Shifting Culture
On Shifting Culture we have conversations at the intersection of faith, culture, justice, and the way of Jesus. Hosted by Joshua Johnson, this podcast features long-form conversations with authors, theologians, artists, and cultural thinkers to trace how embodied love, courage, and creative faithfulness offer a culture of real healing and hope.
Episodes
456 episodes
Ep. 453 Eric Geiger - Rooted Leaders Bear Fruit That Lasts
In this episode, Eric Geiger and I dig into what's growing underneath a leader's life. We've all watched leaders fall over the past few years, and the wreckage takes a long time to clear. Eric's conviction is that we keep working on the things ...
Ep. 452 Pricelis Perreaux-Dominguez - We Have Mistaken Sameness for Unity
In this episode, Pricelis Perreaux-Dominguez argues that much of what the American church calls peace is really just quiet — and that what we call unity is often sameness, congregations gathered around shared opinion rather than around Christ, ...
Ep. 451 Scott Cairns - Why Mystery Makes Better Meaning Than Certainty
In this episode, Scott Cairns talks about certainty and mystery and getting glimpses of the unknowable God. Scott has spent forty years wrestling with, investigating, navigating words to help make meaning in our lives. In this conversation, we ...
Ep. 450 Ian Morgan Cron Returns - Beauty Is a Doorway Home: What St. Francis Knew 800 Years Ago
In this episode, Ian Morgan Cron and I talk about Chasing Francis, the novel he wrote twenty years ago (before anyone called it deconstruction) about a megachurch pastor who loses his faith mid-sermon and goes looking for St. Francis i...
Ep. 449 Natalia Terfa - God Got There Before You Did
In this episode with Natalia Terfa we talk about her book It All Counts, why questions deepen faith instead of eroding it, how to tell human authority from God's, what love looks like when a protest turns ugly, and why the prosperity g...
Ep. 448 Scot McKnight - The Pharisees Weren't Who You Think
In this episode with Scot McKnight, we ask whether the perception that the Pharisees were hypocrites, legalists with a religious spirit is the right way to view them. We move the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees from one of theological ...
Ep. 447 Matthew Soerens & Issam Smeir - There are 120 Million Forcibly Displaced People Around the World, How Should We Respond?
In this episode with Matthew Soerens and Issam Smeir, we touch on something that has shaped my faith - sitting across a table from refugees until a statistic became a person with a name. A decade after the first edition of Seeking Refuge
Ep. 446 Joshua Luke Smith - Why the Life You Have is the Main Event
In this episode with Joshua Luke Smith we sit with the idea that the life in front of you is the main event – even when it is limited, when it is unglamorous, when it’s not what you hoped for. We talk about lament and shame, consecration and wo...
Ep. 445 Graham Joseph Hill - Are We Following Jesus, or Cultural Idols Disguised as Jesus?
In this episode, Graham Joseph Hill joins me to talk through how every culture tends to read Jesus through their own lens and how we tend to remake Him in our own image. And when we do that, we tend to follow idols rather than Jesus. In his lat...
Ep. 444 - Jessie Cruickshank & Julia Schmaltz - How Do We Become Good News to the World?
In this episode, Jessie Cruickshank and Julia Schmaltz join me to talk about Becoming Good News and the argument at its center: that discipleship is less about acquiring information and trying harder and more about receiving; receiving...
Ep. 443 Paul Anleitner - The Anti-Story is Collapsing. What's Replacing It?
In this episode, Paul Anleitner traces how a culture that once watched Rocky in full-throated sincerity learned to read everything through suspicion. We talk about the modern story we inherited, the postmodern anti-story that dismantled it, and...
Ep. 442 Randy Woodley - Has Plato Shaped Western Christianity More than Jesus and What Are We to do About it?
In this episode, Randy Woodley argues that the church has been asking the wrong question. Not whether the story happened, but what the story asks of us. And to start to ask better questions, we have to go back to the root - where did this all c...
Ep. 441 Merideth Hite Estevez - Art is How God Loves Us
In this episode, Merideth Hite Estevez joins me to talk about what happens when a lifetime of chasing excellence quietly empties out the joy that started it all. We dig into the idols hiding inside performance and perfectionism, why she redefin...
Ep. 440 Daniel Hawk - Reckoning with America's Past and Imagining a Better Future
America turns 250 this year, and we'll tell the old story again. But where does it actually start? Daniel Hawk traces our founding back past 1776 to the Doctrine of Discovery that gave Christian powers the right to seize "unclaimed" land, and t...
Ep. 439 Kristin Lee - When the Faith You've Been Handed Begins to Crack, You Mend with Gold
In this episode, I talk with Kristin Lee about what happens when a faith begins to crack, and whether the breaking might be the start of something truer. We get into kintsugi, the art of mending broken pottery with gold, what it costs to ask th...
Ep. 438 Kyle Strobel - When God Seems Distant it Isn't Because You Failed
In this episode, I talk with Kyle Strobel about what's actually happening when God feels distant. Most of us start with passion - prayer comes easy, Scripture comes alive - and then a season arrives where the lights go out and we assume we've f...
Ep. 437 Michael Rhodes - The Gospel is Political (Just Not How You Think)
In this episode, Michael Rhodes claims the gospel is inherently political, and "the Lord reigns" was never just a private comfort but a statement about who actually runs the world. We name the two instincts that keep so many of us stuck: retrea...
Ep. 436 Amar Peterman - Loving Your Neighbor Across Real Difference
In this conversation, Amar Peterman and I get into the slow, local, unglamorous work of becoming neighbors across real difference. We talk about the table as the place where the common good gets built, and why so many of us are far more comfort...
Ep. 435 Ben Norquist & Brian Miller - The Places We Live Are Telling Stories. Which Ones Are Getting Told?
In this episode, Ben Norquist and Brian Miller make the case that American Christians have become a placeless, rootless people and that we are shaped by inherited land stories. That our land is exceptional. That property is something to wall of...
Ep. 434 Aaron Cline Hanbury - When Machines Can Do More, What Does it Mean to be Alive?
In this episode with Aaron Cline Hanbury, we think through how we relate to technology and the things we make. We tackle the question underneath the whole AI moment: not just what it means to be human when machines can do more and more, but wha...
Ep. 433 Brant Hansen - Living Unoffended in an Age of Outrage
In this episode, Brant Hansen argues that holding onto offense is killing us - spiritually, physically, and relationally. He had to decide whether the offense he experienced as a young person should be held on to or if he should release it. It ...
Ep. 432 Zachary Wagner - Is Virtue Formation the Answer to the Crises Men and Boys are Facing Right Now?
There's no shortage of voices telling men who they should be right now and most of them are answering the wrong question. In this conversation with Zachary Wagner, author of Men of Virtue, we get underneath the culture war noise around...
Ep. 431 Fr. John Dear - Surrendering to the God of Peace and Following the Nonviolent Jesus
In this episode, Fr. John Dear joins me to explore his latest book, Universal Love: Surrendering to the God of Peace and one of the core convictions at the center of it: genuine peacemaking begins not with better strategy or more effor...
Ep. 430 Jennifer Garcia Bashaw & Aaron Higashi - Interpreting the Bible in a World Fighting Over What It Means
What are you actually doing when you read the Bible? Interpretation. Every time we open the text, we're already choosing which questions to ask, which lenses to bring, and whose interests get served by the answers we land on. In this episode, I...
Ep. 429 K.J. Ramsey - Finding Joy in the Place Between Our Pains
What does joy look like in the midst of pain and grief? K.J. Ramsey's memoir, The Place Between Our Pains, was written while she was fighting for her life - and in this conversation, she talks about what that actually means. We get int...
