Holy Heretics: Losing Religion and Finding Jesus

Episode SummaryIn the second installment of our conversation with Natalie Drew, we move deeper into her gender transition and how it impacted her marriage, career, and spiritual journey. If you haven’t checked out Part One, go back and listen now before moving forward into this episode! We answer several questions including, can you be Christian and transgender and what might it look like to transcend the false gender binary that pervades our social and spiritual spaces? I know you will appreciate the intimacy, honesty, and bravery Natalie continues to show to her online trolls and the theobros who wish her ill. May her grace provide a way forward in your own dealings with individuals who doubt you, question, you, and try to thwart your personal and spiritual path. BioDespite what many within conservative Christian circles may claim, “Christian” and “transgender” are not mutually exclusive. Natalie is living proof of this, as she navigates life post-transition within conservative Christian circles. She, her wife Heather, and their two teenagers are recent transplants to the heart of Reformed country…west Michigan. Natalie has spent the past 13 years as an HR professional, and currently serves as an HR Manager for a Fortune 500 company in the Grand Rapids area. After 6 years as an infantry soldier in the Army, Natalie has committed her life to advancing an ethic of Christian nonviolence and fighting for the rights of trans people. She is dedicated to elbowing her way in Christian spaces to help make room for her LGBTQIA+ siblings who have historically been rejected and despised by the church.Please follow us on social media (use the buttons below) and help us get the word out! (Also, please don’t hesitate to use any of these channels or email to contact us with any questions, concerns, or feedback.)If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and a review 🙏Show notes: http://www.sophiasociety.org/podcast/transgender-and-christian-part-twoFollow us on social media! Twitter: @holyheretics | Instagram: @holyhereticspodcast | Facebook: @holyhereticsAdvertising inquiries: podcast@sophiasociety.orgSupport our work on Patreon and get early access to episodes! https://www.patreon.com/holyhereticsThis episode was produced by The Sophia Society. and written by Gary Alan Taylor.  Music is by Faith in Foxholes.

CW: We discuss trauma, addiction, suicidal ideation, abuse, and other topics that may be triggering. Please listen at your own discretion.A lot of times on our show, we discuss theological matters that mostly reside in your head, but this episode is altogether very different. This conversation is personal, it’s raw, it’s painful, it’s the deeply transformative work of an individual who fought to save her own life by becoming who she always knew she was. It’s not only an episode about gender dysphoria and transition, it’s a conversation about what it means to live peacefully with yourself and the violent world around us. In many ways, Natalie Drew is one of our heroes. Here’s why.Despite what many within conservative Christian circles may claim, “Christian” and “transgender” are not mutually exclusive. Natalie is living proof of this, as she navigates life post-transition within conservative Christian circles. She, her wife Heather, and their two teenagers are recent transplants to the heart of Reformed country…west Michigan. Natalie has spent the past 13 years as an HR professional, and currently serves as an HR Manager for a Fortune 500 company in the Grand Rapids area. After 6 years as an infantry soldier in the Army, Natalie has committed her life to advancing an ethic of Christian nonviolence and fighting for the rights of trans people. She is dedicated to elbowing her way in Christian spaces to help make room for her LGBTQIA+ siblings who have historically been rejected and despised by the church.I hope her personal story of religious trauma, addiction, recovery, and transition will inspire you to live into who God fully made you to be. Especially in a day and age when transgender individuals are thrown into the culture war to chum the water of hatred and bigotry by evangelical Christians and their Republican Party goons, leading to a rise in dehumanizing tactics and strategies aimed at eliminating transgender people from society. Recent laws passed in Bible-belt states like Texas, Alabama, and Florida are making it almost impossible for transgender people to get healthcare, participate in sports, be themselves at school, and even be in an affirming relationship with their parents. And it is Christian organizations helping to write bigotry into the laws of our land. May we, like Natalie, find ways to resist such evil nonviolently, protecting our souls as we fight each day to make the world a better place for everyone. Quotables“Let me wake up a girl…let me be me! Or God, if you are not going to do that, then please kill me.”“I grew up in that world where it was King James version only where women and children were to be seen and not heard…It was a very spiritually, emotionally, and physically abusive world I grew up in both in the Church and at home.”“I didn’t have the vocabulary for it, I just knew I wasn’t like the boys in class.”“I had no safe place…My parents, I could have never taken this to them.”“I did what a lot of young trans girls do. I retreated into myself and became very violent.”“Like any good cult, you go to their schools. You plan to go to their colleges, you marry the person you meet at college and move back and repeat the cycle with your kids.”“I found the perfect job. It’s a job that let’s me be violent without the condemnation of society. And I would be held up as a hero in society. So, I joined the Army.”“There is a higher percentage of former Special Forces soldiers that are transgender than there is in the general population. It’s called the flight to hyper-masculinity.” If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and a review 🙏Show notes: http://www.sophiasociety.org/podcast/transgender-and-christianFollow us on social media! Twitter: @holyheretics | Instagram: @holyhereticspodcast | Facebook: @holyhereticsAdvertising inquiries: podcast@sophiasociety.orgSupport our work on Patreon and get early access to episodes! https://www.patreon.com/holyhereticsThis episode was produced by The Sophia Society and written by Gary Alan Taylor.  Music is by Faith in Foxholes.

CW: Adult Language.Christians were never meant to be normal, we've always been "holy troublemakers" who do not accept the world as it is but who insist on the world becoming the way God wants it to be. In the words of our friends at The Center for Prophetic Imagination, “A world where all walls of alienation are torn down as we live justly with one another.” From the very beginning, Jesus called us to be a beloved community of resistance to the brutal normalcy of a world dominated by the powers and principalities of darkness. Often, that darkness comes to us cloaked in the status quo, in the normative ideology of white, cis gender, patriarchal ideology. But racism, transphobia, homophobia, economic injustice, violence, patriarchy, and white supremacy are only normal in a world dominated by oppression. In this prophetic episode, we talk with Ashe Van Steenwyk about what it might look like for you and I to "confront not only the institutions and systems and structures that control and constrain our material lives, but also the myths, beliefs, and ideas that shape and bind our imaginations." And what better way to do that than to embody the radical, subversive way of Jesus who came to upend life as we know it.Some of the questions we seek to answer in this episode include: What do we mean when we say Jesus was queer?How do we discern what is real? How do we push back against injustice without losing our souls? How do we not only resist evil, but redeem evil? What does it look like to carve out new possibilities in a world of forced conformity? What if everything we call 'normal' is really just evil in disguise? What if what we believe to be profane is actually holy and what we have been told is orthodoxy is just a set of lies created to keep us in line? How do we resist dominance and power? And where have even liberal and progressive Christians been captivated by oppressive systems and structures? BioM. Ashe (she/they) is the co-founder of the Center for Prophetic Imagination. She is a writer, teacher, organizer, and spiritual director. For nearly 15 years, she has sown seeds of subversive spirituality throughout North America. Ashe is the author of That Holy Anarchist, unKingdom, and A Wolf at the Gate. You can find out more about Ashe here. The Center for Prophetic Imagination works to subvert the existing social order through deep discernment culminating with creative action. Check out their online resources and online classes to learn more about what it means to be a holy troublemaker in our world. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and a review 🙏Show notes: http://www.sophiasociety.org/podcast/queer-jesusFollow us on social media! Twitter: @holyheretics | Instagram: @holyhereticspodcast | Facebook: @holyhereticsAdvertising inquiries: podcast@sophiasociety.orgSupport our work on Patreon and get early access to episodes! https://www.patreon.com/holyhereticsThis episode was produced by The Sophia Society and written by Gary Alan Taylor.  Music is by Faith in Foxholes.

Episode SummaryBarbara Brown Taylor is who you want to be when you grow up. Her life is a legacy of wisdom and wonder, walking the long road toward becoming fully human. In this intimate conversation that is more memoir than interview, she looks back on a long pilgrimage of faith while sharing some of the secrets she’s found along the way. As she reminds us, “This is not the life I planned or the life I recommend to others. But it is the life that has turned out to be mine.” Along the way she shares what suffering and pain have taught her, and how life isn’t so much about eliminating the bad but finding a balance between light and darkness, despair and hope. Together, we explore what it means to slow down and listen to your life, to embrace your humanity as you strive for the Divine. As poet Mary Oliver wrote, “To live in this world you must be able to do three things. To love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.” I hope you will take the time to listen to your life, to see if for all the beauty and agony it brings as you walk this long pilgrimage toward becoming fully human, fully divine. BioBarbara Brown Taylor is An American Episcopal priest, professor, and New York Times bestselling author who has dedicated her life to the pursuit of becoming fully human. Her most beloved works include An Altar in the World, Learning to Walk in the Dark, and Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others. She completed her undergraduate work at Emory University and went on to study at Yale Divinity School where she graduated in 1976. In 1996, she was named one of the twelve "most effective" preachers in the English-speaking world by Baylor University. She was awarded the 1998 Emory Medal by the Emory Alumni Association of Emory University for her distinguished achievement in education. She has been an Avon lady, a cocktail waitress, a horseback riding instructor, and a parish minister, but her favorite job was teaching world religions at Piedmont College for twenty years before putting the chalk down in 2017. She now divides her time between writing, speaking, and caring for the land on which she lives. Barbara and her husband Ed tend a small farm in the foothills of the Appalachians.Quotables“I was raised by parents who took me to libraries instead of churches.”“It took teaching world religions to realize Christianity was probably the most diverse, global tradition. And there are hundreds if not thousands of ways of being Christian.”“It’s a wide, wide Christian world and I still identify that way…I’m the kind of Christian who will never be fully cooked.”“I’m clearly a person who believes what we most have in common is our humanity, not our religion.”“Jesus never told me to love my religion…If given the choice between loving my religion and loving my neighbor, I choose the neighbor.”“If we are made just a little lower than the Angels and made in the image of the Divine, it is quite something to be human.”“Both in Christian life and life universally, I keep meeting people who don’t feel fully equipped yet to live their lives.” “If I’m going to love my neighbor, it is extremely important to ditch my stereotypes.”“We do a lot of judging one another by our yard signs, and I am so weary of that dichotomy.”“There was a time when my writing about Nature earned me a kind of outsider status of being pagan or pantheist.”“For the first time I began to see all the people my beloved tradition left out.”“Outsider status really ended up being like pilgrim status.”“As a mainline Episcopalian, what could be further from where most evangelicals started.”“I don’t speak of the Christ, but I’m happy to talk about Jesus.”“I do believe the spirit of God lives in ALL that God has made.” “Darkness is the way of unknowing…It’s the way you set your feet on when you don’t know where you are going.”“You shed a lot of beliefs along the way as you acquire wisdom and experience and new friends.”“What darkness has taught me is that it is fine to slow down enough in the dark to feel my way instead of thinking my way forward.”“Suffering is not a spiritual practice I would choose, but it seems unavoidable.”“I think the hardest thing about suffering is the idea that we are alone in it.”“It’s really helpful for people to look in their folders marked darkness and see what is in there and interrogate what is in there.”“There are a lot of things we wrestle with out of the public eye that we acquire the wisdom to speak about it IN the public eye.”“I think you just unearthed my primary faith statement which is, ‘I choose to believe the universe is for me and not against me.’”“I do wake up curious every day of my life, and I wake up attentive and with wonder.”“The time ahead is so much shorter than the time behind, so it’s time to get serious about things.”“I think the Benedictines said every day keep your death before you. Not to make you a grim reaper but to make you aware of the preciousness of what you have.”If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and a review 🙏Show notes: http://www.sophiasociety.org/podcast/barbara-brown-taylor-becoming-humanFollow us on social media! Twitter: @holyheretics | Instagram: @holyhereticspodcast | Facebook: @holyhereticsAdvertising inquiries: podcast@sophiasociety.orgSupport our work on Patreon and get early access to episodes! https://www.patreon.com/holyhereticsThis episode was produced by The Sophia Society and written by Gary Alan Taylor.  Music is by Faith in Foxholes.

One of the great ironies of the Christian religion is that the person Christians worship isn’t a Christian. Jesus was born, raised, and died a Jew. He might even find it odd that an entire new religion grew up out of his short life and painful death. He is without question, the most popular person to have ever walked the earth. But what do we really know about this first century Galilean? If we are honest, not much. He was born to humble parents under sketchy circumstances, he grew to become an itinerant preacher and wisdom teacher. The poor loved him, drunks drank with him, and sex workers called him friend. Some believed him a prophet, others thought he was the Messiah. The religious elite saw him as a threat and the Roman Empire eventually murdered him as a political revolutionary. But what cannot be questioned about the historic Jesus is his Jewish identity. He was rooted in first century Judaism. He celebrated the Jewish festivals. He went on pilgrimage to the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, he taught in the Synagogue. He was a miracle worker and mystic. If you grew up in the church, Jesus was presented as the first Christian, a man who dedicated his life to dismantling Judaism in route to founding a new religion. But this view is not only historically inaccurate, it fails to account for Jesus’ Jewish identity. In this erudite episode, scholar Amy-Jill Levine helps Christians and Jews understand the "Jewishness" of Jesus so that our appreciation of him deepens and a greater interfaith dialogue can take place. Levine's humor and informed truth-telling provokes honest conversation and debate about how Christians and Jews should understand Jesus in the modern world. How have we gotten him right? How have we gotten him wrong? What might we learn about him by remembering and studying his Jewish identity? What would Jesus have believed about hell, sexuality, women, and the Bible in his first century Jewish context?We’ve all met Jesus before. Or, have we? Meeting Jesus as a first century Jew just might change not only how you see yourself, but your faith tradition as well. BioAmy Jill Levine (“AJ”) is Rabbi Stanley M. Kessler Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace and University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies Emerita and Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies Emerita, at Vanderbilt. Her publications include The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus, Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi; six children’s books (with Sandy Sasso); The Gospel of Luke (with Ben Witherington III, the first biblical commentary by a Jew and an Evangelical); The Jewish Annotated New Testament (co-edited with Marc Brettler), The Bible With and Without Jesus: How Jews and Christians Read the Same Stories Differently (with Marc Brettler), The Pharisees (co-edited with Joseph Sievers), and thirteen edited volumes of the Feminist Companions to the New Testament and Early Christian Literature. Along with Introduction to the Old Testament for the Teaching Company, her Beginner’s Guide series for Abingdon Press includes Sermon on the Mount, Light of the World, Entering the Passion of Jesus, The Difficult Words of Jesus, Witness at the Cross, and Signs and Wonders.  The first Jew to teach New Testament at Rome’s Pontifical Biblical Institute, an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the first winner of the Seelisberg Prize for Jewish-Christian Relations, AJ describes herself as an unorthodox member of an Orthodox synagogue and a Yankee Jewish feminist who works to counter biblical interpretations that exclude and oppress.If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and a review 🙏Show notes: http://www.sophiasociety.org/podcast/meeting-jewish-jesus-for-the-first-timeFollow us on social media! Twitter: @holyheretics | Instagram: @holyhereticspodcast | Facebook: @holyhereticsAdvertising inquiries: podcast@sophiasociety.orgSupport our work on Patreon and get early access to episodes! https://www.patreon.com/holyhereticsThis episode was produced by The Sophia Society.  Music is by Faith in Foxholes.

Episode Summary"In the Beginning, God created male and female." Evangelicals have used this one verse as a weapon in their war on transgender individuals. But a closer look offers a far more inclusive interpretation. It is true that God made both male and female. God also made light and dark, the land and sea, skies and earth, and guess what? God also made EVERYTHING in between like rivers, lakes, valleys, hills, and mountains.The diversity of life that lies in these in-between spaces is what makes the world rich, beautiful, and complex. Otherwise, the world would be a pretty boring place if it was neatly divided into dualistic choices. The same is true for gender and sexuality. As Father Richard Rohr reminds us, "It seems that everything we put in a neat and tidy package must eventually be allowed to come undone, including our understanding of our bodies, gender, and attraction." Even if you do not identify as transgender, all of us have these shards of identity in us, whether it’s our sexuality, our gender, our faith, our age, our cultural identity, our personal trauma histories—all of those things that are part of who we are combine to create our whole identity. The more complex the identity, the more beautiful our lived experience. In this deeply personal episode, we talk with Dr. Roberto Henderson-Espinoza about what it means to live on the borderlands of gender, sexuality, and race and how that place on the periphery of culture has given them a unique lens through which to see themselves and the world.  Being transgender isn't a problem to overcome, but an opportunity to embrace and we come to realize it too is an original part of God's very good Creation. BioDr. Roberto is passionate about the politics of radical difference and the ways that our collective differences might shed light on how we become a better body together. Dr. Roberto Che Espinoza has been described in a myriad of ways: a scholar-activist, scholar-leader, thought-leader, teacher, public theologian, ethicist, poet of moral reason, and word artist. Among these ways of describing Dr. Roberto, they are also a visionary thinker who has spent two decades working in the borderlands of church, academy, & movements seeking to not only disrupt but dismantle supremacy culture and help steward the logic of liberation as a non binary Trans Queer Latinx. He enfleshes a deep hope of collaborating in these borderland spaces where their work seeks to contribute to the ongoing work of collective liberation. Dr. Roberto is the Founder of the Activist Theology Project, a Nashville based collaborative project that is dedicated to social healing. He is also on faculty at Duke Divinity School teaching at the intersections of queer theory & theology/ethics. Dr. Roberto was named 1 of 10 Faith Leaders to watch by the Center for American Progress in 2018. He has been featured in fashion magazines and appeared on many different podcasts, including Pete Holmes’ You Made it Weird. As a scholar-activist, he is committed to translating theory to action, so that our work in the borderlands reflect the deep spiritual work of transforming self to transforming the world. As the Founder of the Activist Theology Project, Dr. Roberto is committed to the work of social healing through the politicizing of public theology initiatives, and writes & creates both academic & other valuable resources, including digital resources. He is a non-binary Transman; Latinx; and, adult on the Autism spectrum who calls Nashville, TN home. They are the author of Activist Theology and Body Becoming: A Path to Our Liberation. Dr. Roberto's next book-length project focuses on Belonging & Freedom.Quotables“I wake up every morning and there is something new for me to discover, and yet, I feel like I”ve spent a lifetime ignoring my body.”“Here in the United States, gender and sexuality has been so politicized in negative ways.”“In the past six months, I’ve been targeted three times, this most recent time by Matt Walsh and company.”“I grew up in the Southern Baptist Church, and I saw up close the vitriol and hate of ‘difference.’”“Gender is a category that was created during the Enlightenment, and if you look at pre-modern history, you can see a variation of gender and a fluidity of gender.”“Biology exists in a social world.”“There is a thread of anti-intellectualism throughout the Right.”“If we are going to be faithful in the small things, we have to begin to listen to stories of people.”“We know that something other than male and female exists, and we can point to it in real time.”“Figuring out how to move in the world as a mixed race person…how do I live my story faithfully?”“As a transman, as a non-binary man, is part of my work to actually plant seeds for a different kind of masculinity.”“How do we build bridges together to create pathways for ethical futures, because it’s not just me who needs freedom, you also need freedom.”“The center, those in dominant spaces, they also need freedom>.”“We need to recognize that their are people who believe that this country should be distinctly Christian. There is a move, globally, to create theocracies.”“How do we unhinge religion from politics, and can we do that?”“The thing is that is so frustrating, is that the Right is so organized.”If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and a review 🙏Show notes: http://www.sophiasociety.org/podcast/being-transgender-in-a-binary-worldhttp://www.sophiasociety.org/podcast/being-transgender-in-a-binary-worldFollow us on social media! Twitter: @holyheretics | Instagram: @holyhereticspodcast | Facebook: @holyhereticsAdvertising inquiries: podcast@sophiasociety.orgSupport our work on Patreon and get early access to episodes! https://www.patreon.com/holyhereticsThis episode was produced by The Sophia Society.  Music is by Faith in Foxholes.

“The Spirit of God, She has made me, and the breath of the nursing God, She gives me life.” - Job 33:4When you close your eyes and envision God, who do you see? Like me, you probably envision God as an old, white male sitting on a throne looking down from on high with an air of judgment and anger toward the world. This is the god of authoritarianism, patriarchy, domination, and purity culture and he’s been entrenched in our hearts and minds for years. But what if we’ve gotten God wrong all along? What if instead of a Divine dictator, God is Creator and Mother, the Sacred sustainer of life? The Divine Feminine is the spiritual concept that there exists a feminine counterpart to the patriarchal and masculine worship structures that have long dominated organized religions. The Divine Feminine extends well beyond one belief system, and instead can be used as a spiritual lens to balance our perspective on what it means to envision the Sacred. She shows up in all of the world’s great religions including the Black Madonna, the Black Kali, and the Black Tara. It is high time we recovered God in female form for the sake of everyone. BioChristena Cleveland, Ph.D. is a social psychologist, public theologian, author, and activist. She is the founder and director of the Center for Justice + Renewal as well as its sister organization, Sacred Folk, which creates resources to stimulate people’s spiritual imaginations and support their journeys toward liberation. An award-winning researcher and former professor at Duke University’s Divinity School, Christena lives in Boston, Massachusetts.A weaver of Black liberation and the sacred feminine, Dr. Cleveland integrates psychology, theology, storytelling, and art to stimulate our spiritual imaginations. She recently completed her third full-length book, God is a Black Woman, which details her 400-mile walking pilgrimage across central France in search of ancient Black Madonna statues, and examines the relationship among race, gender, and cultural perceptions of the Divine. Dr. Cleveland holds a Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of California Santa Barbara as well as an honorary doctorate from the Virginia Theological Seminary. An award-winning researcher and author, Christena is a Ford Foundation Fellow who has held faculty positions at several institutions of higher education — most recently at Duke University’s Divinity School. A bona fide tea snob, lover of Black art, and Ólafur Arnalds superfan — Christena makes her home in Boston.Quotables“It’s not just white Jesus that I hate, it’s male Jesus too.”“What does God do all day? God Gives birth.”“Whitemalegod is the spiritual or religious organizing principle behind this white patriarchy that flows in our land.”“It’s scary to see how whitemalegod has poisoned so much of global Christianity.” “As a Black woman, I couldn’t even show up (in church) as both Black and female.”“No one person has broken my heart like the Church has.” “I had no idea Saints across history have seen Jesus as female and feminine.” “I trust Black women to get the job done.”“I can relinquish a lot of the need to control others because God is a Black Woman, and She has it handled.” “I’m passionate about people finding themselves in the Divine.”“Gosh, wouldn’t it be amazing if white men actually knew they were Sacred? That would solve pretty much all the problems in the world.” “The idea of God as a Black woman is the only thing that can only heal white patriarchy.” If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and a review 🙏Show notes: http://www.sophiasociety.org/podcast/God-is-a-black-womanFollow us on social media! Twitter: @holyheretics | Instagram: @holyhereticspodcast | Facebook: @holyhereticsAdvertising inquiries: podcast@sophiasociety.orgSupport our work on Patreon and get early access to episodes! https://www.patreon.com/holyhereticsThis episode was produced by The Sophia Society.  Music is by Faith in Foxholes.

We're excited to drop the first episode of Season Three of Holy Heretics with host Gary Alan Taylor! We are dedicating this year to marginalized voices who have either been muzzled by conventional Christianity or who have been pushed to the periphery of faith. People whose voices, bodies, race, gender, or sexuality make them dangerous to the status quo. In this introductory episode, we invite you to go on an adventure into the borderlands of faith, where we seek the real meaning of the spiritual quest, and where we dare to meet the God who stands in solidarity with the marginalized. Along the way, we will be lead by wise guides who know the way through the spiritual wilderness. Following Joseph Campbell’s archetypal “Hero’s Journey,” we’ll wander ancient spiritual pathways toward our final destination with the Divine. What we find is that the God we serve lives on the margins, in the outlandish periphery where She has been banished for being too inclusive, too compassionate, too kind. If God became flesh as the least of these living on the edges of society, then in order to find God now, we need to move to the margins. In the end, we pause long enough in our quest to ask a few simple but profound questions. What is the end goal of spirituality? Why have humans for thousands of years sought union with the Divine, and what happens when we come face to face with God? What is “Theosis,” and is it possible to obtain intimate union with God in the here and now? Thanks for joining us on the quest to uncover the heart of faith! We are glad to offer you early access to Season Three! BioGary Alan Taylor is Co-Founder of The Sophia Society and host of Holy Heretics Podcast. He has an undergraduate degree from Milligan University and a Master of Arts in European History and Holocaust Studies from East Tennessee State University before pursuing doctoral work at the University of Tennessee. He served in non-profit organizations and higher educational institutions before starting The Sophia Society with his friend and co-worker Melanie Mudge. Gary Alan began deconstructing white evangelicalism after leaving Focus on the Family in 2010. An “evangelicals evangelical,” Gary Alan began leaving white evangelicalism during his time on staff at Milligan University when he was introduced to pacifism and nonviolence. He credits his time as an undergraduate at Milligan for helping to instill the joy of lifelong learning, and his favorite authors and mentors in the progressive Christian space include Marcus Borg, Joan Chittister, Matthew Fox, Derrick Jensen, Richard Rohr, and Thomas Merton. In 2014, he and his wife joined the Episcopal Church. Through the leading of his wife Jennifer, he is pursuing a more contemplative, mystical Christianity. Gary Alan isn’t an expert, but rather a fellow traveler on the quest to uncover the heart of faith. He has taught more than 15 courses at the university level and along with his role in the deconstruction space, he works at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs as a Development Officer. Gary Alan is married to Jennifer, and they are raising their three children in Monument, Colorado. He loves to travel, and his favorite places to visit include London, Singapore, South Africa, Scotland, Prague, and Hong Kong. He continues to be inspired by novelist and poet Thomas Hardy, and enjoys British literature. Follow Gary Alan on Instagram @garyalantaylor48. Follow Holy Heretics @holyhereticspodcast on Instagram, and the web: www.sophiasociety.org. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and a review 🙏Show notes: http://www.sophiasociety.org/podcast/finding-god-in-the-marginshttp://www.sophiasociety.org/podcast/finding-god-in-the-marginsFollow us on social media! Twitter: @holyheretics | Instagram: @holyhereticspodcast | Facebook: @holyhereticsAdvertising inquiries: podcast@sophiasociety.orgSupport our work on Patreon and get early access to episodes! https://www.patreon.com/holyhereticsThis episode was produced by The Sophia Society. and written by Gary Alan Taylor.  Music is by Faith in Foxholes.

At some point in your deconstruction journey, you are probably going to be faced with the question, "Do I stay Christian or do I walk away from this movement altogether?" If that is where you are today, this episode is for you.It's been a minute since Western Christianity has looked anything like Jesus. For the last 1,700 years Christianity has been known more its violence, patriarchy, domination, nationalism, and racism, instead of love and compassion. Christianity jumped the religious tracks a millennia ago. American Christianity is experiencing a rebirth in Christian nationalism, a movement seeking to force its will on the world. It’s so bad that many of us no longer even want to be associated with the term Christian. So what's next? Is this movement even worth saving and if so, how do we do it? In this critical episode, Brian McLaren helps us discern the reasons why you should stay Christian as well as a myriad of reasons why you should not stay Christian. But even more important, he ponders what Christianity might look like in the future if those of us in the deconstruction community decide to participate in the recreation and resurrection of a more mystical, ancient form of faith. If you are seriously considering throwing in the spiritual towel, join us for this timely conversation. I think you'll find that Brian offers a way forward through the difficulty and dissonance many of us feel as we navigate this critical question along our faith-seeking journey. BioBrian D. McLaren is an author, speaker, activist, and public theologian. A former college English teacher and pastor, he is a passionate advocate for “a new kind of Christianity” – just, generous, and working with people of all faiths for the common good. He is a faculty member of  The Living School and podcaster with Learning How to See, which are part of the Center for Action and Contemplation. He is also an Auburn Senior Fellow and is a co-host of Southern Lights. His newest book is  Faith After Doubt (January 2021), and his next release, Do I Stay Christian? (May 2022) can be preordered now. His recent projects include an illustrated children’s book (for all ages) called Cory and the Seventh Story and The Galapagos Islands: A Spiritual Journey.Born in 1956, he graduated from University of Maryland with degrees in English (BA, 1978, and MA, 1981). His academic interests included Medieval drama, Romantic poets, modern philosophical literature, and the novels of Dr. Walker Percy. In 2004, he was awarded a Doctor of Divinity Degree (honoris causa) from Carey Theological Seminary in Vancouver, BC, Canada, and in 2010, he received a second honorary doctorate from Virginia Theological Seminary (Episcopal).From 1978 to 1986, McLaren taught college English in the DC area, and in 1982, he helped form Cedar Ridge Community Church, an innovative, nondenominational church (crcc.org). He left higher education in 1986 to serve as the church’s founding pastor and served in that capacity until 2006.Brian has been active in networking and mentoring church planters and pastors since the mid 1980’s, and has assisted in the development of several new churches. He is a popular conference speaker and a frequent guest lecturer for denominational and ecumenical leadership gatherings – across the US and Canada, Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. His public speaking covers a broad range of topics including postmodern thought and culture, Biblical studies, church leadership and spiritual formation, pastoral survival and burnout, inter-religious dialogue, and global crises.Please follow us on social media (use the buttons below) and help us get the word out! (Also, please don’t hesitate to use any of these channels or email to contact us with any questions, concerns, or feedback.)If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and a review 🙏Show notes: http://sophiasociety.org/podcast/do-i-stay-christian-brian-mclarenFollow us on social media! Twitter: @holyheretics | Instagram: @holyhereticspodcast | Facebook: @holyhereticsAdvertising inquiries: podcast@sophiasociety.orgSupport our work on Patreon and get early access to episodes! https://www.patreon.com/holyhereticsThis episode was produced by The Sophia Society.  Music is by Faith in Foxholes.

The vast majority of Americans worship the white god—the god of Christian nationalism, white supremacy, domination, patriarchy, wealth, power, and colonization. The god of guns and empire, the god that exists to make white men great again. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that powerful white people created a god in their own image, in the image of white men has this god been created. As Dr. Miguel De La Torre responds, “What we say is Christianity today is really an ideology of white supremacy and nationalism…This is what evangelical Christianity is today.” And in service of this false evangelical god, white westerners are blind to the victims of their philosophical and theological fabrication. Our deep-rooted blind spots are so common in white evangelicalism and are further engrained by wealth, history, race, and social standing to a point where the vast majority of Christians in the west are living a version of Christianity that is completely anathema to the historical Jesus. However, if you grew up in non-white spaces, in colonized countries, or in economically challenging environments, odds are your faith looks radically different. Odds are you serve the brown God of the oppressed instead of the white god of MAGA Christianity. Which is just one reason why those of us deconstructing evangelicalism are in such dire need of liberation, liberation from the white god that continues to colonize our hearts and minds. One of the paths toward freedom can be found in the liberation and post-liberation theology movements from Latin America. Liberation theology is a social and political movement attempting to interpret the gospel of Jesus Christ through the lived experiences of oppressed people. Liberation theology has its origins in Latin America in the mid-1950s as socio-economic development created by peasant workers and farming populations who had been driven into desperate poverty. With the economic unrest came political unrest, and military dictators took over many governments in the name of national security, only further marginalizing the poor. But from these oppressive experiences came a theology that drives its legitimacy from the perspective of the poor and oppressed. Liberation theology gave us queer Jesus, black Jesus, immigrant Jesus, and Marxist revolutionary Jesus. It is a version of faith that identifies exclusively with the oppressed.It is ironic then that Latin American liberation theology just might save white people from ourselves, but only if we have the humility to come face to face with our colonial past and present drive for power and domination. This episode deconstructs the white god and dives into other forms of evangelical oppression including gender oppression, LGBTQIA+ marginalization, white supremacy, and nationalistic Christianity. Dr. De La Torre offers a practical way forward in our attempt to free ourselves from the white man’s god. BioRev. Dr. Miguel A. De La Torre is Professor of Social Ethics and Latinx Studies at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. He has served as the elected 2012 President of the Society of Christian Ethics and served as the Executive Officer for the Society of Race, Ethnicity and Religion (2012-17). In 2020 the American Academy of Religion bestowed upon the the Excellence in Teaching Award. Dr. De La Torre is a recognized international Fulbright scholar who has taught courses at the Cuernavaca Center for Intercultural Dialogue on Development (Mexico), Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies (Indonesia), University of Johannesburg (South Africa), Johannes Gutenberg University (Germany). Additionally, he has lectured at Universidad Bíblica Latinoamericana (Costa Rica), The Association for Theological Education in South East Asia (Thailand) and the Council of World Mission (Mexico and Taiwan). Advocating for an ethics of place, De La Torre has taken students on immersion classes to Cuba and the Mexico/U.S. border to walk the migrant trails. Among multiple yearly speaking engagements, he has also been a week-long speaker at the Chautauqua Institute, and the plenary address at the Parliament of World Religions De La Torre has received several national book awards and is a frequent speaker at national and international scholarly religious events and meetings. He also speaks at churches and nonprofit organizations on topics concerning the intersection of race, class, gender, and sexuality with religion. In 2020, the American Academy of Religion bestowed on him the Excellence in Teaching Award. The following year, 2021, the American Academy also conferred upon him the Martin E. Marty Public Understanding of Religion Award. De La Torre is the first scholar to receive the two most prestigious awards presented by his guild and the first Latinx to receive either one of them.Quotes:“For white people to get saved, they have to learn how to worship the black Jesus.”“For our economy to function, men of color have to mostly be unemployed.”“I have to constantly be suspicious of my worldview.”“White evangelicalism must be crucified. It has to die.”“Evangelical Christianity has become an apologist and supporter of the rise of U.S. empire.”“The death of Christianity is because of evangelicalism.”“What does the Gospel have to say to the oppressed?”When I worship the white god, I am worshipping a philosophical and theological position that justifies oppression.” “Badass Christianity is a radical implementation of the Gospel message.”“I believe in whatever the poor believe in.”“All forms of oppression really begins with gender oppression.”Please follow us on social media (use the buttons below) and help us get the word out! (Also, please don’t hesitate to use any of these channels or email to contact us with any questions, concerns, or feedback.)If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and a review 🙏Show notes: http://sophiasociety.org/podcast/white-god-brown-jesus-decolonizing-christianityFollow us on social media! Twitter: @holyheretics | Instagram: @holyhereticspodcast | Facebook: @holyhereticsAdvertising inquiries: podcast@sophiasociety.orgSupport our work on Patreon and get early access to episodes! https://www.patreon.com/holyhereticsThis episode was produced by The Sophia Society.  Music is by Faith in Foxholes.