Radical Love Live

Is there a good kind of contamination? The energy and emotion get turned up in this 2nd part of our conversation with teacher and author Bille Hoard about disgust and "eucontamination.". This week we also introduce our new "Bible Moment" segment with Bible Teacher Amanda Pence, MA, who provides valuable context, history, and insight into how passages from the Hebrew Bible and Christian New Testament apply to the episode topic--in t...

Disgust is powerful. If our body believes something we ingest is contaminated, we will throw it up before our mind even knows what happened. But is there a good kind of contamination? Teacher and author Bille Hoard makes the case that disgust can make us reject “euconaminants,” too—the people and qualities that can “infect” us with goodness.

Billie Hoard is "a trans woman, teacher, author, and something of an Anabaptist radical.” Bi...

Bible Teacher Amanda Pence wants you to know your hermeneutic—that is, what lens you’re looking through when you read the Bible. There is no perfect “plain reading” of scripture. We all interpret our way through this library, written by many people in various times, places, & situations—& bring much of our own context to the page. Amanda tells us her story of how studying the Bible broke her out of what some call the “Biblical Worl...

Bible Teacher Amanda Pence wants you to know your hermeneutic—that is, what lens you’re looking through when you read the Bible. There is no perfect “plain reading” of scripture. We all interpret our way through this library, written by many people in various times, places, & situations—& bring much of our own context to the page. Amanda tells us her story of how studying the Bible broke her out of what some call the “Biblical Worl...

As Bruce Epperly regularly writes to the Speaker Mike Johnson , "Please consider what Jesus, not Trump, would do." Using this petition as a starting point, we talk with Epperly, who is a theologian, spiritual guide, pastor, professor, and prolific author, about Christianity and US politics today. Listen as he explains how conservative efforts to hold onto traditional theology & the "greatness" of the 1950s goes against the "divinel...

As Bruce Epperly regularly writes to the Speaker Mike Johnson , "Please consider what Jesus, not Trump, would do." Using this petition as a starting point, we talk with Epperly, who is a theologian, spiritual guide, pastor, professor, and prolific author, about Christianity and US politics today. Listen as he explains how conservative efforts to hold onto traditional theology & the "greatness" of the 1950s goes against the "divinel...

Bakker is back, and he wants you to argue better! "Can't we all get along?" sounds like one of the most naive questions in the world, but in truth, it's one of the most Christlike things we can do. Our guest Jay Bakker, punk-rock pastor, author, and independent scholar, has long been a champion of arguing well, giving others grace, and also calling out intolerance--both on the right and on the left. In this conversation, we dig int...

There is a growing awareness of the impact that religious trauma—damaging things we’ve been told, that have been done to us, and that we’ve believed in negative religious environments—can have a lasting affects on our self-esteem, our relationships, and can even get down into our very nervous systems. This is a heartfelt conversation with Dr Mark Karris that focuses on his experiences in helping others heal the trauma of their adve...

On March 10, a demolition crew tore up the pavement of Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington DC, and Reverend Starlette Thomas was there to bear witness. With this moment of government-ordered erasure as our starting point, we talk with Thomas about the protest and community that happened on that very ground after the killing of George Floyd in 2020—and why recent history has made many African-American protestors avoid the recent ...

What’s so crazy about diversity, equity, and inclusion? We are so glad to welcome back Melanie Hood-Wilson, DEI consultant and educator, to talk about her work and mission in the midst of the current administration’s attacks on programs it calls “Radical and Wasteful.” Melanie is incisive, bold, and clearly lays out the issues we’re facing as America “says the quiet part out loud”, the core issues of identity and belonging that are...

Tamice Spencer-Helms (they/she) riffs on wisdom. They take us on a vast, universe-spanning theological journey that is rooted in our bodies, our ancestry, and our feet right here on the ground. In the church and in our culture in America, there is something hidden and pervasive, Tamice says, and it will continue to eat at us until we find it, name it, and respond to it. Efforts to address it through the lens of race or through the ...

For Kevin Sweeney (author, speaker, spiritual director), Christian faith is all about experiencing God, not in having abstract beliefs about God. And the experiences that have kept him a Christian, even after his first dogmatic teachings about the Bible fell by the wayside, have been at the intersection of the great, transcendent, mystical Cosmic Christ, and the real, authentic, liberating, earthly Concrete Jesus. 

Kevin talks with ...

“The Tattooed Theologian” has something to say about all of it: racism, LGBTQIA bigotry, ecology, capitalism, fundamentalism, Christian nationalism, “F*CKWITTERY” & the questions — and revelations — that drive his work. This week’s conversation with public theologian Dillon Naber Cruz covers the gamut of his musings about theology through the lens of permaculture—(which, defined too simply here, is a kind of eco-theology of partner...

The authors, Matthew Distefano and Keith Giles, are both accomplished writers and teachers in their own right, as well as being the hosts of the popular Heretic Happy Hour podcast. They are also the co-publishers at Quoir Publishing, an author-focused publishing company that publishes work about life, the universe, and everything. They are also the founders of Quoir Academy, an online learning resource where scholars and spiritual ...

In the USA right now, every day brings another attack on transgender identities, lives, and existence. We were eager to check in with Dina Nina Martinez--public servant, activist, comedian, queer minster, and so much more--to understand the current crisis from her point of view. Moreso, we wanted to know where she is turning for hope, community, and spiritual nourishment. The lives and safety of people we love are on the line, just...

(Part 1 of 2) Sometimes faith just doesn’t fit within the church walls—or it even breaks those walls down. This week we talk with Jon Turney, co-host of the popular THIS IS NOT CHURCH podcast, which challenges mainstream religious narratives and flips a few tables along the way. We talk about so many things we needed two episodes (!), including deconstruction and reconstruction, the religion we’d have if we were lost in space, how ...

How does one learn to love the Bible again? For Liz Charlotte Grant, it is almost like a story from a movie: girl meets Bible, falls in love, discovers Bible’s secret past, falls out of love with Bible, but eventually realizes she was really in love the whole time, once she learned how to look at the Bible in a new way. This is an eye-opening conversation about how the tools that scholars have used throughout the history of scriptu...