Holy Heretics: Losing Religion and Finding Jesus

As one half of the hosting team at Heathen Podcast, Anissa Nishira and Karyn Thurston are done with shame. Despite their vastly different upbringings, they each were taught a religion of shame, conformity, and certainty. In this episode, we talk with them about how they are now on a quest to drop the shame and helps others do so, all while building a faith that’s based on love. We also touch on de...

Fed up with superficial religion but also feeling empty from pursuing pleasure as the highest virtue, Reina Rose (host of the Roku TV show Soul Nutrition ) began searching for a new way to fill her soul. In our conversation with her, she tells us what she discovered on her journey, how she nourishes her soul, and what spirituality looks like for her today, as well as offers some tips for how to fi...

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and a review 🙏 To church or not to church, that is the question—at least for those of us who no longer claim the evangelical label. And if we do decide to stay, what do we do when we disagree with things being taught or supported either by the church or by our fellow churchgoers? We sat down with Joey, the host of Dismantle Pod , to talk about...

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and a review 🙏 Most of us who are raised evangelical are taught 3 things about the Bible: 1. that it’s the Word of God; 2. that it’s inerrant (i.e., without error); and 3. that a “plain and simple” reading of it contains all the truth humankind will ever need. But what if none of those things is true? What is the Bible then? How do we read it...

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and a review 🙏 Everyone’s experience with “deconstruction” or “leaving the faith” is different, but one thing that so many have in common is a loss of community. Whether it was by choice or by some level of excommunication, we often find ourselves in need of a new community that understands what we’ve been through and where we are in our faith...

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and a review 🙏 Meghan Tschanz was a good Christian girl her whole life: She went to church, she stayed “pure,” she submitted to male authority, and she dedicated many years of her life to serving God by becoming a missionary. But now, her commitment to God compels her to dismantle so much of what she once promoted. She talks with us about how...

How sure are you about what you believe? How do you know it’s true? Will Thorpe (aka @hereticaltheology) has made it his mission to ask the difficult questions about faith and God in order to make Christianity less harmful. We sat down with the fundamentalist-turned-atheist to talk about his faith journey, why he believes Christianity is harmful, and why he continues to engage in biblical textual...

From his fundamentalist, homeschooled (Bill Gothard style) upbringing to finding himself addicted to alcohol and homeless in France, Travis Wade Zinn has been through a lot. His faith has understandably gone through many changes—including being nonexistent for a while—yet he believes he’s found a deeper connection to God via ancient Christian practices that the modern American Church has lost. Lis...

“Other people have it worse.” “This really wasn’t that bad.” “Stop making mountains out of molehills.” If you’ve ever said these things to yourself when thinking about your religious upbringing, or if other people have ever said them to you, congrats! You’ve been spiritually bypassed! Religious trauma is no joke, and it affects so very many of us. If you’ve ever wondered what religious trauma is,...

If what the evangelical church teaches about sex before marriage (i.e. purity culture) is harmful, is it any surprise that what it teaches about sex after marriage is just as damaging? When Sheila Wray Gregoire, popular blogger and author, set out to survey 20,000 Christian wives about their sex lives, she had no idea all the bombshells her research would uncover. We sat down to chat with her abou...

You’re either right or you’re wrong, there is no in between. At least, that’s what most versions of Christianity in the U.S. have taught for decades, saying that if a spiritual practice falls in the “fully wrong” category, we should have nothing to do with it. But what if there’s a lot to be learned from other religions and practices? What if they understand aspects of faith and God that we have l...

Biblical literalism—i.e. reading the Bible literally and historically—has become synonymous with the Christian faith. But what if we told you that it’s not the original (nor most faithful) interpretation of Hebrew and Christian sacred texts? It can be terrifying to even consider not reading them from that lens, since we’ve been taught for so long that any other lens is heretical. But our conversat...

When our journeys take us to unexpected places, sometimes all we can do is cry…and make jokes about it. For Kristina Harutoonian, the personality behind @thedtrblog , when she started deconstructing her faith because of toxic leaders and theologies, she never anticipated eventually using her sense of humor to speak out against them. But today, because of her incredible journey, she’s embraced the...

Is it possible that most of what our evangelical churches teach about sex and purity actually prime us for abuse? In this episode, we chat with Emily Joy Allison, author of the new book #ChurchToo: How Purity Culture Upholds Abuse and How to Find Healing , about how purity culture, complementarianism, and male headship contributed to her abuse. She also offers some risk-factors or warning signs of...

Why did Joshua Harris , the original face of purity culture, eventually recant everything he once believed? What does he believe now? And what does that mean for the millions of Christians who adopted his stances? Melanie and Gary Alan sit down with the author to talk about his faith journey thus far, complete with its successes, losses, reversals, and apologies. Follow Josh on Instagram and Twitt...

Those of us who were raised evangelical are well acquainted with the terms “family values” and “Christian values.” But do we know where they came from, what came before them, and that they’re more political than they are rooted in Christ? That’s why historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez ’s seminal new book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation is a game-cha...

If Americans could call a truce, just for a moment, what would happen? Would we see the humans on the other side of the political aisle? Would it enable us to find common ground with people who believe differently than we do? We sat down with Chris Staron, producer of Truce Podcast , to talk about what he’s learned about the history of Christianity in America and why it matters so much more than m...

What does it look like to actually love our enemies? We sit down with Dr. Russell Johnson , a professor at the University of Chicago, to talk about his personal faith journey, as well as what he’s learned through his studies about dualism, the “us vs. them” mindset, disagreement, and how to truly love our enemies. For show notes, click here or go to holyheretics.org. Follow us on social media! Twi...

Melanie and Gary Alan briefly respond to the results of the independent investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against the late apologist Ravi Zacharias of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. For show notes, click here or go to holyheretics.org. Follow us on social media! Twitter | Instagram | Facebook Credits This episode was written by Gary Alan Taylor and Melanie Mudge (read thei...

The insurrection at the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 wasn’t a spontaneous decision by rogue militants to commit treason, this day was decades in the making. Fueled by a network of Christian nationalists including mega-church pastors, politicians, and religious organizations, January 6 showed the lengths many evangelicals will go to to maintain power over culture. But are Christians sup...

If you are like us, you grew up in a home and a church where men were in charge and women submitted. The Bible was even used as the reason why. Why can women be Prime Ministers or Vice Presidents but not pastors or priests? Why also is the church one of the safest places to be for a sexual predator and one of the more dangerous places to be as a female victim of sexual assault? The answer, “biblic...

Examining specific aspects of “Purity Culture” and what their effects were, Melanie and Gary Alan draw both on personal experience and listeners’ stories to give an honest critique of the methods adopted by many ministries and churches to keep young people from engaging in any sexual activity before marriage. They also highlight the lies hidden in plain site within the purity culture movement, off...

Examining the first of the three “P”s of American Christianity’s “unholy trinity,” Gary Alan and Melanie dive deeper into the world of Purity and purity culture. In order to honestly discuss how the concept of purity and the resulting “purity culture” of the 1990s and 2000s affected an entire generation, they first look at the history of purity, then delve briefly into the history of purity moveme...

Is it possible that the American Church stopped worshipping God a long time ago and began worshipping something else? What if we’ve begun bowing down at the altar for a substitute, an “unholy trinity,” rather than bowing to the real Trinity? In this episode, Gary Alan and Melanie look at the 3 “P”s of fundamentalism, demonstrate how they’ve influenced Christianity in the United States, and conside...

In the premiere episode, Melanie and Gary Alan explain why you might be a “Holy Heretic.” They discuss how orthodoxy and heresy not only interact with each other, but also how they have shaped the Church throughout history. But most importantly, they highlight how this has impacted not just the modern Church, but also our theology and our understanding of God. For show notes, click here . Follow u...