(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 empathy changes us when we know people instead of objectifying them, rocking out in the SBC and maintaining friendships with faith leaders we disagree with, the jump from guilt to hyper-grace, and more.

Jon Turney, a former worship and associate pastor, and the co-host of the popular This Is Not Church podcast. Nestled in the tranquility of Northern California, Jon resides with his incredible wife, his three adult children, and a lively assortment of grand pets. Beyond his roles in faith and podcasting, Jon finds inspiration on his 23-acre slice of heaven, where he explores the depths of nature, the cosmos, and his own thoughts. Jon is also the author of the thought-provoking science fiction novel RJ the Astronaut (Quoir publishing).

Find your guides at Quoir Academy! If you’ve ever deconstructed your faith you know it’s not easy. But just imagine if you could have people to guide you through your process? People like, Jim Palmer, Kristin Du Mez, Jennifer Knapp, Brad Jersak, Brian Zahnd, Paul Young, and more? Well, if you head over to Quoir Academy and register for SQUARE 2 using the Promo Code [RAD] you’ll get 10% off the regular registration cost of this awesome course and community just for being a fan of our show. Follow this registration link: https://www.bk2sq1.com/square-2-next-steps-into-reconstruction?coupon=RAD

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 scripture, with names like Hermeneutic and Midrash and Eisegesis, helped bring the Bible back to life after deconstruction, and reconnect Grant with the essence of what she loved most about scripture.

Liz Charlotte Grant is an award-winning nonfiction writer based in Colorado, USA. Her debut nonfiction book, Knock at the Sky: Seeking God in Genesis After Losing Faith in the Bible, was released by Eerdmans Publishing Co. on January 7, 2025. In 2024, she wrote a viral article chronicling the disturbing third marriage of an icon of white American evangelical purity culture, "Elisabeth Elliot, Flawed Queen of Purity Culture, and Her Disturbing Third Marriage," the Revealer Magazine, a publication of the Center for Religion and Media at New York University. Grant’s Substack newsletter, the Empathy List, has received recognition from the Webby Awards and the Best of the Church Press Awards. Her work has also appeared in outlets such as the Huffington Post, Religion News Service, Hippocampus Magazine, Brevity, Sojourners, the Christian Century, Christianity Today, US Catholic, National Catholic Reporter.

Find more of Liz Charlotte's work at:
https://lizcharlotte.com/

https://www.threads.net/@lizcharlottegrant

https://www.instagram.com/lizcharlottegrant

https://www.facebook.com/lizcharlottegrant

Find your guides at Quoir Academy! If you’ve ever deconstructed your faith you know it’s not easy. But just imagine if you could have people to guide you through your process? People like, Jim Palmer, Kristin Du Mez, Jennifer Knapp, Brad Jersak, Brian Zahnd, Paul Young, and more? Well, if you head over to Quoir Academy and register for SQUARE 2 using the Promo Code [RAD] you’ll get 10% off the regular registration cost of this awesome course and community just for being a fan of our show. Follow this registration link: https://www.bk2sq1.com/square-2-next-steps-into-reconstruction?coupon=RAD

Is there spirituality after deconstruction? Public theologian and “ecclesiastical disrupter” Dana Hicks shares the story of his exploration of the ways in which the post-deconstruction or post-Christian soul can find those “thin places”—areas in our lives where we can connect with the divine without dogma or fundamentalism—where practices such as meditation, service, and (perhaps) the occasional mushroom can dissolve the ego and help one remember one’s place as part of the larger creation. (And that creation also includes Mark's new puppy, who, if you listen closely, you may hear squeaking a tennis ball in the background.)

Dana Robert Hicks the Amazon best-selling author of The Quest for Thin Places: How to Find Spirituality after Deconstruction (SacraSage Press). His writings revolve around the themes of culture, change, and spirituality. For over 30 years, he served as a church planter, pastor, university professor, and leadership developer. He is the President of The Open Table Network - a progressive network that ordains faith leaders so they can be people of love within communities of love. He is also the Chief Operating Officer for Azura - a social services agency that exists to alleviate poverty in the State of Arizona.

Find your guides at Quoir Academy! If you’ve ever deconstructed your faith you know it’s not easy. But just imagine if you could have people to guide you through your process? People like, Jim Palmer, Kristin Du Mez, Jennifer Knapp, Brad Jersak, Brian Zahnd, Paul Young, and more? Well, if you head over to Quoir Academy and register for SQUARE 2 using the Promo Code [RAD] you’ll get 10% off the regular registration cost of this awesome course and community just for being a fan of our show. Follow this registration link: https://www.bk2sq1.com/square-2-next-steps-into-reconstruction?coupon=RAD

It’s our 100th episode! We celebrate this milestone with a lively conversation with our first guest speakers, two innovative spiritual thinkers who helped us launch the first Radical Love Live event 5 years ago. We welcome back author, minister, and post-Christian thinker Maria Francesca French and scholar, author, theologian, and minister John Thatamanil to revisit the first topics we took on at the beginning of this project—Crisis and Change—and to check in on how our world and the state of faith has changed since we first spoke.

In this episode we delve into such topics as how we continue to search for meaning and purpose in a post-truth world, how humans often find something to worship even in the absence of God, and how the power of imagination and story can help us find that which is true as we face each new day.

Maria Francesca French is the author of Safer than the Known Way: A Post-Christian Journey and Reconfiguring: A Collection of Post-Christian and Theologies (Quoir Publishing). She has spent her career in theological education as both professor and administrator, holding two MAs and a DMin. Maria has worked in innovative church contexts, planting, and denominational leadership focused on the intersections of faith and culture. Offering new forums for faith engagement and theological imagination that are viable and sustainable for an uncertain future, exploring Radical Theology and post-theist thought for the present and future of faith.

Dr John Thatamanil is Associate Professor of Theology and World Religions at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. He is the author of Circling the Elephant: A Comparative Theology of Religious Diversity (Fordham University Press) and The Immanent Divine: God, Creation, and the Human Predicament; An East–West Conversation (Fortress). He teaches a wide variety of courses in the areas of comparative theology, theologies of religious diversity, Hindu-Christian dialogue, the theology of Paul Tillich, theory of religion, and process theology. He is committed to the work of comparative theology―theology that learns from and with a variety of traditions. A central question that drives his work is “How can Christian communities come to see religious diversity as a promise rather than as a problem?”

Find your guides at Quoir Academy! If you’ve ever deconstructed your faith you know it’s not easy. But just imagine if you could have people to guide you through your process? People like, Jim Palmer, Kristin Du Mez, Jennifer Knapp, Brad Jersak, Brian Zahnd, Paul Young, and more? Well, if you head over to Quoir Academy and register for SQUARE 2 using the Promo Code [RAD] you’ll get 10% off the regular registration cost of this awesome course and community just for being a fan of our show. Follow this registration link: https://www.bk2sq1.com/square-2-next-steps-into-reconstruction?coupon=RAD