Holy Heretics: Losing Religion and Finding Jesus

When bad things happen, I often hear people say "Well, God's still on the throne," as if that is some kind of balm or solution for the pain, evil, and uncertainty the world is facing. But here's the problem: God was on the throne during the Holocaust. God was on the throne during segregation and Jim Crow. God is on the throne as thousands of innocent Ukrainian citizens are currently dying from Rus...

Episode Summary Men are in charge and women submit. Men lead and women follow. Men have a biblical mandate from God to lead the Church and the home while women are ordained by God to be silent and submissive not only to their husbands, but every other male leader they encounter in the Church. These are the lies many of us grew up believing. These are the lies keeping so many women in abusive relat...

Leaving white evangelicalism is one thing. Leaving white spaces and white theology is quite another. Writer and activist Dante Stewart joins us today to discuss his new book Shoutin In the Fire: An American Epistle. and how he escaped slaveholder religion in his quest to uncover the heart of Christianity . His journey as a black, Christian, American out of predominantly white spaces offers a path...

Throughout this country’s history, the hallmarks of American democracy – opportunity, freedom, and prosperity – have been largely reserved for white people through the intentional exclusion and oppression of people of color. America’s original sin is white supremacy, born and bred into the first laws of our land and fully endorsed by the church. Am I right Southern Baptist Convention? Yesterday’s...

“Few people can teach you the Enneagram with the genuine insight, humor, and potential for real growth and change better than Suzanne Stabile, writes Father Richard Rohr. And after this incredible episode, we agree! Stabile is one of the world’s most sought-after gurus when it comes to all things Enneagram. Today, she joins us to discuss what it means to know your number, to live a balanced life w...

There are some episodes that defy description, that cover so much ground that it is difficult to describe. This conversation with theologian, poet, activist, and historian Randy Woodley is one such episode. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again for those in the back: evangelicalism is a dominator religion. It seeks to dominate the earth, women, black and brown bodies, those on the fringes of...

It's been said Christianity is heavy on teaching and light on praxis. You could argue the last two thousands years of Church history has been one long, and often violent, conversation about right beliefs but not right action. Thus, you can believe all the (supposedly) right things about God, the virgin birth, the resurrection, and the Bible and still be in bondage. But what if there is another way...

Deconstruction has become a dirty word in evangelical circles. Some people think all we want to do is burn Christianity to the ground. Others worry that the deconstruction community isn’t doing enough to shed itself from fundamentalism. We will just be honest, most days we’d rather just let evangelicalism go up in flames, purging the entire super-structure that is modern Christianity. We know that...

Leaving evangelicalism feels a lot like recovering from an addiction. “For a species wired for survival, we have an odd habit of getting hooked on things that can kill us,” writes science journalist and professor Michael D. Lemonick. Much like an addictive substance, evangelicalism felt good until it didn’t. Most of us began deconstructing evangelical fundamentalism with one goal in mind: to...

According to CNN’s Kirsten Powers, the United States is headed toward a constitutional crisis. Led primarily by white evangelicals and their cult-like worship of former President Donald Trump, American democracy is on the verge of collapse. How do we move forward? How do we have healthy conversations with our friends and family who continue to believe conspiracy theories and parrot the lies they h...

After 30 interviews and 35 episodes, Gary Alan and Melanie look back, reflecting on what they’ve learned, what surprised them, where they hope to go with Season 2, and more. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and a review 🙏 Show notes: https://www.sophiasociety.org/podcast/reflecting-on-season-one Follow us on social media! Twitter: @holyheretics | Instagram: @holyhereticspodca...

Why are we so offended by “cussing”? Is someone really “going downhill” if they smoke tobacco or have tattoos? Melanie joins Katherine from Uncertain Podcast and William from The Space Between Podcast to discuss the morality, legalism, and taboos surrounding these behaviors in the Evangelical Church. How and why did they become such a marker of one’s status with God? And are there more forces at w...

CW : We discuss trauma, sexualized violence, abuse, and other topics that may be triggering. Please listen at your own discretion. Religious trauma is sneaky for so many reasons, perhaps none more so than the fact that trauma of any kind was minimized or delegitimized by religious leaders. So many of us who call ourselves ex-vangelicals find it hard to even believe that we have trauma. But do we?...

Continuing our conversation from last week with C Davis, we hear more about her faith journey, as well as chat about why she is able to have so much compassion despite everything she’s experienced and seen and able to see beyond rhetoric to the truth. Follow her on Instagram: @DeconstructingBlack and @DeconstructingColors ; and consider supporting her work: https://cash.app/$DeconstructingBlk If y...

From being raised in a predominantly Black church to finding herself in predominantly white megachurches to calling herself a spiritualist today, C Davis has had quite the faith journey. Though many who hear that might feel sadness over her losing her faith, she has gained such immense compassion and empathy that she doesn’t see it as a loss. In this first half of our interview with her, we dig in...

Recently, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill (a Christianity Today podcast that looks into why Mars Hill church met such a quick demise) released a bonus episode. In the episode, host Mike Cosper spent time looking at how Mars Hill’s pastor, Mark Driscoll, and Joshua Harris, the I Kissed Dating Goodbye author and former Sovereign Grace Ministries prodigy, had many similarities, despite having wildly d...

When your entire understanding of God, Jesus, and faith is filtered through the lens of the colonizer, it changes everything. But as today’s guest points out, it’s to the detriment of not only ourselves, but to everyone and every thing. Author Ched Myers talks with us about “radical discipleship,” how that relates to decolonizing our white American evangelical faith, and how a decolonized reading...

We all hate politics. With every politician and candidate seemingly corrupt af, voting has turned into an exercise of futility and despair. But our guest today, Charlie McCallie, is a pastor who sees politics very differently. In this episode, he walks us through what politics are at their best, why Christians should be involved, and why it’s about so much more than partisanship and nationalism. I...

Is the American Evangelical Church worth saving? Or is it beyond repair? Many ex-vangelicals are ready to let it die and build something new in its place, but in this episode, we chat with Tim Whitaker, creator of The New Evangelicals , about how he’s fighting to rebuild the American Evangelical Church in a more loving, Christ-like image, despite great pushback from within the Church itself. Follo...

After growing up in the south in the heyday of purity culture, Blair of @TalkPurityToMe recognized that she needed to relearn how to relate to herself and others. Once she healed from the harm she endured through purity culture, she decided to start speaking out against it so that others could heal, too. We talk with Blair about how she came to recognize how unhealthy purity culture had made her,...

If you’ve ever been told not to speak up so you don’t “hurt the witness of the Church,” or if you’ve been discouraged from calling out toxic behavior because Christians are supposed to “bring light and joy and not negativity,” this episode is for you. After years of devoting herself to serving her church, Julia, aka @ThatLoudDeconstructingOne, finally decided she wouldn’t be silenced anymore. We t...

“God’s got this!” “Let go and let God.” “Everything will be okay in the end.” Despite being great bumper stickers, these sayings actually cause more theological problems than they solve. Today we’re chatting with Dr. Thomas Jay Oord, an open and relational theologian, about what God can and can’t do, what God does and does not know, and how we may have gotten God’s nature wrong for centuries. Foll...

Women of the Christian faith eventually have to confront one really big question: Why stay in a system that actively works to silence women and keep them from following their callings? For today’s guest, Kelly Lamb, that question led her on a quest for the essence of faith. We talk with her about what she found, how her faith is different, and how she’s making space for women. Follow Kelly on Inst...

Can God only be experienced through the Church? Or is God revealed and able to be experienced elsewhere? Dr. Belden C. Lane, professor emeritus of theological studies, believes our experience of God is too limited and has thus spent many years cultivating the spiritual discipline of solo wilderness backpacking. In our conversation with him, we discuss why we need the wilderness, how being taken to...

What happens when you realize your religion does everything except foster wholeness, flourishing, and love? For Flamy Grant and Ben Grace, two of the four hosts of Heathen Podcast, it meant searching for belonging, liberation, and authenticity beyond the confines of religion. We chat with them about what they found, where they found it, and what truly unconditional community and acceptance looks l...