Rethinking Faith

Why would an atheist spend his time with the Bible? Dr. Anthony Pinn is a former AME minister who is now a secular humanist and professor at Rice University. He returns to (Re)thinking Faith to talk about his new book, Biblical Outlaws: What the Bible's Most Despised Characters Can Teach Us. Pinn no longer believes in God, but he still values the Bible as powerful literature that shapes millions of lives. He argues we have to read it differently: "the Bible against the Bible." We talk about why Lot's wife looking back was a defiant "why?", why Job's wife may be the only character in the book of Job with any integrity, and how Nimrod's tower celebrates human creativity even when it fails. Along the way, they bring in Camus and the absurd, the "economy of giving and receiving," the beauty of defiance, and whether AI is a new Babel. Enjoy! RESOURCES: Biblical Outlaws: What the Bible's Most Despised Characters Can Teach Us (Book) THEOLOGY BEER CAMP ONLINE TICKETS: Grab your favorite beverage and join us ONLINE. *Special thanks to Marty Fredrick, Josh Gilbert, and Dan Koch. Love you guys <3* Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Dr. Simon Critchley is back, and this time we try to cover Being and Time in a single episode. (Yes... ridiculous... I know!) Simon's new book, Heidegger Thinking, grew out of 35 years of teaching Heidegger and a pandemic-era podcast he recorded at his desk. We talk about how Heidegger's break with Catholicism and his turn to Luther, Paul, and Augustine shaped Being and Time into something like a conversion experience with no God in it. Simon sums Heidegger up in three M's: meaning, movement, and mortality. We also get into why he thinks Heidegger's account of death leaves out grief, what "authenticity" meant before it became a buzzword, why the New Atheism has lost its hold, and Heidegger's decision to join the Nazi Party. We end at Simon's dream "reticence bar," where nobody has to say anything at all. Slow philosophy for a fast world. Enjoy! RESOURCES: Heidegger Thinking: Being and Time Explained (Book) The Faith of the Faithless (Book) Apply-Degger Podcast THEOLOGY BEER CAMP ONLINE: Get your online ticket to theology beer camp HERE *Special thanks to Josh Gilbert, Marty Frederick, and Dan Koch. Love you guys! <3* Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Aaron Stauffer — theologian, Presbyterian clergy, and author of Listening to the Spirit: Radical Social Gospel, Sacred Value, and Broad-Based Community Organizing — joins Josh to unpack what the Social Gospel actually is, why it became a slur in some corners of American Christianity, and how sacred values (not just political issues) build the kind of relational power that outlasts a news cycle. The conversation moves through Christian social ethics, the difference between relational and unilateral power, worker cooperatives, and a candid take on why progressive Christian influencer culture is failing the movements it claims to serve. Grounded in decades of interfaith and labor organizing, this episode is a wonderful introduction to thinking theologically about power, democracy, and community. Enjoy! RESOURCES: Organizing Visions: Social Ethics and Broad-Based Solidarity Activism Listening to the Spirit: The Radical Social Gospel, Sacred Value, and Broad-based Community Organizing THEOLOGY BEER CAMP ONLINE TICKETS: Get your online tickets for Theology Beer Camp HERE. *Special thanks to Marty Fredrick, Josh Gilbert, and Dan Koch. Love you guys! <3* Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What happens when the God of "God Can't" meets the God of the Black church's "God Is Able"? This week I sat down with my friend, the Reverend Jill Elizabeth — public theologian, ordained Curian Network board member, and self-described "barbershop theologian". Together we dig into the real friction between Black church theology and open and relational/process thought, the prosperity-gospel undercurrents nobody wants to name, and why a God who could stop injustice but chooses not to is a harder sell than it sounds. Along the way: a decade-long practice of lament over police violence in Phoenix, the theology of the barbershop as sacred space, storytelling as the doorway to empathy, and why building the kingdom of God always costs us something. This is a conversation about bridges — between traditions, between suffering and hope, and between the ideas we argue about and the bodies those ideas actually affect. Enjoy! RESOURCES: The Curian Network Systematic Geekology Podcast THEOLOGY BEER CAMP ONLINE: Get your online tickets today! YAY TICKETS *Special thanks to Josh, Marty, and Dan! Love you guys <3* Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, John D. Caputo returns to talk about his new book, A Radical God: Theopoetics, Phenomenology, and the Future of Religion. Religion has been incredibly busy making itself unbelievable, and the question isn't whether we can save it from its critics, or whether we can save it from itself, but if religion is even worth saving at all. Caputo's answer is theopoetics, what he calls "religion's last stand". It's not that God exceeds our language so we resort to poetry; it's that the poetic imagination is where God comes from in the first place. We get into what's left of God after you suspend both belief and disbelief, whether you can actually pray to a God like that, and why any of this should matter to the person still showing up on Sunday morning. Enjoy! RESOURCES: A Radical God: Theopoetics, Phenomenology, and the Future of Religion THEOLOGY BEER CAMP: Tickets are running out! It's not too late... grab yours today! TICKETS *A special thanks to Josh Gilbert, Marty Fredrick, and Dan Koch. Love you guys <3* Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices