Holy Heretics: Losing Religion and Finding Jesus

Can God only be experienced through the Church? Or is God revealed and able to be experienced elsewhere? Dr. Belden C. Lane, professor emeritus of theological studies, believes our experience of God is too limited and has thus spent many years cultivating the spiritual discipline of solo wilderness backpacking. In our conversation with him, we discuss why we need the wilderness, how being taken to the edge physically also pushes us spiritually, why we need “dangerous” books, and his deep admiration of the desert mothers and fathers.Find Dr. Lane’s books on Amazon.If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and a review 🙏For show notes, click here or go to www.holyheretics.org.Follow us on social media! Twitter: @holyheretics | Instagram: @holyhereticspodcast | Facebook: @holyhereticsAdvertising inquiries: podcast@sophiasociety.orgSupport our work on Patreon and get early access to episodes, as well as a spot in our brand new course on the Bible! https://www.patreon.com/holyhereticsThis episode was produced by The Sophia Society.  Music is by Faith in Foxholes, and sound engineering is by Joshua Mudge.

What happens when you realize your religion does everything except foster wholeness, flourishing, and love? For Flamy Grant and Ben Grace, two of the four hosts of Heathen Podcast, it meant searching for belonging, liberation, and authenticity beyond the confines of religion. We chat with them about what they found, where they found it, and what truly unconditional community and acceptance looks like.Follow Heathen on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook (@HeathenPodcast), check out Heathen Happy Hour on YouTube, and listen to their podcast.If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and a review 🙏For show notes, click here or go to www.holyheretics.org.Follow us on social media! Twitter: @holyheretics | Instagram: @holyhereticspodcast | Facebook: @holyhereticsAdvertising inquiries: podcast@sophiasociety.orgSupport our work on Patreon and get early access to episodes, as well as a spot in our brand new course on the Bible! https://www.patreon.com/holyhereticsThis episode was produced by The Sophia Society.  Music is by Faith in Foxholes, and sound engineering is by Joshua Mudge.

As one half of the hosting team at Heathen Podcast, Anissa Nishira and Karyn Thurston are done with shame. Despite their vastly different upbringings, they each were taught a religion of shame, conformity, and certainty. In this episode, we talk with them about how they are now on a quest to drop the shame and helps others do so, all while building a faith that’s based on love. We also touch on deconstruction, birthing justice, microaggressions, being a Black woman in predominantly white spaces, and the meaning of community. (And don’t miss next week’s episode with Flamy and Ben, the other two hosts of Heathen!)Follow Heathen on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook (@HeathenPodcast), check out Heathen Happy Hour on YouTube, and listen to their podcast: https://www.heathenpodcast.com/If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and a review 🙏For show notes, click here or go to www.holyheretics.org.Follow us on social media! Twitter: @holyheretics | Instagram: @holyhereticspodcast | Facebook: @holyhereticsAdvertising inquiries: podcast@sophiasociety.orgSupport our work on Patreon and get early access to episodes, as well as a spot in our brand new course on the Bible! https://www.patreon.com/holyhereticsThis episode was produced by The Sophia Society.  Music is by Faith in Foxholes, and sound engineering is by Joshua Mudge.

Fed up with superficial religion but also feeling empty from pursuing pleasure as the highest virtue, Reina Rose (host of the Roku TV show Soul Nutrition) began searching for a new way to fill her soul. In our conversation with her, she tells us what she discovered on her journey, how she nourishes her soul, and what spirituality looks like for her today, as well as offers some tips for how to find spiritual nourishment when the Church is no longer a safe option.Follow Reina on Instagram (@reina_rose_tv), Twitter (@reinarosetv), and Facebook (@reinarosetv), and check out her show: https://reina-rose.com/show.If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and a review 🙏For show notes, click here or go to www.holyheretics.org.Follow us on social media! Twitter: @holyheretics | Instagram: @holyhereticspodcast | Facebook: @holyhereticsAdvertising inquiries: podcast@sophiasociety.orgSupport our work on Patreon and get early access to episodes, as well as a spot in our brand new course on the Bible! https://www.patreon.com/holyhereticsThis episode was produced by The Sophia Society.  Music is by Faith in Foxholes, and sound engineering is by Joshua Mudge.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and a review 🙏To church or not to church, that is the question—at least for those of us who no longer claim the evangelical label. And if we do decide to stay, what do we do when we disagree with things being taught or supported either by the church or by our fellow churchgoers? We sat down with Joey, the host of Dismantle Pod, to talk about why he’s chosen to not only stay in church, but even serve in many different capacities, and how he’s learned to handle differences.Check out Dismantle Pod and follow along on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook (@dismantlepod). Email Joey at dismantlepod@gmail.com.For show notes, click here or go to www.holyheretics.org.Follow us on social media! Twitter: @holyheretics | Instagram: @holyhereticspodcast | Facebook: @holyhereticsAdvertising inquiries: podcast@sophiasociety.orgSupport our work on Patreon and get early access to episodes, as well as a spot in our brand new course on the Bible! https://www.patreon.com/holyhereticsThis episode was produced by The Sophia Society.  Music is by Faith in Foxholes, and sound engineering is by Joshua Mudge.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and a review 🙏Most of us who are raised evangelical are taught 3 things about the Bible: 1. that it’s the Word of God; 2. that it’s inerrant (i.e., without error); and 3. that a “plain and simple” reading of it contains all the truth humankind will ever need. But what if none of those things is true? What is the Bible then? How do we read it if not from a literal, inerrant framework? And what place is it supposed to have in our lives? We talk with biblical scholar, author, and host of The Bible for Normal People podcast, Dr. Pete Enns, about what the Bible is and isn’t and how there are other faithful frameworks for approaching it despite what we’ve been taught.Follow Pete on Instagram and Twitter (@peteenns). Check out his podcast, The Bible for Normal People, and find it on Instagram.For show notes, click here or go to www.holyheretics.org.Follow us on social media! Twitter: @holyheretics | Instagram: @holyhereticspodcast | Facebook: @holyhereticsAdvertising inquiries: podcast@sophiasociety.orgSupport our work on Patreon and get early access to episodes, as well as a spot in our brand new course on the Bible! https://www.patreon.com/holyhereticsThis episode was produced by The Sophia Society.  Music is by Faith in Foxholes, and sound engineering is by Joshua Mudge.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and a review 🙏Everyone’s experience with “deconstruction” or “leaving the faith” is different, but one thing that so many have in common is a loss of community. Whether it was by choice or by some level of excommunication, we often find ourselves in need of a new community that understands what we’ve been through and where we are in our faith. So how do you find it? We joined Joey (host of Dismantle Pod), Emily (co-host of The Postmodern Fish Podcast), Katherine (host of Uncertain Podcast), William (co-host of The Space Between UK Podcast), and Tim (host of The New Evangelicals Podcast) to have a roundtable discussion of what it’s like to lose a community and where we’ve all found new ones.Check out the show notes (below) for links to follow everyone in this episode.For show notes, click here or go to www.holyheretics.org.Follow 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, and sound engineering is by Joshua Mudge.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and a review 🙏Meghan Tschanz was a good Christian girl her whole life: She went to church, she stayed “pure,” she submitted to male authority, and she dedicated many years of her life to serving God by becoming a missionary. But now, her commitment to God compels her to dismantle so much of what she once promoted. She talks with us about how her experiences halfway across the world helped her see that her complementarian theology was directly complicit in the systematic subjugation of women for men’s pleasure and why we’ll never fix the sex trafficking problem if we only treat the symptoms, not the cause.CW: Sex trafficking, rape, oppression, female genital mutilation, patriarchy, sexual abuse, sexual assaultFollow Meghan on Instagram and Twitter (@meghantschanz).For show notes, click here or go to www.holyheretics.org.Follow 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, and sound engineering is by Joshua Mudge.

How sure are you about what you believe? How do you know it’s true? Will Thorpe (aka @hereticaltheology) has made it his mission to ask the difficult questions about faith and God in order to make Christianity less harmful. We sat down with the fundamentalist-turned-atheist to talk about his faith journey, why he believes Christianity is harmful, and why he continues to engage in biblical textual criticism long after he’s left the faith.Follow Will on Instagram (@heretical_theology), Twitter (@heretictheology), and Facebook (if you must).For show notes, click here or go to www.holyheretics.org.Follow 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/holyhereticsCreditsThis episode was produced by The Sophia Society.  Music is by Faith in Foxholes, and sound engineering is by Joshua Mudge.

From his fundamentalist, homeschooled (Bill Gothard style) upbringing to finding himself addicted to alcohol and homeless in France, Travis Wade Zinn has been through a lot. His faith has understandably gone through many changes—including being nonexistent for a while—yet he believes he’s found a deeper connection to God via ancient Christian practices that the modern American Church has lost. Listen to his story of struggle, loss, transformation, and finding God in unlikely ways.Follow Travis on Facebook (@twzinn), Instagram, and Twitter (@traviswadezinn).For show notes, click here or go to holyheretics.org.Follow us on social media! Twitter: @holyheretics | Instagram: @holyhereticspodcast | Facebook: @holyhereticsAdvertising inquiries: podcast@sophiasociety.orgSupport our work on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/holyhereticsCreditsThis episode was produced by The Sophia Society.  Music is by Faith in Foxholes, and sound engineering is by Joshua Mudge.