Recovering Evangelicals
Luke Jeffrey Janssen and Boyd Blundell
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A podcast for people who were once very comfortable in their Christian faith … until the 21st century intruded and made it very hard to keep on believing.
And for those who are intrigued by science, philosophy, world history, and even world religions …. and want to rationalize that with their Christian theology.
And for those who found that’s just not possible … and yet there’s still a small part of them that … … won’t let it go.
Available episodes
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Oldest first
Aug 7, 2020
#33 End of the World (ITEOTWAWKI)
View the autosave There’s never been a shortage of reasons to think that the Apocalypse was right around the corner. But Covid-19 and worldwide socio-political-economic unrest have recently ratcheted that fear to a whole new level. It takes some effort to not get caught up in the hysteria while at the same time not willfully […]
Jul 31, 2020
#32 – Mailbag episode – the Bible
. Looking back at the comments and responses which have accumulated at this WordPress site, at Facebook, and sent to us by email, we thought it was time to respond to a few of them in more detail. We noticed a couple recurring themes, one of which related to the Bible itself: how to read/interpret […]
Jul 24, 2020
#31 Moths drawn to a flame
“I found my way out of Young Earth Creationism because I tried to prove Young Earth Creationism … and failed.” These are the words of our guest today. But it’s a well-worn confession, made by many before him who walked the same beaten path. Renowned historian Dr. Ronald Numbers identifies a recurring theme in the […]
Jul 16, 2020
#30 Emergent Creationism – part 2
When we read a paper1 published a couple years ago by last week’s guest — Dr. Chris Barrigar — we felt his idea was a perfect book-end to our recent discussions about Young Earth Creationism and Intelligent Design. We’ve often referred to an image of God rolling certain ingredients — thermodynamics; entropy; quantum mechanics; biological […]
Jul 9, 2020
#29 Emergent Creationism – part 1
After exploring one end of the spectrum of Creationist beliefs (Young Earth; Intelligent Design), we now move to the other end. This week, we talk to Dr. Chris Barrigar an Anglican pastor from Montreal, Quebec, who’s proposed an idea by which God might have front-loaded the intrinsic properties of the primal cosmic egg in such […]
Jul 2, 2020
#28 Covid-19
Right now, Covid-19 is turning the world up-side-down. Our social systems … education systems … industries … economies … everything has been shut down. Healthcare is straining. And we’re scrambling for answers to how to deal with this thing. Many don’t know that we actually ran into Covid’s brother just less than 20 years ago, […]
Jun 25, 2020
#27 Science Denial
We all do this: we dismiss verifiable scientific fact because we think we know better, or because we think we’re an outlier case. For some, this looks fairly innocuous. Resorting to medicinal herbs and Gwyneth Paltrow to treat health problems. Thinking that cell phones cause brain cancer … wind turbines cause leukemia … 5G networks […]
Jun 18, 2020
#26 My faith was threatened by YECism, not science!
Christianity has always existed alongside of science. Some of the greatest Biblical characters were highly educated people (Moses; Daniel; Solomon; Saul of Tarsus). Most of the early Church Fathers were fully schooled in the highest forms of Greek thinking (Irenaeus; Clement; Origen; Augustine). Many leading scientists from the past (Sir Isaac Newton; William Buckland) and […]
Jun 11, 2020
#25 YECist 2nd response to science — reject faith
When modern science conflicts with a Young Earth Creationist worldview, two common responses are either to deny the science (last week’s topic) or reject the faith. This week, we talk to someone who opted for that 2nd coping strategy. But the person we talked to isn’t just another one of the many people who quietly […]
Jun 4, 2020
#24 YECism responds to science — deny the evidence
You may have heard that when an ostrich perceives a threat, it responds by sticking its head in the sand. The implied logic being that it no longer sees the danger, so it no longer feels threatened. “Out of sight, out of mind.” It turns out that this phenomenon isn’t true. It’s a myth! It […]
May 28, 2020
#23 Young Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism. “Really?” … you might ask. “Why are we still talking about this? I mean, how many people still think this way?” According to polling agencies like Pew and Gallup … “many!” For example, Pew asked two groups of people: “did humans evolve, or have they always existed in their present form?” The […]
May 21, 2020
#22 Fine Tuning
Apologies to my high school geography teacher. The only thing I seem to remember learning in that class was how to balance pencils on the end of their erasers!? I’d seen street performers turn the art of balancing odd things into an impressive revenue generator … maybe I could make something of it too? I […]
May 14, 2020
#21 Intelligent Design
Bill Gates created Microsoft. The Pharaoh Cheops built the Great Pyramid in Egypt. George Washington founded the United States of America. But did any of them actually get their hands dirty doing so? God created everything. But did he carefully design it — put molecule to molecule … assemble the bits and pieces … shape […]
May 7, 2020
#20 Atonement Theology: what does science have to say?
The last in this four part mini-series. Previously, we’ve talked about what science has to say about “Original Sin,” and then last week about seven ideas the Church has had for ten or twenty centuries about “Atonement.” Here, we see how those seven ideas about Atonement stand up to our new modern understanding of human […]
Apr 30, 2020
#19 Atonement Theology: the traditional view(s)
Atonement … aka, salvation. The whole point behind Christianity. In fact, the main reason we have religions of any kind. Atonement is basically about finding a way to God. Given that this is so central, you might think that the Christian church would have had a unified understanding about this right from its earliest days, […]
Apr 23, 2020
#18 Original Sin: what does science say?
Our goal next week is to talk about the core of Christian faith: Atonement Theology. But before we can do that, we need to talk about a fundamental concept on which it’s built: a concept called “Original Sin.” The Christian understanding of that idea is rooted in the story found in the third chapter of […]
Apr 16, 2020
#17 Original Sin: the traditional view(s)
One of the core tenets of Christian theology … is also often one of the hardest to embrace, and all-too-often a reason for giving up on the faith. How is an abstract, theological concept like guilt or sin transmitted down through genetic lines? Can that really be inherited like skin color, or a tendency towards […]
Apr 9, 2020
#16 Consciousness
Mind. Personality. Soul. Consciousness. Spirit. These five things which account for the human experience are often seen as overlapping, or even interchangeable. Boyd and I see them all as related … but quite separate. For us, the first four are material and emergent properties of the brain and therefore completely within the scientific realm. In […]
Apr 2, 2020
#15 Loose Threads: Chronological snobbery
Chronological snobbery. Science of their day. Phenomenological science. These related terms came up many times in our previous episodes, and we kept saying “sometime we’ll have to get into that in more detail.” Here we come through on that promise. Clearly, the Biblical authors saw things differently than we do. the earth being unmovable, and […]
Mar 26, 2020
#14 Loose Threads: Evangelicalism (part III) … four core problems
What is it about Evangelicalism that sets believers up for their faith to fail when confronted simply by scientific facts? We suggest four answers to this question … (1) An inflexible adherence to inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture, and putting the Bible on too high a pedestal that borders on turning it into an icon […]
Mar 19, 2020
#13 Loose Threads: Evangelicalism part II … this time it’s personal
Here, we take a close look at a dozen high-profile people who were once fully Evangelical in their outlook, and active in Christian leadership … with far more theological training and ministry experience than the average believer … and who found their Fundamentalist Christian faith increasingly didn’t make sense or was deeply disturbing. Although they […]
Mar 12, 2020
#12 Loose Threads: Evangelicalism and the Gospel
Many times, Boyd and I have been asked “What’s with the name of your podcast?” Here’s our answer. In the first of a three part series, we take a look at how Evangelicalism has morphed and deviated away from its historical roots: the Gospel message itself. Boyd starts us off looking at our respective experiences […]
Mar 5, 2020
#11 Soul&Afterlife: Resurrection and the afterlife
An Old Testament scholar tells us that the Bible makes it very clear: there has to be a resurrection of the body. Early church fathers were convinced that this body would contain the very same molecules that we “owned” while alive on earth. And many Christians today, without thinking too deeply about the subject, imagine […]
Feb 27, 2020
#10 Soul&Afterlife: Scientific explanation for the soul
Can there be a materialistic explanation for the soul!? Does the soul have to be immaterial? In the previous episode, we found that scholars — scientists and philosophers — have long wrestled with the concept of an immaterial soul (and spirit) and come to a fully reasoned conclusion that it doesn’t work. Here, we first […]
Feb 20, 2020
#9 Soul&Afterlife: Science says “no” to immaterial soul
The vast majority of people — whether they be Christians sitting in the pews of our churches, or non-believers outside the church — think that Substance Dualism is a central and core tenet of Christianity. That one can’t reject Substance Dualism and still call themselves Christian. And yet many scholars — both Christian and non-believers […]
Feb 13, 2020
#8 Soul&Afterlife: Bible says “yes” or “no” to immaterial soul?
Many Christians think they get their idea(s) about the human soul from the Bible. But the Bible doesn’t actually say too much about that. Which is rather paradoxical or ironic given that one would think that the Bible is all about the development of our soul. What exactly does the Bible have to say about […]
Feb 6, 2020
#7 Soul&Afterlife: Bible also gives a human perspective
Before we look at what the Bible has to say about the soul, we take a look at how the Biblical authors obtained their scientific understanding on things in general. Luke first introduces his understanding of “phenomenological science” — the science of their day — and then goes through several examples of science reflected in […]
Jan 29, 2020
#6 Soul&Afterlife: World and Biblical history
Very few of the believers sitting in the pews of our churches have a solid understanding of how we came to receive this collection of writings that we call “the Bible.” And most of them don’t realize how “Biblical thinking” evolved over the centuries during which those books were being written. Before we get into […]
Jan 29, 2020
#5 Soul&Afterlife: Introduction to the series
In this episode, Luke goes out to do “on-the-street” interviews, asking people three questions about what it means to be human. Since the three main words used by the Bible in this context are heart, mind and soul, he asked students during Frosh Week, people from my church, and professors at the university their ideas […]
Jan 25, 2020
#4 Plato’s Cave: Boyd’s story
Boyd Blundell describes his journey through Christian faith, including the experiences which seriously challenged the traditional form that he grew up with, and which now motivate him to present a faith that evolved through facing those challenges. In particular, he found an intellectual rigidity within Christian communities as well as within intellectual/academic circles in the […]
Jan 25, 2020
#3 Plato’s Cave: Luke’s story – Reconstruction
In this second half of his story, Luke describes why he didn’t go the whole way in becoming an atheist when his Christian faith became too uncomfortable to hang on to, but instead found a new Christian faith that was much more compatible with the 21st century. Part of the solution came from giving up […]
Jan 25, 2020
#2 Plato’s Cave: Luke’s story – Deconstruction
Luke describes the first half of his journey in which three things kept eroding his Christian faith to the point that it finally became too hard to hang on to it. The first of those three eroding influences was science: a Fundamentalist world view that forced a six thousand year time-line on the origin of […]
Jan 22, 2020
#1 Inaugural episode
This is the unveiling of our new Recovering Evangelicals pod-cast. In it, we introduce you to the hosts — myself and Boyd Blundell — and tell you our motives behind teaming up to give you this, our academic credentials, and history, and a bit of a sneak peak into the two series of pod-cast episodes […]