I have new nerd crush and it is Dr. Susan M. Shaw. This episode was one of the most fun conversations I have had in a while. It may be because we are both members of an endangered theological species… cradle southern baptists who went process, but none the less it was so fun it went for three hours and I had to edit it down!

Susan M. Shaw is professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Oregon State University. She is author of God Speaks to Us, Too: Southern Baptist Women on Church, Home, and Society and Intersectional Theology: An Introductory Guide.

In this conversation we discuss…

* growing up Southern Baptist and becoming a Baptist in exile

* Susan shares her experience in the conservative take over of the SBC

* the peculiar nature of being a progressive Baptist

* religious formation and the predicament of raising a spiritual free agent

* how the movement of ‘social justice’ functions as a meta-narrative

* the predicament of becoming human

* what happens when white evangelical men start loosing cultural power

* power over is NOT the gospel, but power to and power with

* are fundamentalist and progressive Christians in the same religion

* why moderates saying nothing is so frustrating

* what if we are still in the early church

* divine presence and sexual abuse

* how process helps one reengage with a tradition

* thinking simultaneity and both/and with intersectional thought

* “God loves me and I can live like it”

* it’s not if we come together, but how