Shifting Culture

In this episode, Kenneth Tanner and I contemplate the human face of God. We talk about why we split Jesus into a divine half and a human half, and what we lose when we do. We get into the story we've been told about strength, survival, and success, and how a God who takes the lowest seat overturns it. We talk about serving as a way into the permanence of God, the cross as the foundation of creation, the dignity of the body, and a resurrection already at work in the world. What would change if we believed God is like Jesus?
Kenneth Tanner is pastor of Church of the Holy Redeemer in Rochester Hills, Michigan, where he has served since 2005. He is the author of Vulnerable God: How Jesus Upends Our Assumptions About God—and Shows Us How to Be Human (Brazos Press, 2026). His writing has appeared in many outlets, including Huffington Post, Sojourners, Mockingbird, National Review, Christianity Today, Clarion Journal, and more. He and his wife, Debbie, have seven children and four grandchildren.
Kenneth's book:
Vulnerable God
Kenneth's recommendation:
The Wound of Unknowing
Connect with Joshua: jjohnson@shiftingculturepodcast.com

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In this episode, Dave Nienhuis joins me to talk about his memoir, And the Sea Was No More. We explore the deep, the chaos waters that run through Scripture from Genesis to Revelation, and what happens to faith when anxiety and trauma take away your ability to control your own mind. Dave shares how Scripture gave him language for drowning, why Jesus enters death rather than destroying it, and how the body, community, and liturgy carried him through. We also talk about shame, a generation leaving the church, and why we don't have to explain suffering before we cry out.
Dave Nienhuis is a teacher, writer, speaker, and Professor of New Testament Studies at Seattle Pacific University.
Dave's Book:
And the Sea Was No More
Connect with Joshua: jjohnson@shiftingculturepodcast.com

Go to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.

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This is The Good, The True, and The Cinema, a film podcast in pursuit of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Join Joshua Johnson, cultural critic and host of Shifting Culture, Craig Detweiler, filmmaker, author, and president of Wedgwood Circle, and John Dougherty, writer, educator, and film critic for America Magazine. Together, they review new releases, revisit the classics, and have a lot of fun along the way.
Follow The Good, The True, and The Cinema anywhere you get podcasts.
Connect with Joshua: jjohnson@shiftingculturepodcast.com

Go to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.

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Support the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link below

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In this episode Annie F. Downs joins me to take John 10:10 apart. Steal, kill, destroy — we tend to read them as one sentence, but Annie treats them as three different losses asking three different things of us. Something stolen still exists somewhere. Something dead doesn't come back. Something destroyed has to be cleared before anything gets built there. We talk about courage borrowed from artists, grief that never fully resolves, why resurrection never looks like restoration, and why none of this can be worked out alone. Don't let that hold you back.
Annie F. Downs is a New York Times bestselling author, sought-after speaker, and successful podcast host based in Nashville, Tennessee. Known for her engaging and honest style, Annie makes readers and listeners feel like long-time friends. She is the co-founder of the That Sounds Fun Network, home to her flagship podcast, That Sounds Fun and host of the television talk show I Gotta Ask.
Annie's Book:
Don't Let That Hold You Back
Annie's Recommendation:
Calamity Club
Connect with Joshua: jjohnson@shiftingculturepodcast.com

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In this episode Sarah Stankorb joins me to talk about Damned If She Does and the sixteen million American women who have walked away from the church in the last decade. Sarah is a journalist who covers religion, and someone who left herself, and she argues that women leaving isn't a side story but a signal we have about where American faith is going. We follow the threads back decades, sort through what the numbers do and don't show, and talk about what women are finding after they go. Some have left faith entirely. Some are still following Jesus without the institution. 
Sarah Stankorb is a journalist, essayist, and author. Hundreds of her pieces have been featured in publications including: VICE, ELLE, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Republic, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, and others. The award-winning writer tends to break taboos, offering women a platform to discuss the quiet hurts and joys that define their lives. Stankorb's beat spans religion, politics, gender, and power, but is informed by questions of basic morality. 
Sarah was born in Youngstown, Ohio, and often found escape in books. She studied world religions and philosophy at Westminster College, and a chance to study abroad in Northern Ireland and then Israel further opened her eyes to how faith (and conflict) can shape people’s everyday existence. She earned her master’s degree from the University of Chicago’s Divinity School, where she studied ethics and South Asian religion and history. 
She’s more fun than all this sounds.
Sarah lives in Ohio with her husband and two children, and she writes regularly about the quirks of American faith for her Substack, In Polite Company.
Sarah's Book:
Damned if She Does
Sarah's Recommendation:
The Conspiracists
The Magicians
Connect with Joshua: jjohnson@shiftingculturepodcast.com

Go to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.

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