The Unintentional Heretic
The Unintentional Heretic is a podcast for spiritual explorers, questioners, and ever-expanders who believe faith should be deep enough to survive honest inquiry. Together we’ll explore theology, spirituality, doubt, and the evolving search for truth—trusting that God is not threatened by our questions, and that sometimes heresy is just tomorrow’s orthodoxy.
Episodes
35 episodes
Baptized Patriarchy: When Toxic Masculinity Hides Behind Scripture
In this episode, The Unintentional Heretic explores how “biblical manhood” often baptizes patriarchy and toxic masculinity with sacred language, constricting men, silencing women, and hiding domination behind claims of biblical order. But Scrip...
The Cloud of Unknowing: Losing Your Grip on God to Fall Deeper into Love
In this episode, The Unintentional Heretic explores The Cloud of Unknowing and its invitation into a faith that moves beyond analysis, certainty, and the need to master God with the mind. This anonymous medieval text reminds us that Go...
Jesus as Wisdom Teacher: Beyond Belief and Into the Kingdom’s Way of Seeing
In this episode, The Unintentional Heretic explores Jesus as a wisdom teacher who came not simply to give us more religious information, but to disrupt our inherited lenses and invite us into the expansive paradigm he called the kingdom of God....
The Lost Art of Mysticism: Encountering God Beyond Certainty, Control, and Words
In this episode, The Unintentional Heretic explores the lost art of Christian mysticism and why contemplative voices like Meister Eckhart, Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Ávila, John of the Cross, and Thomas Merton still matter for a faith often s...
The Desert Will Tell You the Truth: The Desert Mothers and Fathers, the Shadow Self, and the Search for an Undivided Life
In this episode, The Unintentional Heretic explores how the Desert Mothers and Fathers left the growing power and respectability of empire to seek a more honest and transformed faith. Their practices of silence, solitude, prayer, and self exami...
Interview with Josh Patterson - The God Who Loves Without Control: Open and Relational Theology, Suffering, and the End of Omnipotence
In this episode of The Unintentional Heretic, I sit down with Josh Patterson, host of of the popular podcast Rethinking Faith and Director for Creative Content for Ilia Delio’s World Institute for Science, Religion and Culture...
The Gospel of Thomas: Heresy or Hidden Wisdom?
In this episode of The Unintentional Heretic, we explore the Gospel of Thomas, an ancient collection of sayings attributed to Jesus that did not make it into the Bible but still asks deeply Christian questions about wisdom, awakening, ...
Left Behind: The Modern Myth That Terrified a Generation
In this episode of The Unintentional Heretic, we explore how the rapture, often assumed to be ancient Christian teaching, is actually a modern theological invention that reshaped the imagination of generations of evangelicals through f...
Interview with Bishop Sam Rodman: The Problem with Certainty - Truth, Faith, and the Lenses We Live By
In this episode of The Unintentional Heretic, I sit down with Bishop Sam Rodman, the 12th Bishop of the Diocese of North Carolina, to explore epistemology, the deeply human question of how we know what we know. Together we talk about t...
America at 250: Gratitude, Truth, and Hope
In this brief Fourth of July reflection, The Unintentional Heretic explores how Christians can love their country with both gratitude and honesty, celebrating America’s ideals while telling the truth about its contradictions. True patriotism is...
God Is Not in Control, and That Might Be Good News: Omnipotence, Suffering, and the Power of Uncontrolling Love
In this episode of The Unintentional Heretic, we explore whether God must be understood as all powerful in the traditional sense, especially in light of suffering, tragedy, and the painful claim that even the death of a child is someho...
When the Flag Replaces the Cross: Christian Nationalism and the Gospel According to Empire
In this episode of The Unintentional Heretic, we explore Christian nationalism as a distortion of the Gospel that confuses love of country with worship of country and replaces the way of Jesus with the logic of empire. From Pharaoh to ...
Mary Magdalene: Apostle, Sinner, or Threat?
In this episode of The Unintentional Heretic, we explore how Mary Magdalene was transformed by centuries of church tradition from the first witness to the resurrection into a symbol of sexual sin and repentance. Her story reveals how e...
When the Church Split in Two: The Great Schism and the Fracturing of Christian Orthodoxy
In this episode of The Unintentional Heretic, we explore the Great Schism of 1054, when the Eastern and Western churches formally split after centuries of theological, political, cultural, and linguistic tension. It is a reminder that ...
Interview with Bishop Anne Hodges-Copple: The Truth Was There All Along: Women, Authority, and the Church’s Slow Awakening
In this episode of The Unintentional Heretic, I sit down with Bishop Anne Hodges Copple, a bishop in the Episcopal Church, to explore authority and the role of women in the church. Bishop Anne reminds us that the full dignity, calling,...
St. Benedict and the Rule That Quietly Changed the World
This episode of The Unintentional Heretic explores St. Benedict and the Rule of St. Benedict as one of Christianity’s quiet revolutions, a way of life rooted in listening, prayer, work, humility, stability, hospitality, and shared comm...
The Inquisition: When Faith Became Fear
This episode of The Unintentional Heretic explores the Inquisition as one of the most sobering examples in Christian history of what happens when faith becomes entangled with fear, certainty, institutional power, and coercion. We look ...
Theosis: Do We Become Divine?
This episode of The Unintentional Heretic explores the ancient Christian idea of theosis — the startling belief that salvation is not merely about being forgiven or going somewhere after we die, but about humanity becoming divine by gr...
The Crusades: When The Church Went To War
This episode of The Unintentional Heretic explores the Crusades as one of Christianity’s most sobering examples of what happens when faith becomes entangled with empire, violence, certainty, and political ambition. It traces the Crusad...
Gnosticism: Christianity's First Great Heresy?
In this episode of The Unintentional Heretic, we explore Gnosticism—the ancient Christian movement that taught salvation comes through awakening to the divine spark within—and the profound influence of Platonic philosophy, the Demiurge...
Why Did Christianity Become Obsessed with Sex? Desire, Embodiment, and the Sacredness of Creation
For centuries, Christianity wrestled with a profound question: are our bodies, desires, and passions obstacles to God or places where God is revealed? In this episode of The Unintentional Heretic, we explore how Greek dualism, Augustin...
Jesus Said “Follow Me,” Not “Worship Me”: When Christianity Became a Religion About Christ Instead of the Way of Christ
In this episode of The Unintentional Heretic, we explore how Christianity gradually shifted from being a movement centered on following the way of Jesus to a religion increasingly focused on worshiping Jesus and defining correct belief...
Is the Bible Inerrant? Scripture, Authority, and the Evolution of Truth
In this episode of The Unintentional Heretic, Greg explores the history and evolution of biblical inerrancy, distinguishing it carefully from literalism while examining how modern Christianity came to equate certainty with faithfulness...
Satan, the Devil, and the Evolution of Evil: From the Divine Council to the Cosmic Devil of Modern Christianity
This episode explores the fascinating evolution of Satan from “the accuser” within the divine council of ancient Israel to the cosmic devil of modern Christianity, revealing how ideas about evil, suffering, and spiritual conflict developed acro...
When Orthodoxy Changed: The Crises That Forced Christianity to Evolve
This episode explores the moments in Christian history when long-held “orthodox” paradigms were forced to evolve through crisis, discovery, and changing human understanding — from the fall of Rome and the Copernican Revolution to Darwin, democr...