Gravity Commons Podcast

Matt and Ben respond to a listener question about finding a place in the body of Christ after clergy sexual abuse. Connect with Gravity Commons: 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 week to all things edifying and interest...

In the face of the rising threat of Christian Nationalism to both church and democracy, Beau Underwood joins us to talk about how some of the hidden undercurrents are present not just among evangelical Christians, but in the mainline church, which is the theme of the book he co-wrote with Brian Kaylor, Baptizing America: How Mainline Protestants Helped Build Christian Nationalism . Beau Underwood...

We're starting a Book Club, and you're invited! We talk about why we wanted to do this, how you can be involved, and the first book we'll discuss: The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism , by journalist Tim Alberta. The Book Club will be a weekly discussion on Fridays at 12pm ET starting August 2, 2024 (recordings available to all members). T...

Though evangelicals emphasize fidelity to the gospel above all else, many have fallen in step with "a different gospel" of Christian nationalism. Analyzing Scripture, church history, and current events in the United States and Russia, Joel Looper offers evangelicals a theological rationale for resisting Christian nationalism. Joel Looper teaches at Baylor University where he serves as coor...

There is no such thing as substitutionary death sacrifice in the Torah, which changes everything we thought we knew about Jesus's death. The consistent message throughout the entire NT is not that Jesus died instead of us, rather, Jesus dies ahead of us so that we can unite with him and be conformed the image of his death. It's not about substitution, it's about participation, and Andr...

What if obedience is not the goal of Christian parenting? What if it's our job as parents to instead help our kids get to know God and discover that God can be trusted? In her book Woven: Nurturing a Faith Your Kid Doesn't Have to Heal From , pastor and parent Meredith Miller helps families nurture the kind of faith that can flex and grow, be broken and repaired. The kind of faith that can...

Men today are starved for sexual formation. They've been failed by parents, churches, and culture alike, leading to widespread shame, confusion, and brokenness in the area of sexuality. We talked with therapist Sam Jolman about helping men reconnect their God-given sexuality with innocence, awe, and joy, and shows readers how to celebrate--instead of struggle against--the gift of sexual desire...

Lee C. Camp joins us (again!) for a wide-ranging conversation about human flourishing, habits, ethics, politics, philosophy, and faith. This is Lee's second time on the podcast - we talked with him in 2020 about his book Scandalous Witness: A Little Political Manifesto for Christians . Lee C. Camp is an award-winning teacher and Professor of Theology & Ethics at Lipscomb University in Nash...

In a world experiencing turbulent change, we need people who are resilient, kind, open, generous, and brave. How do we become those kinds of people? In Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times , popular podcaster Elizabeth Oldfield uses the seven deadly sins as a framework to explore this question. Elizabeth Oldfield hosts The Sacred , a podcast about our deepest values, the stories tha...

We talk with spiritual director Terra McDaniel about how to rediscover the lost practice of lament, so we can heal and hope again. Most people don't know how to process personal or communal mourning and instead struggle to honor our tears, vulnerability, and the full weight of these disillusioning times. But tending our grief is exactly what we need to reimagine a way forward. Terra's book...

Matt posted something on Facebook recently about people who attempt to "police" those going through deconstruction, who seem to: equate deconstruction with de-conversion, say people deconstruct so they can sin, say people deconstruct to 'be cool or hip or trendy or for street cred', criticize 'giving up' on the local church, and blame deconstruction on bad teaching. Matt re...

In their new book Beyond Justification: Liberating Paul’s Gospel , Douglas Campbell and Jon Depue address a growing frustration among many Christians of how to understand what seems to be contradictory messages from Paul about the Gospel. On one hand, Paul usually talks about a participatory, transformational good news full of freedom, resurrection, love, and being ‘in Christ’. On the other hand,...

The fact that "good evangelical Christians are Republican" seems obvious means the propaganda is working. Professor and author Scott Coley helps us understand how evangelicalism became fused with right-wing politics and now presses evangelical theology into the service of authoritarian politics, which he outlines in his new book Ministers of Propaganda: Truth, Power, and the Ideology of th...

A dramatic misinterpretation of the Jewish tradition has shaped the history of the West: Christianity is the religion of love, and Judaism the religion of law. In the face of centuries of this widespread misrepresentation, Rabbi Shai Held, in his book Judaism Is about Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life , recovers the heart of the Jewish tradition, offering the radical and moving argument th...

In her book Forgiveness After Trauma: A Path to Find Healing and Empowerment , Christian minister and scholar Susannah Griffith explores what the Bible says--and doesn't say--about the biblical call to forgive. She helps readers understand a "trauma-informed forgiveness" that is healing and restorative, framing forgiveness within broader concerns around lament, anger, accountability, r...

American history has profoundly shaped, and been shaped by, Christianity. In her book Turning Points in American Church History: How Pivotal Events Shaped a Nation and a Faith , Dr. Elesha Coffman tells the story of Christianity in the United States by focusing on 13 key events over four centuries of history. Elesha helps us understand our faith and the landscape of American religion. Elesha J. Co...

The Beatitudes are some of the most-quoted and least-understood words of Jesus. Pastor and author Ryan Post helps us hear the Beatitudes anew as good news to form us into Christlikeness. Ryan Post is the lead pastor of Village Church in Burbank, CA and the author of  Healthy Prayer: Integrating Structure, Silence, and Spontaneity and the book we talked about in this converastion, Jesus People: Com...

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...