Spiritual Misfits Podcast

Will, Caro, Mitch and Becca unpack the purity culture they grew up in: Focus on the Family books, True Love Waits banquets, journals of letters to a future spouse, and the very real fear of dying in your sleep after masturbating.

But this isn't just a look back. They explore what changed their minds, what (if anything) was worth keeping, and what might a better sexual ethic look like now?

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Wes Crawford is a church historian and pastor of twenty years, currently vice provost and associate professor of church history at Abilene Christian University.

His new book One Nation Over God names what sociologists call "civil religion" — the way a nation, in the absence of a shared faith, starts borrowing the shape of one: sacred texts, rituals, symbols, calendar days, revered people — and traces how that borrowing, in American life, has tangled love of country with love of God to the point of idolatry.

We also talk about what this looks like translated into an Australian context — Southern Cross tattoos, January 26, and Pauline Hanson's recent talk of a "Judeo-Christian monoculture" — and ask what it actually means to love a country enough to critique it.

Learn more and order the book here: https://www.eerdmans.com/9780802885470/one-nation-over-god/

Want to reach out and let us know your thoughts or suggestions for the show? Send us a message here; we’d love to hear from you.

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Will Small is joined by Steff Fenton, Kelly Woods and Jono Ingram to discuss the complex nature of hope, the work of cultivating an alternative imagination and a vision of how it might look in community. With beautiful opening words from Alisha Fung and Paul Banks, and a closing benediction from Matt Cutler this was a rich and memorable evening that may just restore a little hope where it's needed.

Presented in partnership with Simba Sessions, Sonderverse, Beyondering Podcast and Northcote Uniting Church. 

Want to reach out and let us know your thoughts or suggestions for the show? Send us a message here; we’d love to hear from you.

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Chelsea Kim Long grew up inside a world that had an answer for everything — until her body didn't cooperate with the script. A traumatic birth, postpartum depression, infertility, and eventually an impossible decision during a quadruplet pregnancy each cracked open a theology that had no room for what she was actually experiencing. In her new book Faithfully Dissident Daughters: Reclaiming Christian Womanhood Beyond Patriarchy, and in this conversation, she traces how patriarchy in the church has limited our understandings, and points towards a more expansive approach to faith and community.

Connect with Chelsea's work here: https://www.chelseakimlong.com/

Want to reach out and let us know your thoughts or suggestions for the show? Send us a message here; we’d love to hear from you.

The Spiritual Misfits Survival Guide (FREE): https://www.spiritualmisfits.com.au/survivalguide

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Paul Banks spent his early childhood living in an intentional Christian community — it wasn't perfect, but it 'spoiled' him for church spaces that never quite replicated the taste of an integrated communal life in the same way. 

Paul has moved in, out and back in to communities of faith across his journey. In a sense, he has never stopped pursuing spaces where art, story and community come together in meaningful and transcendent ways. 

Paul and his wife are the founders and hosts of Simba Sessions, a monthly night of poetry, storytelling and music in Kyneton, Victoria.

The next Simba Sessions is taking place on September 11. More info and tickets are here: https://events.humanitix.com/simba-sessions-fundraiser-timothy-coghill-will-small-kavisha-mazzella-and-special-guests

Want to reach out and let us know your thoughts or suggestions for the show? Send us a message here; we’d love to hear from you.

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Will and Caro discuss some surprising findings from the recent Spiritual Misfits listener survey and then continue their series looking back at excerpts from Future Church Conference keynotes — this time, Simon Buckingham Shum's exploration of AI and the Church. His talk pushes past the "AI will save us / AI will doom us" binary and asks a much better question: not is AI good or bad, but what is the quality of each interaction, and who is it being trained to serve?

Watch Simon's full talk from Future Church Conference here:
https://youtu.be/Q5zLFaK-pDw?si=JH6Pq3hwzW-pYR4y

Check out the Center for Humane Technology's podcast, mentioned in this episode: Your Undivided Attention
https://www.humanetech.com/podcast

Slides from Simon's talk can be viewed here:
https://simon.buckinghamshum.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Simon_FCC26.pdf

Want to reach out and let us know your thoughts or suggestions for the show? Send us a message here; we’d love to hear from you.

The Spiritual Misfits Survival Guide (FREE): https://www.spiritualmisfits.com.au/survivalguide

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Fr. Joash P. Thomas comes from a long line of misfits — literally: a St. Thomas Indian Christian whose people had followed Jesus since the earliest days of the church, but were labelled heretics by colonial missionaries who showed up fifteen centuries later.

In this conversation, Fr. Joash makes the case that justice isn't a side quest for the church, it's the main mission. We talk about the moment he realised he'd "sold his soul to Empire," what it means to decolonise the Great Commission, why deconstruction without decolonisation is pointless, and what ancient Celtic and Indian Christianity can teach a Western church that's forgotten how to hold doubt and diversity together. It's a conversation full of provocation, hospitality, and a lot of flavour!

Connect with Fr. Joash P. Thomas
Read his book: The Justice of Jesus
Subscribe to his newsletter: Masala Chai Theology Substack
Follow him on insta: https://www.instagram.com/joashpthomas

Want to reach out and let us know your thoughts or suggestions for the show? Send us a message here; we’d love to hear from you.

The Spiritual Misfits Survival Guide (FREE): https://www.spiritualmisfits.com.au/survivalguide

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Adam Gowen is a Wiradjuri man with deep cultural ties to Ngunnawal and Yuin country, a husband, father of three, not-for-profit board director, and campus manager at the University of Wollongong. In this conversation with Carolyn Meers, Adam traces his path from a childhood where his family's Aboriginality was known but rarely spoken of, through the education journey that gave him language for his identity, to recent years of actively stepping into cultural practice.

The conversation centres on what Adam calls "the displaced middle": the experience of belonging fully to neither one world nor another, and finding that this in-betweenness can be a privilege rather than a deficit. 

SPIRITUAL MISFITS LISTENER SURVEY — We want to hear from you! Take 5 minutes to fill out our listener survey here and shape the future of Spiritual Misfits:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe9TY7zaFqW6Zlaq3h9gjKzp7LO2PNxVTqvBXhCzlKQjSJUeQ/viewform?usp=header

Want to reach out and let us know your thoughts or suggestions for the show? Send us a message here; we’d love to hear from you.

The Spiritual Misfits Survival Guide (FREE): https://www.spiritualmisfits.com.au/survivalguide

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We continue our Future Church series where Will and Caro listen back to a highlight excerpt from Future Church Conference and then debrief what it sparks for them as they think about their lives and faith communities.

This time, we listen to 10 minutes from Tanya Riches' talk, where she invites us into a wider and deeper understanding of the 'Imago Dei.' Is the Image of God exclusively reflected in humans? Or might we find it in the face of a cockatoo?

Tanya Riches directs the Masters of Transformational Development at Eastern University and is an all-round fantastic human. Her reflections spark Will and Caro's imagination and they discuss a range of ideas you might want to try out in your own life and/or faith community.

Listen to Tanya's full talk from Future Church (and all other keynote sessions) here: 
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsFveo-xYmS3nYRJAMrVmew

SPIRITUAL MISFITS LISTENER SURVEY — We want to hear from you! Take 5 minutes to fill out our listener survey here and shape the future of Spiritual Misfits:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe9TY7zaFqW6Zlaq3h9gjKzp7LO2PNxVTqvBXhCzlKQjSJUeQ/viewform?usp=header

Want to reach out and let us know your thoughts or suggestions for the show? Send us a message here; we’d love to hear from you.

The Spiritual Misfits Survival Guide (FREE): https://www.spiritualmisfits.com.au/survivalguide

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Will, Mitch and Caro get round the table and discuss some listener questions, like: Is it actually unethical to have kids given the state of the world? how do you respond to thought-stopping church clichés? And then Will shares the question on his mind: do you believe in aliens, and would it matter to your theology if they showed up tomorrow? 

Take the Spiritual Misfits Listener Survey (5 minutes, helps shape exciting new things we're working on): https://forms.gle/Ce596SzAaDMFiXap7

Previous Spiritual Misfits episodes mentioned:

• Blood, Wrath & Love: What Actually Happened on the Cross? (with Mitch Forbes) 
• A More Christlike God: Bradley Jersak on Faith After Deconstruction
• Future Church Series: Uncle Ray Minniecon and the Scarred Tree

The Documentary Will mentions:

UFOs: Investigating the Unknown — National Geographic documentary series on Disney+

Want to reach out and let us know your thoughts or suggestions for the show? Send us a message here; we’d love to hear from you.

The Spiritual Misfits Survival Guide (FREE): https://www.spiritualmisfits.com.au/survivalguide

Sign up to our mailing list:
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Support the pod:
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View all episodes at: https://spiritualmisfits.buzzsprout.com