So we’re at the Common Market in Charlotte drinking craft beverages and fielding questions from the Speaking to a Modern World conference, which means we’re ping-ponging between topics faster than your algorithm-addled attention span. Josh starts us off playing voice of the people, then we trade him for Leah Robinson, who’s delightfully willing to interrupt me when I get too deep in the philosophical weeds. We tackle everything from what the hell “modernity” actually means (hint: it’s not just Protestants arguing about beliefs), to why religion emerged before language as a solution to mammalian cooperation problems, to how process theology offers a different way through deconstruction than Nietzsche’s lonely child-making. Tom and I explain why we think classical theism’s omnipotent God is actually less helpful than you’d think, we get into the weeds on sacrificial language and atonement theory, and Leah keeps us honest about whether all our philosophical specificity is just academic masturbation or actually useful for people trying to figure out how to live. Plus we discover that getting kicked out of the Nazarenes gives you mixed feelings but doesn’t automatically make you drink beer.

Thomas Jay Oord is a theologian, philosopher, and scholar of multi-disciplinary studies. He is an award-winning author, and he has written or edited more than twenty-five books. Oord directs a doctoral program at Northwind Theological Seminary and the Center for Open and Relational Theology. He won the Outstanding Faculty Award twelve times as a full-time professor and now speaks at institutions across the globe. Oord is known for his contributions to research on love, open and relational theology, science and religion, and freedom and relationships for transformation.

Some Previous Tripp & Tom Pods

• Love at the Center: Tom Oord’s Systematic Theology Project


• A Journey of Faith and Integrity


• Faith without Certainty


• Big God Questions


• Christ, Christmas, & the Incarnation


• the Death of Omnipotence!


• Brian McLaren & Thomas Jay Oord: a God Worthy of Love


• Process This!


• Process Theology QnA


• Authority, Atonement, Abortion, and a Big Hug


• from Pluriform Love to Divine Revelation


• Big God Twitter Takes


• Trump is (NOT) a Process Theologian & Other Questions


• Thomas Jay Oord wants you to know “God Can’t”


• Open and Relational Theology Throwdown


• Open and Relational Q&A with Thomas Jay Oord


• Why Go Wesleyan?

Leah Robinson is a practical theologian, author of Bad Theology, and professor at McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University. A Georgia native who completed her PhD at the University of Edinburgh, Robinson has taught at both the University of Glasgow and University of Edinburgh before returning to her alma mater. Her work focuses on practical theology with particular attention to feminist, queer, and liberation theological perspectives

Check out Leah’s previous visits to the podcast

• Oppression in the Name of God


• Bad Theology & Jager Bomb Fountains


• When a Practical Theologian talks about God

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