The Broken Book Bible Podcast
Considering the Bible's saintly reputation, it packs surprising gore, horror, and depravity. As well as beauty, wisdom, and tedium. For millennia, the Bible has held Western culture captive to its strange stories of ancient people trying to figure out God.Maybe you're not religious, but you're curious about the Bible. Maybe you grew up in church, but you're looking for a new way to relate to the Bible. Welcome! We're Sam and Amanda. We're obsessed with the Bible. Sam is a liberal Presbyterian who became post-modern by studying the Bible too much. Amanda is a mystic naturalist Unitarian Universalist with Reformed and Evangelical roots. We are wrestling with what the Bible can mean in the midst of radical questioning, faith changes, depression, and self-doubt. We hope you'll join us as we appreciate, dissect, criticize, defend, and generally nerd out about the Bible from our progressive religious perspectives.
Where to Find Us
Where to Find Us
Podcast Directories: Stitcher, iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-broken-book-bible-podcast/id1172672907?mt=2 , Google Play
Email: sam@brokenbookpodcast.com & amanda@brokenbookpodcast.com
Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/brokenbookpod
Twitter: @BrokenBookPod
Episodes
36 episodes
The Realities of Social Construction: Interview by Micah Redding, Executive Director of the Christian Transhumanist Society
Joint project with the Christian Transhumanist Podcast! https://www.christiantranshumanism.org/podcastLots of interesting questions. How can we love religion when so many are hurt? How do we describe the reality of social construction? ...
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1:03:37
God as Living Liminality: A Queer Nonbinary Theology - Episode 34
Adriaan Dippenaar, director of the Seattle Nonbinary Coalition joins in to discuss how queer identity, queer tension, and queer magic helps them imagine God. God is absurd, and that's okay! The divine does not fit into any clear, clean label. This...
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Episode 34
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56:37
Blasphemy: Reciting the Apostles Creed in First Person - Episode 36
If the Spirit of Christ dwells in are hearts, and if we are supposed to be Christlike. . . then the Apostle's Creed is about us.
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40:56
Autism: Finding God on the Spectrum - Episode 33
Sam, who is on the autism spectrum, discusses how his diverse theory of mind has brought him on a unique, exciting, and terrifying journey with and towards God.People on the spectrum develop their sense of theory of mind differently than neurotypi...
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Episode 33
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1:35:46
Trinity and Biblical Authority: Reclaiming Truth - Episode 32
This episode was originally recorded over two years ago, and shows us at a different stage in our spiritual development. Amanda, a Unitarian, defends the trinity. Sam, a relativist, defends Biblical' authority and infallibility. As modernism is ch...
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Episode 32
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35:26
Creation in Bondage to Decay: When God cursed the ground after Eden - Episode 31
After Eden, God curses the world with hard child birth, patriarchy, toil, and death. The curse sets female against male, humans against nature, and humanity against the snake. We explore how these curses mirror the evolution of humans and the bir...
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Episode 31
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1:03:36
The Sentience of the Holy Spirit: How God lives into us - Episode 30
The constant evolution of religious doctrines is an argument for God's living consciousness. The Spirit is sentient! Christianity has too often shunted the Holy Spirit to the corners of our canon, as sort of the third wheel of the Trinity. But th...
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26:20
More Mailbag: Bible TV Shows, the Qur'an, and Empire - Episode 29
We answer more listener questions! How does the Spirit move and change through time? How should Christians approach the Qur'an? If we could make a Bible TV show, what book would we choose? And is America the new Roman Empire? Also, what does it me...
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Episode 29
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35:34
Forgetting the Gospel: The New Testament as Tragedy - Episode 28
Jesus Christ flips. He is the anti-emperor who becomes the symbol of empire. He resists all elements of power, and then becomes the all powerful. He is the incarnation that eventually rejects humanity. What Jesus stands for in the Bible versus wha...
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52:08
Mailbag Episode: Propecy, Song of Songs, and What would you ask the Historical Jesus? - Episode 27
Listener questions we consider -
What is your favorite and least favorite book of the Bible?
What would you ask Jesus (historical Jesus) if you had the chance?
Do you know anything about Song of Songs? I've heard some interpret it a sour...
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33:49
Hold the Tension: There are no Good or Bad Religions - Episode 26
Have you been burned by the church? Found solace in Zen? Maybe you love your humanist discussion group. Maybe your church is the place you feel the most loved. Maybe you're disillusioned with religion in general. How do we hold the tension between...
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13:52
How to Classify Christians: Problematic Messiness - Episode 25
Contemporary Christianity has split into hordes of different factions. And we try to find labels to identify different kinds of Christians. These labels are probably necessary in order to talk about the modern faith. . . but these labels are also ...
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Episode 25
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17:54
Satan: The Lie that Rules the World - Episode 24
Satan is a powerful force of evil in Scripture. He is an independent agent who challenges God, and successfully rules the world for awhile. But Satan's power rests in a very simple lie, based on ignorance and outdated science. Satan claims that so...
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Episode 24
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31:11
Blood: Menstration and Communion - Episode 23
Old Testament Law is difficult to understand, especially on the topic of blood. Blood belongs to God alone, and menstruation makes women unclean half the month. Miriam, Moses's older sister, illustrates the disappointment and disillusionment peopl...
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Episode 23
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44:16
The Seven Principles: Unitarian Universalism from a Biblical Perspective - Episode 22
Amanda and Sam cruise all over the Bible, seeing how modern progressive ideas are ancient and Biblical. Unitarian Universalism is no longer an exclusively Christian belief network, But it is still historically linked to the Bible, and it's seven p...
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1:31:13
Gospel Authors: How would they write our biographies - Episode 21
Question - which gospel author would you most like to write your biography? Sam discusses the strengths, and weaknesses, of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. He shows what elements of Jesus are captured in each narrative. And how those same themes wo...
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Episode 21
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23:59
Lamentations Chapter 3: Taking God on a Guilt Trip - Episode 20
At the center of the Book of Lamentations, there's a long fantastic personal prayer. The author is hurt by God. The author loves God. The author tries to convince himself to trust God, but God doesn't seem to work that way anymore. Lamentations 3 ...
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Episode 20
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1:06:33
Bible Geekery: Ranking the Minor Prophets by Entertainment Value - Episode 19
It's a weekday night. You want to sit back, chillax, and read a Minor Prophet. Which one will be the most fun!?!?!? This minisode answers that ageold question you didn't know you were asking. How do you rank the Minor Prophets in order of Entertai...
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Episode 19
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32:12
Lamentations: Cry Against an Abusive God - Episode 18
The Book of Lamentations captures that darkest sensation, when God becomes an enemy. Lamentations is our favorite book of the Bible. It has the darkest depiction of God seen in Scripture. And it may have the most hopeful, most empowering depictio...
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Episode 18
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51:47
Atheism: A Progressive Christian Critique - Episode 17
Hard Atheism is the claim that there are no gods. This form of secularism is outdated, unnecessary, and accidentally hurts and silences progressive or alternative forms of religion. There is a theist/atheist binary that over simplifies the wisdom ...
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Episode 17
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24:16
God Continuity: Reclaiming Christian Ancestors - Episode 16
In this minisode, Amanda explores threads of continuity throughout her faith journey. The presence of God and the stories of those who have drawn on that presence for strength in difficult times have been interpreted and reinterpreted, but their p...
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Episode 16
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14:03
Refugee Narratives: The Bible written in Exile - Episode 15
Without refugee narratives, the entire essence and logic and plot of the Bible ceases to exist. Ignore them and we lose our religion. In this episode Sam looks at how being forced out of their country impacted the Biblical authors, and really crea...
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Episode 15
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38:44
Media: If the Bible were made today - Episode 14
The Bible was made up of Songs, poems, prose, letters, narratives, genealogies. . . all kinds of different media. So! If the Bible were made today, it certainly would not be a book! Amanda and her husband Jim go through the Bible and figure out ho...
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Episode 14
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27:41
Reality God: Existence - Episode 13
The idea that God is control of absolutely everything is incredibly common. That is because all of the universe is bound by its own existence, and it is incredibly easy to turn existence into its own God. Unfortunately this God is insanely problem...
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Episode 13
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32:11
Ezekiel: The Reality Gods - Episode 12
Judah is finished. The temple is destroyed. The old God conception failed. The prophet Ezekiel tries to make sense of everything that's happened. And he seems to go insane. And in this process, he discovers a new God conception. A deadly and sensi...
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Episode 12
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40:03