Gravity Commons Podcast

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Elizabeth Oldfield: Tending to Our Souls in Turbulent Times May 28, 2024

Show notes

In a world experiencing turbulent change, we need people who are resilient, kind, open, generous, and brave. How do we become those kinds of people? In Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times, popular podcaster Elizabeth Oldfield uses the seven deadly sins as a framework to explore this question.

Elizabeth Oldfield hosts The Sacred, a podcast about our deepest values, the stories that shape us, and how we can build empathy and understanding between people who are very different. She has a regular column for UnHerd and has appeared on BBC One, Radio 5Live, Radio 4, and The World Service. Her work has appeared in The Financial Times, Prospect, The Times, CNN, The Guardian, and beyond. Oldfield is also a contributing editor at Comment magazine, a guest lecturer at the University of Birmingham, and former director and now senior fellow at Theos, the UK's leading religion and society think tank. She lives in London, England.

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Terra McDaniel: Rediscovering Lament as a Practice of Hope May 21, 2024

Show notes

We talk with spiritual director Terra McDaniel about how to rediscover the lost practice of lament, so we can heal and hope again. Most people don't know how to process personal or communal mourning and instead struggle to honor our tears, vulnerability, and the full weight of these disillusioning times. But tending our grief is exactly what we need to reimagine a way forward.

Terra's book Hopeful Lament: Tending Our Grief Through Spiritual Practices makes space for the powerful act of crying out before a loving God and offers provoking reflection questions, embodied practices, and applications for families with children. Learn how to journey gently through suffering.

Terra McDaniel is a spiritual director for adults and children. She spent two decades as a pastor and ministry leader and earned her MDiv at Portland Seminary. McDaniel wrote More Than Ordinary with Doug Sherman and is a regular contributor to the Companioning Center blog. She lives with her husband in Austin, Texas, with her twin grandchildren nearby.

You can connect with her and her work on her website.

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The Truth About Deconstruction From Someone Who's In It Now May 14, 2024

Show notes

Matt posted something on Facebook recently about people who attempt to "police" those going through deconstruction, who seem to:

equate deconstruction with de-conversion,
say people deconstruct so they can sin,
say people deconstruct to 'be cool or hip or trendy or for street cred',
criticize 'giving up' on the local church, and
blame deconstruction on bad teaching.

Matt received a response from Aaron Gardner, a friend who is right in the middle of a painful deconstruction process, and we decided to record a podcast conversation about what it's actually like to be right in the middle of deconstruction.

You can connect with Aaron on his Facebook page for further conversation.

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Jon DePue: Liberating the Gospel from Mere Justification May 07, 2024

Show notes

In their new book Beyond Justification: Liberating Paul’s Gospel, Douglas Campbell and Jon Depue address a growing frustration among many Christians of how to understand what seems to be contradictory messages from Paul about the Gospel.

On one hand, Paul usually talks about a participatory, transformational good news full of freedom, resurrection, love, and being ‘in Christ’. On the other hand, about 10% of the time Paul’s language speaks of retribution, punitive justice, and a conditional transaction at the cross. What to make of this disjunction in Paul’s thought?

Jon Depue joins us for a provocative conversation seeking a way through this quagmire that has consistently confounded Christians for many years. Making use of historical backgrounds and utilizing a close reading of Paul’s rhetoric and argument in the book of Romans, Doug and Jon propose a compelling and unifying way forward to a clear articulation of Paul’s Gospel.

Jon DePue is a graduate of Duke Divinity School and has served churches as director of Christian education for several years. He currently works as a learning community support specialist for Indianapolis Public Schools.

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Scott Coley: How Christian Leaders Became Ministers of Propaganda Apr 30, 2024

Show notes

The fact that "good evangelical Christians are Republican" seems obvious means the propaganda is working.

Professor and author Scott Coley helps us understand how evangelicalism became fused with right-wing politics and now presses evangelical theology into the service of authoritarian politics, which he outlines in his new book Ministers of Propaganda: Truth, Power, and the Ideology of the Religious Right.

Scott M. Coley is a lecturer in philosophy at Mount St. Mary's University. His research interests include philosophy of religion, moral epistemology, and political philosophy.

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Shai Held: Why Judaism is Actually About Love (Not Law) Apr 23, 2024

Show notes

A dramatic misinterpretation of the Jewish tradition has shaped the history of the West: Christianity is the religion of love, and Judaism the religion of law. In the face of centuries of this widespread misrepresentation, Rabbi Shai Held, in his book Judaism Is about Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life, recovers the heart of the Jewish tradition, offering the radical and moving argument that love belongs as much to Judaism as it does to Christianity.

Rabbi Shai Held--philosopher, theologian, and Bible scholar--is President and Dean at the Hadar Institute. He received the prestigious Covenant Award for Excellence in Jewish Education, and has been named multiple times by Newsweek as one of the fifty most influential rabbis in America and by the Jewish Daily Forward as one of the fifty most prominent Jews in the world. Rabbi Held is the author of several books, and is the host of Hadar's newest podcast, Answers WithHeld.

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Susannah Griffith: Forgiveness and Healing After Trauma Apr 16, 2024

Show notes

In her book Forgiveness After Trauma: A Path to Find Healing and Empowerment, Christian minister and scholar Susannah Griffith explores what the Bible says--and doesn't say--about the biblical call to forgive. She helps readers understand a "trauma-informed forgiveness" that is healing and restorative, framing forgiveness within broader concerns around lament, anger, accountability, release and rebirth, and reconciliation.

Susannah Griffith (PhD, Vanderbilt University) is an independent scholar whose work focuses on the intersection of biblical studies and trauma. She is also a licensed minister of the Mennonite Church USA, a role she embodies to advocate and care for the marginalized outside the walls of the church. Her first book, Leaving Silence, was a Christianity Today Book Award finalist for Christian discipleship. Griffith resides in Northern Indiana with her husband and three young daughters.

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Elesha Coffman: How Pivotal Events Shaped the American Church Apr 09, 2024

Show notes

American history has profoundly shaped, and been shaped by, Christianity. In her book Turning Points in American Church History: How Pivotal Events Shaped a Nation and a Faith, Dr. Elesha Coffman tells the story of Christianity in the United States by focusing on 13 key events over four centuries of history. Elesha helps us understand our faith and the landscape of American religion.

Elesha J. Coffman (PhD, Duke University) is associate professor of history at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. She previously served as the editor of Christian History magazine and has taught at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary. She spent a year as a fellow at the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University. Coffman is the author of The Christian Century and the Rise of the Protestant Mainline, Margaret Mead: A Twentieth-Century Faith, and numerous articles on American religious history.

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Ryan Post: Communities Formed by the Beatitudes Apr 02, 2024

Show notes

The Beatitudes are some of the most-quoted and least-understood words of Jesus. Pastor and author Ryan Post helps us hear the Beatitudes anew as good news to form us into Christlikeness.

Ryan Post is the lead pastor of Village Church in Burbank, CA and the author of Healthy Prayer: Integrating Structure, Silence, and Spontaneity and the book we talked about in this converastion, Jesus People: Communities Formed by The Beatitudes.

You can connect with Ryan and his work at ryanpost.com.

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Michael Rhodes: Practicing Justice-Oriented Discipleship Mar 26, 2024

Show notes

Many Christians and churches are rediscovering that God cares deeply about justice, but opinions abound as to what an approach to biblical justice might look like in contemporary society. We talk with biblical scholar Michael Rhodes about justice-oriented discipleship that is critical for the formation of God's people, which is the theme of his new book Just Discipleship: Biblical Justice in an Unjust World.

JUST DISCIPLESHIP BOOK GIVEAWAY: In partnership with IVP, we are giving away two copies of Michael Rhodes' book Just Discipleship. Go to gravitycommons.com/justdiscipleship to register.

Michael J. Rhodes (PhD, Trinity College/University of Aberdeen) is the lecturer in Old Testament at Carey Baptist College. He is the author of Formative Feasting: Practices and Virtue Ethics in Deuteronomy's Tithe Meal and the Corinthian Lord's Supper; Practicing the King's Economy: Honoring Jesus in the Way We Work, Earn, Spend, Save, and Give (with Brian Fikkert and Robby Holt); and numerous articles in popular outlets such as Christianity Today and The Biblical Mind. Rhodes has spent more than fourteen years involved in community development and urban ministry work, and is an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. He currently lives in Auckland, New Zealand with his wife, Rebecca, and their four children.

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