: Episode 56 - The Anti-Greed Gospel: A Revolutionary Conversation with Malcolm Foley on the Battle with Mammon. No surprise.  Malcolm is pretty great.  Thank you all for listening, sharing, and reviewing!  Keep sharing in 2026.  We're working on a few things behind the scenes to make this podcast even better.   Runn...

Send us a Question! How ought the Christian feel about presidential pardons given our personal dependence on pardons? On today's episode, we dug into the messy intersection of presidential pardons, public trust, and Christian theology to ask a hard question: when a leader can erase consequences with a signature, who bears the cost of the harm? We start with a rapid-fire tour through a heavy n...

Send us a Question! On this episode of Theology in Pieces , Slim and Malcolm are back with a full plate—and not just because Thanksgiving is still lingering in our arteries. We kick things off with National Signing Day and why college football used to be great but is actually terrible. Then we wade into the typical swamp of terrible tweets, biblical misquotes, and the unsettling ease with which Ch...

Send us a Question! Today we sit down with Rev. Dr. Emily McGowin to ask why so many of us feel trapped between “family first” slogans and the weight of church, work, and politics pressing on our homes. Emily’s vision is both bracing and kind: stop chasing a biblical blueprint that doesn’t exist, and start practicing love in households that actually look like ours—single, married, multigenerationa...

Send us a Question! What if the most radical thing you could do this week isn’t another hot take, but a habit that holds? We open with the “No Kings” rallies and ask a tough question: are we organizing for change or outsourcing our hope to cathartic moments? Drawing on Martin Luther King Jr.’s four steps of nonviolent direct action, 1) collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are al...

Send us a Question! What if loving your Christian nationalist neighbor is the most political thing you’ll do this year? Can a stadium memorial where “forgive your enemies” and “hate your enemies” share the same stage?"   Today we invited pastor and author Caleb Campbell ( Disarming Leviathan ) to help us name the powers discipling our age—and offer a way back to love with a spine. We trace Ca...

Send us a Question! Dr. Mika Edmondson, pastor of Koinonia Church in Nashville, joins us for a profound conversation about redemptive suffering and denominational identity. What can Job, MLK, and the african spirituals teach us about redemption and hope amidst incredibly dark times?   "It's not the suffering in and of itself that is redemptive, it is actually our engagement with it,&quot...

Send us a Question! What if becoming like Christ means something far more profound than we've imagined? In this week's episode Malcolm and Slim dive into one of Christianity's most transformative yet often overlooked doctrines. The ancient Christian understanding of salvation extends beyond forgiveness to actual participation in divine life. "What Christ is by nature, we become...