Straight White American JesusWhat does American religious history actually tell us about the present moment? In this episode, Brad sits down with historian and author Brook Wilensky-Lanford to discuss her sweeping new book, A God-Shaped Nation: 500 Years of Religion in...
New Books in ReligionKorean New Religions (Cambridge University Press, 2025) is an excellent primer for anyone interested in modern Korea’s religious landscape. The Korean peninsula has dramatically transformed over the past century, and various new religions have...
Straight White American JesusIn this week's Weekly Roundup, Brad Onishi and Dan Miller unpack the fallout from the Trump administration's Iran deal, the growing fractures within the MAGA coalition, and why Vice President JD Vance appears to be carrying the political burden for...
Religion for Breakfast 
Home Brewed Christianity A Substack subscriber named Jennifer recently emailed me a list of thirty questions she had wanted to ask in the live chat but never got to. So we did the only honest thing — pulled in Josh Patterson from Rethinking Faith as a third voice (he just...
Madang Podcast Welcome to Madang.Madang is the outdoor living room of the world. Here, we invite you to sit and tune into unreserved, remarkable conversations with renowned authors, leaders, public figures, and scholars on religion, culture, and everything in...
Religion for Breakfast New Books in ReligionYoussef J. Carter’s The Vast Oceans: Remembering Allah and Self on the Mustafawiyya Sufi Path (UNC Press, 2026) is a stunning meditation on Black Atlantic Sufism, specifically as it travels between South Carolina and Senegal via the Mustafawiyya...
Straight White American JesusWhat are the questions you aren’t supposed to ask in church—the ones that earn you a sit-down with the pastor, worry your parents, and might even make you leave your faith entirely? In this episode, Dan kicks off a brand-new series, "Questions I...
Straight White American JesusThis week, Brad Onishi and Matthew D. Taylor break down three major stories shaping the American political and religious landscape: 🔹 The Southern Baptist Convention’s hard-right turn The SBC elected a new president, Willie Rice, and moved to...
Straight White American JesusAxis Daily Brief on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/axis-daily-brief/id1896931494https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/axis-daily-brief/id1896931494 Axis Daily Brief on Spotify:...
Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman In the gospels, Jesus' suffering is on a sliding scale - from sweating blood, to calmly accepting his fate. What did Jesus think about his own suffering, and is it even possible to answer that question from the evidence we have?
Data > DogmaThe sins of the fathers! It's a phrase you've heard a thousand times, but did you know it comes straight from the Bible? This week it's Bible versus Bible, and the topic is generational punishment: God visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the...
New Books in ReligionEver since conquistadores claimed Taino land in the name of their Catholic God and New England Puritans formed their strictly Protestant “city on a hill,” religion has been central to American life. Even as some found religious freedom—Rhode Island...
New Books in ReligionOne of the things that stood out in my conversation with John Longhurst about his book Can Robots Love God and Be Saved? A Journalist Reports on Faith (CMU Press, 2024) was his seriousness about journalism itself. Longhurst understands the...
Bible For Normal People Podcast In this week’s episode of The Bible for Normal People, Jared continues his tour through the history of modern biblical scholarship, exploring five (or six) more “aha moments” that transformed how scholars understand the Bible. From Rudolf...
Straight White American JesusWhat if one of the most important political symbols in American evangelicalism isn't a campaign slogan, a policy platform, or a charismatic preacher, but a worship song? In this episode of the Straight White American Jesus Sunday Interview, host...
Classical Ideas Podcast Ira Helderman PhD, LPC (Adjunct Professor of Religion, Psychology, and Culture, Vanderbilt University; PhD, Religious Studies, Vanderbilt University, 2016) studies how psychotherapists' definitions of what is and is not religious shape their...
Home Brewed Christianity Dr. Everett Worthington spent thirty years building the most rigorously tested forgiveness program in psychological science — and the day he turned in his first book on the subject was the day his mother was murdered in a home invasion. Three years...
New Books in ReligionThe relationship between the Church and the world has been a subject of debate since the Church's earliest days. In A Church for a Secular World: The Development of Klaas Schilder's Ecclesiology (Brill, 2025), Marinus De Jong explores...
New Books in ReligionFundamental to Islamic thought is the idea that there is a way that human beings simply are, by nature or creation. This concept is called fiṭra. In The Politics of Islamic Ethics: Hierarchy and Human Nature in the Philosophical...
Straight White American JesusThis week on Straight White American Jesus, Brad and Dan unpack the GOP’s latest claims of voter fraud in California and show how conspiracy thinking, Christian nationalist spiritual warfare, and anti-democratic rhetoric continue to undermine...
New Books in ReligionWhat if the book of Genesis is not only the story of humanity’s first family, but also the story of God learning how to parent? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with Stephen Spector to discuss his book God and the First...
Religion for Breakfast New Books in ReligionSurrender to God Across Languages: Multilingual Intellectual History of Premodern India (Oxford UP, 2026) explores the role of languages in the intellectual landscape of second-millennium India by way of six theological treatises composed between...
Straight White American JesusWhat are the broader takeaways from Josh Hawley’s presentation on “manhood?” How does Hawley’s vision of “masculine America” illuminate the dynamics of high-control Christianity, Christian nationalism, and the broader MAGA movement in America...
Religion for Breakfast Home Brewed Christianity Ilia delivered the Axial Age lecture this past week from her temporary post in Germany, and the questions came in fast enough that we ended up touching the third rail of the whole class — the rise of monotheism. Yes, there was a time when God was...
Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman Ever wondered what the first Christian praise and worship service sounded like? Join us as Dr. Charles Cosgrove unveils the mystery of the Oxyrhynchus Hymn, the earliest known Christian hymn with musical notation!
Data > DogmaWhat happens when you're raised to be a militant Christian nationalist Supreme Court justice, but you decide to actually study church history instead? This week, we are thrilled to welcome social media powerhouse, educator, and musician Monte...
New Books in ReligionVeiling meant many things to the ancients. On women, veils could signify virtue, beauty, piety, self-control, and status. On men, covering the head could signify piety or an emotion such as grief. Late Roman mosaics show people covering their hands...
Straight White American JesusIn this episode, Brad Onishi sits down with Rev. Alba Onofrio, the Executive Director of Soulforce and author of Spiritual Violence: Religious Phenomena That Defile the Faith. Rev. Alba brings nearly two decades of global activism across four...
Home Brewed Christianity This is the first Q&A of The Future of Religion, and the questions did exactly what good questions do — they pulled the lecture into places I had not planned to take it. Ilia opens by reframing my religion before belief lecture in her own...
Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman The resurrection of Jesus is probably one of the most well known stories from the New Testament. But how do historians deal with this miraculous event? Should it be discounted in its entirety, or can it be investigated using the historical method?...
Classical Ideas Podcast Dr. Annie Selak (she/her/hers) is an expert in feminist ecclesiology. She studies wounds in the church, or moments where the church fails to live into its mission and causes harm. Racism, sexism, and the clergy sex abuse crisis are examples of the...
Data > DogmaMost parents think their kids are pretty great. That makes sense. But if your son is the messianic savior of the world, the bragging rights are kind of through the roof. And that's what we get in Hebrews 1. The claim here is that God told the...
Bible For Normal People Podcast In this week’s episode of The Bible for Normal People, Pete and Jared talk with Bruce Longenecker about Galatians, Paul’s understanding of the Torah, and the kind of community he believed the gospel creates. They explore how Paul reframes identity...
Home Brewed Christianity Ilia Delio and I sat down a week before The Future of Religion class opens, in front of 500 people who already knew what they were signing up for. The conversation ranged — from the brain mutation she underwent when thirteen years of neuroscience...
Home Brewed Christianity Bo and I started with bikes, a Pentecost-red pair of glasses, and my new Crazy Chicks ballcap. We did not stay there. By the end we had hit the evolutionary anthropology of religion before belief, Pope Leo XIV’s AI encyclical, Gandalf telling...
Home Brewed Christianity Some conversations want to be in a coffee shop, not a studio — and this is one of them. Elizabeth Hinson-Hasty and I share a particular endangered species of Baptist heritage, the small, ecumenical, justice-formed wing whose patron saints include...
The Revealer PodcastWhat is the history of evangelical queer activism? William Stell, author of Born Again Queer: A History of Evangelical Gay Activism and the Making of Antigay Christianity, joins us to discuss what gay evangelical activists set out to achieve. Who...
Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman The Old Testament wasn't written in a cultural vacuum, but who and what influenced its writers. Today we're talking about the cultural background of the Old Testament and how the literature and societies of the surrounding cultures impacted its...
Data > DogmaBeloved novelist Clive Staples Lewis (Jack to his friends)(?) went through an atheist phase in his life. But that didn't last, and when he came back to Christianity, he came back HARD! Everyone who knows his work beyond life in a wardrobe is well...
Home Brewed Christianity The volume of “I genuinely don’t know what to preach anymore” emails landing from clergy has become its own data set. Pastors are not okay. So I did the only honest thing — I outsourced your questions to the one person whose books, research, and...
Bible For Normal People Podcast In this week’s episode of Faith for Normal People, Jared talks with Roberto de la Noval and Jordan Wood about the church fathers, the development of doctrine, and how early Christians approached the Bible. They explore how figures like Augustine...
Home Brewed Christianity Gary Dorrien joins me and Aaron to close out six weeks of Theology for Troublemakers with a session that covered more ground than any before it — Kelly Brown Douglas as the fourth womanist founder, the double negative she cut from Resurrection Hope...
Religion for Breakfast Madang Podcast Welcome to Madang.Madang is the outdoor living room of the world. Here, we invite you to sit and tune into unreserved, remarkable conversations with renowned authors, leaders, public figures, and scholars on religion, culture, and everything in...
Religion for Breakfast Religion for Breakfast