Untidy Faith

In this episode of the Untidy Faith Podcast, I sit down with Liz Daye, author of Interwoven Discipleship, for a conversation about what happens when the Trinity gets flattened into a chain of command—and why the doctrine seminaries treat as a footnote might be the one that keeps churches from harming people.

Topics Covered

* Why perichoresis usually shows up as the last unit of a Trinitarian theology class, and what the church loses by treating it as an add-on

* How the hierarchy we imagine inside God ends up justifying who submits to whom in the pews, and who gets covered for when abuse surfaces

* The youth group challenge Liz’s abusive youth pastor invented, and what a wall full of daily notes did to a teenager’s sense of enough

* What chaplaincy taught her that seminary didn’t: why the A+ answer centers you and not the person in front of you

* Why spiritual gift assessments never had “chaplain” on the list, and what that reveals about discipleship paths built for efficiency

Timestamps:02:00 Hierarchy That Harms and the Doctrines Underneath It05:00 Perichoresis: The Trinity as Verb, Not Triangle09:00 Following Jesus Isn’t a Stopping Point12:00 Eternity: The One Year Challenge15:00 Welcoming Human Limits Instead of Filling Holes19:00 Felt-Need Questions and Why Good Answers Don’t Help25:00 What Discipleship Looks Like at a Bedside27:00 Spiritual Formation That Isn’t One Size Fits Most30:00 When Discipleship Paths Become Assembly Lines35:00 For Those Who Doubt There’s Anything Underneath37:00 Finding the Book and Liz’s Work

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In this episode of the Untidy Faith Podcast, I sit down with KJ Ramsey, trauma therapist and author of The Place Between Our Pains, for a conversation about what happens when the faith language you’ve published books about stops working—and why joy might still be available in the middle of a medical crisis that isn’t resolving.

Topics Covered

* What happens to us spiritually when every complaint has to come with a caveat, and why that splits us in two

* Why being a trauma therapist didn’t spare KJ from trauma, and why she thinks that’s actually good news for the rest of us

* How to be in your body when your body is the site of the pain, starting with how you’d talk to a five-year-old who skinned her knee

* Why she stopped judging her own silence when she lost the ability to pray or describe God at all

* A definition of joy that doesn’t require your life to get better, offered from a seat where things are actively not better

Timestamps:01:00 When Hope Functions as a Gag Order04:00 Why It’s Still Hard to Let People See You10:00 Having the Language and Still Being Battered by It15:00 Embodiment When Your Body Doesn’t Feel Safe17:00 Your Body Is a Person, Not a Problem to Fix24:00 When the Words for God Stop Working28:00 Forsaken as Loosened for the Sake of Expansion33:00 Joy as the Presence of Love37:00 For Anyone in Something They Never Would Have Chosen40:00 Finding the Book and KJ’s Work

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In this episode of the Untidy Faith Podcast, I sit down with Kat Armas for a conversation about what “empire” actually means once you strip away the buzzword—and why decolonizing your bookshelf and diversifying it are not the same project.

Topics Covered

* How empire shifted from a ruler over his own people to an ambition that metastasized, and why the US is an imperial state even without an emperor

* Why the Bible’s language is so imperial, including Heaven itself, and what that tells us about the people writing it

* Who gets to decide what counts as wisdom, and what changes when you notice wisdom in Scripture is a woman shouting in the street

* Why empire has no imagination (it’s been running the same tired playbook since Rome) but we do

* The Quechua hummingbird story that reframes what meaningful resistance actually looks like

Timestamps:01:00 Why “Empire” and “Decolonize” Became Buzzwords04:00 A Working Definition of Empire07:00 How Imperial Ideology Gets Woven Into Faith13:00 The Bible Isn’t an Anti-Imperial Manifesto16:00 What Cuban American Formation Reveals That Western Readings Miss21:00 Empire Begins as Story, Then Calcifies Into Systems26:00 Imagine Smaller: The Hummingbird Drop31:00 Empire Doesn’t Just Live Out There, It Lives In Us37:00 Why Liturgy Is Subversive42:00 Finding Kat’s Work

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In this episode of the Untidy Faith Podcast, I sit down with Anna Rollins, author of Famished: On Food, Sex, and Growing Up as a “Good Girl,” for a conversation about the shared script underneath purity culture and diet culture—and why knowing the promise is false doesn’t make it stop working on us.

Topics Covered

* The pattern Anna kept finding in her own private writing before she had a name for it, and what scarcity, smallness, and shrinking appetite had to do with each other

* Why “control your appetite and you’ll be safe” persists even for women who see through it, and the very real thing it’s rooted in

* What internalized fundamentalism looks like once the original system is gone, including inside body positivity

* How to tell rigidity from conviction, and where each one shows up in the body

* What “reclaiming appetite” actually looks like on a normal Tuesday, and why it’s rarely about food

Timestamps:01:00 Noticing the Pattern in Her Own Writing03:00 Why the Promise Is Durable Even When You Know Better06:00 Fundamentalism That Follows You Into New Systems11:00 Wellness Language as Code and the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders13:00 Telling Rigidity from Conviction18:00 Shame, Guilt, and Where the Hope Lives20:00 Why Healing Body Shame Shifts Your Relationship With God24:00 Reclaiming Appetite on a Normal Tuesday31:00 For Anyone Still in the Middle of It35:00 Finding the Book and Anna’s Work

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://kateboyd.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of the Untidy Faith Podcast, I sit down with Kristin Mockler Young, author of The Other Side of Certainty, for a conversation about what certainty is actually doing for us—and why the thing we were handed as faith might have been a tool for detachment all along.

Topics Covered

* The cynical-but-true reason certainty appeals to people who don’t know what to do with hard emotions or injustice

* Why a faith that shatters and a faith that holds questions often come down to how the hard thing arrived

* What people gain when they trade black-and-white belief for something roomier, and the loss almost nobody escapes

* How certainty gets tangled up with identity and belonging, and why your people find it easier to let you go than face their own dissonance

* The question Kristin is still sitting in, and why she’s not rushing to resolve it

Timestamps:01:00 What Certainty Is Actually Doing for People04:00 The Difference Between Rooting Yourself in God and in What You Know About God09:00 What You Gain and What You Lose14:00 The Disorienting Moment You Notice the Cracks16:00 Authority vs. Power and How We Got Out of Balance17:00 How to Practice Curiosity When You Weren’t Trained For It20:00 Sitting in Not-Knowing Without Rushing23:00 The Question Kristin Hasn’t Resolved25:00 Finding the Book and Kristin’s Work

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In this episode of the Untidy Faith Podcast, I sit down with Tyler Hill for a conversation about what changes when you start your story with belovedness instead of brokenness—and why the exhaustion so many of us carry comes from chasing something we’ve had in our pocket the whole time.

Topics Covered

* The breathwork session that gave Tyler a visceral image of the womb, and what it revealed about his very first knowing

* Henri Nouwen’s three biggest lies (I am what I have, what I do, what others say) and how they become the raw material for a false self

* Why belovedness isn’t spiritual bypassing, and what Tyler learned about it from people in prison who can’t hang their hat on their morality

* The unexpected first spiritual practice Tyler prescribes, and why it involves $100 and an outfit you actually love

* What’s hardest to let go of when you awaken to your true self, and it isn’t the theology

Timestamps:03:00 The Six Months When Everything Fell Apart05:00 “Nothing to Prove, Nothing to Lose” and Why It Felt Like a Lie11:00 Baseball Tyler and the Making of a False Self18:00 The Practical Cost of Living from the False Self22:00 Belovedness That Isn’t Cheap Grace or Positive Thinking26:00 On-Ramps That Don’t Feel Like Obligation30:00 The Burning Bush and the Practice of Curiosity38:00 What You Have to Let Go Of46:00 Why Belovedness Requires a Feminine God47:00 How to Know You’re Living It, Not Just Believing It53:00 Finding Tyler’s Work and Monday Morning Blessings

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In this episode of the Untidy Faith Podcast, I sit down with Kristel Acevedo, author of Liberated at the Cross, for a conversation about what we lose when the cross gets flattened into a single transaction—and why a theology that has been used to justify suffering, silence, and submission might actually be the one that sets us free.

Topics Covered

* Why picking one atonement theory and calling the rest trash doesn’t square with a God who pursues relationship over and over

* What it means that Jesus wasn’t a victim of the cross, and how that reframes the whole event for people who’ve been handed it as guilt

* How liberation theology’s systemic lens challenges the individualism of Western evangelicalism without abandoning personal faith

* Why Kristel spent years downplaying her Latinidad in white-majority spaces, and what changed when someone asked her to write from her culture

* The one thing the church would stop doing if it took liberation at the cross seriously (hint: it involves looking away)

Timestamps:02:00 Beyond Transaction: Meaning and Method at the Cross05:00 When the Cross Has Been Used Against You10:00 Catholic Guilt and the Crucifix That Said “You Did This”13:00 Why “Liberated” and Not Some Other Word18:00 What a Latina Perspective Reveals About the Cross22:00 What the Church Would Stop Doing23:00 What a Cross-Shaped Life Actually Looks Like24:00 Finding the Study and Kristel’s Work

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In this episode of the Untidy Faith Podcast, I sit down with Elizabeth Berget, author of Love Like a Mother, for a conversation about what happens when we take maternal metaphors for God as seriously as paternal ones—and why the church’s exclusion of feminine language for God isn’t just theologically incomplete but leaves women spiritually homeless in motherhood.

Topics Covered

* What gets quietly excluded when “God the Father” is our only or primary image

* How the Hebrew word for God’s compassion (rachum) in Exodus 34:6—God’s first self-description—is tied to the word for womb (rechem)

* How motherhood becomes a spiritual desert when your brain changes more than any other point in life (including puberty) but nobody tells you to expect your faith to change, and churches assume laziness instead of recognizing you’re doing a lot

* The disconnect between how motherhood is emphasized in church circles but under-resourced spiritually

* What’s at stake if we keep handing people a God who can only be described in paternal terms

Timestamps:

01:00 What We Describe and Exclude with “God the Father”

06:00 All God Language Is Metaphor (We Forgot That)

10:00 Why Motherhood Feels Like a Spiritual Desert

16:00 Rachum: God’s Maternal Compassion Lost in Translation

23:00 Embodied Verbs and the Incarnational God

29:00 What Spiritual Formation Actually Looks Like for Mothers

35:00 What’s at Stake When We Exclude Feminine Language

37:00 Finding the Book and Elizabeth’s Work

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://kateboyd.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of the Untidy Faith Podcast, I sit down with Celeste Irwin for an honest conversation about what it’s like to be trans in Christian spaces—from childhood shame over “transy thoughts” with no language for them, to losing every friend when coming out, to discovering that transition feels like being literally raised to life.

Celeste Irwin is a transgender, lesbian woman and a survivor of a spiritually abusive evangelical church network. She’s written in-depth about her experiences in that network, and she now writes and speaks about issues affecting transgender people, including queer inclusion in Christian spaces.

Topics Covered

* Why even as a child Celeste knew “this is the thing I can’t confess”—different from sins you talk about in small group, this was something that would “really mess stuff up” if she stared at it too long

* The cost of exile like losing most friends when leaving evangelicalism, then losing the rest when coming out as trans

* What churches miss without trans people:

* Why queer exclusion is spiritual abuse

* The three things Celeste is tired of saying but will say for us anyway:

* How the movie Moana captures trans joy best

Timestamps:

02:00 Primary School “Transy Thoughts” and Unconfessable Shame

10:00 The Cost of Exile: Losing 20-Year Friendships

14:00 What the Church Loses Without the Trans Limb

22:00 Names, Identity, and “Your Identity Should Be in Christ”

28:00 Three Things Celeste Is Tired of Saying (But Will Say Again)

36:00 Why Becoming Affirming Requires Actual Repentance

40:00 What Intellectual Arguments Miss: The People

46:00 Trans Joy: Skirt Go Spinny and Te Fiti’s Heart Restored

54:00 What a Church That Genuinely Welcomes Trans People Looks Like

58:00 The Pride Month Challenge: Education Work Required

Links

https://www.celestefinally.com

https://www.youtube.com/@Celestial-Navigation

https://www.notovercome.org

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Join me and Alisha Roth for a honest conversation about what it takes to leave a marriage when you’ve done everything “right”—the Christian college, the missionary training, the four daughters—and why the church’s fear and control around divorce leaves women trapped in unsafe situations.

Topics Covered

* The question that changed everything and why the answer unlocked self-love Alisha couldn’t access when it was just about her own safety

* Why “your husband has a right to your body” made it impossible to trust what her body already knew, and how one therapist naming abuse as abuse cracked open the church bubble keeping her trapped

* The stat the church doesn’t want you to know

* Why women who choose to leave face different judgment than women who get left

* What happened when Alisha’s therapist refused to tell her whether to get divorced—and why learning that taking ownership of your own life (instead of keeping everyone else happy) is the holy work

Timestamps:

01:00 When Everything Looks Right But Something’s Wrong

05:00 Having Someone Name the Abuse Changes Everything

10:00 Why the Church Blames Women Who Leave

15:00 Fear, Control, and Managing God’s Image

20:00 Finding Hope and Community After Loss

24:00 Why It Matters to Talk About Choosing to Leave

29:00 Taking Ownership: “I Have to Make This Decision”

32:00 Rebuilding Faith: Love Over Rules

35:00 Finding the Book and Alisha’s Work

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://kateboyd.substack.com/subscribe

Join us for this podcast crossover episode! I’m bringing you our I Read Something Bad discussion about bad Christian art. If you’re into spicy fantasy books and spiritual formation, check out I Read Something Bad Podcast biweekly!

Today your Matron Saints of Spice are tackling the ever-controversial question of why so much Christian art feels thin, didactic, and aesthetically weak—and just plain BAD.

We’re getting real about how flattening the Bible into surface-level application points has destroyed our capacity to engage layers in any medium, why making Ruth and Boaz into a love story completely misses the point about welcoming the stranger, and how capitalism turned humans into resources to be used up—which means our entire identity got wrapped up in usefulness instead of Imago Dei.

Topics Covered:

* The definition of good art as opening perception and making room for the reader versus bad art that reduces experience to propaganda with predetermined conclusions

* Why Christian art often fails the hospitality test—inviting someone over just to lecture them about what to believe instead of offering actual coffee and conversation

* Post-Reformation history of shifting from visual imagery (icons, stained glass) to language-only emphasis, and how the printing press made accessibility a priority that accidentally flattened everything

* The Enlightenment’s need for certainty, empirical knowledge, and being on the same page—which bled into making messages crystal clear at the expense of mystery and layers

* How “Facing the Giants” versus “Remember the Titans” shows the difference between heavy-handed Christian messaging and wrestling with justice/humanity through storytelling

* Why Ruth and Boaz isn’t a romance about finding your person—it’s about Boaz depicting how Jesus welcomes strangers and provides for the vulnerable (Ruth said “where you go I will go” to NAOMI, people)

* The collapse of context and layers in Bible reading, and how treating Scripture as flat application points instead of artistic literature kills our ability to engage depth anywhere else

* How usefulness became our framework for existence instead of beauty, and why that’s devastating when your productivity disappears but you’re still made in the image of a creative God

Good art invites wonder and makes space for mystery. Bad art tells you exactly what to think and then wonders why you’re not engaged. 🎨✝️📖

Timestamps:

02:00 Defining Good Art: Hospitality vs Heavy-Handed Messaging

06:00 Intimacy and Openness as Framework for Beauty

09:00 Why People Want to Be Told What to Think vs Asking Questions

11:00 Facing the Giants vs Remember the Titans: What We’re Wrestling With

14:00 Stained Glass Windows vs Sharpie Statements: Losing the Layers

16:00 Post-Reformation Shift from Visual to Language-Only Emphasis

20:00 Teen Talent Competitions and Performing for God’s Glory

23:00 When Church Art Became Branded Word Art from Hobby Lobby

25:00 Iconoclasm and What We Lost by Rejecting Visual Beauty

28:00 Ruth and Boaz Isn’t a Love Story About Finding Your Person 3

1:00 Reading the Bible with Layers: Literature, Language, Lifetime, Lenses

34:00 Why Translation Is Always Interpretation

37:00 Ruth After Proverbs 31: She’s the Woman of Valor, Actually

39:00 When Usefulness Disappears and You Lose Your Framework for Beauty

41:00 Imago Dei Isn’t Broken or a Mission to Accomplish—It Just Is

43:00 Capitalism Turned Humans Into Resources to Be Used Up

45:00 Creating Without Goals: The Church Art Studio Experiment

47:00 Redeeming Love Scammed Us (The Bible Story Is Different, Y’all)

50:00 Mount Pilgrim’s Stained Glass: Good Christian Art That Inspires Justice

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://kateboyd.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode …

Topics Covered

* Understanding the difference between performance and presence

* How busyness and transactional living keeps us from noticing sacredness, but the deeper barrier is internal fear—not of other people but of what we might reveal if we stopped performing and showed up authentic

* Why conversation as sacrament doesn’t mean using Christianese or performing religiosity, but practicing noticing these moments as important (maybe even sacred) until you graduate into sensing holiness far more often than you used to

* The radical claim that if you just pay attention you’d find one or two moments that were everything you’ve been looking for in the next week

* Changing our mindset around interactions to being sacred rather than battlefields

Timestamps:

01:00 Everyday Sacredness and the Fear People Will Miss It

04:00 Reclaiming “Church” as the Space Between Us

09:00 Performance vs. Presence: The Conditioning That Keeps Us Safe

14:00 Finding Freedom to Just Be in the Pews

19:00 What Keeps Us from Seeing the Ordinary as Holy

26:00 The Holy Work of Silence and Listening

31:00 Abiding in the Vine: Relationship as Spiritual Practice 3

6:00 Practicing Sacred Conversation Like Crooked Yoga

40:00 What Changes When We Notice This Moment Matters

43:00 Finding the Book and the Between Ministry

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://kateboyd.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of the Untidy Faith Podcast, I sit down with Shannan Martin, author of Counterweights, for a grounding conversation about how her dad’s blue-collar farm wisdom—”carry something equally heavy in the other hand”—became a daily practice for staying upright in a world that feels increasingly overwhelming.

Rather than focusing on “toxic positivity” or the “count your blessings” mantra, Shannan teaches us to honestly name the weights we carry and intentionally find counterweights that pull us back to center so we can keep breathing through the chaos and moving toward justice without burning out.

Topics Covered

* How a blue-collar dad’s practical advice about carrying heavy things to the barn became a metaphor for pulling ourselves back to center when we’re lurching under the weight of collective trauma and constant news cycles

* Understanding counterweights as different from gratitude or mindfulness

* Why the “abundant life” Jesus promised isn’t prosperity gospel glitter but getting all of it

* Learning from incarcerated people at the work release center what accessible counterweights look like

* How protecting your peace can mean staying engaged and bearing witness to trauma (especially for those with power and privilege) rather than opting out

* Why counterweights are always happening and how naming them with intention increases capacity for moving toward justice

Timestamps:

01:00 Defining Counterweights: Dad’s Blue-Collar Wisdom

05:00 Why This Cultural Moment Needs This Practice

11:00 The Abundant Life: We Get It All

16:00 Avoiding Toxic Positivity While Staying Grounded

21:00 Accessible Counterweights: From Cabinet Scrubbing to Dancing

27:00 Learning from Incarcerated Neighbors About What’s Accessible

32:00 Beauty as Emergency: Increasing Capacity for Justice Work

37:00 Finding the Book and Shannan’s Work

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://kateboyd.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of the Untidy Faith Podcast, I sit down with Joash Thomas, author of The Justice of Jesus, for a conversation about how colonization shaped Western Christianity to resist justice, and what recovering our authentic identities—indigenous, spiritual, and human—has to do with embodying the gospel Jesus actually preached.

The Western church’s complicity in colonization didn’t just harm the Global South, it also robbed Western Christians of their own indigenous practices and created theology that privileges the spiritual over the physical in ways Jesus never did, and how prayer can be the formative work that transforms us into instruments of justice.

Topics Covered

* Understanding colonization not as a political buzzword but as lived reality: India went from 25% of world GDP in 1700 to 1% in 1947 after British extraction, and the Western church was largely on the side of oppressors, excusing colonial theft in theological language

* Why the gospel being “more spiritual than physical” is colonized theology that doesn’t come from Jesus of Nazareth, whose ministry in Luke 4 explicitly defined good news as setting captives free both physically and spiritually

* How empires steal identity by conditioning us to forget who we are beyond labels like “just American” or “just Christian,” and why recovering indigeneity—whether Celtic Christianity or St. Thomas Indian Christianity—reveals pre-colonial traditions offensive to empire

* The prophetic journey from outrage to love: starting angry about injustice (righteous and necessary) but being transformed to see Christ in enemies, transcending trauma to become wounded healers rather than perpetuating violence in words or deeds

* Why reimagining prayer as formative rather than just intercessory—praying with marginalized communities, not just for them—creates the sustainable oxygen advocates need for long-term justice work without burnout

Timestamps:

01:00 From India to America: Learning Power from the Margins

09:00 Justice as Gospel in Global South vs. “Woke Marxism” in America

15:00 How Colonization Stole Western Christians’ Identities Too

20:00 Loving the Church While Critiquing It

27:00 The Prophet’s Journey from Outrage to Love

32:00 Can Western Churches Pursue Justice? (Yes, Here’s How)

38:00 Reframing Mission: Encountering Jesus in the Margins

45:00 Prayer as the Formative Work of Justice

49:00 Finding the Book and Connecting with Joash

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://kateboyd.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, I sit down with Marissa Burt and Kelsey Kramer McGinnis, authors of The Myth of Good Christian Parenting, for a sobering conversation about how the Christian parenting industry sold families impossible promises wrapped in biblical authority.

Critiquing parenting books is important, but we also need to recognize how movements born from 1970s political fears, biblical counseling innovations, and prosperity gospel thinking created authoritarian frameworks that promised godly legacies while actually preventing authentic relationships, and how families can move toward seeing children as fully human neighbors instead of extensions of parental control.

Topics Covered

* Understanding the false promise of “train up a child in the way they should go” as a guaranteed formula for producing Christian adults, and how this turned children into extensions of parental desire for “kingdom legacy” rather than autonomous persons

* Why James Dobson’s Dare to Discipline (1970) is far more a conservative political book about restoring order and authority in response to social upheaval than a Christian or biblical parenting resource

* How the biblical counseling movement (starting 1970), inerrancy movement (1978 Chicago Statement), and fears about no-fault divorce combined to create unprecedented emphasis on parental authority as “first principle” and spanking as spiritual practice

* The invention of “liturgy spanking”—transforming what was historically just coercive behavior control into a supposedly godly catechesis connected to penal substitutionary atonement, complete with step-by-step manuals

* Why these frameworks betray entire families: parents are left ill-equipped to relate to children as individuals when external compliance is mistaken for authentic connection, and adult children reclaiming autonomy creates painful estrangement

Timestamps:

01:00 The “Oh No” Moment: When Christian Parenting Advice Doesn’t Add Up

06:00 False Promises of Guaranteed Godly Legacies

12:00 Political Origins: Dobson’s Book as Conservative Response to Social Upheaval

18:00 Biblical Counseling Movement’s Outsized Influence

25:00 The Invention of “Liturgical Spanking” in the 1970s

31:00 How Families Get Betrayed by These Frameworks

37:00 Children as Fully Human Neighbors, Not Property

43:00 Finding the Book and More Resources

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://kateboyd.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, I sit down with Zach Lambert, author of Better Ways to Read the Bible, for an honest conversation about how to read the Bible in ways that bring life instead of harm.

This isn’t just about finding better interpretations—it’s about recognizing how literalism, apocalypticism, moralism, and hierarchy have damaged real people, and learning to read Scripture through lenses that center Jesus, context, flourishing, and fruitfulness instead. Zach offers both deconstruction of harmful patterns and reconstruction of life-giving practices for engaging with the Bible.

Topics Covered

* How a college professor’s simple assignment to research women like Deborah, Junia, Phoebe, and Priscilla shattered Zach’s assumptions about women’s roles in the church, and why 80% of his class changed their minds after one week

* Understanding the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy as a recent invention designed to police theological borders by saying “if you disagree with our interpretation, you’re not a Christian”—a form of spiritual abuse that weaponizes God’s name for human control

* Why the “apocalypse lens” (obsession with end times, rapture, hell, and judgment) is so pervasive in American evangelicalism: it’s incredibly effective at controlling people through fear, and has influenced American foreign policy for 75 years through Left Behind theology

* Learning from a Jewish rabbi that the Bible’s authority comes from its multiplicity of truths—like a crystal refracting light differently depending on who’s reading—rather than excavating one singular “correct” interpretation for every verse

* Reframing “God hates divorce” through context and flourishing lenses: understanding that divorce commandments were exclusively given to men in a patriarchal society where divorce was often a death sentence for women, not a universal prohibition against leaving abusive marriages

* How humility and healthy diverse community are the essential ingredients for reading Scripture well—because white clergy’s unanimous biblical defense of chattel slavery wouldn’t have survived if they’d been in equitable community with Black people

Timestamps:

01:00 The Assignment That Changed Everything About Women

06:00 Separating Biblical Inspiration from Human Interpretation

10:00 Social Location and Who Gets Called “Just Theology”

16:00 The Chicago Statement as Spiritual Abuse Tool

21:00 Why Apocalypse Lens Dominates American Evangelicalism

30:00 Detoxing Harmful Patterns Through Humility and Community

35:00 Reframing “God Hates Divorce” Through Healing Lenses

42:00 What Makes God Angry According to the Prophets

45:00 Leading a Church Through Interpretive Diversity

47:00 Finding Zach’s Work and Upcoming Book

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://kateboyd.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of the Untidy Faith Podcast, Kate Boyd sits down with Jared Stacy, author of the forthcoming book Reality in Ruins, for a nuanced conversation about why conspiracy theories have become so pervasive in evangelical Christianity and what the church can do about it.

This isn’t just about QAnon or stolen elections—it’s about understanding how evangelicalism’s theology of persecution, end-times anxiety, and individualism creates fertile ground for conspiracism, and how reclaiming the whole story of Jesus offers a way forward that doesn’t require us to become fact-checkers but truth-tellers in our own key.

Topics Covered

* Understanding conspiracy theory as “functional reality” that provides people not just a lens for interpreting the world but prescribes specific actions—like how belief in a stolen election motivated the January 6th Capitol attack

* Why evangelicals are particularly susceptible to conspiracy thinking: the combination of persecution complex, end-times theology giving conspiracies a “theological charge,” and modern individualism that seeks control through claiming secret knowledge

* How evangelicalism’s witness to the gospel grants conspiracy theories plausibility by packaging spurious claims as “what good faithful Christians believe,” making it feel like apostasy to question them rather than just correcting misinformation

* The historical pattern of conspiracy theories serving evangelical responses to cultural anxieties—from George Whitfield using gospel preaching to prevent slave revolts, to Cold War anti-communism, to contemporary fears about losing white Christian America

* Why confronting conspiracy theories head-on with facts or mockery only leads to deeper entrenchment, and what questions like “why do you need this to be true?” or “why is that good news to you?” can open up instead

* How the church can resist conspiracism not by becoming fact-checkers but by being constituted as Jesus’s body—a “place of reversal” where we discover we were wrong, rehearse the whole story of Jesus, and refuse to settle for anything less than recognizing full humanity in everyone

Timestamps:

01:00 Conspiracy Theory as Functional Reality

06:00 Why Evangelicals Are Susceptible to Conspiracy Thinking

12:00 The Theological Charge That Makes Conspiracies Plausible

18:00 Alternative Knowledge vs. Embodied Truth

24:00 Historical Anxieties Driving Conspiracy Theories

35:00 When Facts and Mockery Don’t Work

45:00 The Freedom to Be Wrong in Christian Community

54:00 Healthy Skepticism Without Conspiracy Thinking

1:03:00 The Church as Place of Transformation and Discovery

1:06:00 Finding Jared’s Work and Forthcoming Book

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In this episode of the Untidy Faith Podcast, Kate Boyd wraps up the year-and-a-half journey through 2 Samuel with returning guests Jenai Auman and Liz Daye, examining chapters 23-24—David’s self-congratulatory final words followed by a devastating census that reveals how little he’s actually learned.

This isn’t a triumphant ending to a great king’s reign—it’s a sobering reminder that David’s version of greatness cost 70,000 lives, and his idea of repentance always came after profound devastation that somehow never seemed to affect him personally. The contrast between how David sees himself and what the text actually shows us is the perfect capstone to understanding power’s corruption.

And a shoutout to Jon Pyle, Robert Callahan, and Amanda Waldron for being a part of the journey through books of Samuel!

Topics Covered

* How David’s “last words” in chapter 23 present his self-image as a just ruler bringing cloudless morning prosperity, immediately contrasted by the compilers listing “Uriah the Hittite” among his mighty men—a literary shade that reminds readers of David’s profound injustice

* Understanding why David’s census in chapter 24 was such a violation: it risked ritual impurity for the entire nation, mimicked divine power (only gods counted in ancient cultures), and served as the first step toward military conscription, slavery, and exploitation

* Why David’s choice of punishment—three days of plague affecting 70,000 people—reveals his continued pattern of self-protection, when he could have chosen three months of fleeing enemies with his “mighty men” that would’ve primarily affected him

* The devastating reality that David “makes things right with God” through sacrifice but never repairs things with the people harmed by his choices, mirroring modern patterns where abusive leaders go on apology tours without addressing the actual devastation they caused

* How the story ends not with David as hero but with God’s compassion for the land, contrasting David’s transactional understanding of hesed (loyalty) with God’s hesed (compassion)—showing what God actually values versus what David claimed to embody

* Why paying attention to prophets and moving toward justice and shalom matters more than celebrating leaders who buy their own hype, and how David delivering Israel into bondage (the census taking nine months—a gestation period) inverts God’s role as deliverer from oppression

Timestamps:

01:00 David’s Self-Hype Poem vs. “Uriah the Hittite”

07:00 The Mighty Men List as Twilight End Credits

14:00 Why the Census Was Such a Big Deal

21:00 David’s Cowardly Choice: 70,000 Deaths

30:00 Repentance Without Repair to the Harmed

38:00 Spiritual Bypassing and Weaponized Forgiveness

47:00 The Angel Who Wouldn’t Stop Judging

55:00 Measuring Success by Empire vs. Jesus

1:04:00 Final Takeaways from the David Journey

1:06:00 Finding the Hosts and What’s Next

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In this episode of the Untidy Faith Podcast, Kate Boyd sits down with Dr. Beth Allison Barr, historian and author of The Making of Biblical Womanhood and Becoming the Pastor’s Wife, for a fascinating conversation about how the role of pastor’s wife has functioned to limit women’s leadership in the church.

This isn’t just about theological debates—it’s about recognizing how economic anxieties, racial prejudice, and fear of losing privilege have repeatedly driven backlash against women’s independence throughout history, and how biblical language gets weaponized to justify keeping women in subordinate, unpaid positions.

Topics Covered

* How 2025 marks the 25th anniversary of the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message that encoded complementarian theology into Southern Baptist doctrine, and recognizing this as part of a historical pattern where women’s subordination rises during periods when women gain legal and economic independence

* Understanding backlash against women’s ordination as rooted in cultural anxieties—particularly white anxiety about demographic changes and fears about losing economic privilege—rather than purely theological concerns about biblical interpretation

* Why the pastor’s wife role has become “the primary ministry role model for women” in conservative churches, creating a safe space for women’s gifts while simultaneously keeping them under male authority and conditioning congregations to reject independent female leadership

* The economic reality that women’s ministry is almost always expected to be unpaid volunteer work while men’s ministry comes with salaries and benefits, revealing how “noble calling” language masks structural inequality and devalues women’s contributions

* How closely associating female leadership with marriage trains churches and broader culture to only accept women’s authority when it’s subordinate to men, contributing to resistance against women in business, politics, and other spheres beyond the church

* What the church has lost by silencing women’s theological voices, contrasting with historical examples like Catherine of Siena convincing the Pope to return to Rome because medieval Christianity respected that “God spoke through women to men”

Timestamps:

01:00 25 Years of Complementarian Theology’s Damage

05:00 Cultural Anxieties Driving the Backlash Against Women

10:00 How Economic Fears Shape Attitudes Toward Women’s Equality

14:00 The Pastor’s Wife Role as Gatekeeper to Female Leadership

19:00 Unspoken Expectations and Their Cost to Women

23:00 What the Church Loses Without Women’s Voices

28:00 Historical Hope: Women Who Never Stopped Speaking

32:00 Finding Beth’s Work and Resources

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://kateboyd.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of the Untidy Faith Podcast, Kate Boyd, Jenai Auman, and Liz Daye continue their exploration of 2 Samuel, examining chapters 21-22—a jarring collection of appendices that reveal David’s legacy through violence, political maneuvering, and self-congratulatory poetry.

This isn’t a triumphant conclusion to David’s reign—it’s a sobering look at how powerful people rewrite history to justify harm, and how the quiet faithfulness of marginalized women like Rizpah often goes unnoticed while loud, self-serving declarations get preserved as “worship.”

Topics Covered

* Understanding the structural shift in 2 Samuel 21-24 from linear narrative to a collection of “appendices” that are deliberately out of chronological order, giving different perspectives and even contradicting earlier accounts like the story of who actually killed Goliath

* How David responds to a three-year famine by asking the Gibeonites (not God) how to fix it, resulting in the execution of seven of Saul’s descendants—a solution that violates Torah patterns of repentance while serving David’s political interests by eliminating threats to his throne

* The prophetic witness of Rizpah, a concubine who holds vigil over her sons’ desecrated bodies for six months, whose quiet faithfulness actually lifts the famine when David finally gives the bodies proper burial—yet most major commentaries ignore her story entirely

* Why the famous contradiction about Goliath’s death (attributed to Elhanan here rather than David) reveals how stories were shaped to serve David’s propaganda, showing us that “history favors the victor” and inviting us to read with suspicion

* Examining David’s Psalm in chapter 22 as an unreliable narrator’s self-congratulatory rewriting of history, claiming blamelessness and righteousness while celebrating violence and conquest that directly contradicts Torah values and God’s vision for leadership

* How hyper-spiritualizing language gets weaponized to justify harm—from David’s beautiful words masking brutal actions to modern Christian nationalism using similar rhetoric to consolidate power while claiming God’s blessing on violence and oppression

Timestamps:

01:00 Chapter 21: Famine, Gibeonites, and Political Pragmatism

06:00 David’s Solution: Execution Instead of Repentance

12:00 Rizpah’s Vigil: Six Months of Prophetic Witness

18:00 Why Most Commentaries Erase Rizpah’s Story

24:00 The Goliath Contradiction and David Propaganda

33:00 Chapter 22: David’s Self-Congratulatory Psalm

42:00 Rewriting History: When Beautiful Words Mask Violence

52:00 Context Matters: Why We Can’t Proof-Text Our Way Through

59:00 Reading with Suspicion and Through the Lens of Torah

1:04:00 Loud Posturing vs. Quiet Faithfulness

1:10:00 Finding the Hosts Online

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://kateboyd.substack.com/subscribe