My 2022 Podcast Listens
My valiant recording mic. Photo by Mark Hackett.
A common question I get from friends and folks who keep up with this site is what are you reading and listening to? So, in addition to my annual reading list, I’m starting this new tradition of sharing my top 10 favorite podcast episodes at the end of each year.
These conversations cover a wide array of topics and ideas in the Christian faith, history, and some political commentary. I hope at least a few sound interesting to you. Enjoy.
I may be a little biased as this is my podcast, but this conversation with historian Dr. Beth Allison Barr of Baylor University is gold. We talked about her powerful book The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth and why American evangelical ideas of biblical womanhood may not be as biblical as many people think. We also discuss the real-world implications of gender hierarchy —including widespread abuse and the crisis of masculinity plaguing complementarian church culture— and the hope of what a better future could look like.
If you’re like me and have long found the often explosive debate on strict gender roles in churches frustrating and unproductive, this episode is for you. Also please do all that subscribe and rate and review stuff on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Does the Bible address modern moral questions? Saying those words out loud will get you thrown out of at least a few churches in my neck of the words. But if you set aside our church milieu and ask this question with as much intellectual honesty as you can, the conversation gets fascinating —and leads to many more questions— really quickly. In our modern age, how do we embody and find deep meaning in an ancient tradition? Instead of looking to the Bible to justify what we already think, what is a better way to engage the Scripture as we consider problems biblical writers never envisioned? What is a hermeneutical hangover?
The Bible For Normal People is one of my favorite podcasts, hence three of their episodes being on this list. I don’t really know what to think at the end of some of the episodes. The open discussion without harsh judgement, threat of being ostracized, or need for answers is kind of the point though.
The story of the collapse of the Mars Hill megachurch and disgraced-yet-somehow-still-a-pastor Mark Driscoll is as dramatic as they come, a reality that Christianity Today captured well in their hit podcast. Yet as the episodes progressed I couldn’t help but think that, if we set aside some of the most extreme abuse and drama and sheer size of the church, what happened at Mars Hill isn’t that unique of a story. It’s a very American experience that we’ve seen in politics, academia, the media, and perhaps most noticeably in faith institutions and churches. A number of the experiences documented at Mars Hill were eerily similar to things I saw, heard, and experienced in the 2010s as my time in white American evangelicalism came to an end.
This particular episode examines these connections between the failure of our cultural institutions and the phenomena of rootlessness and loneliness, exploring how these related phenomena create the preconditions for charismatic leaders and corruption. There’s also some good talk about what change can look like in the ruins and the power death should have in all of our lives.
What are the limits of using the Bible in ethics? What is the role of community in biblical interpretation? How does seeking certainty and absolutes close us off to others? What is the purpose of having hope?
Dean of Vanderbilt Divinity School Emilie Townes answers these questions and more in this beautiful interview. This episode was originally released during the heat of the pandemic in 2020 and was re-released this year. I’m thankful it was because I likely would have never heard it otherwise. Dr. Townes speaks about faith, community, life, and leaving some work that needs to be done to God.
What happens when one of the country’s leading historians of white evangelicalism sits down with a well-known evangelical political pundit? An engaged conversation about faith, culture, and the desperate need for hospitality in the digital age.
If you frequent this site and somehow don’t know who Kristin Du Mez is, I’m not sure how you missed her. She’s the author of New York Times bestseller Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (get your copy). David French is one of the few elite American evangelical voices that post-evangelical Christians like myself take seriously. I read both religiously.
These two orthodox Christians don’t see eye-to-eye on everything, but this conversation on their roles as public cultural commentators in a fractured media and church environment is fascinating. They talk about how they choose their battles, how they deal with criticism, and the hard work of critiquing one’s own tribe in the age of political tribalism.
Putting the first episode on this list is more about sharing this entire podcast that kept getting better and better to the very end. Each meticulously crafted episode showcases the stunning story of the Nazi plot to overthrow American democracy and the U.S. government during World War II, as well as the sprawling collective of powerful and ordinary Americans committed to the dark cause. This is the all-but-forgotten true story of old-fashioned American extremism getting supercharged by proximity to power.
I went into the show knowing a little about the story but was instantly hooked by the details and the exquiste storytelling. And yes, there are plenty of lessons that can be learned for our current political moment today. Even if you aren’t a history buff this is a fantastic show that you can appreciate.
Christian nationalism has been on the ascendant in American politics alongside Donald Trump. From “Stop the Steal” to the January 6 insurrection to the overturning of Roe, Christian nationalist rhetoric has undergirded it all. But faith also isn’t going anywhere in our politics with a majority of Americans identifying as Christian. So what would a better relationship between church and state look like?
There is A LOT packed into these 33 minutes of trying to answer this question. Esau McCaulley also gives some solid advice for why we can’t just put our heads down and hope Christian nationalism goes away and how we can move forward out of broken theology. He also speaks to why we must all be willing to pay a price for telling truth in a post-truth church context.
If the Bible is not inerrant —at least in the fundamentalist sense of the word— what value does it hold? Another question that would get you thrown out of at least a few churches in my neck of the woods. Much like the first B4NP episode listed above, asking this question with as much intellectual honesty as one can muster leads to a fascinating conversation and even more questions. How can an all or nothing mindset about the Bible be harmful? What are some different ways of reading and approaching Scripture? How should people who aren’t scholars and experts approach the Bible?
Some of you may be reading these questions and feeling anxiety rising inside you; but, for me at least, my anxiety began dissipating when I became free enough to ask questions like these which, in turn, released me from an incorrect need to have a sense of certainty. Weird how that works, right? Anywho, if you are frustrated by people who aggressively confuse their narrow interpretation of the Bible with ideas of inerrancy I think you will appreciate this conversation.
A lot of people toss around words like “conservative” and “progressive” without understanding their meaning. Doing so at the intersection of theology and politics especially winds up hurting people and leaving others exhausted and confused. I’ve been called some…colorful…versions of each the past few years, even though how people meant those terms was neither accurate to my beliefs nor to my words and actions.
Pastor Curtis Chang and political commentator David French discuss important questions and provide clarity on these common and conversational terms. How is equivocation misleading and damaging to Christian discourse? Can politics be used as a proxy for faithfulness? If so, when? If you find the way these terms are often used in certain parts of the American church world frustrating and painful, then this discussion will be music to your ears.
What’s the difference between engaging in cultural transformation and waging a culture war? When are we really seeking change and when are we just virtue signaling and performing for our tribe? What role does vindictiveness play? Is boycotting an effective approach to real change or, in our current moment at least, is it just performative culture warring? What’s Wikipedia got to say about all of this?
This is a great conversation that includes solid insight from Skye Jethani and Kaitlyn Schiess especially, whose books are on my annual reading list. Kaitlyn speaks to how certain people profit from culture warring and the incentives that puts in place to keep people riled up so more money can be made. Cynical? Maybe. True? Absolutely. Thankfully the book of Jeremiah in the Bible gives us some guidance on how to live faithfully in fraught times.
Thank you so much for being a part of this online space in 2022. I’ve enjoyed engaging with many of you on issues in American church culture and where our faith goes next. Have a podcast you think I’d be interested in? Comment below!
I explore faith and American church culture from Memphis, TN. Never miss an article by signing up for my free newsletter or becoming a member. You can also subscribe to my podcast.
