Reclaiming the Garden

We’re ending this year with a lovely conversation with our pals from the Couch Communion Podcast, Sara Kaufmann and Jordyn Manczyk! We also have an episode we did with them over on their podcast where we played Bible and Christmas Jeopardy, so go check that out! In this episode, we reflect on what happened in the Christian faith/religion and the exvangelical/deconstruction spheres this year. We ac...

This is part two of two episodes about our church experiences. In this episode, we start by briefly touching on two elements of our church adolescence we didn’t get to in the first episode (and even as April types this, she can think of so many more memories she didn’t get to; but they’re bound to come up in other episodes)--experiences around the themes of missionary and martyrdom aspirations. We...

In this episode, we have a conversation with our wonderfully queer friend Nathan Daniel Cromwell! He discusses his faith background, wild stories from when he served in Australia and Indonesia through the evangelical org Youth with a Mission, his shift towards agnosticism (though he has no doubt in his mind that he’s got some guardian angels), and how he came to terms with being trans. You can fin...

This is part one of two episodes about our church experiences. In this episode we focus on children’s church, youth group, and church camp, and the next episode will be about church in the midst of the deconstruction and reconstruction of our faith (though in the next episode we’ll still have a few things from youth group and church camp to bring up, there’s so much to talk about!). We talk about...

In this episode, we have a conversation with the awesome queer couple Angel and Nicole Morris! They discuss their winding journeys of faith, the challenges they faced when coming out at a Christian university, and the spiritual practices that they’ve discovered and found meaningful as they now find themselves no longer identifying as Christians. We also talk about how embodiment is really importan...

The beasts in the book of Revelation are scary...but what’s even more terrifying are the oppressive, violent, greedy empires they represent (and in which all of us are complicit). In this episode, we get down and dirty and nerdy with scripture as we break down the misconceptions we were taught about this apocalyptic text; most notably, the supposed order of events of the end of the world (sometime...

In this episode, we have a conversation with author and filmmaker (and April’s best friend) Brianna da Silva. We discuss her faith background and her journey to becoming an atheist and coming to terms with her lesbian identity, and how that experience impacted her creative process and what she believes about storytelling (and along with that we do a little shit-talking about Christian movies, of c...

In this episode, we talk about women all across the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament—from badass skull-breaking ladies like Jael to the too-many-Marys to the unnamed women that Jesus encountered, and everyone else in-between. We discuss the nuances of their stories that often aren’t brought up in church (if the women are even mentioned at all), and we talk about the “Proverbs 31 woman” and why e...

In this episode, we talk with soon-to-be Master’s student in gender, sexuality, and culture, Artie Peters (they/he). They share about their faith journey, and he also talks about his hopes and interests for his Master’s degree program, and the importance of rituals in his life (such as reading, which leads into a big discussion about media and its impacts on our lives). We also poke fun at April’s...

In this episode, we discuss the recently released Netflix documentary Pray Away, which tells the stories of ex-leaders (all of whom are queer) of the conversion therapy movement; they speak out about its harm to the LGBTQ+ community and its devastating persistence in the modern day through new movements like Freedom March. We discuss the stories that touched our hearts (particularly Julie Rodgers’...

In this episode, we talk with our wonderful friend and fierce LGBTQ+ Christian advocate Lauren Dempster (she/they). They share the story of their winding faith journey and how they came to terms with their bisexuality and non-binary gender identity. She also talks about the painful process of coming out to her non-affirming church and eventually choosing to leave it.  You can follow Lauren on...

Content warning: sexual abuse, evangelical bullshit, religious shame/trauma Purity culture—the sexual ethic taught by most evangelical and Catholic churches that sex is only good/holy in the context of monogamous marriage between a cisgender man and cisgender woman. It’s a teaching that has led to so much sexual shame, abuse, and loss of people’s agency and embodiment. In this episode, we discuss...

In this episode, we have a conversation with justice educator, activist, (sometimes reluctant) minister, and writer/speaker Alicia Crosby. Alicia and April start off by bonding over their shared alma mater, Hollins University. After that, we get into Alicia’s faith journey, her “ecumenical promiscuousness” and what she’s learned from different Christian traditions, her coming out journey and panse...

In this episode, we get down and dirty and nerdy with Scripture, specifically with the first three chapters of Genesis. We’re breaking down the misconceptions about the text that we were taught by the evangelical churches we grew up in, and providing another way of looking at these topics from a scientific and LGBTQ+ affirming standpoint, while also honoring its place in the bigger story of God. W...

In this episode, we talk with Hungarian academic Amy Kósa about her religious background, how she became a progressive Christian, and the research she is currently doing on the dynamics of evangelical and progressive Christianity in the United States. We also talk about our shared love for the progressive Christian writer Rachel Held Evans, why the Bible is NOT “clear,” the pressure to proselytize...

We’re so excited to launch this podcast! In our first episode, we discuss why we chose “Reclaiming the Garden” as our title, and we share a bit about our faith journeys of coming to terms with our queer identities. RHE tweet that April quotes:   https://mobile.twitter.com/rachelheldevans/status/1003321449497681921 Our social media: @reclaimingthegarden on Insta, @RtGardenPodcast on Twitter. O...