Holy Heretics: Losing Religion and Finding Jesus The Sophia Society

Episode Summary:
(CW): Mental Illness, Suicidal Ideation, Depression, and Anxiety)
Anna Gazmarian’s new book Devout: A Memoir of Doubt, investigates the overlapping complexities of religious faith, mental illness, and doubt. If you grew up in religiously conservative spaces, odds are you either never talked about mental illness or you were made to believe only people with a demonic spirit could suffer from mental and behavioral disorders. According to research by the National Institutes of Health, evangelical Christians often see mental health as the outworking of a harmful spiritual condition and therefore, the solution is to just have more faith in God. This is not only completely erroneous, it’s harmful. In this deeply personal conversation, Anna shares her struggles with depression, bipolar disorder, darkness, and doubt. For those of us who have lived on the dark side of the human experience, we have gifts to give to the world that only we can give because we know what it is like to lose touch with reality, to be in pain, to question the entire human experiment, to suffer with anxiety, to struggle to get out of bed in the morning, and to fight to find meaning in an otherwise meaningless existence. I’m honored to share this space with Anna and have this needed conversation about mental health and faith.

Bio:
Anna’s debut, Devout: A Memoir of Doubt is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster in March 2024. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her essays have been published in The Guardian, The Rumpus, Longreads, The Sun, and Quarterly West. She works for The Sun Magazine and lives in Durham, NC.

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Show notes:
http://www.sophiasociety.org/podcast/Christianity-and-mental-illness

Follow us on social media! Twitter: @holyheretics | Instagram: @holyhereticspodcast | Facebook: @holyheretics | Substack: holyheretics.substack.com


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This episode was produced by The Sophia Society and written by Gary Alan Taylor.  Music is by Faith in Foxholes.

Episode Summary:
Interviewing Jonathan Merritt felt like having a conversation with myself. His journey out of white evangelical subculture is an almost mirror-image of my journey. My guess is, you’ll find a lot of correlation as well.
Jonathan was a card-carrying evangelical who left his Southern roots and evangelical home to find faith, family, and freedom outside the confines and cult-like community of evangelical Christianity. His journey led him from certainty to contemplation, from winning to wisdom, from the shallow end of the pool into the deep waters of Ignatian spirituality, and from exclusion to radical inclusion. As he reminds us, evangelical Christianity is not only a fairly modern invention, it is also a minority movement within global Christianity. Evangelicals do not have a monopoly on God. There are a myriad of spiritual pathways available to you once you leave. So take heart, there is life after evangelicalism. There is faith after evangelicalism. There is new found family after evangelicalism. You get to decide what your future is going to look like. You have the power to form a freer faith and a more inclusive “family.”
Four years and seventy-four episodes into Holy Heretics Podcast and I can honestly say I believe this conversation with Jonathan Merritt to be the most helpful and hopeful episode we’ve ever created. I hope you enjoy!
Bio:
Jonathan Merritt is one of America’s most popular writers on issues of faith and culture. He is author of several critically-acclaimed books, including Learning to Speak God from Scratch: Why Sacred Words are Vanishing - and How We Can Revive Them, named “Book of the Year” by the Englewood Review of Books.
Jonathan is an award-winning contributor for The Atlantic, a contributing editor for The Week, and a regular columnist for Religion News Service. He has published more than 3000 articles in respected outlets such as The New York Times, USA Today, Buzzfeed, The Washington Post, The Daily Beast and Christianity Today. 
In addition to the written word, Jonathan regularly contributes commentary to television, print, and radio news outlets. He has been interviewed by ABC World News, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR, PBS, and CBS’ “60 Minutes.”
Jonathan is also a sought after speaker at colleges, conferences, and churches on topics relating to spirituality, politics, and current events. Whether he is delivering an academic lecture or inspirational sermon, Jonathan’s captivating communication style and powerful presence are well-suited for intimate gatherings of hundreds or arenas filled with thousands.
As a collaborator or ghostwriter, Jonathan has worked on more than 50 books, with several titles landing on the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestsellers lists. Additionally, he trains hundreds of young writers through his Write Brilliant seminars and online course. He is often available for exclusive one-on-one coaching for a select number of advanced writers.
Jonathan holds a Master of Divinity from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, a Master of Theology from Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, and has done additional graduate work focused on ascetical theology at The General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church.
He is the recipient of numerous awards and accolades including the Wilbur Award for excellence in journalism, and the Religion News Association’s columnist of the year award.
Jonathan currently happily resides in New York City.
You can find Jonathan’s latest children’s book My Guncle and Me here! For more information about Jonathan and his writings, visit his website. You can also connect with Jonathan on Instagram.
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Episode Summary:
Do you feel spiritually and physically domesticated? Are you struggling to free yourself from the long-term impacts of spiritual colonization? Do you feel disconnected from the natural world? Are you longing for something more than merely reconstruction? If so, spiritual rewilding might be the next step in your faith seeking journey.
Though an environmental term—meaning letting nature take care of itself and referring to conservation strategies that reintroduce species to their natural environment, restore wilderness areas and the land to its original state, and create corridors to connect these lands and species with each other—rewilding is a concept that just makes sense at a soul level.
The faith deconstruction movement has provided an unprecedented opportunity to rediscover the untamable within, to decolonize our souls, and to free ourselves from a fenced-in faith domesticated by dogma, ideology, whiteness, patriarchy, power, purity culture, and rationalism. We have the opportunity to trade in our certainty for wonder and our literalism for mystery. As stewards of a once-wild faith that has all but been domesticated, we have a duty to free our faith from some of the repressive, world-denying, and destructive practices that have facilitated our spiritual stagnation. 
This episode with Holy Heretics host Gary Alan Taylor is an introduction to spiritual rewilding through the re-introduction of indigenous spirituality and Creation-centered Christianity. Along the way, we’ll look back at the history of our faith tradition and find examples of how our spiritual ancestors responded to spiritual domestication through their pursuit of a primeval faith.
Bio:
Gary Alan is the host and co-creator of Holy Heretics Podcast. He spent the first-half of his life in evangelicalism before beginning his faith deconstruction journey in 2020. He started Holy Heretics and The Sophia Society with his friend Melanie to serve the thousands of other individuals leaving toxic Christianity. Gary Alan has an undergraduate degree in History from Milligan University and a Master of Arts degree from East Tennessee State University. An international speaker, content creator, and writer, Gary Alan has over 26 years experience working in nonprofit ministry and higher education. He is in recovery from fundamentalist Christianity and his passion is to see others free themselves from toxic expressions of faith. He and his family live in Monument, Colorado and he works for the University of Colorado.
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Show notes:
http://www.sophiasociety.org/podcast/rewilding-christianity

Follow us on social media! Twitter: @holyheretics | Instagram: @holyhereticspodcast | Facebook: @holyheretics | Substack: holyheretics.substack.com


Advertising inquiries: garyalan@sophiasociety.org

Support our work on Patreon or Substack and get early access to episodes and premium content like our online class on deconstruction!
https://www.patreon.com/holyheretics or subscribe to our Substack to gain access to Holy Heretics Shorts, premium content, and our online class on faith deconstruction!

This episode was produced by The Sophia Society and written by Gary Alan Taylor.  Music is by Faith in Foxholes.

Episode Summary:
Author Liz Cooledge Jenkins joins us on the show to discuss the harmful effects of patriarchy on men, women, families, LGBTQIA persons, culture, nations, and spiritual communities.
With its ties to domination, violence, aggression, militarism, and white supremacy, patriarchy centers white, heterosexual men at the expense of everyone else. Patriarchal communities often tolerate or even condone violence against women, including domestic violence, sexual assault, and honor killings. Patriarchy comes to us in overt and subtle ways, but even nice, churchy patriarchy is toxic AF.
How has patriarchy damaged your identity and self-worth? How has patriarchy impacted the assault on women's reproductive rights and what might it look like for you to resist patriarchy in a post-Roe world? How do we use literary criticism to re-interpret those clobber passages in the Bible? Why have we seen an uptick in violent, hyper-masculine, patriarchal expressions since 2016? This episode answers all those questions and more as Liz and I dissect, dismantle, and destroy the theological, social, and sexual manifestations of patriarchal culture.
Liz wrote Nice Churchy Patriarchy in the hope of helping evangelical and formerly evangelical women make sense of their experiences in church, feel seen and validated in the frustrations they may have, and be inspired to chart a new way forward. "Oppressive mindsets, theologies, and systems are not okay. Change is needed. We are not asking for too much, too soon. We deserve better. And we have the power to find that better—to build it together," writes Jenkins. 
This practical conversation addresses the ways you and I can work to dismantle patriarchal structures, theologies, communities, and families to achieve a more just world. Connect with Liz on Insta @lizcoolj and @postevangelicalprayers.

Bio:
Liz Cooledge Jenkins (MDiv) is a writer, preacher, and former college campus minister who lives in the Seattle area with her husband Ken and their black cat Athena. Liz is passionate about building more just faith communities and a more just world. She has a BS in Symbolic Systems (Stanford University) and a Master of Divinity degree. Her writing has appeared in Sojourners, The Christian Century, Christians for Social Action, Feminism and Religion, and Red Letter Christians, among other places. When not writing, Liz enjoys swimming, hiking, attempting to grow vegetables, and drinking a lot of tea.

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Show notes:

http://www.sophiasociety.org/podcast/nice-churchy-patriarchy

Follow us on social media! Twitter: @holyheretics | Instagram: @holyhereticspodcast | Facebook: @holyheretics | Substack: holyheretics.substack.com


Advertising inquiries: garyalan@sophiasociety.org

Support our work on Patreon or Substack and get early access to episodes and premium content like our online class on deconstruction!
https://www.patreon.com/holyheretics or subscribe to our Substack to gain access to Holy Heretics Shorts, premium content, and our online class on faith deconstruction!

This episode was produced by The Sophia Society and written by Gary Alan Taylor.  Music is by Faith in Foxholes.

Episode Summary
Have you ever wanted someone to sit with you by the fire and watch your old religious beliefs go up in flames? Maybe you’ve longed for a guide or a coach to help you navigate all this wandering in the spiritual wilderness. If so, then this week’s episode is what you need right now!
Faith deconstruction coach Angela J. Herrington joins me to talk about life after evangelicalism, and in particular this tender time in your spiritual journey when you feel alone, bewildered, angry, lost, and a bit terrified of what comes next. “There are a ton of people out here in the wilderness trying to figure out what we believe and what faith looks like during and after deconstruction. Together, we slog through the uncertainties and complexities of faith deconstruction. Laughing, crying, and raging against the toxic religious machine together,” she shares.
This incredibly practical, approachable, and applicable conversation is a must for anyone in the throes of faith reconstruction.
Faith deconstruction is disorienting, it’s painful, it’s also triggering. It’s often hard to find the language to describe what you are feeling, much less to find a way forward. As you navigate this space in between who you were and who you are becoming, may this conversation guide you on the long journey back to yourself as well as to God.

Bio:
As a certified life coach, seminary-trained online pastor, and a faith deconstruction coach, Angela has a lot of experience helping people connect with God. But this is also a very personal journey for me. For the last decade, I’ve been on my own journey to break free from learned smallness and step into wild sacred holy womanhood. Long story short, after finding faith in my early 30’s I began to realize that what I was hearing from the church about women didn’t always line up with what God was telling me. I loved God but realized the church was teaching some really toxic stuff. So this Enneagram 8, first born, Gen Xer started deconstructing. I questioned and challenged everything I thought I knew about faith, gender, and myself. It was messy and took a lot of work to sort it out. Therapy. Coaching. Bodywork. Spiritual healing. Conferences and retreats. And even a couple of college degrees. But the thing that made the biggest difference was the presence and support of wise people who helped me up when I didn’t know where else to turn. Which is just one reason why I became a faith deconstruction coach, to help people just like me make their way through the wilderness of deconstruction.

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Show notes:
http://www.sophiasociety.org/podcast/reconstruct-faith-your-way

Follow us on social media! Twitter: @holyheretics | Instagram: @holyhereticspodcast | Facebook: @holyheretics | Substack: holyheretics.substack.com


Advertising inquiries: garyalan@sophiasociety.org

Support our work on Patreon or Substack and get early access to episodes! and premium content like our online class on deconstruction!
https://www.patreon.com/holyheretics or subscribe to our Substack to gain access to subscriptions and online classes in faith deconstruction!

This episode was produced by The Sophia Society and written by Gary Alan Taylor.  Music is by Faith in Foxholes.

Episode Summary
Have you ever paused long enough to consider why you continue pursuing the spiritual path? After all the scandals, abuse, religious trauma, and oppressive theology, why are you still here?
This same question hit me last week during church and I didn’t have a profound answer. For whatever reason, I just can’t quit my search for the Sacred.
I bet you’ve asked a similar question, or at least had the honesty to wonder just what the hell you are still doing in a movement that has caused you so much heartache. If eternal punishment is off the table, why even bother? I believe our latest episode on Holy Heretics provides an answer.
According to today’s guest, spirituality isn’t about escaping the fire of hell, it is about your personal transformation. In short, you must become fully human in order to become fully divine. Sounds like the historical Jesus doesn’t it? A closer look at ancient Christianity reveals a novel truth—what Jesus was attempting to create was not a path to heaven but the revelation of the Way to birth a fully divine human race, a people as radically alive, compassionate, and enlightened as he is himself.
What Jesus lived into and enacted was a new life of “kingdom consciousness,” available now to every person willing to claim their divine inheritance. The invitation is clear: you can walk the same road Jesus walked and attain the same deification he attained. The point to all your spiritual seeking isn’t to sin a little less, or ensure your spot in heaven, it is to become like Jesus himself. That, my friends, is the point.
In today’s episode with monk and mystic Father Brendan E. Williams, we attempt to show you how to walk that road, what spiritual tools you will need along the way, and how to begin the practice of daily contemplation and meditation in our modern world. If you are seeking a more contemplative pilgrimage back to God, if you are ultimately wondering why to continue the spiritual journey, this conversation will provide a more mystical pathway forward, allowing you to discover the divine secret within you.

Bio:
The Rev. Father Brendan E. Williams, CMR is a monk and a priest of the Episcopal Church, and serves as Prior of the Episcopal monastic order, The Communion of the Mystic Rose. He also serves in chaplaincy, parochial ministry, and retreat leadership. Father Brendan is a scholar of religion and mystical theology, a yogī, a professional spiritual director and meditation instructor. He frequently writes and offers teaching in comparative religion, ascetical theology, contemplative practices, Indo-Tibetan and native Gaelic traditions. He can be found online at: www.brendanelliswilliams.com.

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Show notes:
http://www.sophiasociety.org/podcast/this-is-the-way

Follow us on social media! Twitter: @holyheretics | Instagram: @holyhereticspodcast | Facebook: @holyheretics | Substack: holyheretics.substack.com


Advertising inquiries: garyalan@sophiasociety.org

Support our work on Patreon or Substack and get early access to episodes! and premium content like our online class on deconstruction!
https://www.patreon.com/holyheretics or subscribe to our Substack to gain access to subscriptions and online classes in faith deconstruction!

This episode was produced by The Sophia Society and written by Gary Alan Taylor.  Music is by Faith in Foxholes.