Cabernet and Pray

Keith Giles spent two years digging through gospels that didn't make the cut, the ones buried in a jar in the Egyptian desert in 1945 alongside fifty other texts the church decided not to count. On this episode, Jeremy pours a Bordeaux blend and sits down with the author of the Quantum Gospel series to ask what it means that the people who assembled the New Testament were doing canon math with pol...

Lauren Peiser has spent time making wine in Italy, working at a seminary, and writing a Substack that will make you use your imagination. In this episode, she brings a concept called "wild magic," the kind of transformation that can't be packaged into a sermon or a stage talk. She talks about Mary not as the untouched ideal of purity culture but as someone who chose to birth Christ in the dirt, in...

What do saints, sinners, and zombies have in common? In this episode, Jeremy sits down with author Matthew DiStefano to talk about his book on The Last of Us , the video game that somehow became one of the most philosophically serious explorations of what it means to be human. This conversation goes places you won't see coming: the MLM structure of Christian nationalism, why empathy is more danger...

Ben introduces the idea of the "feral spirit," a way of understanding spiritual encounter that doesn't require institutional scaffolding to be real. He talks about what happens when churches try to manufacture the Spirit's presence instead of simply making space for it, the difference between rituals that help us remember and rituals that help us control, and why a thousand dolphins playing in the...

What do you do when the very people who introduced you to Jesus can no longer recognize the Jesus your faith has led you to? C.E. Jarnagin is a priest, researcher, and author who's asking that exact question in his new book The Congruent Life , and he brings a rare combination of Anglican liturgy, pastoral honesty, and zero tolerance for religious veneer to the conversation. In this episode, Jerem...

Bethany Cseh is a pastor who spent years standing at a pulpit she wasn't sure she was allowed to occupy, internally justifying each sermon as something other than what it actually was. That tension turned out to be the beginning of a longer, stranger education. In this episode, Bethany joins Jeremy to talk about co-pastoring two completely different churches with her husband, what happened when th...

Beau Stringer spent years as a lead pastor in evangelical spaces. He's on the other side of that now, working in adult discipleship at one of the largest United Methodist churches in the country and making the case that mainline churches are the best thing most deconstruction-adjacent Christians have never heard of. His image for them: public libraries. Quiet, scattered through communities, not se...

What does it actually take for a church to be a safe place? Anthony Parrott, co-pastor of Table Church DC, has spent 17 years in ministry and a lifetime accumulating enough theology to know when it stops being honest. In this conversation, he and Jeremy trace a winding path through open and relational theology, trauma competency, why packaging spiritual formation into a program is its own kind of...

What happens when a former pastor trades the pulpit for a microphone? In this episode, we sit down with Stuart Delony, host of Snarky Faith and author of The Tribulation Survival Guide , for a conversation that is equal parts hilarious and razor-sharp. Stuart unpacks why fear-based theology is basically a drug dealer's business model, how humor functions as a Trojan horse for spiritual healin...

This week on Cabernet & Pray, we sit down with Collin Packer for a conversation that feels as honest as it is necessary. Collin shares his journey from fundamentalist pastor to working in the Texas State House, from not voting for 12 years out of theological conviction to wrestling with what it means to let “justice take a side.” We talk about racial reconciliation, political discipleship, the...

What if the Bible’s most familiar wine stories have been quietly misunderstood all along? In this episode of Cabernet and Pray , Jeremy sits down with New Testament scholar John Anthony Dunne , author of The Mountains Shall Drip Sweet Wine , to uncork what Scripture actually says about alcohol. From the wedding at Cana to the myth of “biblical grape juice,” they explore how modern anxieties have f...

What happens when someone can no longer believe in God—but still can’t let go of Jesus, Pentecostalism, or the church that formed them? In this episode, Jeremy sits down with Colten Barnaby, who calls himself an “atheist Pentecostal,” to talk honestly about losing faith without losing integrity. They explore church history, certainty vs. honesty, why pretending belief can feel like a moral failure...

What if the most sacred spaces in your life aren’t churches at all, but ordinary moments of shared humanity? In this episode of Cabernet and Pray, Jeremy sits down with author and spiritual guide Matthew G. Matson to explore Cathedrals of Connection—a vision of faith that shifts holiness away from institutions and back into the space between people. Over a glass of wine, they talk about decenterin...

What comes after deconstruction? In this episode, I sit down with James McGrath to talk about what it looks like to move beyond tearing faith down and begin the slower, braver work of rebuilding it with honesty, humility, and curiosity. We wrestle with Bible scholarship, doubt, certainty, and why faith that looks like Jesus may require fewer answers and more courage. If you’ve ever felt stuck betw...

What if the real spiritual crisis isn’t disagreement, but how we disagree? In this episode, we explore why certainty has replaced curiosity and why faith so often becomes brittle instead of beautiful. We see what happens when winning arguments matters more than loving people. This isn’t a call to “be nicer,” but a challenge to examine how fear shapes our theology and fractures our communities—and...

What if the faith you inherited isn’t the faith you actually want to keep? In this episode, I sit down with David Hayward—yes, the Naked Pastor himself—to talk about the root systems beneath our beliefs, the fruit they produce in real life, and why so many of us feel torn between what we were handed and what we’re becoming. If you’ve ever wondered whether God can survive your questions… or if...

What happens when a pastor decides the real mission field isn’t inside the church walls… but somewhere between the pulpit and the pub? In this episode, Gavin Linderman and I dive into the beautifully messy overlap of Anabaptist theology, creativity, and craft beverages. We talk about churches that accidentally turn coffee shops into Christian bookstores with bad espresso, bars that become modern m...

What if beauty isn’t something we chase, but something that’s been waiting for us all along? In this episode of Cabernet & Pray, we sit down with author and theologian Diana Butler Bass to talk about what it means to truly live a beautiful year. We discuss how joy, grief, and gratitude can all coexist at the same table. We explore what happens when faith stops being a checklist and starts beco...

What happens when Christianity gets weaponized for political gain? When culture wars hijack the gospel of love? In this episode, we unpack John Fugelsang's book,  Separation of Church and Hate,  exploring why following Jesus might actually mean breaking up with some forms of Christianity. Pour a glass, lean in, and let’s talk about what it really means to love God and neighbor in an age...

What if doing the right thing still made you guilty? Dietrich Bonhoeffer believed that following Jesus sometimes meant stepping straight into the mess—into what he called “the fellowship of guilt.” But was he right? In this episode, we grapple with one of the most challenging ethical questions in the Christian narrative: Can faithfulness ever necessitate breaking the rules? Click here to watch the...

What happens when Christians start rethinking the very idea of hell? In this episode of Cabernet and Pray, we sit down with Brian Recker to ask the questions many of us were told we weren’t allowed to ask. Is hell really eternal conscious torment? What about annihilation? Could universalism actually be more faithful to Jesus? And how do history, culture, and scripture all play into the pictures we...

What if the shrinking of evangelicalism isn’t a crisis to be feared but an opportunity to rediscover something truer, leaner, and more like Jesus? In this episode, I sit down with author Michelle Van Loon to talk about what’s being lost, what’s worth keeping, and why smaller might actually be better for the future of faith. Grab a glass, pull up a chair, and join us as we explore how downsizing co...

What if you’re not the same person you used to be—and that’s exactly the point? In this episode, I explore the strange and beautiful truth that growth requires us to let old versions of ourselves fade away, like water waiting to be turned into wine. From awkward past opinions (yes, I found some of mine in print!) to Taylor Swift lyrics and even a little wisdom from Brian Zahnd and Rob Bell, we’ll...

In this episode, we dig into why the most famous command in Christianity has become more of a coffee mug slogan than an actual way of life. We’ll explore how we’ve domesticated Jesus’ radical ethic into something polite and toothless… and what it would take to bring its wild, world-flipping power back. We’ll look at what happens when faith stops being about certainty and starts being about curiosi...

What if evil is never as strong as it seems? In this episode of Cabernet and Pray , we wade into the heaviness of the world (child trafficking, genocide, injustice) and wrestle with what it means to have hope in the face of it. We explore a surprising biblical theme that runs throughout the Psalms and the prophets. We consider Bonhoeffer’s call to jam a spoke in the wheel, Brueggemann’s...