A conversation with Kristen Johnson on the surprising history of the phrase that has been so central to evangelical identity, mission, and practice. It's perhaps time to reassess the outsize role Matthew 28:19-20 plays in our thinking, and just as importantly, to actually look at what the passage says!

This week, I respond to a few questions about individualism, I talk a little about Bruce Longenecker's book, In Stone and Story, and I have a discussion with Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of the new book, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.

In this episode I respond to some questions I received, commend the super-fun book Cringeworthy: A Theory of Awkwardness, by Melissa Dahl, and talk about the idolatrous notion that America is a Christian nation.

In this episode I share a few ideas in response to a question asking what we can do about our individualized gospel, I recommend Lee Camp's sparkling new book, Scandalous Witness: A Little Political Manifesto for Christians, and I elaborate some of the dynamics of the Kingdom of God in Scripture that conservative white evangelicals are missing, captive as that culture is to a shrunken version of the gospel.  

In this episode I respond to some questions I received about evangelism from the first episode, I talk about Kristin Kobes Du Mez's wonderful new book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, and I share a conversation I had about race with Max Botner, my New Testament colleague at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary. We hit a few things we've learned from the book White Fragility and about some criticisms of it, and we touched on some aspects of Christian identity that drive us to learn about and discuss matters of race.

In this first episode, I explain why I’m jumping into podcasting and what I hope to explore. I talk a little about Chanequa Walker-Barnes’s new book, I Bring the Voices of My People, and I explore a bit further how I came to change my thinking about a Christian posture toward others, both at an individual level and cultural one.