Shake the Dust

Today, we’re talking with Kai Ngu, co-founder of Church Clarity and a divinity student studying colonial and missionary historical engagement with indigenous religious traditions. We discuss their personal story of how their views changed on sexuality and theology over time, finding empathy and a way forward with family who vehemently reject their new views, what they’re learning about how Christi...

Today, Jonathan, Suzie, and Sy share their perspectives on queer Christianity, LGBTQ folks in church leadership, and why conversations like this one are so important. Their journeys are different and so are the places they land. What they all share is a conviction to center the experiences of queer Christians and to love well.   Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook , Ins...

The team is doing something a little different and more personal today. Jonathan, Suzie, and Sy are all talking about their own reasons for following Jesus at this point in their lives, as well as the things that push them away from faith and the Church. Suzie mentions Henri Nouwen’s idea that the most personal is often the most universal. So we trust that opening up these stories will resonate wi...

Today, Jonathan and Sy are talking to Dr. Amy Kenny, disabled Shakespeare scholar and author of My Body Is Not a Prayer Request : Disability Justice in the Church . They discuss curing disabilities versus biblical healing, finding beauty and power in disability, reshaping the Church around disabled people, compassion in literature, and so much more!  Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follo...

This extra feed drop is Sy reading the essay of his we just published. There isn’t a separate transcript for this episode. Below is the only audio information in the episode apart from Sy reading the essay, which you can find at the above link. Enjoy!  [An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes, the first three ascending and the last three descending — F#, B, F#, E, D#, B — with a keyboard pad pla...

Today, we have a conversation with returning guest Milly Silencio (formerly Milly Aquije) about the effect that acquiring privilege at different points in life has on us, our relationships, and our interactions with God. Milly goes into detail on the tension between being an undocumented activist who is now married and applying for a Green Card. Each of the hosts also discuss their own interaction...

Today, the team interviews Dr. Mika Edmondson, the Lead Pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church Koinonia in Nashville, Tennessee, and the author of The Power of Unearned Suffering : The Roots and Implications of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Theodicy . They discuss how Dr. Edmondson sees and resists colonized church practices in his context, his theological library of marginalized voices, how to stay unc...

We’re talking all about abortion today. Jonathan, Suzie, and Sy sit down with Mako Nagasawa, founder of the Anástasis Center and author of Abortion Policy and Christian Social Ethics in the United States . We talk about the surprising history of the theology around abortion, the political and historical factors that shape modern pro-life politics, gender and disability in abortion debates, and a w...

Suzie, Jonathan, and Sy give some updates about Season 2, which starts this Friday!  Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook , Instagram , and Twitter . Find transcripts of this show and subscribe to get our newsletter and other paid content at KTFPress.com .  Hosts   Jonathan Walton – follow him on Facebook , Instagram , and Twitter .   Suzie Lahoud – follow her on Faceboo...

This month’s bonus episode is on the ways that middle- and upper-class churches often function in ways that exclude poor people and reinforce classist structures. We also talk about how to operate congregations more in line with God’s vision for the Church. Jonathan couldn’t make this one, but we have Gabrielle Apollon back on the show as a guest host. We have a lot of really helpful tips and pers...

  Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook , Instagram , and Twitter . Find transcripts of this show and subscribe to get our newsletter and bonus episodes at KTFPress.com .  Follow Jonathan Walton on Facebook , Instagram , and Twitter .   Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam – follow her and see her other work on Instagram .   Production, editing, and transcript by Sy Hoeks...

In this month’s bonus episode, the team talks about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We get at the many ways our biases affect how politicians and the media are discussing the war and its refugees, the religious aspects of Putin’s desire to take over Ukraine, how the invasion fits with a growing international movement of religious conservatives from predominantly white countries, and a lot more.  Art...

This month, we discuss tone policing — what it is, how it shows up in church, the discriminatory ways it’s deployed, the things it suppresses that are beneficial to Christian community, and a lot more. Also… Suzie’s back!!!  Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook , Instagram , and Twitter . Find transcripts of this show at KTFPress.com .  Hosts   Jonathan Walton – follow h...

This episode is a conversation between Sy and Jonathan about how we create hierarchies of sin – implying in a million big and small ways that some sins are worse than others. They also talk about how that distortion of Christianity supports systems of control and oppression, how the hierarchy is applied more harshly to marginalized people, how we can find our way out of this flawed thinking, and a...

For this month’s bonus episode, Sy and Jonathan sat down to talk about how the incarnation relates to a lot of the themes we talk about at KTF Press. Christmas celebrates God coming close to the oppressed, enacting anti-imperial liberation, refusing to use worldly power as a foundation for his kingdom, and a lot more. Oh, and Jonathan does an Advent poem at the end, which is incredible as always....

On today’s episode, Jonathan and Sy discuss why we need to rethink the amount of attention we give to white people’s opinions, the danger of not knowing what white people think, recalibrating our thoughts around Jesus’ views, and a lot more. Thank you so much for subscribing!  Articles mentioned during the episode:   * Our response to the Kyle Rittenhouse case   * Jonathan’s essay on suffering and...

Today’s episode is Sy having a conversation with Jonathan about living as a blind Christian, how disabled people think about disability differently, the church’s interactions with disabled congregants, ableist theology and church practice, and a lot more.   Resources mentioned during the show:  Sy’s list of disabled people to follow on Twitter  Disability and the Church by Lamar Hardwick  The epis...

In this special off-season episode of Shake the Dust , our guest is Danté Stewart, here to talk to us about his new book that just came out this week — Shoutin’ in the Fire: An American Epistle . We talk to him about his journey finding life and identity in the Black church and Black literary tradition, expanding our definition of what theology is, finding God and faith in the ordinariness of life...

This week is the season 1 finale of Shake the Dust ! The team takes questions from listeners and discusses the difficulty of maintaining faith when the Church can be so awful, the role of empathy in leaving colonized faith, interracial family dynamics, why we don’t cover more current events on the show, how we did this season in reaching some of our goals, and a lot more. Thanks so much for listen...

This week, we have a fascinating interview with Dominique DuBois Gilliard, the Director of Racial Righteousness and Reconciliation for the Evangelical Covenant Church, and author of Subversive Witness: Scripture’s Call to Leverage Privilege . We talk to him about that book; how the Bible discusses privilege; reading Scripture with ideas like privilege, power dynamics, and trauma in mind; how disci...

We have an exciting announcement to make! Drumroll, please…  Sign up  here  for our free email list if you want more information as it comes, or follow us on  Facebook ,  Instagram , and  Twitter .   This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ktfpress.substack.com

This week, Sy and Jonathan discuss the importance of practicing emotional health for individuals and communities engaged in the work of justice and liberation. They talk about how burying emotions can perpetuate systems of oppression, how emotionally healthy communities confront injustice, how to engage your feelings when dealing with people who disagree with you on fundamental issues, and a whole...

This week, the team discusses American imperialism overseas and the end of the war in Afghanistan. We talk about Americans’ naïveté regarding the United States’ capabilities and altruism, the colonialist mindset underlying much media commentary on the end of the war, how Christian nationalism contributes to the persecution of the Church abroad, how Jesus leads us in a different direction, and a lo...

This week is Sy and Jonathan’s interview with Keli Young, a lawyer and community organizer in New York City. We talked about what it looks like for those most affected by oppressive systems to lead movements for change, what it  actually  means to defund or abolish the police, redefining the idea of public safety, how our language can dehumanize people, what keeps Keli going in her difficult work,...

This week is an interview with Shadia Qubti, a Palestinian peace activist who now studies indigenous theology in Canada. We talk to Shadia about her decision to move across the world and study in such a different tradition from her own, how indigenous theology is changing her thinking and Christian practice, the dualism of Western theology, the inadequacy of Western theology to address intractable...