Shifting Culture
by Joshua Johnson
Latest episode
Ep. 477 Ruth Haley Barton - We Can Have a Transforming Community…
Ep. 477 Ruth Haley Barton - We Can Have a Transforming Community…
About this podcast
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
The newest 50 of 482 episodes
- Ep. 477 Ruth Haley Barton - We Can Have a Transforming Community, But Not by Formula · 59 min · Season 1 Episode 477In this episode, Ruth Haley Barton joins me to talk about her new book, Leading a Transforming Community. We start with the difference between formation and transformation, and…
- Ep. 476 Amanda Held Opelt - Food, Home, and the Lost Art of Belonging · 1 h 0 min · Season 1 Episode 476In this episode, Amanda Held Opelt and I talk about her book Provisions and what the food of Appalachia can teach us about home, memory, and belonging. We discuss why we long for…
- Ep. 475 Brian McLaren - We Can’t Change What We Can’t Imagine · 54 min · Season 1 Episode 475In this episode, Brian McLaren joins me to talk about The Great Rift, the second book in his Last Voyage trilogy. We discuss what happens when a community leaves a collapsing…
- Ep. 474 Matthew D. Taylor - How Do You Follow Jesus When Christians Choose Empire? · 1 h 2 min · Season 1 Episode 474In this episode, Matthew D. Taylor joins me to talk about his new book, Defying Tyrants: Following Jesus in a World of Christian Antichrists, and why he believes American…
- Ep. 473 Carmen Imes Returns - These Women are Fierce and Faithful · 56 min · Season 1 Episode 473In this episode, Carmen Joy Imes returns to talk about Fierce and Faithful: 25 Women of the Bible Who Dared to Trust God, the children’s book she co-wrote with Nijay Gupta. The…
- Ep. 472 Michael Gorman - The Power of Self-Giving Love and the Transfigured Life · 53 min · Season 1 Episode 472In this episode, Michael Gorman and I talk about his new book, Life Transfigured, and why Paul still matters for a church that wants to look like Christ. Michael makes the case…
- Ep. 471 Jonathan Tremaine Thomas Returns - Why Justice and Righteousness Can’t Be Separated · 56 min · Season 1 Episode 471In this episode, Jonathan Tremaine Thomas returns to talk about Make Straight the Path and what it means to stand in the gap when everyone around you is choosing a side. JT…
- Ep. 470 Mark Batterson Returns - Conviction Without Contempt in a World of Chaos · 54 min · Season 1 Episode 470In this episode, Mark Batterson joins me to talk about Not My Circus and how to live with courage, conviction, and compassion in a world of chaos. We explore discernment as…
- Ep. 469 Kristin Mockler Young - From Certainty to Curiosity: Faith That Keeps Growing · 55 min · Season 1 Episode 469In this episode, Kristin Mockler Young and I talk about The Other Side of Certainty and what it means to grow from certainty into something with more nuance. We discuss the four…
- Ep. 468 - Chuck DeGroat Returns - How Character Is Formed in an Age of Performance · 54 min · Season 1 Episode 468In this episode, Chuck DeGroat joins me to talk about how people actually change. We talk about how therapy language and spiritual practices can become performance, and why so…
- Ep. 467 Matthew Kaemingk - Can Religion Save Democracy? · 56 min · Season 1 Episode 467In this episode, Matthew Kaemingk joins me to talk about Can Religion Save Democracy?, the book he co-wrote with Shadi Hamid. As religious participation in America has declined…
- Ep. 466 Kayla Craig Returns - Prayer Is as Close as Your Next Breath: Learning to Pray in Anxious Times · 55 min · Season 1 Episode 466In this episode, Kayla Craig joins me again to talk about her new devotional, Our Daily Breath, a year of breath prayers, Scripture, and short reflections for anxious people…
- Ep. 465 Kutter Callaway - Learning to Fear Rightly · 57 min · Season 1 Episode 465In this episode, Kutter Callaway joins me to talk about his new book, Be Afraid, and why horror might be one of the most spiritual genres in film. We explore the difference…
- Ep. 464 Jen Pollock Michel Returns - What a Sixth-Century Monk Knows About Modern Anxiety · 55 min · Season 1 Episode 464In this episode, Jen Pollock Michel and I talk about A Rule for the Rest of Us and what Saint Benedict might offer people who will never live in a monastery. We start with the…
- Ep. 463 Wes Crawford - America Never Established a Religion, So It Became One · 1 h 4 min · Season 1 Episode 463In this episode, Wes Crawford joins me to talk about his new book, One Nation Over God, and why faith and patriotism have become so tangled in American life. We explore Robert…
- Ep. 462 Kenneth Tanner - The Vulnerable God Who Shows Us How to Be Human · 57 min · Season 1 Episode 462In this episode, Kenneth Tanner and I contemplate the human face of God. We talk about why we split Jesus into a divine half and a human half, and what we lose when we do. We get…
- Ep. 461 Dave Nienhuis - What Happens to Faith in the Deep · 56 min · Season 1 Episode 461In this episode, Dave Nienhuis joins me to talk about his memoir, And the Sea Was No More. We explore the deep, the chaos waters that run through Scripture from Genesis to…
- Introducing: The Good, The True, and The Cinema · 14 minThis is The Good, The True, and The Cinema, a film podcast in pursuit of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Join Joshua Johnson, cultural critic and host of Shifting Culture…
- Ep. 460 Annie F. Downs - When Something is Stolen, Killed, or Destroyed, How Do We Keep Going? · 60 min · Season 1 Episode 460In this episode Annie F. Downs joins me to take John 10:10 apart. Steal, kill, destroy — we tend to read them as one sentence, but Annie treats them as three different losses…
- Ep. 459 Sarah Stankorb - Millions of Women Have Left the Church in the Past Decade. What's Happening? · 55 min · Season 1 Episode 459In this episode Sarah Stankorb joins me to talk about Damned If She Does and the sixteen million American women who have walked away from the church in the last decade. Sarah is…
- Ep. 458 Kristin Kobes Du Mez Returns - Positive Thinking, Holiness Theology, and the Power Women Were Promised · 54 min · Season 1 Episode 458In this episode Kristin Kobes Du Mez traces how holiness theology and New Thought merged into a faith that promised women power right where they stood, and taught them that…
- Ep. 457 Jeff Woodke - After Six and a Half Years as an Al-Qaida Hostage, What Remained? · 50 min · Season 1 Episode 457In this episode, Jeff Woodke tells me what six and a half years as a hostage in the Malian desert stripped away. We talk about the day he was taken, the years of false promises…
- Introducing: Jesus and... Everything · 6 minJesus and... Everything is a space for those of us who want a faith that is deeply spiritually alive, but also rooted in the big framing issues of the world. Every week, Pete…
- Ep. 456 W. David O. Taylor Returns - How Artists Bear Witness to the Fullness of God's Creation · 58 min · Season 1 Episode 456In this episode, W. David O. Taylor joins me to talk about To Set the World Aflame and the artist's calling to bear witness to the fullness of God's creation. Artists work with…
- Ep. 455 Derwin Gray Returns - We've Made our Wounds our Identity: It's Time to Heal · 56 min · Season 1 Episode 455In this episode, Derwin Gray and I talk about what it actually takes to heal. He noticed years ago that people were making their wounds into their identity, and It's Time to Heal…
- Ep. 454 Sandra Glahn - A Woman's Place Is in the Story · 56 min · Season 1 Episode 454In this episode Sandra Glahn helps us read Scripture the way we already know how to read a story. We talk about the women we've skipped as bunny trails, handed only to women…
- Ep. 453 Eric Geiger - Rooted Leaders Bear Fruit That Lasts · 53 min · Season 1 Episode 453In 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…
- Ep. 452 Pricelis Perreaux-Dominguez - We Have Mistaken Sameness for Unity · 53 min · Season 1 Episode 452In 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…
- Ep. 451 Scott Cairns - Why Mystery Makes Better Meaning Than Certainty · 52 min · Season 1 Episode 451In 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…
- Ep. 450 Ian Morgan Cron Returns - Beauty Is a Doorway Home: What St. Francis Knew 800 Years Ago · 54 min · Season 1 Episode 450In 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…
- Ep. 449 Natalia Terfa - God Got There Before You Did · 51 min · Season 1 Episode 449In 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…
- Ep. 448 Scot McKnight - The Pharisees Weren't Who You Think · 54 min · Season 1 Episode 448In 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…
- Ep. 447 Matthew Soerens & Issam Smeir - There are 120 Million Forcibly Displaced People Around the World, How Should We Respond? · 51 min · Season 1 Episode 447In 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…
- Ep. 446 Joshua Luke Smith - Why the Life You Have is the Main Event · 54 min · Season 1 Episode 446In 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…
- Ep. 445 Graham Joseph Hill - Are We Following Jesus, or Cultural Idols Disguised as Jesus? · 57 min · Season 1 Episode 445In 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…
- Ep. 444 - Jessie Cruickshank & Julia Schmaltz - How Do We Become Good News to the World? · 59 min · Season 1 Episode 444In 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…
- Ep. 443 Paul Anleitner - The Anti-Story is Collapsing. What's Replacing It? · 1 h 3 min · Season 1 Episode 443In 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…
- Ep. 442 Randy Woodley - Has Plato Shaped Western Christianity More than Jesus and What Are We to do About it? · 55 min · Season 1 Episode 442In 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…
- Ep. 441 Merideth Hite Estevez - Art is How God Loves Us · 52 min · Season 1 Episode 441In 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…
- Ep. 440 Daniel Hawk - Reckoning with America's Past and Imagining a Better Future · 54 min · Season 1 Episode 440America 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…
- Ep. 439 Kristin Lee - When the Faith You've Been Handed Begins to Crack, You Mend with Gold · 48 min · Season 1 Episode 439In 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…
- Ep. 438 Kyle Strobel - When God Seems Distant it Isn't Because You Failed · 1 h 0 min · Season 1 Episode 438In 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…
- Ep. 437 Michael Rhodes - The Gospel is Political (Just Not How You Think) · 1 h 0 min · Season 1 Episode 437In 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…
- Ep. 436 Amar Peterman - Loving Your Neighbor Across Real Difference · 55 min · Season 1 Episode 436In 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…
- Ep. 435 Ben Norquist & Brian Miller - The Places We Live Are Telling Stories. Which Ones Are Getting Told? · 51 min · Season 1 Episode 435In 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…
- Ep. 434 Aaron Cline Hanbury - When Machines Can Do More, What Does it Mean to be Alive? · 55 min · Season 1 Episode 434In 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…
- Ep. 433 Brant Hansen - Living Unoffended in an Age of Outrage · 57 min · Season 1 Episode 433In 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…
- Ep. 432 Zachary Wagner - Is Virtue Formation the Answer to the Crises Men and Boys are Facing Right Now? · 57 min · Season 1 Episode 432There'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…
- Ep. 431 Fr. John Dear - Surrendering to the God of Peace and Following the Nonviolent Jesus · 1 h 5 min · Season 1 Episode 431In 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…
- Ep. 430 Jennifer Garcia Bashaw & Aaron Higashi - Interpreting the Bible in a World Fighting Over What It Means · 53 min · Season 1 Episode 430What 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…
