Episode 99: In the Shift is back for 2025 - and we kick off this year's pod by looking at what is going on in the world right now. In many respects, the social, political and economic disruption we're experiencing is a natural consequence of the trajectory we've been on for a number of years - and is also connected to particular religious frameworks, beliefs and assumptions. Hyper-individualism, growing inequality, fears and uncertainties, authoritarianism, fascist (or at least fascist-adjacent) rhetoric, scapegoating, conspiracies and on the list goes... so what is going on, what angers are being inflamed, what vulnerabilities are being exploited, and where do we go from here?

Episode 98: Thomas Jay Oord joins the pod for a great conversation on how we might start to think about God in the wake of deconstruction. We talk about his and Tripp Fuller's 2024 book "God After Deconstruction" and discuss the different intersecting factors that lead to deconstruction and how and why there might still be a place for God on the other side. For those still left with the God-question, with a wondering about ultimate reality, with a sense of something 'more', this conversation explores God and meaning without certainty or in/out binaries. We chat through why we might still believe in God, and perhaps more importantly, what kind of God this might be.

For more of Tom's work, you can head to www.thomasjayoord.com. You can find the book 'God After Deconstruction' by Tom and Tripp here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/195867026X

Contact: feedback@intheshift.com

Support: www.patreon.com/intheshift

Episode 97: This episode explores the language of faithfulness to the way of love (of self, neighbour, other and enemy) along with the subversion of "power over" as being at the core of a certain kind of Christian spirituality. There's a contrast between this and the language of the church creeds - these creeds are statements about belief that have often defined Christian orthodoxy and have been used as boundary markers for Christian identity. But the creeds carry no mention of Jesus' vision of the kingdom of God, his inclusion of the marginalised, his challenge to the powerful nor his claim that the most important aspects of spirituality and humanness are defined by love. If "orthodox Christian belief" doesn't include these things, can it really be used to define what it means to be Christian? Or perhaps we can be free to innovate and re-imagine this for ourselves.