Gravity Commons Podcast

Many Christians and churches are rediscovering that God cares deeply about justice, but opinions abound as to what an approach to biblical justice might look like in contemporary society. We talk with biblical scholar Michael Rhodes about justice-oriented discipleship that is critical for the formation of God's people, which is the theme of his new book Just Discipleship: Biblical Justice in a...

Children are marginalized in our churches, dismissed into Sunday school or silenced for lengthy sermons aimed at adults. Ryan Stollar has spent his career advocating for the rights of children, and in his book The Kingdom of Children : A Liberation Theology , he proposes a liberation theology of the child, whereby we can avoid stunting their spiritual growth and passing on trauma. Ryan Stollar is...

Pastor, podcaster, and public theologian Trey Ferguson knows that faith can get messy. In his book Theologizin' Bigger: Homilies on Living Freely and Loving Wholly , he encourages us to re-engage our imaginations and construct theologies that speak to our current contexts. Our conversation covers topics like how we read the Bible, our inherited traditions, accountability, our value, and what t...

We talked with biblical scholar Pete Enns about how the Bible actually works, what to do when your faith takes turns you never saw coming, and lots more. This is kind of a mashup conclusion for our past series on the Bible and our series on deconstruction. Pete Enns is the Abram S. Clemens Professor of Biblical Studies at Eastern University, and the host of  The Bible for Normal People  podcast. H...

As a Black autistic pastor and disability scholar, Lamar Hardwick lives at the intersection of disability, race, and religion. He wrote How Ableism Fuels Racism: Dismantling the Hierarchy of Bodies in the Church to help Christian communities engage in critical conversations about race by addressing issues of ableism. Lamar Hardwick is the lead pastor of Tri-Cities Church in ATL, GA, and the author...

There are lots of misconceptions about "deconstruction" (i.e. it's the "easy way out" or a way to avoid accountability). But Angela Herrington, in her new book Deconstructing Your Faith Without Losing Yourself , defines it as healing from religious trauma by releasing harmful beliefs, and accompanies people on that journey in her work. Angela Herrington is a Lark's Song Cer...

Many First Nations tribes communicate with the cultural and linguistic thought patterns found in their original tongues. Terry Wildman joins us to talk about The First Nations Version (FNV) , his indigenous translation of the New Testament, which recounts the Creator’s Story—the Christian Scriptures—following the tradition of Native storytellers’ oral cultures. This way of speaking, with its simpl...

Jon Ward's life is divided in half: two decades inside the evangelical Christian bubble and two decades outside of it. In his book Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation , Ward tells the engaging story of his upbringing in, and eventual break from, an influential evangelical church in the 1980s and 1990s. Ward sheds light on the evangelical movement's troubling...

What does it look like to love someone you disagree with? In Loving Disagreement: Fighting for Community through the Fruit of the Spirit , Kathy Khang and Matt Mikalatos share how the fruit of the Spirit informs our ability to engage in profound difference and conflict with love. Kathy Khang is a writer, speaker, and yoga teacher. She's contributed to  More than Serving Tea  and  Voices of Lam...

Most of us assume that all shame is toxic shame (feeling bad for the person I am). But can shame be "good"? In this episode we continue a conversation we started a few episodes ago in our Christmas episode, where we wondered about the way Jesus seems to leverage shame to seek repentance and restitution from oppressors. We received some excellent reflections from Naomi, a member of the Grav...

We started Gravity in 2015, and up until recently the official name of the organization was Gravity Leadership. But we recently changed our name to Gravity Commons . Why? Show notes: Read the article online: Why We Changed Our Name to Gravity Commons Join the Gravity Community . Connect with Gravity: Leave us a message or ask a question  about this or any other episode and we'll answer it on a...

In her book Eve Isn't Evil: Feminist Readings of the Bible to Upend Our Assumptions , the Rev. Dr. Julie Faith Parker reads biblical texts through a feminist lens, discussing how vital our readings of the Bible can be as a source of strength, guidance, and joyful defiance. Julie Faith Parker lives in NYC where she is a visiting scholar at Union Theological Seminary and biblical scholar in resi...

We talk with pastor and professor Cheryl Bridges Johns about why our reading of the Bible needs to be "re-enchanted" for us to encounter it as God's Word. She is the author of Re-Enchanting the Text: Discovering the Bible as Sacred, Dangerous, and Mysterious. Cheryl Bridges Johns is a pastor and theologian who has taught collee and seminary students for over 40 years. She is visiting p...

Christy, Matt, and Ben spend some time reflecting on the past year: what they're learning and hoping for in the new year (and opening Christmas presents!). Connect with Gravity: Leave us a message or ask a question  about this or any other episode and we'll answer it on a future episode. Join the Gravity Community to interact with other listeners, and get our list of curated links each wee...

As part of our series on how to understand and read the Bible, we talk with New Testament scholar Robyn Whitaker about why and how to read the Bible on its own terms (instead of trying to make it into something it's not). Robyn Whitaker is Associate Professor of New Testament Studies at Pilgrim Theological College and the University of Divinity in Melbourne Australia. She co-hosts the By the W...

We talk with Rev. Dr. Miguel A. De La Torre about his book Reading the Bible From the Margins and how learning to read from the perspective of the poor, oppressed, and marginalized can enrich our perspective on what Scripture means and does. Rev. Dr. Miguel A. De La Torre, Professor of Social Ethics and Latinx Studies at the  Iliff School of Theology  in Denver, Colorado. He has served as the elec...

We talk with New Testament scholar Scot McKnight about his new translation of the New Testament, entitled The Second Testament: A New Translation , and why encountering the strangeness of the Bible can help us to read it anew. Connect with Gravity: Leave us a message or ask a question  about this or any other episode and we'll answer it on a future episode. Join the Gravity Community to intera...

What if the imperfections and contradictions in Scripture aren't an accident? What if they were allowed to be there by the Holy Spirit in order to draw us beyond the literal words on the page and deeper into the spiritual truth God is trying to teach us? As provocative or unorthodox as that might sound, it is in fact a very ancient way of understanding what it means for the Bible to be divinel...

In response to our conversation with Chris Green, we've received a couple questions asking for examples of how this "new/old" way of interpreting the Scriptures works. So we used a recent sermon from Matt on 2 Samuel 21:1-14 (David avenging the Gibeonites) as an example and talked about the implications. Here's a link to Matt's original sermon, if you'd like to listen: Rizp...

As part of our series on the Bible, we talk with Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg about Jewish interpretation of Scripture, repentance and forgiveness, and some of the commons things Christians miss in the Hebrew Scriptures (aka the Old Testament). Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg is author of numerous books, including On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World --winner of the National Jewish Bo...

“Scripture is a spring of life-giving, life-altering truth, but when we don’t understand how and why it came to us, we end up misusing it.” Karen Keen joins us to talk about how we got the Bible, why that matters, and how history shows us that Scripture can be used for both life-giving and destructive purposes. Karen's book The Word of a Humble God: The Origins, Inspiration, and Interpretation...

As part of our series on reading and interpreting the Bible, we talk with pastor Melissa Florer-Bixler about how to find God in the Old Testament, reading it as a Christian without succumbing to the pitfalls of antisemitism and supercessionism. She wrote about these issues in her book Fire by Night: Finding God in the Pages of the Old Testament . Melissa is the pastor of Raleigh Mennonite Church,...

To kick off our series on reading and interpreting the Bible, we talk with pastor and professor Chris Green about how his reading of the Bible has changed over the years from his upbringing in pentecostal holiness to his recent consecration as an Anglican bishop. We touch on how to read disturbing texts, as well as other elements of his book Sanctifying Interpretation: Vocation, Holiness and Scrip...

Critical race theory (CRT) has become a lightning rod in contemporary American politics and evangelical Christianity. In this interview, Dr, Robert Chao Romero and Dr. Jeff Liou offer a critical but constructive and sympathetic introduction to CRT written from a perspective rooted in Scripture and Christian theology, moving us beyond caricatures and misinformation to consider how critical race the...

CW: Domestic violence and abuse. On any given Sunday morning, a pastor can look over the 100 members of the congregation and see 25 women and 14 men who have been crippled by domestic violence and trauma--no matter the race or socio-economic group. The church is more than a hospital for sinners, it is also an emergency room for those who have been sinned against. But emergency rooms are not the pl...