Religion on the Mind

The final chapter of our 4-part series on the End Times and mental health concerns. Today, we hear three shorter stories that each circle around the issue of family, and how family relationships and differences intersect with the rest of what we’ve been hearing these past few weeks. If you're just joining us, it's recommended to start with Part 1, three weeks back. Children’s Bibles and reading li...

After being personally wrecked by the series finale of The Good Place, I needed to process this with some friends. Those friends are D.L. (Danielle) Mayfield and her husband Krispin. This is the result of that processing. Spoiler talk continues until the 23:00 mark, so head there if you don't want the ending of the series spoiled. We talk about death, the afterlife, finitude, attachment, healing,...

Part 3 of 4 (it is very much recommended to start with Part 1!) of a series on the so-called End Times and mental health issues. Today, we hear from 15 of the 20 interviews I conducted in August of 2019: more about mental health symptoms and seeking help, whether or not they still consider themselves Christian, advice they have for people with similar struggles, and much more. Come back for Part 4...

Part 2 of 4 (it is very much recommended to start with Part 1!) of a series on the so-called End Times and mental health issues. Today, we hear two longer stories: Samantha, who followed a self-proclaimed prophetess in 2015 and began prepping for the apocalypse, and Steve, who hoped that Jesus’s imminent return would keep him from having to come of age as a gay man. Come back from parts 3 & 4 over...

What better way to celebrate 50 episodes of YHP than to kick off a 4-part series on so-called “End Times” teaching/theology and mental health? As part of early research toward my doctoral dissertation in psychology, I conducted 20 interviews in August of 2019, collecting personal stories about how popular Christian notions of the End Times, like the Rapture, Tribulation, and the Left Behind series...

Plus: a working definition of “Process Theology and “Robust Christian Pluralism." Dr. Wm. Andrew Schwartz (Claremont School of Theology) walks us through four possible answers to the question of whether all monotheistic Abrahamic believers are actually worshipping the same God, including arguments for and against and various consequences of each view.- The book: https://smile.amazon.com/Christians...

During the holiday break, I'm choosing two lesser-downloaded or well-timed episodes for re-airing. Many of us are still, or have just been, spending time with family members who are fundamentalists, or lean that way, and that can be really hard sometimes. Original show notes:“Fundamentalist” has become a theological swear word. But how does it work psychologically? Why hasn’t it “gone away”? How d...

During the holiday break, I'm choosing two lesser-downloaded episodes for re-airing. This conversation with Philip Clayton about Panentheism (and a few other things) was fantastic, but I think maybe the thick theological terminology might have turned some would-be listeners away. Also, Phil is coming back on the podcast in the coming month or two to talk about doubt, and this is a nice precursor t...

Dan discusses the all-time most famous passage in western philosophy, Plato’s Cave Analogy, with Catholic philosopher Patrick McDonald (Seattle Pacific University). The Cave is a gift that keeps on giving (holiday-appropriate!), through various stages of growth, deconstruction, reconstruction, and on and on. Dan and Patrick discuss implications for Christians thinking through hard questions, and a...

As it turns out, both conservatives AND liberals, depending who you talk to. But is it a valid field of research, and what do we learn about human nature from evolutionary psychology? Dan also talks with Dr. Justin Barrett (Fuller Seminary) about so-called “cultural evolution,” where the evolution of humanity moves at a much more rapid pace, and through the dissemination of information, values, st...

Dan is joined by philosopher John Haught (Georgetown University), who argues that many people think we should look to the past, the deep past, for ultimate answers. This includes certain scientists who want to look to the Big Bang for ultimate explanations, or religious teachers focusing on God’s perfect design in the Garden of Eden, before everything got messed up. Others might tend to look to th...

“Human beings are primarily intrinsically sinful and evil.”“God’s truth can only be found in the Biblical text.”“The body and its desires are inherently wicked.”“Emotions are not to be honored and listened to; only God’s truth should be valued.”Mark Karris (author, therapist, professor at Point Loma Nazarene University) lists these among a group of claims that he believes are a part of “Toxic Chri...

Can Christians believe that people are only “physical”? Must we have “souls” in order to be saved, to have relationships with God, to be God’s image-bearers in the world? My two guests today are biologist Kenneth R. Miller (Brown University) and philosopher Rebekah Rice (Seattle Pacific University), and they argue that there are good reasons to accept some kind of Christian Naturalism or Christian...

This is the episode that some of you have been waiting 40-some episodes for. Many of you know that I identify as a universalist, meaning that I believe that everyone will be saved in the end, whatever we mean by the word “saved.” There are a lot of reasons that people believe in Hell, and there are a lot of reasons that people don’t. Many of those reasons, maybe even MOST of the reasons, I would a...

Just in time for Halloween (not on purpose actually!)... What exactly is the "supernatural"? When God does something in the natural world, is that the same thing as saying that God broke the laws of physics? Theologian Thomas Jay oord helps Dan explore these questions, and whether or not it makes more sense to think of the “natural” and “supernatural” as essentially no different from one another....

Philosopher Myron Penner (Trinity Western University) helps Dan think through some interesting but complicated and challenging findings from cognitive science (the study of the mind, not the study of the brain -- that's called neuroscience) and what they mean for our understanding of religions beliefs, behaviors and experiences. By explaining religious belief from a cognitive perspective, how does...

How do we parent our kids after faith deconstruction? What if only one half of a couple is going through faith changes? Can people of different faith traditions have healthy marriages? How do I relate to my family, who haven’t had the same faith changes that I have, and who now think I’m going to Hell? Is this what “unequally yoked” is actually supposed to mean? This is a long, meaty episode, wher...

Why is everyone suddenly talking about psychedelic drugs again? What do we know about them, and what is their relationship to more “ordinary” religious experiences? Is taking a psychedelic as part of a worship service any different than dimming the lights and swaying together to worship music? What can we learn about human brains and religious experience in general from the research on psychedelic...

Is experience potentially a direct pathway to the God of the universe? Or is it simply “the heart [being] deceitful above all things”? Can we trust our spiritual experience, and if so, which experiences are trustworthy? This topic was recommended by my guest Dustin Kensrue (singer/songwriter of the band Thrice, former worship director at Mars Hill Church in Seattle), and I jumped at it. In today’s...

What exactly is “purity culture,” and why is everyone talking about it? Was it really so harmful? Isn’t it pretty straightforward to not have sex until marriage? Today’s guest Linda Key Klein has interviewed hundreds of young women about their experiences in and after purity culture, and she has written a fantastic book about it, “Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Y...

Darwin’s theory of evolution by common descent is so widely agreed upon by scientists that it is either the best explanation we have for the origins of life on this planet, or else it is a massive conspiracy involving millions of people. It is also, according to some Christians, a dangerous theory that undercuts basic claims of Christianity. Sometimes these Christians, working through organization...

Today’s guest is Peter Wehner -- Vice President and Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, and a contributing editor for The Atlantic magazine. He served in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush Administrations prior to becoming deputy director of speechwriting for President George W. Bush, and is one of the more prominent “NeverTrump Co...

“Fundamentalist” has become a theological swear word. But how does it work psychologically? Why hasn’t it “gone away”? How do religious fundamentalists make sense of their world and find meaning in their lives? And what might this tell us about non-religious fundamentalists? Psychologist Peter Hill joins Dan to talk through the model he and his co-authors developed in their book The Psychology of...

The question of whether or not Adam and Eve were historical figures is a hotly debated topic in some circles of Christianity -- especially more Reformed and/or conservative circles -- and completely ignored in others. But there are a lot of consequences to this question, no matter where you fall theologically. Physicist and Science & Religion veteran Karl Giberson joins Dan to talk through the iss...

A lot of us have been pretty burned in Reformed Christian communities, which might go by names like Presbyterian, Bible Church, Baptist, and more, all of which stem in one way or another from the teachings of John Calvin. But not all Reformed thinkers read John Piper and R.C. Sproul, or believe that women shouldn’t become preachers, and SOME Reformed thinkers are even Universalists when it comes t...