Saved by the City

We're all living inside the code. On this episode, Katelyn and Roxy recount their brushes with the evangelical bro code — that malignant workplace milieu of religion mixed with patriarchy mixed with entitlement. We discuss the nearly two hundred responses women sent to Katelyn on the topic and unpack the Three B's of the Evangelical Bro Code: Breadwinner Bias, The Billy Graham Rule and Bullying. I...

That's poog spelled backward. The wellness industry has scope creep. Is it about health? Self-care? Spirituality? Mud masks? Yes, yes, yes, yes — and so much more. One thing it all seems to have in common though is that it costs money. Marketed primarily to women and promising solutions to every woe, wellness is more in the category of faith than science, but that doesn't keep millions of American...

The Jesus thing always gets in the way. Did you ever think Rob Reiner — director of such favorites as "When Harry Met Sally," "Princess Bride" and "Spinal Tap" — would make a movie about Christian nationalism? Inconceivable, right? Well, that word doesn't mean what you think it means and yes, he did. The documentary, "God & Country," directed by Dan Partland and produced by Reiner, is based on the...

The son has come and you've been ... On each episode of this show, we talk about a popular, influential — or at least lucrative — Christian book from the 90s or 2000s (you know, our era). We discuss how the book shaped American Christianity, our own personal faith journeys, and how it has aged in our current dystopian Christian Nationalist hellscape. In this episode, Roxy reads Left Behind for the...

Are you happy enough? On each episode of this show, we talk about a popular, influential — or at least lucrative — Christian book from the 90s or 2000s (you know, our era). We discuss how the book shaped American Christianity, our own personal faith journeys, and how it has aged in our current dystopian Christian Nationalist hellscape. In this episode, Tyler and Roxy wonder who is the most hedonis...

This podcast will change your life. On each episode of this show, we talk about a popular, influential — or at least lucrative — Christian book from the 90s or 2000s (you know, our era). We discuss how the book shaped American Christianity, our own personal faith journeys, and how it has aged in our current dystopian Christian Nationalist hellscape. In this episode, Tyler and Roxy travel back in t...

Paintball never looked so holy. On each episode of this show, we talk about a popular, influential — or at least lucrative — Christian book from the 90s or 2000s (you know, our era). We discuss how the book shaped American Christianity, our own personal faith journeys, and how it has aged in our current dystopian Christian Nationalist hellscape. In this episode, Tyler and Roxy become the men God c...

Cozy up for this time traveling book club. On each episode of this show, we talk about a popular, influential — or at least lucrative — Christian book from the 90s or 2000s (you know, our era). We discuss how the book shaped American Christianity, our own personal faith journeys, and how it has aged in our current dystopian Christian Nationalist hellscape. This episode, Tyler and Roxy move into th...

Decadent December is coming to a close and bills are due. Every year, we all get a little excited for what a new start could bring — who could I be this year? Surely this year, I'll do the thing. Or stop doing the thing. Or change everything. Right? When it comes to making goals, setting intentions, naming desires, we're as all-in as anybody ... but we also have a healthy dose of skepticism when i...

Be good to your people. The holidays are hard for the grieving. This year, as Roxy and her family walk through their first Christmas without her dad, we wanted to do an episode on what has helped get them through. Well, who has helped really. This is an episode on the power of community and friendship when life hands you loss. Katelyn and Roxy are also joined by J.S. Park, a hospital chaplain who...

It's the new evangelical Vatican y'all. Before there was New York City, both Katelyn and Roxy flirted with Nashville. The draw was real: deep friendship, like-minded value systems, shared faith, the prospect of financial stability. But something never quite clicked. Nashville felt maybe a little ... too comfortable, too safe, even a bit stifling. In this episode, Katelyn and Roxy imagine what coul...

The range of a religion reporter. This week, we ask ourselves: would we do mushrooms for research? Plus, a journey from Kansas to Tennessee to California and their multiple misbehaving men in ministry. Katelyn and Roxy discuss the similarities and patterns present in congregations where clergy can get away with almost anything. And we're joined by guest Gloria Purvis, a Black Catholic scholar who...

For this Thanksgiving, we return to a favorite episode about food, hosting and the power of conversations around a dinner table. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's a mancession. Or, as one woman put it to our guest today, "men are in their flop era." Men are lagging behind women in almost every measure of success today — from mental health, to education levels, to employment, to sexual satisfaction. What's going on? Katelyn and Roxy are joined (once again!) by columnist and author Christine Emba to discuss this masculinity crisis — and why it should mat...

When the clock keeps ticking, you gotta get picking ... a sperm donor, that is. Ok, but really, as more and more women are single into their late thirties and early forties, the option to have a child through in vitro fertilization becomes a very live question. As much as forty may be the new twenty, the biological timeline for many women still looms large. If you're someone who wants to bear chil...

But it is better if you get spiritual in the mornings. For a very long time, spending time with God felt a bit like a chore to be checked off. Remember quiet times? One year Bible reading plans? On this episode, Katelyn and Roxy discussing finding rhythms and rituals that actually work for connecting with God — no guilt attached. And, bonus, actually became morning people along the way. We can't b...

"Seek peace and pursue it — especially when it seems impossible." Inspired by these words of his father, our guest today has been working to bring peace in the Holy Land since the early 2000s. The last few weeks have been an onslaught of horrifying news from Israel and Gaza — thousands upon thousands dead, hundreds held hostage, hundreds of thousands displaced. And, here, in America a rush to make...

What's on your Jesus Island? Church, God, Christianity — they made up a core part of our identity as kids. In other words, we definitely had a Jesus Island. And, yes, that's a reference to Pixar's highly relatable "Inside Out." This episode of the podcast is full of them. Katelyn and Roxy plumb the depths of their childhood faith and discuss how those core memories continue to shape their faith to...

Why can't you just let us be happy? Recent internet pile ons have made it clear there are a whole lot of people out there — including some academics and sociologists, as well as all the incels — who believe single women are ruining society. Not an exaggeration. Marriage rates are down, birth rates are down, men are reporting all time lows in mental health and happiness — especially single men — an...

And if Russell Moore is a liberal, then what the heck are we? Our first guest for season six has us thinking about institutions. An exciting lead for a season opener, you say? It is! In part because this guest now leads an institution, Christianity Today, that both Katelyn and Roxy have some history with. But, not too long ago, he was an SBC bigwig — the president of its Ethics and Religious Liber...

... and very messy. It's not everyday Saved by the City hosts Katelyn and Roxy get invited to be on documentaries, but it is every Hillsong documentary. The latest documentary treatment of the global megachurch’s descent into scandal recently premiered on FX and Hulu. And it featured our very own Ms. Beaty with some real zingers. It also featured Carl Lentz. Like a lot of Carl Lentz. The disgraced...

Mary, the mentor of Jesus. A lifetime of Bible reading and the women who surrounded Jesus still feel so flat, so much a part of the flannel graph background. Why? In this episode, Katelyn and Roxy explore how their perceptions of the women in the New Testament were formed and why it's still so difficult to conceive of them as real, three-dimensional people. They are joined by New Testament scholar...

ENTP! 2 wing 3! Let's talk about you and me! We'll admit, a podcast episode all about our personalities might be a bit self-indulgent. But also fun! So bear with us as we dive headfirst into the various and sundry methods for categorizing oneself. This week, Katelyn and Roxy go old school (Myers-Briggs), new school (StrengthsFinder) and a little woo-woo (Enneagram, just kidding, don't come after u...

Let's go shatter a glass steeple or two, shall we? When it comes to women in ministry, the gains have been ever so gradual. And at the top levels of leadership — from seminary faculty and deans to senior clergy positions — women seem to have hit a wall. Fewer than 25 percent of seminary faculty and deans are women, as are 11 percent of presidents, according to the Association of Theological School...

You sound like your mother. Is an essential project of a daughter's life trying to understand her mother? On this episode of the podcast — on this week of Mother's Day — we reflect on the lessons we learned from our moms, how we saw them as teens, how we see them now (SPOILER: it's changed). Plus, we are joined by Marcie Alvis Walker in a wide ranging conversation about the power of motherhood — f...