Homebrewed Christianity

I had the privilege of sitting down with Dr. Cornel West, one of America's most distinguished public intellectuals and philosophers, to discuss his historic Gifford Lectures, which marked a watershed moment in the series - bringing a jazz-soaked philosophical methodology to this centuries-old tradition of natural theology. West has spent decades at the intersection of rigorous academic scholarship...

In this episode, we turn to the radical vision of William Blake with brilliant scholar and psychotherapist Mark Vernon. Mark argues that Blake isn't just a historical curiosity—he's a guide for rewilding our humanity in an age of spiritual flatness. We explore how Blake saw the collapse of cultural imagination coming 200 years ago, offering us a way out of what Mark calls the "narrow deadening" of...

I got an email from a retired university chaplain who'd hit a wall - after decades of ministry, he felt so culturally alienated from undergrad students that he didn't think he could do the job anymore. It made me think about my friend Nicole Torbitzky, who serves as both philosophy professor and university chaplain at Lindenwood University in Missouri. We dove into how she navigates the shifting r...

What if everything we think we know about trauma and healing is backwards? Today I'm talking with Aizaiah Young about his incredible new book "Trauma and Renewal" and honestly, this conversation blew me away. Isaiah survived a near-death motorcycle accident right after passing his PhD comprehensive exams (talk about terrible timing), and during a 16-hour surgery, he had this profound mystical enco...

In this episode, Tim Whitaker from the New Evangelical joined me for one of those sprawling conversations that somehow manages to connect Christian nationalism, the Democratic Party's moral cowardice, process theology, and whether buying burritos on payment plans signals the end of civilization. We started with our upcoming "God of Justice" class and quickly dove into the bewildering reality of wa...

What if everything you thought you knew about why evangelical Christians became politically active was completely wrong? Today I sit down with one of America's greatest historians of religion, Randall Balmer, to do some serious myth-busting. We dive deep into what Balmer calls "the abortion myth" - the widely believed but false story that evangelicals mobilized politically in the 1970s over Roe v....

So I got pulled into this fascinating email exchange with Brian McLaren about Kojin Karatani's The Structure of World History, and it turns out there's this whole crew of organizers and academics who've been quietly working with these ideas to rethink everything from social movements to economic theory. My guest Guillermo Bervejillo—who went from being a disillusioned neoclassical economist to wri...

You can join the Democracy in Tension online summit and get access to all the lectures today.⁠ You can WATCH this conversation on YouTube Dr. Matthew Segall is a transdisciplinary researcher and teacher who applies process philosophy to various natural and social sciences, including consciousness. He is also an  Assistant Professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Program at the Cal...

Well, Ryan Burge is back with a bunch of graphs about religion. We covered the supposed "Gen Z revival" (spoiler alert: Ryan's data says it's not happening), dove deep into some philosophical sociology about why people are leaving religion, and I went on my usual tangents about Charles Taylor and Hartmut Rosa, while Ryan kept bringing us back to earth with actual numbers. We also spent way too muc...

Another epic live stream from our Democracy in Tension summit! Aaron Simmons and I dive deep with theologian and community organizer Aaron Staufer about how sacred values and vulnerability shape our political life together. We wrestle with the big questions y'all have been sending in - can mainline churches recover a compelling sense of the sacred while staying committed to critical thinking? How...

What's up Theology Nerds! We're diving deep into one of the most powerful sessions from last year's Theology Beer Camp in Denver - a conversation that honestly left me speechless. Brian McLaren kicks us off with a gut-punch keynote on ecological crisis and the power of lament that'll challenge everything you think you know about faith in our current moment. Then Jacob Erickson responds with some b...

Hey y'all, so this was our first live stream kicking off this online democracy summit we're doing - basically a bunch of us nerds getting together to wrestle with why everything seems to be falling apart politically and what the hell we're supposed to do about it. Kevin Carnahan and Aaron Simmons joined me to dig into Kevin's lecture about Christian citizenship, which traces this fascinating line...

In this episode, I am joined by Josh Scott, a minister at GracePointe Church in Nashville and author of the new book Parables: Putting Jesus Stories in Their Place. We discuss the book's exploration of Jesus' parables, focusing on their historical context and contemporary relevance. Josh shares insights into how these parables challenge both ancient and modern assumptions about power, empire, and...

So Andy and I just got back from this wild week in Berlin where we taught 25 folks about Bonhoeffer right there in his actual house - like, we're sitting in his bedroom, walking the same streets, the whole deal. And wow, this trip was different from the others because everyone kept asking the question that used to make me roll my eyes: "Is this our Bonhoeffer moment?" But after spending time with...

In this conversation, I got to catch up with my friend Jacob Erickson, who's doing some inspiring work at Trinity College Dublin, where they've just launched a new Master's in Theology and Social Justice. What struck me most was how Jake and his colleagues are embodying this broader transformation happening in theological education - moving beyond those traditional disciplinary boundaries to creat...

What's up, Theology Nerds! So I had my buddy Matt Novenson on to talk about what's happening on the cutting edge of New Testament research these days, and let me tell you, it's way broader than you might think. We covered five major areas where scholars are doing really fascinating work: first, bringing Jewish studies into conversation with the New Testament (like Matthew Thiessen's work on how Je...

Just got back from three and a half weeks in Europe (still not sure what time zone I'm in), and Aaron Simmons and I dove straight into the deep end of why democracy feels like it's falling apart. We're wrestling with this massive question: what do you do when reason-giving just seems to fail completely - when people either dismiss everyone who disagrees as morally bankrupt, or assume their own vie...

Nicholas Spencer joins us for a fascinating conversation about the complex relationship between science and religion, moving far beyond the tired warfare narrative that dominates popular discourse. As a senior fellow at Theos and author of several important books including the recently released The Landscapes of Science and Religion: What Are We Disagreeing About?, Nick brings both historical dept...

Ethicist and organizer Dr. Aaron Staufer returns to the podcast to tackle one of the most pressing questions facing progressive Christianity today: how do we move from feeling overwhelmed and powerless to actually building meaningful change in our communities? Aaron brings his experience as both a theologian and organizer to help us understand why mainline Protestantism has struggled to find its p...

In this episode, I am joined by the eminent historian of science and religion, Peter Harrison. We examine how we've inherited a distorted narrative about the relationship between science and religion. Rather than the conflict narrative we're accustomed to, Harrison reveals that science and religion are not historical foes, and that modern Western sciences are actually built on theological assumpti...

In this episode, Aaron Simmons stepped up to host this conversation with Robert Talisse while I'm leading the Bonhoeffer travel-learning trip. They unpack one of the most pressing issues of our time - this wild paradox where the very thing democracy needs (us banding together with like-minded folks to get stuff done) is also the thing that's slowly destroying our ability to see people who disagree...

This was our final Q&A session wrapping up Grace's lecture series on the Holy Spirit (you can get here), and what a fantastic conversation it turned out to be! Grace shared how spending time with pneumatology has shifted her focus toward the practical, embodied aspects of faith - moving beyond the academic exercises of graduate school toward understanding how the Spirit calls us to live sustainabl...

On this episode, we're back live at Lot 63 in Winston-Salem. I was joined once more by Corey Walker & Bill Leonard for a wide-ranging conversation from the Council of Nicaea to smartphone addiction. We explore the roots of our civilizational crisis, tracing lines from the Anabaptist radicals 500 years ago who said "God alone is judge of conscience" all the way to today's algorithmic plantation whe...

In this episode, I am joined by the podcast Producer, Josh Gilbert, for our second tutorial edition. This time, we tackle some heavy stuff - Josh opens up about his modern existential crisis of living untethered from traditional institutions, which gets us into William James' "Will to Believe" and the whole mess of making momentous decisions in a culture that's allergic to commitment. Then I get n...

Grace Ji-Sun Kim joined me at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Durham for a fantastic live Pentecost Podcast, and let me tell you, the Spirit was moving! Grace had just preached at Duke's chapel that morning (complete with a birth story analogy that had people talking), and we dove deep into the connections between creation's hovering spirit and the fire that made us human as a species. We explored...