Recovering Evangelicals

David Morris, with a PhD in psychology and theology, tells us about the psychology behind forming a spiritual/religious worldview, and then rejecting that worldview, and the mourning process that follows.

In this episode, we talk to Dr. David Morris, who holds a PhD in psychology and in theology, worked for one of the largest publishers of Christian books (Zondervan), and is now starting up his own publishing business.

David first gave us his personal story of growing up in a very Evangelical home (Southern Baptist), but ended up giving up almost everything he believed …. twice! Once after coming through university, and encountered a number of intellectual assaults on his faith, from which he reconstructed a very different (more liberal) Christian faith. The second time, though, was more a result of religious abuse, from which he’s still recovering.

Having his doctorate in both psychology and theology, he had to process the wide range of emotions he was going through as he deconstructed and deconverted … again, twice. Fear, anger, grief, betrayal, …. as well as peace, release, and a new understanding of himself.

David then talked to us in detail about the psychology behind the formation of a world view and belief system, as well as the psychology behind leaving both of those. We covered a wide range of topics, all related to the first half of his book — Psychology of disillusionment, mourning and a return of hope — in which he gives a foundational understanding of the history, sociology and psychology of a theology:

In the second half of his book, David devotes a chapter to each of six different individuals: people in many respects much like any one of us (in other words, not prominent leaders or personalities) who went through a convoluted, complex, difficult spiritual journey that involved at least one re-formation of their worldview and spirituality. I’m sure the listeners will relate personally to at least one of these six people (I particularly related to Randall … giving up the faith of his father). In each chapter, David applies the psychosocioanalytical tools described in the first half of the book.

One of several threads that ran through all six stories? … it’s a long process or journey, lasting decades.

At the end of our conversation, we asked David about the subtitle of his book, particularly the phrase: “… and a return of hope.” What is this hope? His answer ….. coming alive to life, finding things that bring you joy that you can connect to …. becoming a whole person, and being able to ask all the questions you want to ask and finding a space to talk about those things … community again!

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

You can find more about Dr. David Miller at his personal webpage, or the one for his publishing business (Lake Drive Books), and his blog page.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like ones we’ve done before on the neurobiology of the spiritual experience and on spiritual/religious abuse (seven to choose from here).

Episode images used by permission from Dr. David Morris.

To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher.

Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook.

Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

For Sarah Henn Hayward, reading a few too many books, meeting a few too many beautiful non-Christians, and asking a few too many questions, was just too much for her Evangelical faith.

For five years, we’ve been building a community of like-minded people wrestling with a spirituality that didn’t work for us  …. or even harmed us.

We’re all Recovering Evangelicals.

In this episode, we talk to yet another Recovering Evangelical … Sarah Henn Hayward … who just published her deconstruction story in Giving up God: resurrecting a spirituality of love and wonder.

Through her first two decades, Sarah was fully on board with her Evangelical faith, wearing it on her sleeve and actively laboring for it. But she was also a voracious reader, and a critical thinker. Ultimately, we’ll find, she simply asked a few too many questions and read a few too many books, and that led to her leaving that worldview and starting a journey to look for another one.

Going to university to pursue a career in health care immediately began to chip away at her Evangelical beliefs and values. One student she befriended was full of life, joy and goodness: however, he was gay. Another fellow student who seemed to share all of Sarah’s values and deep religious conviction, was a Muslim. Sarah’s relationship with both of them, and others, caused her to question so many ideas that she had grown up accepting fully, and so many parts of the Bible which she thought were absolutely condemning of friends like them. At the same time, Sarah discovered the writings of an Episcopalian Christian mystic — which further challenged many of her Evangelical ideas, especially those pertaining to hell. And then, ironically, the fourth serious challenge to her Evangelical faith was a number of theology courses that she took: learning about how the Bible and Christian dogma were put together by humans was eye-opening, to say the least.

“A world full of blurred lines and shades of grey felt scary compared to the simplistic black-and-white views I’d held before. Now I had a harder time reading the Bible with all this cultural context added in.”

Sarah finished university with a much more liberalized Christian faith. As she began pursuing her career, and a husband, and having kids, she continued going to church. But she was still reading …. and asking questions. Her husband opened her eyes to the disturbing links between Evangelicalism and American politics. Simply looking for some medical information to develop promotional material for her health care clinic had her learning about the evolution of the human foot … and about human evolution in general. We heard the same thing from Paul Enns (“Paulogia”), who told us that simply looking up some basic information about dinosaurs, so he could more accurately draw them in a video he was creating, that opened up his eyes to the truth about evolution … and shattered his Evangelical faith!

And then the COVID pandemic happened.

It forced Sarah to close her clinic temporarily. With her husband now working at home … and able to watch the kids during their nap time … Sarah had hours to go on long walks as she contemplated all this new information, and new perspectives. As well as the racial unrest and deep partisan divisions that were tearing society apart … the crazy things that Evangelicals were saying and doing (and not doing) about COVID … their involvement in politics and the election. A world full of cruelty, hate, racism, murder, cancer, suffering …. couldn’t God have done better? It was all too much.

Ultimately, it was theodicy — the problem of a good God and so much evil — that finally pushed her over the edge. She could no longer believe in God.

In the final few chapters of her book, Sarah describes how she’s trying out a few new hats … new labels for her spirituality: Poetic Naturalism? … Agnostic? … Christian Atheist? Yes, you read that right: that juxtaposition is intentional. Sarah can no longer believe in God, and yet she recognizes that her Christian upbringing has shaped her: she will always be Christian …. “it’s in my cells ….  my DNA.” We heard the same kind of thing from Frankie Schaeffer when we interviewed him last year: Sarah is a Christian who doesn’t believe in God … Frankie said he’s an atheist who believes in God.

In the last few minutes of our conversation, we talked with Sarah about whether it was really the traditional Evangelical conception of God which shattered, rather than other possible conceptions of God. And we asked if she could set aside all this talk of original sin, divine wrath, blood sacrifice, and eternal conscious torment in hell (the Evangelical “Gospel”), and yet still embrace a spirituality that talks about love and liberty, enjoying community and creation (the Christ-ian Gospel). Sarah resonated with that to some extent, but it seems that the baggage related to the Evangelical concept of God is still holding her back.

As always, tell us your thoughts …

Find more information about Sarah and her book at her website.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like similar interviews we’ve had with Frankie Schaeffer and Paul Enns (“Paulogia”).

Episode image used by permission from Sarah Henn Hayward.

To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher.

Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook.

Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

Setting the stage for the next season of episodes, and how we want to move beyond merely “dancing in the ruins” of a deconstructed faith

We’re back! After a 3-month hiatus to recalibrate and strategise, we’re now embarking on a season in which we’re emphasizing reconstruction of a new Christian worldview that works … for us at least … in the 21st century. We had been experiencing some cynicism and disillusionment around the end of Season 4. In fact, we both admitted to sometimes feeling like we had left a cult!?

We first discussed certain highlights from one of the latest (2022) PEW Research polls on the ever increasing numbers of people who see themselves as religiously unaffiliated (previously referred to as “the NONES”), and their biggest reasons for leaving faith:

After talking about our own deconstruction, disaffiliation, and disillusionment, we decided it was now time for some more deliberate reconstruction. That it’s not enough to “dance in the ruins” of a deconstructed Evangelical faith. This has been a long-standing goal of this podcast, and we’ve frequently released episodes in which, after deconstructing a number of key ideas, we showed how we’ve put together a New Christian Worldview.

Many have asked how we can still call ourselves Christian when we’ve rejected so many ideas and tenets which they view as essential to Christian faith. Our answer: we’re rejecting ideas that other humans have added to the basic teachings of Christ:

All of those ideas, and others, are seen by many to be essential core tenets of Christian theology. Those may be “Christian” in one sense of that word, but Christ-ian they are not! Those ideas were never part of Christ’s Gospel message.

We remarked on the influence that the historian and author Tom Holland has had on us: especially in pointing out how dependent modern Western society is on Christ-ian ideas.

Before explaining why we want to hang on to the label “Christian,” we thought we should emphasize two reasons that do not apply. It is not at all some kind of Pascalian Wager (reducing it some kind of insurance policy against an unpleasant afterlife): we do not hold onto the idea of an eternal conscious torment in Hell. And it is not because of any claim to have a personal relationship with Christ: we’ve explained previously why we just don’t buy into that kind of thinking.

Certain other people might claim that many Christian teachings can be found in other world religions. Again, “Christian” maybe, but not “Christ-ian.” For example, many religions teach “love your neighbour”; but Christ taught “love your enemy.” Many religions teach “don’t steal”; but Christ taught “if someone steals your coat, give them your shirt as well.”

Instead, we think that Christ-ian teachings are essential if humanity is ever going to survive its climb up the evolutionary ladder. You’ll have to listen to the episode if you want an abbreviated version of what we mean by that. But we’ve previously given a much longer and more in-depth version of that in our episodes on Original Sin and Atonement Theology.

As always, tell us your thoughts …

To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher.

Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook.

Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

A brief retrospective on Season 4, and a longer one on the journey that the podcast has taken us on through Christian belief.

Well, we kept it going for over a year, and added 54 more episodes to our archive. But all good things must come to an end. And so this will be the finale for our fourth season of episodes.

This podcast grew out of a blog site I started almost 10 years ago. Both were vehicles for my own personal quest to find a new Christian worldview to replace the one that was handed to me in my teen years, and which no longer worked for me. And it also didn’t seem to work for others of my generation who grew up in it: it seems that most of them no longer follow that version of Christianity, and almost none of our own children seem to do so either.

The podcast was a vehicle … a catalyst … for my journey out of 20th century North American Evangelicalism, and into a new version of Christian belief. And it has become a public record of that personal journey.

After taking a brief look back at this fourth season of episodes, and trying to decide whether we started to get mired in the science weeds, Scott and I talked about where this podcast has taken each of us in our respective personal belief systems, and shared our new perspectives on:

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher.

Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook.

Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

Biology is unique among the sciences in its apparently absolute dependence on language that implies a goal, direction, or intention. Does this mean that biology IS goal-oriented, or directed? If so, that has huge philosophical and theological implications!?

Our deep-dive into Intelligent Design got us wondering why so many people embrace that worldview. Not just “sheeple” who can often blindly follow vocal proponents of even crazy beliefs (COVID was a global government-orchestrated event; vaccines cause autism; everything Q-Anon; the “stolen” election), but even many with impressive academic credentials who appear to have researched the question. In trying to understand this, we came across an article with the title The Teleological Menace: Why Biology (Still) Requires God by Seth Hart, a doctoral candidate whose current research project asks: does Darwinism (Natural Selection as a causal mechanism of evolution) require teleological concepts? He made many great points that are worth sharing with our listeners.

Some of the main points we discussed with him included:

At the end of this discussion, we addressed what seems to be two inevitable conclusions:

If those two conclusions didn’t slap you in the face, you need to read them again, more carefully.

Two equally provocative implications of those two statements:

Let us know what you think of those conclusions and their implications …..

If you enjoyed this episode, you might also enjoy our retrospective of our Intelligent Design mini-series, in which we summarize our current understanding of that worldview, including why so many people embrace it.

Find Seth Hart at his university profile page or this Academia profile page. Also make sure to check the article that first brought Seth to our attention on this matter.

Dr P. Z. Myers is a Professor of Biology at the University of Minnesota Morris, and founder of and writer at the Pharyngula science blogweb-site.

Dr. Denis Walsh is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto.

Episode image by meineresterampe from Pixabay.

To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher.

Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook.

Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

The details behind the story of how bacteria mutated in order to grow bigger and better by eating oranges, instead of sugar.

Last week, we talked to a member of the Long-Term Evolution Experiment, Dr. Zachary Blount. He and his colleagues followed 75,000 generations of bacteria competing for a limited food resource — sugar — and described many different kinds of genetic changes in 57 different genes. Creationists and ID-proponents dismiss this as “simply breaking genes.” In this episode, we take a very deep-dive into the story, and show how this is actually a prime example of evolution proceeding through gene duplication, progressive modifications, and the building up of new regulatory pathways and metabolic functions. How it is that well educated anti-evolutionists, especially the biochemists among them, can only see this as destructive and detrimental either says something about them being biased and misled … or deceptive!?

Before we asked Zach to give us the details, we provided some background introductory information:

Bacterial metabolism of glucose through biochemical conversions (buckets) involving other molecules such as acetate, citrate, and succinate, producing energy molecules (the green “E”s in the figure).

A potentiating mutation (#1, highlighted in pink) allows acetate to escape the process, thus accelerating the flow of glucose through the top half).

An actualizing mutation (#2, highlighted in yellow) allows the OCEAN of citrate that the bugs are swimming in to now flow into the process, making it possible to grow on citrate in the presence of oxygen when glucose levels drop.

[nb: this chart simplifies the story to the point of being inaccurate, but at least a non-expert can follow it!]]

With that introduction in place, we then got deep into the details of this story:

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more information about our guest, Dr. Zachary Blount at his university profile page and his own lab’s web-site. Learn more about the LTEE itself, including descriptions of the team members and lists of their publications, at their webpage. You can also watch a video in which Dr. Blount regales Dr. Richard Lenski on the latter’s 60th birthday, and recounts the whole history of the LTEE.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like the mini-series of episodes we did focusing on Intelligent Design and its misrepresentation of science.

Episode image by Andrew Kirkham. Thanks Andrew!

To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher.

Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook.

Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

Two very different interpretations of the same set of data: one from Creationists and ID proponents, and the other from the scientists actually doing the work. Here, we talk to one of the latter.

A frequent talking point for creationists and Intelligent Design proponents in their anti-evolution rhetoric is a ground-breaking scientific project referred to as “the Long-Term Evolution Experiment.” Almost forty years ago, Dr. Richard Lenski began studying bacteria competing for limited energy resources (sugars) — generation after generation — looking for any genetic changes which gave any kind of advantage in that competition. His group have recently reached 76,000 generations, and documented many dozens of genetic mutations: rearrangements of regulatory pathways, elimination of genes which were no longer needed, introduction of new metabolic functions, shuffling of genetic information. In the process, there has been an incredible increase in fitness. This is much like someone deciding to train for a marathon — losing layers of fat, toning up muscles, revising their diet, replacing their normal wardrobe with ultra-light clothes and expensive runners, shaving seconds off of their run-time, increasing their stamina — and in the process, becoming a lean, mean running machine.

Nonetheless, creationists and ID proponents persist in diminishing the LTEE findings to just “breaking genes” and losing information.

After a brief introduction to the LTEE and the primary variables that they were monitoring (oxygen; fuel sources), we then talked to Dr. Zachary Blount, a member of the LTEE team who is continuing and broadening that research program, building on the findings and strategies of the LTEE. Points that we discussed included:

Scott and Luke then reflected a bit on what Zachary told us so far, and how that relates to the on-going discussion going on between creationists and anti-evolutionists:

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more information about our guest, Dr. Zachary Blount at his university profile page and his own lab’s web-site. Learn more about the LTEE itself, including descriptions of the team members and lists of their publications, at their webpage. You can also watch a video in which Dr. Blount regales Dr. Richard Lenski on the latter’s 60th birthday, and recounts the whole history of the LTEE.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like the mini-series of episodes we did focusing on Intelligent Design and its misrepresentation of science.

Episode image by WikiImages from Pixabay.

To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher.

Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook.

Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

Dr. Janet Kellogg Ray, a deeply Evangelical believer and state college professor, has long been speaking to and educating Evangelicals about their science denial

Unfortunately, science denial and pseudoscience run rampant in Evangelical circles. In our previous episodes, we’ve learned about the exceptionally strong correlations between being Evangelical and: … being against COVID protection measures (vaxing, masking, social distancing) … being against evolution (particularly so about human evolution) … denying climate change … accepting the Sunday School version of the Noah’s Ark story as historical … and otherwise disagreeing on several other points which many others take for granted.

Our guest today — Dr. Janet Kellogg Ray — has been teaching, speaking and writing to Evangelicals for decades about this science denial. Here, we talk about her latest book coming out next week from Eerdmans: The God of Monkey Science: People of Faith in a Modern Scientific World.

Points that we covered include:

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find out more about Dr. Janet Kellogg Ray and her books at her profile page at Eerdmans Publishing, or at her FaceBook page.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like our mini-series of episodes on:

or maybe individual episodes on science denial (#27), COVID-denial and pseudoscience (#61), the Evangelical response to science (#24), a prominent social influencer whose faith was destroyed by YECism, aka “Paulogia” (#25), or another one whose faith was ruined by working for Answers-in-Genesis (#31).

To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher.

Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook.

Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

After a seven-episode deep-dive into Intelligent Design, we finally arrive at our better informed opinion of our position on this worldview.

We started this 7-part mini-series introducing the Intelligent Design proposal that many creationists hold, and also shared our position at the outset on it: at that time, we were not convinced, feeling like we should embrace it but still a bit skeptical, and not really knowing what to do. It took seven episodes — three in which we gave you, the non-expert, some conceptual foundations to follow the scientific arguments (what is Intelligent Design; how do genes work; how are proteins made), and then the interviews with two leading Intelligent Design proponents (Michael Behe; Jonathan McLatchie) and the counterarguments from three scientific experts (Nick Matzke; Matt Miller; Mark Pallen). We now feel ready to make a better informed opinion about the ID worldview.

In this episode, Scott and Luke pull the threads together, compare notes, and try to make sense of the differing arguments presented. Points that we covered include:

We also took time to respond to some questions/comments from our listeners:

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher.

Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook.

Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

After last week’s scientific experts cleared up much ID-rhetoric, we ask a rising star in the ID movement — Dr. Jonathan McLatchie — to respond to our reinvigorated questions, concern, and critiques of Intelligent Design

After starting this mini-series with an interview with one leading ID proponent, and then hearing from a number of scientific experts who gave a different perspective on things, we now want to finish this on-going conversation with an interview with another leading ID proponent — a relatively new face — Dr. Jonathan McLatchie. With three graduate degrees in biology and evolutionary biology, he may be a rising leader in that movement. Before the interview, we gave him a list of the anti-ID challenges we’d be raising, so that we could get fully prepared and informed responses to those questions. Here are his answers, and our other points of discussion:

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more about Dr. Jonathan McLatchie, including upcoming public speaking engagements and writings, at his web-site.

To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher.

Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook.

Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive