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Recovering Evangelicals

Luke Jeffrey Janssen

198 episodes

1 month ago

A podcast for people who were once very comfortable in their Christian faith … until the 21st century intruded and made it very hard to keep on believing. And for those who are intrigued by science, philosophy, world history, and even world religions …. and want to rationalize that with their Christian theology. And for those who found that’s just not possible … and yet there’s still a small part of them that … … won’t let it go.

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Religion & Spirituality

All content for Recovering Evangelicals is the property of Luke Jeffrey Janssen and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.

A podcast for people who were once very comfortable in their Christian faith … until the 21st century intruded and made it very hard to keep on believing. And for those who are intrigued by science, philosophy, world history, and even world religions …. and want to rationalize that with their Christian theology. And for those who found that’s just not possible … and yet there’s still a small part of them that … … won’t let it go.

Show more...

Religion & Spirituality

Episodes (20/198)

Recovering Evangelicals

#198 – Peter Enns: How we got the Old Testament

Divine dictation of fully-formed books, or a gradual evolution of texts at the hands of authors, editors, interpreters, redactors, copyists, collectors, ……? This will be the first of several episodes we’re hauling out of our Podcast Archive that are related to how we came to have this collection of books we call the Bible. This […]

1 month ago

1 hour

Recovering Evangelicals

#197 – updating the Exodus and Christian faith

A new understanding of the ancient story of Israel’s exodus out of Egypt leads to a whole new understanding of the Passover … and of the crucifixion! In this episode, Scott and Luke look back on the two recent re-releases — both challenging the traditional “Sunday school version” of the Exodus story — to address […]

1 month ago

58 minutes

Recovering Evangelicals

#196 – The Exodus from Egypt, part 2 (re-release)

Science now makes the Sunday School version of this story no longer tenable, leaving three options for believers: ignore the problem, reject the Bible, or revise one’s theology. The story of “the Exodus” has traditionally been seen to involve millions of Israelites following Moses out of Egypt: this image is derived from a literal reading […]

1 month ago

1 hour 3 minutes

Recovering Evangelicals

#195 – The Exodus from Egypt, part 1 (re-release)

Although the origin story for Jews, and the foundation for much of Christian theology, many scholars will ask: did it really happen (that way)? Moses leading the newly-born nation of Israel out of slavery in Egypt, wandering through the desert for 40 years, and taking possession of Canaan is an iconic story. Not only is […]

2 months ago

1 hour 8 minutes

Recovering Evangelicals

#194 – The three existential threats of Dispensationalism

Last week we said this “mind-virus” could end up destroying the planet; this week we explain the three biggest reasons why/how. Last week’s episode title claimed “Dispensationalism” could end up destroying our planet, but we never really fully explained how: here, we fill in that fundamentally important gap. Our guest is the perfect expert for this. […]

2 months ago

1 hour 12 minutes

Recovering Evangelicals

#193 – The word that most have never heard of, but that could end up destroying our planet

Very few have heard of “Dispensationalism,” and fewer could give a paragraph-length definition of it, and yet it saturates Evangelical thinking and influences much of what is in the news headlines today Are you aware of the common thread that ties together the following diverse list of things: All of these are connected by one […]

2 months ago

1 hour 6 minutes

Recovering Evangelicals

#192 – Looking back at S6 (and forward to S7?)

A retrospective on how well we achieved our goals for this season, and pondering whether we need to do some re-branding before the next!? August is a busy time of year for us: vacations … road-trips … and getting ready for the return to teaching responsibilities at the university. And for that reason, we have typically gone […]

3 months ago

46 minutes

Recovering Evangelicals

#191 – A more human (and relatable) Jesus

Although Christians may say that “Jesus was fully human and fully divine,” many of them tend to slow-pedal the first half of that fundamental tenet. A fundamental Christian belief is that Jesus was fully human and yet fully divine. But for many, including us at Recovering Evangelicals, this tenet raises all kinds of questions and […]

3 months ago

1 hour 7 minutes

Recovering Evangelicals

#190 – Theological anthropology updated

It’s time to revise our picture of human origins, and the theology built up around the one handed down to us by authors and church fathers who knew nothing about our hominid cousins. This is the final episode of our miniseries looking at the impact that scientific discoveries over the past couple centuries of our […]

3 months ago

1 hour 19 minutes

Recovering Evangelicals

#189 – Human morality has been evolving upwards!?

A strident secular humanist, two Christians (and a Jewish rabbi) compare perspectives on their agreed claim that human morality has been on the upswing. A year ago, we did an episode with a Jewish rabbi and scholar — Dr. and Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson — exploring the claim that human morality has been trending upwards, […]

4 months ago

1 hour 14 minutes

Recovering Evangelicals

#188 – Human evolution is just like the evolution of English

The questions “who was the first person to speak English?” and “who was the first human?” are equally ridiculous and unanswerable, and for the same reasons. For many Christians, the many recent discoveries of our ancient hominid ancestors have raised uncomfortable questions. Some of them will cope with this by just trying to avoid any […]

4 months ago

1 hour

Recovering Evangelicals

#187 – Adam had ancestors!?

Christianity’s response to discoveries of ancient hominids today is exactly the same as their response to previous discoveries of “non-Adamic” people in the Americas … “they’re not human!” Christianity today is not handling well the recent discoveries of ancient hominids. A lot of denial and dismissal; very little excitement or enthusiasm. One shouldn’t be surprised […]

4 months ago

1 hour 5 minutes

Recovering Evangelicals

#186 – Christian theology and our hominid cousins

Do we need to update our theology in light of Christian-bigotry toward our genetic cousins? During the millennia that Biblical characters were living out their lives, Biblical authors were writing their texts, the early Christian church was forming, and the medieval Church fathers were constructing a Christian theology, nobody had any idea that humans had […]

4 months ago

56 minutes

Recovering Evangelicals

#185 – Science education / science denial

The anniversaries of two pivotal legal cases brought by evolution deniers got us talking to the National Center for Science Education about their work 2025 is the 100th anniversary of the infamous Scopes Trial (aka, the “Monkey Trial”), in which a high school teacher in Tennessee was convicted of violating a law that banned teaching human […]

4 months ago

1 hour 1 minute

Recovering Evangelicals

#184 – Brian McLaren’s journey

Time magazine’s pick for “most influential Evangelical in 2015” tells his own story of leaving behind traditional Evangelicalism. Over the past five years, we’ve interviewed many people who are “Recovering Evangelicals” … people who were handed an Evangelical/Fundamentalist faith that they eventually found they had to reject. As they explored their faith from different angles, […]

5 months ago

1 hour

Recovering Evangelicals

#183 – The paranormal and psychic phenomena

Are they just fun parlor tricks? Spiritual gifts and miracles like the ones we read in the Bible? Demonic manifestations? Or simply mind-over-matter? Dr. Alan Streett was on a career trajectory to be a professional baseball player when a major arm injury and a psychic healer diverted him into Seminary studies as a non-believing church […]

5 months ago

1 hour 2 minutes

Recovering Evangelicals

#182 – Why religion went obsolete !?

A Harvard-trained sociologist gives us far more than downward church attendance graphs and the “rise of the nones” that Pew and Gallup dish up None of our listeners would be surprised by news that religious faith is in decline. Pew and Gallup have been talking about “the rise of the nones” and of the “spiritual-but-not-religious” […]

5 months ago

1 hour 6 minutes

Recovering Evangelicals

#181 – Peter Enns and the control of orthodoxy

A theologian and professor at an Evangelical Theological Seminary describes a very unique, but instructive, “slippery slope” experience. As promised, here’s our second conversation with someone who walked that “slippery slope” out of Evangelicalism, but did so while leading and teaching a large group of Evangelicals who were still quite comfortable with their own Christian […]

6 months ago

1 hour 3 minutes

Recovering Evangelicals

#180 – A Christian Nationalist pastor encounters Jesus on “the slippery slope”

One of our listeners tells his story of chipping away at Christian ideas, only to find a faith that feels more Christian. This week and next, we’re going to hear the life stories of two more people who grew up in a Fundamentalist / Evangelical world, but embarked on a journey with which our listeners […]

6 months ago

1 hour 3 minutes

Recovering Evangelicals

#179 – Humans can believe some pretty crazy things!

An exploration of belief, unbelief, delusion, and critical thinking, and some (coping) strategies in dealing with this peculiarity of being human. Humans can believe some pretty crazy things. Pew Research has at times found that 1% of Americans believe the earth is flat. And that 6% aren’t quite sure whether it is or not! In […]

6 months ago

1 hour 14 minutes