Episodes
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Episode 96: This conversation explores what it might mean to make meaning on the other side of Fundamentalism/Evangelicalism. As we "leave" one world behind (even as we carry many aspects of it with us - both seen and unseen), do we enter the 'real' world or is there no neutral space? What kind of world do we want to build, what values shape our engagement with the fundamental questions of what it is to be here, of the kind of life we might want to live, our relatedness to the divine and so on. What kind of assumptions are made about reality in an age of autonomous individualism and neoliberalism? How do we care for each other and so what could healthier versions of sacrifice and faithfulness look like?
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Episode 95: This episode explores what can happen to our identity formation and our sense of being in the world when we live in a world built on the assumption that the apocalypse, the return of Jesus, and the end-of-the-world is likely to happen within our lifetime. What happens to our ability to be confident in ourselves, to think about the future, to make wise decisions, to care for the earth and justice, and to live with a deep sense of grounded-ness? And then there is so much about end-times theology that is adjacent to contemporary conspiracy movements and (somewhat ironically for people who follow the "Prince of Peace") suspicious of efforts for peace and of those who work for it. Layered on top of this, is a fear of hell that drives a kind of existential dread - about God, about our own worth, and that also sees the world as filled with possible temptations that could lead to the slippery slope of damnation. So - just a few things that might need to be unpacked here, because living in this kind of world feels like it might all do something to our identity!
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Missing episodes?
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Episode 94: Continuing our conversations around the world-building of our Evangelical/Pentecostal past, in this episode we examine the idea of depravity, sin and brokenness as being at the heart of humanness. What does this belief say about our fundamental identity, and how might that influence our sense of self as well as our relationship to God and others? We also explore the role that testimony plays within this world. Testimonies are often stories that uphold and promote the version of reality that is being built - and when there is only one kind of story arc allowed (i.e. from sin and brokenness to freedom and liberation) this means all sorts of stories and experiences are not given any airtime. It can also make it hard for us to see or acknowledge the ways in which our own life and experiences are not following the script.
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Episode 93: In this episode we use the framework of 'world-building' (like we see in literature) as a way to start thinking about Evangelical/Pentecostal assumptions about reality and how they shape us. In particular we look at a world that is built on a high-demand God who needs to be pleased through obedience and sacrifice and the problems that arise with all of this. There was something so potent about this world as we understood it - it gave us confidence we were on the 'right' side, it provided us with something clear to follow and there was often a promised kind of freedom or breakthrough that was tantalisingly out of reach but available if we could just do what is required. We talk through this 'world' and how it shaped us, exploring the insecure and anxious attachment to God (and to leaders) it fostered, and how it impacts our sense of identity when we are formed in ways that constantly demand we bury our own sense of self.
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Episode 92: In this conversation we explore a central theme of many Evangelical/Pentecostal/Charismatic approaches to parenting over the past few decades - namely, "obedience." We discuss the ways that obedience and compliance stem from the theological paradigm that views children born as corrupted sinners along with the looming threat of hell as eternal suffering for those outside the faith. In this context, obedience and compliance become central to parenting and discipleship, and in forming spirituality for all ages. But the outcomes of this can be deeply troubling; what does this say to a kid (or an adult for that matter) about God and about what really matters in the world? This can all contribute to a loss of autonomy and connection to our own wants, desires and needs, the suppression of genuine questions, fawning and people-pleasing extolled as a virtue (especially toward parents, pastors and leaders), and a susceptibility toward authoritarian and abusive leadership. So we tackle all of this, and begin to reflect on what it might mean for healthy spirituality, and what we should do with the themes of obedience found in Christian scripture.
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Episode 91: In this conversation we explore the questions that come up for us around faith and parenting and how we approach the process of discussing spirituality with our kids. For many folk who have experienced some kind of shifting or deconstructing faith, this can feel complicated or come with feelings of pressure. What should I be telling my kids? What happens if they ask a question but I don't have a concrete answer? Can (or should) I pass on the good without also passing on the bad? Should I pass on anything at all? We talk our way through these questions not to offer solutions but to explore how we find ourselves navigating them at this point in our lives. We discuss what we hope for our own children, why we're interested in having spiritual conversations with them and how that might connect to the kinds of humans we hope for them to become. And in all of this, how these conversations can be approached through the lens of wonder and curiosity, hope and invitation, rather than fear, anxiety and punishment/reward.
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Episode 90: This episode is a follow-up to our previous episode (89) about navigating relationships post-deconstruction, and this time Shane Meyer-Holt does the interviewing! He talks here with Jane Kennedy (a counsellor who works in the field of religious trauma) about the gender and power dynamics that are at play within high-demand/high-control religious communities, and in particular she reflects on the ways in which patriarchal systems - both explicitly and implicitly - impact on what it means for women to find authenticity, to take up space in the world, and to negotiate through the complexity of friendships and relationships after faith change.
Contact: [email protected]
Support: www.patreon.com/intheshift
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Jane Kennedy is a Sydney based Counsellor working on Wan-Gal land. She has lived experience of religious trauma and works with people as they go through faith transitions, leave church and/or God. This experience, still frequently misunderstood, can be life-altering. She brings language and framing for the complexities of religious trauma to the counselling space and works with other Australian therapists to broaden knowledge among those working with affected clients.
Jane has written her story, an e-book, The Sentimental Non-Believer, on Loving & Leaving God. Her mini-course, What I Wish My Therapist Knew About Religious Trauma, is a resource for therapists. A new course, Freedom from Religious Trauma, for those with lived experience will be available in 2024.
With much of her career spent in the International Aid & Development sector, Jane has a special interest in trauma-informed programming and the mental health of practitioners. Jane continues to work in this space with agency teams, navigating the impact of saviourism and vicarious trauma using radical self and collective care models.
Jane has two completely delightful adult kids, and lives with two demanding rescue cats and a cyclist who all wake her before 5 most mornings."
https://janekennedycounselling.com.au/
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Episode 89: In this conversation with Shane Meyer-Holt, we discuss the complexities of navigating relationships with those from our 'past' when we've undergone some kind of fundamental faith transition. How do we negotiate what happens when we change, when the version of ourselves that people are used to relating to has shifted, and what are the complex intersections that collide when we seek to take up authentic space in the world?
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Episode 88: After a podcast hiatus, the first episode of 2024 is here! In this episode I talk through my own reflections on what it means to make some kind of 'peace' with the past - especially as it relates to a past of harmful religious beliefs and communities. This can be a complex journey, even more so when this has impacted the very core of identity formation and important relationships in our lives. This is not about moving on and forgetting, but about continuing to make space for what we feel, as well as reflecting on the importance of understanding systemic dynamics, and of cultivating levels of empathy for self and others. The hope is that this points us toward what it might look like for us to take up authentic space in the world.
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Episode 87: In this episode, Shane Meyer-Holt joins me for the final episode of 2023. This episode is an unplanned departure from our series on experience and comes after an unexpected hiatus with the podcast too. In this personal, raw, and wandering conversation, we talk through why we’ve not had an episode out in the past couple of months amidst the complexity of life and the presence of suffering and profound challenge. We also talk through the demands of hustle culture and how we care for each other in a world shaped by the internalised social and economic assumptions of what matters. And we use this to springboard into a conversation about our friendship, about how Shane and I have been present to one another through various crises and contrasting experiences of pain. This then connects to how vulnerability and empathy have shaped both the contours of our friendship, as well as becoming the central paradigm for our theology and spirituality.
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Episode 86: In this conversation, Shane and I discuss the paradigms for experiencing God we used to hold and the theological shape of those paradigms. This led to a lot of energy being expended in trying to create the right conditions for 'experience', and an unspoken set of 'signs' that these experiences were being had - something that created a set of problems that we both found problematic in our life and spirituality. We then explore the ways we think about God now, how we see the God-world relationship, and what this means for how we may or may not experience the divine in the present. Finally, we undo some of this good work by throwing a spanner in the works - which means we'll need a follow-up episode to deal with all of that!
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Episode 85: Olivia Jackson is the researcher and author of the recently published book, "(Un)Certain: A Collective Memoir of Deconstructing Faith". In this book, Olivia draws together insights and themes from more than 140 interviews of people from around the world whose Christian faith has gone through a process of deconstruction. The range of experiences, stories and reflections from "regular people" (i.e. people without large churches, book deals, social media followings, or other forms of power) offers a sense of solidarity for those who may have felt isolated, confused and alone or simply curious about their own experience and how it is or is not reflected in the experiences of others. Olivia is able to draw out a number of themes from the wide range of stories, and reflect on the commonalities (among the many differences). In this conversation we talk about her own journey of faith, the pain of deconstruction and the unravelling of certainty, the variety of causes for a shifting faith, and reflect on what this can offer those who have experienced (or are experiencing) a process of deconstruction, or who want to understand the experiences of those who have.
You can find Olivia's book here.
Contact In the Shift: [email protected]
Support In the Shift: www.patreon.com/intheshift
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Episode 84: In this second conversation on the complicated world of 'experiencing God', we explore the ways in which all experience is mediated, and so the meaning is thereby a matter (to some degree) of interpretation. We examine the role that suggestibility plays in certain forms of experience, and chat about the unhelpful ideas of 'spiritual hunger' or 'desperation/expectation' as keys to divine presence, and whether particular songs are 'anointed'. We also reflect on the ways we think about the relationship between God and us/world. Does God withhold divine presence and love for some kind of 'greater good', and if so, what does this say about God?
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Episode 83: In this conversation with Shane Meyer-Holt we dive into the complicated world of understanding experiences of God. For some, particular kinds of experiences with God are central to their spirituality, to feelings of closeness with God, to a sense of meaning and purpose. And yet for others, the attempt to impose certain forms of experience have resulted in harm and even trauma. Some have never 'felt' what they've been told they're supposed to feel, have never sensed God in the way that those around them are apparently sensing God. Does this mean its all pretence, or am I simply being ignored by God?
For many, this just ends up as a very confusing jumble - we might have had meaningful experiences but no longer know what to make of them, or we may have had a mixture of positive and negative experiences and now we're left wondering if any of it was real at all. So this episode is the beginning of a series of conversations trying to unpick all of this and see if we can make some sense of it.
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Episode 82: Dr Karen O'Donnell is a specialist in theology and trauma. In this conversation we explore the nature of trauma and, in particular, we reflect on spiritual trauma and abuse and the ruptures it can cause to the embodied person. The field of trauma theology seeks to take the experience of trauma as a starting point for theological reflection - both in terms of critiquing the ways in which theological beliefs can cause harm, and also in terms of constructing theologies that can create room for what she calls 'post-traumatic remaking'. This conversation moves from grappling with the large scope of these ideas, to talking about the personal and very real experiences of trauma and how they impact us. Karen shares from her own experiences of grief and loss as we discuss how the theology, practices, prayers and worship of the church can either be a contributor toward harm (or even the cause of), or can help cultivate safe and nurturing communities within which we are able to rebuild a new self.
Please note as a trigger warning, this conversation includes references to various causes of trauma, including pregnancy loss, sexual assault and abuse, violence and spiritual abuse.
Karen is the author of several publications including Broken Bodies: The Eucharist, Mary and the Body in Trauma Theology and The Dark Womb: Re-Conceiving Theology Through Reproductive Loss. You can find her on twitter: @kmrodonnell
Get in touch with In the Shift via email: [email protected]
Support In the Shift: www.patreon.com/intheshift
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Episode 81: Marc Fennell is the force behind the new SBS documentary, "The Kingdom". It is a doco that explores the rise and fall of Hillsong Church in Australia (and around the globe), but that also asks harder and more nuanced questions of the wider pentecostal megachurch systems and structures that have grown so rapidly in recent decades. This form of Christianity clearly appeals so deeply to so many, and yet can also grow on the back of coercion and abuse of power that often leads to burn out, spiritual trauma, and to many thousands of unsaid, unheard stories of pain, dislocation and harm. In this conversation we talk with Marc about his approach and hopes for the doco, about his own story of growing up in these kinds of churches, the good, the bad, the ugly... and the kinds of hard questions that the new emerging churches should be asking of themselves (and that participants should be asking) if there is going to be a healthier future ahead.
You can get in touch: [email protected]
Support: www.patreon.com/intheshift
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Episode 80: This is a first for In the Shift - a reissue of an older conversation! But in light of more stories, documentaries, investigations and interrogations of the megachurch story here in NZ, Australia and across the world in recent months, we thought it might be helpful to reissue the first podcast episode on our megachurch series - originally aired as Episode 55 in April 2022. Shane and I began talking about this because we both had history in these spaces, and there were stories hitting the mainstream about coercion, manipulation, burnout, abuse of power and just a litany of stories of people's lives being messed up through their experience in these kinds of spaces. In particular, here in New Zealand we were responding in real time to the stories from journalist David Farrier - but we also knew that the stories he was telling were not limited to one specific context, but were endemic across a whole stream of the contemporary church movement. So we began what was going to be a short series of conversations about this, and then it turned into a rather long series of conversations about all of this. So if you're new to In the Shift and you find this convo helpful, you can wind back to episode 56 and go with us on the journey. Here's the original blurb:
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This episode is the first in a series of conversations between myself and Shane Meyer-Holt (who you may remember from way back in episode 3) as we respond to some of the deeply concerning stories emerging from megachurches in recent weeks and months. There are common themes found in the experiences of those who have suffered under the weight of pressure, expectation, bullying, harassment and abuse of power within these systems.
Shane and I have been talking about this for more than a decade, having met while in the process of trying to extricate ourselves from the problematic church structures we had been deeply immersed in since our teenage years. Since then we have both explored very different ways of engaging in faith communities and ‘leadership’. But we have also continued to reflect on those things that make megachurches (or those following that model) so potent and effective. Effective at both the glories of success and growth but also at leaving a trail of pain and trauma - while managing to keep that suffering largely silent and under the radar (until now).
This is the beginning of our processing ‘out loud’ on these issues, dealing with themes that have in many ways been woven through the In the Shift podcast from the very beginning. If you want to get in touch to offer comment, question, story, insight, or to seek a bit of solidarity and support, you can get in touch with Shane and I via: [email protected]
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Episode 79: Amanda Pilbrow works in the space of helping support LGBTQIA+ folk in the church, as well as working with churches, pastors, ministry leaders and others to go on the journey to become fully affirming of queer folk in the church. She is the facilitator of the website www.alreadyenough.co.nz which is a sorting house for a vast range of resources in relation to this conversation. In this episode we talk about her journey as a young woman growing up within very conservative traditionalist church systems. We discuss the exclusion of women from ministry and leadership, and the impact this had on her sense of self. And we explore how her journey of processing through this is connected to the ongoing passion she has for the church to change its stance on queer inclusion. Her postgrad research focused on hearing the experiences of LGB Christians in New Zealand, and has deeply informed the way she approaches these conversations.
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Episode 78: This episode is a live recording from an event called "Reframing Easter" held in March of this year. Here I talk through my understanding of how the Easter story fits within the wider historical, cultural, political and religious context of its day. The imperial power of Rome, the backdrop of suffering for the Jewish people, religious leadership and belief being used in the jostling for power, status and control, and the tense and very real potential for a violent revolution. Jesus lives and dies in the midst of this moment - and the meaning of Easter can only really be grappled with in light of what's going on here. Unpacking this story can then help us to make sense of how all of this might still speak to us in the present moment. It helps us to reframe ideas of Jesus' death as "atonement for sin", and to reimagine what "salvation" looks like in contrast to the power, violence and abuse of harmful systems, beliefs and practices.
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Episode 77: One of the common themes of our recent conversations has been how churches have been able to co-opt Christian language and ideas and use them to enforce power, to gaslight victims, and to justify their actions as God-approved. This can often leave victims feeling confused, isolated and ashamed. This episode is a theological exploration of how the language of sin/repentance and blessing/empowerment is used in the biblical narrative in the almost entirely opposite direction to how we see it used in the contemporary church. In the biblical narrative, confrontation of sinners and calls to repentance are directed to those people in positions of power who are abusing that power. And the language of empowerment/blessing is directed at those who have been harmed, marginalised, abused and mistreated. Ironically (and sadly) in the church, those with power often claim the language of empowerment and blessing, and the language of sin/repentance is directed at those who are already vulnerable. This episode tracks the competing imperial and prophetic trajectories of the biblical story, and how the words of Jesus (and Paul) must be understood within this wider context.
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