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
443 episodes
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...
Ep. 428 Tim Ross - What Secrets Do to the Body and Why Confession Is the Path to Healing
In this conversation, Tim opens up about the wound that shaped his early life, the silence that followed, and what the long road toward healing has actually required. We get into what secrets do to the body, the difference between vertical conf...
Ep. 427 Richard Beck Returns - Reading the Bible Through the Lens of Love
In this conversation with Richard Beck, author of The Book of Love, we explore what it actually means to read Scripture through the hermeneutic of love. Richard helps us see that we have to reckon with our attachment to God - whether w...
Ep. 426 Brian Zahnd - Unseen Existences: Why the Western World Forgot the Spiritual Realm Exists
Brian Zahnd joins me to talk about his new book Unseen Existences — and we get into why modern Western people suffer a kind of spiritual homelessness, how philosophical materialism has convinced us the spiritual world isn't real, and w...
Ep. 425 Elizabeth Berget - How Motherhood Reveals the Maternal Heart of God
Elizabeth Berget joins the podcast to explore the maternal heart of God — tracing how the Hebrew word rakum, often translated simply as "compassionate," is linguistically rooted in the word for womb, and what it means that God reaches ...
Ep. 424 Jeffrey Overstreet - What a Darkened Theater Can Teach About Seeing God Clearly
Light is a language, and learning to read it - in a darkened theater, in the stories of your neighbors, in the films you were told to avoid - helps us see clearly. In this conversation, Jeffrey Overstreet and I talk about cinema as a spiritual ...
Ep. 423 Nijay Gupta - What Does New Creation Look Like Here and Now in Your Work, Your Money, Your Relationships
Paul wasn't just helping people get to heaven. Nijay Gupta joins me to make the case that Paul's letters were written for people trying to figure out how to live, not how to escape. Drawing from his new book Paul for the World, Nijay w...
Ep. 422 Tia Levings Returns - What High Control Religion Takes From You and What it Actually Looks Like to Get it Back
In this episode, Tia Levings returns to talk about her new book I Belong to Me - a guide to healing and recovery after high-control religion and other controlling environments. Tia walks through what she calls the steps before the step...
Ep. 421 Tish Harrison Warren - What Grows in Weary Lands: Can the Desert Fathers and Mothers Teach Us Moderns What We Need for Resilience?
What do you do when the fire won't start - when life is full but God feels distant, when faith is intact but the soul is running on empty? In this conversation, I sit down with Tish Harrison Warren, who draws on her new book, What Grows in ...
Ep. 420 Eric Clayton Returns - The Spirituality of Star Wars
In this episode, I sit down with Eric Clayton to explore the spirituality of Star Wars and why these stories still shape how we see ourselves and the world. We talk about the cave on Dagobah, the pull of the dark side, nonviolence, discernment,...
Ep. 419 Scot McKnight & Adrienne Gibson - Ministries That Aren't Trauma-Informed Aren't Truly Pastoral
In this episode, I talk with Scot McKnight and Adrienne Gibson about their new book Traumatized Church, and what it looks like to read Paul, and our congregations, through a trauma-informed lens. We explore what trauma actually is, how...
Ep. 418 Alan Noble - Why Every Decision Feels Existential Right Now and What an Ancient Framework Can Do About It
We’re living in a fractured world, pulled in a thousand directions, unsure what it actually means to live a good life. In this episode, I talk with Alan Noble about virtue, telos, and how prudence, justice, courage, temperance, faith, hope, and...
Ep. 417 Steven Garber - Making Peace with the Proximate: Why Hope Isn't the Same Thing as Optimism
What do you do when the world refuses to become what you know it should be? In this conversation, Steven Garber introduces the concept of "the proximate" - learning to make peace with what is nearly, but not yet, true - in our marriages, our wo...
Ep. 416 Andrew Root - The Church Has Been Worshiping an Ancient Fertility Idol
I sit down with Andrew Root to talk about his new book Baal and the Gods of More and the ways fertility idols still shape how we think about growth in the church. We explore how the drive for more - more people, more influence, more mo...
