Accidental Tomatoes

Live from the 2025 Wild Goose Festival , we kick off Season 6 as Joe sits down with Rev. Brad Davis of From Below: Rising Together for Coalfield Justice to ask the question "How is it with your soul?" in regards to the work of justice in one of the poorest regions of the country. (Special thanks to our friend Charles Bretan of A Jew and a Gentile Walk Into a Bar...Mitzvah for producing this episod...

“ Spilling the Black Girl Tea: Unfiltered Stories from the Heart of Appalachia ” is a multimedia project built on the fundamental belief that the people who are the least heard have the most important things to say. The storytellers in the project are Black girls and women who call West Virginia home — part of a vibrant but often overlooked group that comprises less than 2.5% of the entire Mountai...

“ Spilling the Black Girl Tea: Unfiltered Stories from the Heart of Appalachia ” is a multimedia project built on the fundamental belief that the people who are the least heard have the most important things to say. The storytellers in the project are Black girls and women who call West Virginia home — part of a vibrant but often overlooked group that comprises less than 2.5% of the entire Mountai...

“ Spilling the Black Girl Tea: Unfiltered Stories from the Heart of Appalachia ” is a multimedia project built on the fundamental belief that the people who are the least heard have the most important things to say. The storytellers in the project are Black girls and women who call West Virginia home — part of a vibrant but often overlooked group that comprises less than 2.5% of the entire Mountai...

“ Spilling the Black Girl Tea: Unfiltered Stories from the Heart of Appalachia ” is a multimedia project built on the fundamental belief that the people who are the least heard have the most important things to say. The storytellers in the project are Black girls and women who call West Virginia home — part of a vibrant but often overlooked group that comprises less than 2.5% of the entire Mountai...

Joe talks with Brad Davis and Josh Scott about how colonialist interpretations of the Bible have helped contribute to the social, economic, political, and spiritual exploitation of Central Appalachia, including the WV water crisis, at the 2024 Wild Goose Festival. (Our apologies for the extra bit of background noise...this episode was recorded live in an open area without studio controls.) Learn m...

Fresh off the 2024 Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church in West Virginia, Heather and Joe take a look at two resolutions that signal a renewed focus on social justice for the denomination in the Mountain State and beyond. Show links: Hope for McDowell: https://hopeinthemountains.com/donate/ (please specify “Hope for McDowell” on the donation page) From Below: Rising Together for Coalfi...

In one of the historically poorest communities in America, thousands of people are going without clean tap water in their homes. And while cities like Flint, MI, and Jackson, MS, deservedly grab national headlines for their water issues, the Southern West Virginia Coalfields are now decades into a water crisis with few answers on the horizon. In this episode, Brad Davis and Caitlin Ware join Heath...

We don't often think about tourism as a justice issue, but the displacement of families and communities to provide a more favorable user experience in tourist locations is a very real concern in places like Appalachia, where connection to the land runs deep and where infrastructure to support a tourist economy lags significantly behind. In this episode, Heather and Joe sit down with Caitlin Ware,...

How is spiritual deconstruction like a lasagna? Is reconstruction a necessary result of deconstruction? Heather Moore and Joe Webb unpack these questions and more in Heather's debut as our new co-host!

What does grief look like in the midst of spiritual/religious deconstruction? When your beliefs change, what do you hold on in the midst of loss? In the first episode of our 5th season, Joe talks openly about how old constructs no longer work for him following the death of his father, and how therapy and community are filling the void.

Is salvation merely about life after death? Or is there a more immediate, more holistic way of seeing salvation through the lens of liberation? In this episode, Joe riffs on how understanding salvation as liberation is more true to the way of Jesus than your typical Christian fire insurance policy.

As science continues to learn more about psychedelic substances and their use becomes more mainstream for both recreational and therapeutic applications, what do the church and faith leaders need to know? In this episode Joe and Jenny chat with Kaleb Graves, a recent Duke Divinity graduate who is researching and exploring the intersections of psychedelic use and Christianity. CONTENT WARNING: Kale...

Recorded live at the Wild Goose Festival on July 15, 2023, Joe talks with return guest Josh Scott about the Bible, progressive Christianity, Appalachian resistance, and West Virginia craft whiskey.

Is progressive Christianity really gaining momentum? Is there hope for institutional mainline denominations? In this episode Joe takes a second crack at deconstructing evangelistic paradigms in favor of a more authentic, contextualized type of faith community.

In this episode guest hosts Jenny Williams and Krysta Rexrode Wolfe talk with Rev. Alba Onofrio (they/them), a.k.a. “ Reverend Sex ” about queerness, activism, healing from spiritual violence, the good news of God in Appalachia, and what it means to be “antagonistically alive.” Alba is the Executive Director and Spiritual Strategist for queer-led Soulforce , which works to end the religious and po...

If God is love, can God exist where love is absent? In this bonus podcast episode, co-hosts Joe Webb and Brad Davis break down Brad's latest blog post , taken from a Maundy Thursday reflection he wrote for the Welch Charge of the United Methodist Church in McDowell County, WV during Holy Week 2023.

We're excited to welcome Josh Scott back to Accidental Tomatoes to talk about his new book, Bible Stories for Grownups, which drops in early April 2023. In this episode, Josh and Joe talk about the importance of contextualizing scripture and understanding the depth and breadth of the human experience at the time some of our most familiar and beloved Bible stories came to be. You can hear more from...

Do Christians really have a biblical mandate to convert other people to Christianity? Or should our evangelism have less to do with recruitment than with awakening people to Jesus' alternative worldview of peace, justice, and liberation? In this episode Joe deconstructs the evangelism of coercion and control in favor of a better, more inclusive story.

For this episode we literally go outside the walls as Joe and Brad chat with Rev. Corey Turnpenny, pastor of Church In The Wild in Windsor, NY. Corey talks about how Church in the Wild came to be, how their nontraditional worship services emerge out of their very specific context, and how they view themselves as a community dedicated to helping other people in their neighborhoods thrive.

Are you tired of the kind of bumper sticker theology where people throw random Bible verses out in almost every conversation? In this episode, Joe takes on a few of his favorite decontextualized passages and offers a more holistic way to look at them.

What kinds of things are innovative United Methodist leaders doing to create more inclusive, justice-oriented, liberation-minded spaces? Joe and Brad discuss their impressions from the recent UMC LEAD Conference in Asheville, NC, in this special Road Show Edition of the podcast. From becoming better neighbors to dismantling racist systems to learning from the natural world, our intrepid co-hosts e...

Singer-songwriter and high school English teacher Daniel Couper joins Joe and Jenny for a conversation about helping high school students record and produce their own album, the joys of creative collaboration, and the deconstruction journey that serves as the backdrop for his art. Learn more about Daniel at http://www.danielcoupermusic.com/ and check out his students' Red Gold Collective project o...

The Accidental Tomatoes content team revisits one of our favorite episodes from season 3 with an all-new list of grievances about the holiday season. From Hallmark Christmas movies to light displays to the so-called "war on Christmas," our creators take a tounge-in-cheek look at all the things that get under our skins during the holidays. Please don't take us too seriously...we certainly don't!

Theologian, author, and speaker Dr. Tom Oord joins Joe for a conversation about Open and Relational Theology, why it's attractive to people experiencing spiritual and religious deconstruction, and what it means to say "God can't"...and what the movie The Princess Bride has to do with it all. Learn more at https://c4ort.com/