We all know what it feels like to scapegoat—or to be scapegoated. To shift blame, protect ourselves, and make someone else carry what feels too heavy to hold.

So what does that have to do with Good Friday?

In this episode of the Allender Center Podcast, Mako Nagasawa helps us see that what we call "scapegoating" today is actually a distortion of its original biblical meaning.

Looking at Leviticus 16, he explains that the scapegoat was never about blaming or punishing a substitute, but about removing what didn't belong. A way of naming that the problem isn't who we are, but what has taken hold within us.

But over time, we've changed that meaning, looking for others to carry the blame instead of facing what's broken in us.

This episode invites us to see the cross differently.

Rather than reinforcing blame and punishment, Jesus steps into our cycle of scapegoating to break it, revealing a God who is not looking for someone to punish, but is committed to restoring what's broken.

This is the hope of Good Friday: not a story of blame, but the beginning of restoration.

Special Offer for our Listeners:

"Scapegoating as a Spiritual Formation Problem:" A free, four-week discussion group led by Mako Nagasawa with The Anástasis Center.

Explore how Penal Substitutionary Atonement theology encourages people to accept arbitrary authority and deploy harsh retributive justice. Explore how Medical Substitutionary Atonement theology from Early and Eastern Christianity can heal our souls, relationships, and public witness.

Enroll for free (with donations) at: https://anastasiscourses.thinkific.com/courses/scapegoating

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

Stream each episode, plus find transcripts, additional resources, and more at:

theallendercenter.org/podcast

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, visit:

https://theallendercenter.org/2025/11/podcast-support/

If you and your organization would like to partner with the Allender Center Podcast, please reach out to Clay Clayton at [email protected]

For decades, Rev. Rob Schenck was a leading voice in the religious right, shaping policy and influencing power from the halls of Washington, D.C. But over time, he began to see that the gospel he was serving had become entangled with politics, ambition, and illusion.

In this episode, Rob reflects on the experiences that cracked his assumptions: moments of human suffering he couldn't ignore, the limits of religious influence, and the moral compromises he witnessed in powerful circles. He shares how these experiences—and encounters with people whose realities he had once dismissed—led him to reimagine faith as a call to truth, compassion, and reality rather than fantasy or control.

This conversation isn't really about politics. It's about confronting hard truths, facing the realities of the world and ourselves, and rediscovering the gospel in a society where our imaginations, privileges, and systems often distort it.

About the Allender Center Podcast:

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

Stream each episode, plus find transcripts, additional resources, and more at: theallendercenter.org/podcast

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, visit: https://theallendercenter.org/2025/11/podcast-support/

If you and your organization would like to partner with the Allender Center Podcast, please reach out to Clay Clayton at [email protected]

Many listeners of the Allender Center Podcast have asked us to explore neurodivergence—especially what it means to parent neurodivergent children or to make sense of a diagnosis in adulthood.

We're pleased to welcome therapist Stephanie Isbell, a Narrative Focused Trauma Care®–trained clinician who works with neurodivergent adults and families. In conversation with Dan and Rachael, she leads us through the complex intersection of neurodivergence, trauma, identity, and story.

Neurodivergence—which can include autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, and more—points to the many ways human brains process the world differently. For many people, these differences have been misunderstood or pathologized, often leading to experiences of shame, isolation, and relational misunderstanding from early childhood.

Stephanie brings both clinical insight and compassionate curiosity to the conversation, helping unpack how neurodivergent people often grow up navigating social miscues, sensory overwhelm, and the pressure to "mask" their natural ways of being in order to fit in. She highlights how considering these experiences as part of a larger story—perhaps our own and perhaps those of the people we love—offers helpful layers of understanding, allowing us to respond with greater compassion.

Throughout the conversation, we are invited to cultivate deeper curiosity—about ourselves and about the people we love. For parents, partners, and communities, this means moving beyond forcing conformity and instead learning to ask better questions, listen more carefully, and honor the unique ways each person experiences the world.

About the Allender Center Podcast:

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

Stream each episode, plus find transcripts, additional resources, and more at:

theallendercenter.org/podcast

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, visit:

https://theallendercenter.org/2025/11/podcast-support/

If you and your organization would like to partner with the Allender Center Podcast, please reach out to Clay Clayton at [email protected]

Have you been living within a role for years—only to wonder if there is more of you still waiting to be known?

For decades, Becky Allender stood faithfully behind the scenes, supporting Dan's work, praying as an intercessor, helping build what would become the Allender Center. Yet she also carried the ache of being "in the room" without fully feeling she had a seat at the table. In today's conversation, she names the cost of that tension, and the courage it took to step forward.

When Becky chose to participate in Narrative Focused Trauma Care—the very framework her husband helped create—something began to shift. Through the steady presence of skilled facilitators and courageous companions, she encountered grief she hadn't fully named and discovered a growing kindness toward parts of herself long defended or hidden.

What followed was not only personal healing, but relational transformation. Through the language she gained and interactions she experienced, her relationship with Dan deepened. Repair with her daughters became possible. Her love for her parents softened and expanded. And from that engagement with her story emerged a clearer sense of calling—expressed in her teaching, leadership, and her memoir, Hidden in Plain Sight.

Perhaps most compelling is this: Becky began this work after decades of marriage, motherhood, and ministry. It was not too late. And it is not too late for you.

What might you be missing by staying in the role you've always carried? And what new life could unfold if you trusted that your story is still being written?

*This episode mentions an incident of rape; listener discretion is advised.

About the Allender Center Podcast:

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

Stream each episode, plus find transcripts, additional resources, and more at:

theallendercenter.org/podcast

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, visit:

https://theallendercenter.org/2025/11/podcast-support/

What if healing from purity culture requires more than naming how you were hurt? What if it also means asking how you participated?

In this episode, Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen sit down with their colleague Dr. Lauren Sawyer, to explore her new book, Growing Up Pure.

Lauren names something many haven't had language for: as teens, we weren't only victims of purity culture; we were also moral agents within it. We made choices. We found belonging. We sometimes resisted in small ways. And at times, we participated in systems that harmed others and ourselves.

That tension between vulnerability and agency, harm and complicity can feel destabilizing. Yet Lauren invites us to see accountability not as punishment, but as a sacred, even hopeful, practice.

What if repentance wasn't shame-driven, but a pathway toward integration? What if healing meant not only tending to the wounds purity culture caused, but also examining how we were formed by—and sometimes upheld—it?

This episode is honest, nuanced, and tender. It creates space to grieve the damage of purity culture while also imagining a different story. One rooted in the belief that we are made in the image of God as embodied, relational, sexual beings… and that restoration is possible.

About the Allender Center Podcast:

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

Stream each episode, plus find transcripts, additional resources, and more at:

theallendercenter.org/podcast

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, visit:

https://theallendercenter.org/2025/11/podcast-support/

How often do we think about disgust? Yet it shapes our choices, relationships, and even our faith every day in ways we rarely notice.

In this episode of the Allender Center Podcast, Dr. Paul Hoard and Billie Hoard discuss their new book, "Eucontamination: Disgust Theology and the Christian Life," exploring how this powerful, often overlooked force influences us.

Drawing from theology and psychology, they examine how disgust—originally designed to protect us—can become a tool for exclusion when applied to people rather than pathogens. From purity culture to nationalism to everyday relational divides, they consider how "contamination logic" forms the world around us.

But the heart of their work is hopeful: Jesus doesn't abolish disgust—he inverts it. In Christ, holiness is not fragile. Love is stronger than sin. What looks contaminating does not defile him; instead, his presence transforms from within.

This conversation invites us to reflect on where disgust may be shaping our reactions, relationships, and theology—and to imagine a discipleship formed by more courageous, more transformative love.

About the Allender Center Podcast:

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

Stream each episode, plus find transcripts, additional resources, and more at:

theallendercenter.org/podcast

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, visit:

https://theallendercenter.org/2025/11/podcast-support/

Who gets to tell the story? This week, Pastor James A. White returns to the Allender Center Podcast to explore why that question sits at the heart of Black History Month.

Marking 100 years since Carter G. Woodson launched Negro History Week in February 1926, this episode examines how history has long been shaped by those in power — and how it remains at risk of erasure when we refuse to name the truth. From the creation of racial categories to modern claims of "colorblindness," division has been strategically constructed to preserve power, while silence continues to support a distorted narrative.

But this conversation isn't only about what has been. It's about what is unfolding now. The same grasping for power, the same fear-based narratives, the same temptation to flatten difference are still at work today.

Black history reveals both the cost of erasure and the brilliance of resilience. And it invites us to ask: What story are we participating in now?

James White is an architect of identity-driven leadership who designs environments where leaders and organizations align values, systems, and culture for lasting impact.

As Senior Pastor of Christ Our King Community Church, he integrates strategy, story, and spiritual formation to develop leaders who strengthen both communities and institutions.

James served for more than two decades as an Executive Vice President within large-scale, multi-million-dollar YMCA nonprofit systems—first in the Raleigh–Durham Triangle and later with the YMCA of the North in Minneapolis. In these executive roles, he designed leadership formation systems that developed emerging and senior-level leaders, aligned mission with operational execution, and strengthened organizational culture across complex community-based institutions.

He has facilitated cross-sector leadership labs for executive teams in both for-profit and nonprofit sectors, creating learning environments focused on identity clarity, values alignment, governance structure, and systems coherence. Over the course of 40 years, James has engaged audiences across academia, think tanks, business, nonprofit organizations, state and local government, and professional sports organizations throughout the United States and Canada.

At the core of his work is a simple conviction: identity shapes leadership, and both individuals and institutions have the opportunity to design a better story.

• Listen to "The Narratives of Marginalization" with Pastor James A. White and Linda Royster on the Allender Center Podcast.

• Explore Racial Trauma & Healing offerings from the Allender Center.

About the Allender Center Podcast:

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

Stream each episode, plus find transcripts, additional resources, and more at:

theallendercenter.org/podcast

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, visit:

https://theallendercenter.org/2025/11/podcast-support/

What if the freedom you long for is hidden in that final 3% of the truth you're afraid to share?

This week, Dan and Rachael are joined by therapists Blake Roberts and Jamie Haigh of the Three Percent Podcast for a thoughtful conversation about holistic masculinity, loneliness, and the risk of real vulnerability.

Blake and Jamie share the meaning behind the "three percent", which references the small but powerful parts of our story we hide in shame, and how naming them opens the door to deeper connection and freedom. Together, they explore why so many men feel alone, the difference between conquering and connecting, and how redemptive risk invites us into a fuller, more honest life.

About the Allender Center Podcast:

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

Stream each episode, plus find transcripts, additional resources, and more at:

theallendercenter.org/podcast

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, visit:

https://theallendercenter.org/2025/11/podcast-support/

Talking with kids about sex, pornography, and sexuality can stir up fear, shame, and a deep sense of inadequacy for many parents. In this episode, Dan and Rachael sit down with author and parent-educator Laurie Krieg to think through a steadier, wiser way forward—one rooted in the gospel, attunement, and ongoing relationship rather than one-time "big talks."

Drawing from her new book "Raising Wise Kids in a Sexually Broken World," Laurie shares her own journey as she offers parents help to move from reactivity to intentionality. She names why these conversations feel so overwhelming—often because of our own unresolved stories—and invites parents to do their own work so they can show up with courage and calm.

Rather than avoiding hard topics or responding with fear and control, Laurie offers concrete, age-appropriate ways to engage kids through many small conversations over time, helping parents become the trusted "anchor" their children return to when confusion, curiosity, or exposure inevitably arises.

This conversation is especially helpful for parents navigating early exposure to pornography, online content, and rapidly changing technology. Laurie shares practical language parents can use, how to reduce shame when kids encounter inappropriate material, and how to frame boundaries not around fear, but around God's beautiful design for bodies, intimacy, and care.

Throughout, the emphasis is clear: it's never too late to begin, repair matters more than perfection, and wisdom is something parents can grow into—step by step—as they walk alongside their children in a complex world.

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For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

You can find transcripts, show notes, and more for each episode at: theallendercenter.org/podcast

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, visit: https://theallendercenter.org/2025/11/podcast-support/

In a country that is hurting and fractured by deep division, many of us are wondering how to remain rooted in love. As followers of Jesus, the question before us is not simply what do we think, but how do we stay human, attentive, and faithful in such a time as this?

In this thoughtful and spacious conversation, Rachael Clinton Chen welcomes theologian and author Kat Armas into a much-needed dialogue about power, imagination, and what it means to remain grounded and joined together in the way of Jesus.

Drawing from her newest book, "Liturgies for Resisting Empire: Seeking Community, Belonging, and Peace in a Dehumanizing World," Kat invites listeners beyond political binaries and party lines into a deeper reckoning with how power has shaped our stories.

Here, empire names more than a political system. It refers to any way of organizing life—political, theological, cultural, or personal—that relies on power and fear to preserve itself, rather than love, humility, and mutual care. Often, its influence goes unnamed, shaping our imaginations, our bodies, our relationships, and even our spirituality.

Against this backdrop, Kat offers liturgies as embodied practices that can steady us, give us language when words feel thin, and help us resist dehumanization together.

This episode is not about debating political parties or policies. Instead, it invites us to slow down, to notice what's been "in the water" all along, and to return our attention to Jesus. We hope this conversation offers something more sustaining than easy answers—a holy resistance shaped by presence, community, and love.

About the Allender Center Podcast:

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

Stream each episode, plus find transcripts, additional resources, and more at:

theallendercenter.org/podcast

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, visit:

https://theallendercenter.org/2025/11/podcast-support/