We discuss the ideology of whiteness and its implications. Whiteness is real. It’s powerful. And it’s destructive. We have to face it and we have to reject it.

We discuss an intriguing idea from Peter Rollins and how it intersects with the emerging consensus around the stages of faith.

We have now lost over 500,000 lives to COVID-19 in the United States. We ruminate on how the United States and the world has coped with this pandemic and all that it has revealed. Finally, we think about what Lent might have to say about the human condition in this time of profound loss. 

Republicans put party over country, again, and they did so with the support of the majority of white Christians. When will we see the Republican party for what it is and white Christianity for what it is? We can do better, and we must.

If we can’t start speaking the truths that we know, then we are in serious trouble. Things have to change or things have to die.

We discuss our thoughts and feelings on the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

It’s time to tell the truth about White Christianity in America and about the  Republican Party. We offer our analysis with as much clarity and courage as we can. 

This episode explores the scapegoat theory of Rene Girard as an explanation for the death and resurrection of Jesus. Maybe redemptive violence is a myth.

Did Jesus die for your sins? Did God pour out his just wrath on Jesus? Does God forgive?

Christus Victor, Christ the victorious, was the first major atonement theory of the church. We discuss the components of this theory and give our thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses of it.

Let’s talk honestly about the New Testament’s vision of the second coming of Jesus, and let’s think concretely about how we experience the divine in our lives.

This episode focuses on our current thoughts on Jesus’s first coming and on Jesus’s purported second coming. We discuss the gospel writers’ attempts to connect Jesus to the Old Testament. We also discuss the connection between Jesus’s life and ministry and the promise that Jesus will return. What are we to think about the significant delay in the return of Jesus? Is Jesus really coming back?

We discuss the biblical witness of the Old and New Testament on the promise of the land to Israel. What are the different options for understanding the modern state of Israel in relationship to God’s promises to Israel in the Old and New Testament? Is it reasonable for a Christian to view the modern state of Israel as the fulfillment of the promise of the land to Israel in the Old Testament? How much do the effects of one’s theological position matter?

This episode is devoted to our reactions to the deaths and injuries of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza. The March of Return began on March 30 and culminated on May 14-15. Over 100 Palestinians have been killed and over 10,000 wounded. We give some background on Gaza and on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We then offer our analysis of the situation, including some commentary on Israeli society and on the Bible’s role in all of this.

We continue our conversation on Jesus’s message about the kingdom of God, focusing our attention on the gospel of Luke. Luke’s gospel offers some unique ideas about the kingdom of God that deserve attention. Has the kingdom of God already come, in some subtle way? Luke offers this possibility in one story of Jesus. This discussion will give you some insight in how this gospel writer utilized his sources, making small, but important changes in a few places. We envision the gospel writers (and...

In this episode, we continue our conversation on the historical Jesus, focusing on the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s gospel. Can the Sermon on the Mount be understood in an apocalyptic framework? What about the Jesus’s temptation by Satan in the wilderness? We explain how both of these episodes in Jesus’s life and ministry fit well within an apocalyptic framework.

We continue our conversation on the historical Jesus and his message on the kingdom of God. We focus on John the Baptist and his role in the formation of Jesus message. We talk about the awkwardness of the fact that Jesus was baptized by John, and principally about congruence between Jesus’s message and John’s message.