Language really shapes how we think about things. After Jonathan Merritt moved from the South to New York City, he discovered that the words he had always used to describe spiritual life didn’t resonate anymore! The more pluralistic and postmodern the society, he observed, the less language people seem to have for spiritual experience. Jonathan is so sure that this is a problem, he wrote a book about it - Learning to Speak God from Scratch - which he and Bart Campolo chat about in this episode. They talk about the resurgence of the religious right and the desire of many Christians to separate themselves from it, the importance of language to describe good and kind forms of spirituality, Jonathan’s own beliefs, the importance of good questions and our comfort level talking about our spiritual lives.