Religion on the Mind

Guests: Victoria Jackson & Terry Shoemaker Topics: Religion, sport, and the sacred — evangelical baggage and finite vs. eternal stakes (7:00) Maradona's "Hand of God" and sport as modern mythology (13:42) Victoria's World Cup travel plans and fan culture on the road (20:36) FIFA corruption, Infantino, and Trump's soccer obsession (36:13) Masculinity, grace, and violence across sports (44:45) Promo...

Guests: Tony Jones & Josh Gilbert (Generation Gap Culture Hour returns!) Topics: Culture roundup: All the Pretty Horses, Dave on Hulu, The Strokes (3:28) Streaming piracy & the ethics of stealing (19:58) Dude lit & the book club (30:53) Men and reading (Tony's Substack crossover moment) (36:27) Patron Half Begins (46:55) World Cup (46:30) Down Syndrome screening, disability & ethics of life (1:01:...

Guest: Daryl Van Tongeren Returns! (⁠Hope College⁠ / ⁠"Done") Topics: Are most people living in a kind of illusion? (0:00) How people spend their time (17:14) What makes humans special: Christianity and existentialism agree (27:37) The five givens of existence and how Christianity responds to them (32:23) Religious certainty and the road to violence (45:14) It's never too late (48:14) ____________...

Guest: Daryl Van Tongeren Returns! (Hope College / "Done") Topics: What is existentialism and existential psychology? (5:25) Does life have a predetermined purpose, or do we make our own? (19:00) Faith and uncertainty (42:21) Objective morality, self-sacrifice, and the doormat problem (54:02) ___________________________________________ Follow Dan on IG: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.instagram.com/dancok...

Guest: Barrabas! (Tim Burnette returns) Topics: • Religion after religion (7:04) • In-group Religion (10:58) • Is there moral and spiritual progress? (25:04) • Haidt's Rider & Elephant (32:51) • Collective effervescence & human bonding (38:37) • Out-groups & non-duality (42:27) • Moral foundations theory (1:05:33) • Christian nationalism & the remnant (1:17:34) Previous Episode with Tim: Self-awar...

Sex drive, religious formation, and the stubborn residue of purity culture — welcome back to Study Hall, where I bring you along as I cram for my licensure exam and connect to the psychology of religion along the way. Today we're staying in developmental psychology but moving into territory that, let's just say, came up a lot in my Christian high school years. Religious adolescents start later — b...

Licensed therapist and trauma specialist Ryan Kuja joins me to examine the surprising parallels between Christian fundamentalism and new age spirituality — particularly how both can enable spiritual bypassing, discourage authentic questioning, and ultimately fail to hold space for the full complexity of human pain and experience. Ryan's Link Tree ___________________________________________ Follow...

In this episode, comedian and podcaster Jordan Morris describes growing up as a youth group kid in Orange County, and how those experiences informed his new graphic novel Youth Group, which treats its faith-filled characters with nuance and genuine affection rather than cheap satire. In the Patron-only second half, we get into the DIY ethos that both church basements and punk rock scenes share, th...

Psychologist Dr. Pamela Epstein King returns to explore how religious systems provide purpose, calling, and meaning — and what happens to those foundations when people go through significant religious change. Pam's Faculty Page Episodes Mentioned: Trusting Yourself After Religious Change | #370 The Six Facets of Spiritual Health | #285 ___________________________________________ Follow Dan on IG:...

I sit down with Rabbi Dr. Simcha Raphael and learn about his remarkably wide-ranging spiritual journey. From a traditional Montreal Hebrew education through India, the San Francisco counterculture, and ultimately into the Jewish Renewal Movement as a scholar of death, afterlife, and the inner life of Judaism, his story mirrors what so many of us are navigating in our own religious explorations. In...

The nature vs. nurture debate is largely settled (spoiler alert: it's both), but the implications for how and when religious identity forms are striking. The research points to a surprisingly early window for faith formation, and what happens inside that window matters far more than most parents realize. Join me for what I'm calling Study Hall, where I bring you along as I study for my licensure e...

Meredith Miller returns to talk about something many of us have been navigating in our personal lives: how do you raise kids with a meaningful faith after your own deconstruction? We cover the real reasons to consider church, what the research actually says about faith formation, and why doing nothing is still doing something. Previous Episodes with Meredith: ⁠How Can Deconstructing Parents Talk A...

Brad Strawn of Fuller Seminary returns to unpack the four clinical and theological influences that shape his work as a therapist, pastor, and professor (Wesleyan theology, relational psychoanalysis, 4E cognition, and terror management theory), and we get into some genuinely good “inside baseball” about what all of this looks like in the room with actual clients. Highlights: Wesleyan theology: feel...

Things are, objectively, pretty rough right now! But honestly? We can't stop laughing at the "Trump AI Jesus" memes. Religion on the News is back with Mason Mennenga (A People's Theology), and today we're leaning more into the silliness and laughter of it all, with a hearty dose of psychology along the way. Topics (full list on the full Patron-only episode): Trump/Jesus AI art, the resulting memes...

Lillian Daniel returns after five years to discuss her new book Defrocked: Good News from a Bad Pastor for a Better Church — a candid, often funny, and deeply human account of the misconduct process she underwent in the UCC, what it taught her about identity, boundaries, and shame, and how she eventually found her way back to ministry. Highlights: Power, process, and accountability Over-identifica...

This is the fifth and final installment of the Anxious Times series, and we're bringing it home by exploring what existential psychology has to say about community, belonging, and civic engagement. I’m joined by returning guest Kristen Tideman and Brian Adoff, founder of Join Philly, a directory and events platform helping Philadelphians connect with each other.  In the Patreon-only second half, w...

Religion on the News is back with Mason Mennenga, and today we're tackling some heavy hitters: the Supreme Court's 8-1 ruling striking down Colorado's conversion therapy ban, the rise of the manosphere and what it means for young men, and the latest alien discourse from Obama and beyond. Highlights: Supreme Court conversion therapy ruling First Amendment vs. public health Evidence base for convers...

Co-host Kristen Tideman and I work through the final two legs of Emmy van Dersen's triad — the impossible and the desirable — using Kristen's new motherhood, MS diagnosis, and ongoing religious change as real, lived test cases for the framework. In the Patron-only second half, We move from naming what we can't have, to excavating the values underneath those wishes, to identifying what we actually...

I sit down with clinical psychologist and author Dr. Jeffrey Rubin to explore his concept of meditative psychotherapy — a genuinely reciprocal integration of Western psychoanalysis and Eastern contemplative practice that goes far deeper than the usual mindfulness-lite approaches. We get into what meditation actually is (hint: not just stress relief), spiritual bypassing, the scandals that keep pla...

I'm joined by my co-host Kristen Tideman for the third installment of the Anxious Times series. We dig into Emmy van Dersen's concept of "the necessary" — the hard limits baked into existence that we can't change, only accept — and explore how resisting these limits is one of the biggest drivers of unhealthy anxiety, whether you're navigating religious deconstruction, a new diagnosis, or just bein...

I sit down with theologian and ethicist Dr. Jared Stacey to unpack his new book Reality in Ruins: How Conspiracy Theory Became an Evangelical Crisis, exploring what actually distinguishes a conspiracy theory from a real conspiracy — and why the answer matters more than ever in the wake of the Epstein file releases. Jared on IG | @Jaredmstacy Highlights:  Psychology of conspiratorial thinking Moder...

We're not just individually stressed — we're living through a historic collision of crises that existential psychology has a name for. In this second episode of our Anxious Times series, Kristen Tideman and I explore why the anxiety so many of us feel right now isn't a personal failing, but an honest response to the world we've actually inherited. We explore things like: What a "boundary situation...

In this episode, I sit down with Harper’s Magazine Editor Christopher Beha to explore why neither scientific materialism nor romantic idealism fully satisfies — and what a third path might look like. We ask questions like: Does materialism account for consciousness? Is hard determinism therapeutically dangerous? Can we rationally care about others? What breaks down in "radical authenticity"? In th...

Introducing a NEW five-part series called Anxious Times, focused on practical insights from existential psychology for navigating intense periods like the one we’re living through, both collectively and individually. Drawing on thinkers like Karl Jaspers, Rollo May, and Emmy van Deurzen, existential psychology provides actionable tools to help you engage with (and not just avoid or manage symptoms...

…In this sociopolitical economy, that is. I’m joined in today’s Generation Gap Culture Hour by regulars Josh Gilbert, Tony Jones, and we hear all about the newest generation to our experiment — Josh’s brand new baby!  A rewatch of Last of the Mohicans has me seriously considering learning a new hobby, and Tony's 6% confidence in me is, frankly, offensive. We close out the first half of the episode...