Gravity Commons Podcast

Lee C. Camp joins us (again!) for a wide-ranging conversation about human flourishing, habits, ethics, politics, philosophy, and faith. This is Lee's second time on the podcast - we talked with him in 2020 about his book Scandalous Witness: A Little Political Manifesto for Christians.Lee C. Camp is an award-winning teacher and Professor of Theology & Ethics at Lipscomb Univ

In a world experiencing turbulent change, we need people who are resilient, kind, open, generous, and brave. How do we become those kinds of people? In Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times, popular podcaster Elizabeth Oldfield uses the seven deadly sins as a framework to explore this question.Elizabeth Oldfield hosts The Sacred, a podcast about our deepest values, th

We talk with spiritual director Terra McDaniel about how to rediscover the lost practice of lament, so we can heal and hope again. Most people don't know how to process personal or communal mourning and instead struggle to honor our tears, vulnerability, and the full weight of these disillusioning times. But tending our grief is exactly what we need to reimagine a way forward.T

Matt posted something on Facebook recently about people who attempt to "police" those going through deconstruction, who seem to:equate deconstruction with de-conversion,say people deconstruct so they can sin,say people deconstruct to 'be cool or hip or trendy or for street cred',criticize 'giving up' on the local church, andblame deconstruction on bad teachi

In their new book Beyond Justification: Liberating Paul’s Gospel, Douglas Campbell and Jon Depue address a growing frustration among many Christians of how to understand what seems to be contradictory messages from Paul about the Gospel.On one hand, Paul usually talks about a participatory, transformational good news full of freedom, resurrection, love, and being ‘in Christ’.

The fact that "good evangelical Christians are Republican" seems obvious means the propaganda is working.Professor and author Scott Coley helps us understand how evangelicalism became fused with right-wing politics and now presses evangelical theology into the service of authoritarian politics, which he outlines in his new book Ministers of Propaganda: Truth, Power, and the

A dramatic misinterpretation of the Jewish tradition has shaped the history of the West: Christianity is the religion of love, and Judaism the religion of law. In the face of centuries of this widespread misrepresentation, Rabbi Shai Held, in his book Judaism Is about Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life, recovers the heart of the Jewish tradition, offering the radical and mov

In her book Forgiveness After Trauma: A Path to Find Healing and Empowerment, Christian minister and scholar Susannah Griffith explores what the Bible says--and doesn't say--about the biblical call to forgive. She helps readers understand a "trauma-informed forgiveness" that is healing and restorative, framing forgiveness within broader concerns around lament, anger, ac

American history has profoundly shaped, and been shaped by, Christianity. In her book Turning Points in American Church History: How Pivotal Events Shaped a Nation and a Faith, Dr. Elesha Coffman tells the story of Christianity in the United States by focusing on 13 key events over four centuries of history. Elesha helps us understand our faith and the landscape of American religio

The Beatitudes are some of the most-quoted and least-understood words of Jesus. Pastor and author Ryan Post helps us hear the Beatitudes anew as good news to form us into Christlikeness.Ryan Post is the lead pastor of Village Church in Burbank, CA and the author of Healthy Prayer: Integrating Structure, Silence, and Spontaneity and the book we talked about in this converastion, Jes