In the Shift

• On making it to 100 - Part One!

  Episode 100: This is it! We've gone and done it. We've made it to episode 100... and this means that we've ascended the mountain of success and significance and will finally get all the credit and recognition we deserve! Actually... it means none of that. But for this episode Shane Meyer-Holt interviews me (Michael) about the journey of the past few years, how I've changed since I started In the Shift - both in belief and approach - and the personal impact of this kind of journey. I hope that this conversation resonates with aspects of your own shifting path, as so many of us navigate the impact of changing faith, the impact on our community, spiritual trauma, a reconfiguring and reimagining of life, meaning and spirituality....and hope (or otherwise) for the future. 

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• This disruptive moment

  Episode 99: In the Shift is back for 2025 - and we kick off this year's pod by looking at what is going on in the world right now. In many respects, the social, political and economic disruption we're experiencing is a natural consequence of the trajectory we've been on for a number of years - and is also connected to particular religious frameworks, beliefs and assumptions. Hyper-individualism, growing inequality, fears and uncertainties, authoritarianism, fascist (or at least fascist-adjacent) rhetoric, scapegoating, conspiracies and on the list goes... so what is going on, what angers are being inflamed, what vulnerabilities are being exploited, and where do we go from here?

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• God After Deconstruction - with Thomas Jay Oord

  Episode 98: Thomas Jay Oord joins the pod for a great conversation on how we might start to think about God in the wake of deconstruction. We talk about his and Tripp Fuller's 2024 book "God After Deconstruction" and discuss the different intersecting factors that lead to deconstruction and how and why there might still be a place for God on the other side. For those still left with the God-question, with a wondering about ultimate reality, with a sense of something 'more', this conversation explores God and meaning without certainty or in/out binaries. We chat through why we might still believe in God, and perhaps more importantly, what kind of God this might be.  For more of Tom's work, you can head to www.thomasjayoord.com.  You can find the book 'God After Deconstruction' by Tom and Tripp here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/195867026X Contact: [email protected] Support: www.patreon.com/intheshift 

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• The alt meaning of being a Christian... (or, what if the creeds totally miss the point?)

  Episode 97: This episode explores the language of faithfulness to the way of love (of self, neighbour, other and enemy) along with the subversion of "power over" as being at the core of a certain kind of Christian spirituality. There's a contrast between this and the language of the church creeds - these creeds are statements about belief that have often defined Christian orthodoxy and have been used as boundary markers for Christian identity. But the creeds carry no mention of Jesus' vision of the kingdom of God, his inclusion of the marginalised, his challenge to the powerful nor his claim that the most important aspects of spirituality and humanness are defined by love. If "orthodox Christian belief" doesn't include these things, can it really be used to define what it means to be Christian? Or perhaps we can be free to innovate and re-imagine this for ourselves. 

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• The need for meaning making (and is there a "real" world?)

  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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