Heather Cronk was a fervent evangelical from ages 13 to 23, until seminary at Wake Forest Divinity School dismantled her theology and left her agnostic. Twenty-plus years later, she started Project 2112 to connect roughly 15 million exvangelicals in the U.S. and organize them against Christian nationalism. In this episode of Cabernet & Pray, Heather and Jeremy talk about the guilt and shame that keep so many people stuck after deconstruction, what it takes to rebuild trust in other people and in yourself, and why she says the only effective organizing happens in community. You’ll hear how she holds space for a community split almost evenly between people who still call themselves Christian and people who never will.

Watch the episode on video: https://youtu.be/HxqNhBpunEQ

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Join us Monday, November 2nd for our next AZ tasting event in Gilbert. We'll have a guided wine flight of four pours and talk about why changing your theology often means changing your community. Save your seat: https://communionwineco.com/events/az-tasting-event/

You can get a signed copy of my latest book, The Edge of the Inside, or in whatever form you prefer: https://www.edgeoftheinside.com/

Join the online community and get access to exclusive content and experiences: https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/online-community

Trying to make sense of faith? Download my free Deconstruction Field Guide. It's a ten-page resource to help you navigate what's next so you don't have to do it alone. https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/opt-in

Links:

• https://www.instagram.com/project.21.12
• https://www.tiktok.com/@project.2112

Amy Hawk spent 25 years inside the evangelical bubble before 2016 brought it down around her. She taught Bible, served as an elder, voted for John McCain and Mitt Romney, then left the church that was her entire life, lost her two best friends, and says she is closer to Jesus today than she was then. Her book, The Judas Effect, argues that a church chasing political power betrays the character of Christ. We talk about what speaking up costs, how she holds onto Jesus without a church building, and why she thinks conversations like this one may be closer to what church was meant to be all along. Listen in as I ask her whether this book is about saving the church or surviving it.

Watch the episode on video: https://youtu.be/x6ZvO2wfBzc

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Listen to my new short story audiobook called Loving God More. It's about a 15yo boy who tells his Christians parents he's gay. Neither of them knows how to handle it when an anonymous letter arrives with only one word. https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/blog/loving-god-more

You can get a signed copy of my latest book, The Edge of the Inside, or in whatever form you prefer: https://www.edgeoftheinside.com/

Join the online community and get access to exclusive content and experiences: https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/online-community

Trying to make sense of faith? Download my free Deconstruction Field Guide. It's a ten-page resource to help you navigate what's next so you don't have to do it alone. https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/opt-in

Episode links:

• The Judas Effect: https://link.amazon/B09aHCmZn
• https://www.instagram.com/amyhawk_author/
• https://www.facebook.com/amyhawkministries
• https://www.youtube.com/@amyhawk9

The word Trinity appears nowhere in your Bible, and the one verse that claims to state the doctrine in plain words is missing from every early Greek manuscript. So where did the doctrine come from? The path runs through an emperor who had a political problem to solve, two church councils more than fifty years apart, and a lineup of explanations the church eventually declared heresy. You may still be using a few of them. Along the way we find out what the first Christians were guarding for three centuries, and I share a bold new question about the Trinity that I just started asking.

Watch the episode on video: https://youtu.be/IhaFY8XFAWs

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Listen to my new short story audiobook called Loving God More. It's about a 15yo boy who tells his Christians parents he's gay. Neither of them knows how to handle it when an anonymous letter arrives with only one word. https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/blog/loving-god-more

You can get a signed copy of my latest book, The Edge of the Inside, or in whatever form you prefer: https://www.edgeoftheinside.com/

Join the online community and get access to exclusive content and experiences: https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/online-community

Trying to make sense of faith? Download my free Deconstruction Field Guide. It's a ten-page resource to help you navigate what's next so you don't have to do it alone. https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/opt-in

You probably expect a certain type of person to talk to you about deconstruction and doubt. Perhaps someone young and with a lot of life yet to experience. But Jack Reese is 75, a former senior pastor and a professor for 28 years, and he just wrote Grace Sideways, a book about a lifetime of doubting. He has never fully understood certainty, and he argues that a hidden God is the God the Psalms and the prophets handed us. We get into summer Christians and winter Christians, why the church sings praise so quickly and lament so rarely, and what Jesus was doing when He quoted Psalm 22 from the cross. Jack also tells the story of walking away from a comfortable career to lead a nonprofit in the poorest zip code in Texas, where a Black congregation gave him the nickname "1%" and meant it as love. Along the way, he explains why the person who insists you must never doubt may be the most arrogant one in the room, and I admit that I want to sound like him when I'm 75.

Watch the episode on video: https://youtu.be/3y4NmmKFPMU

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Listen to my new short story audiobook called Loving God More. It's about a 15yo boy who tells his Christians parents he's gay. Neither of them knows how to handle it when an anonymous letter arrives with only one word. https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/blog/loving-god-more

You can get a signed copy of my latest book, The Edge of the Inside, or in whatever form you prefer: https://www.edgeoftheinside.com/

Join the online community and get access to exclusive content and experiences: https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/online-community

Trying to make sense of faith? Download my free Deconstruction Field Guide. It's a ten-page resource to help you navigate what's next so you don't have to do it alone. https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/opt-in

Links:

• https://link.amazon/B0eEUfMci
• https://substack.com/@jackreese1
• https://www.jackreese.us/

I've been on the ash heap with the Book of Job for eight weeks, and this week the author of Job in Exile: A Guide for Spiritual Refugees, Dr. David Gushee, joins me to close it out. Gushee was once America's leading evangelical ethicist, and after he wrote Changing Our Minds, the community he helped build pushed him out. He reads Job as a story that works like a parable. We take on Job 42:6, the verse where the Hebrew is so tangled that scholars disagree on whether Job repents at all, and Gushee explains why he doesn't buy the version most translations give us. If you've ever been told your questions were the problem, Job may have been on your side all along.

Watch the episode on video: https://youtu.be/HFFSJQhR6bc

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Listen to my new short story audiobook called Loving God More. It's about a 15yo boy who tells his Christians parents he's gay. Neither of them knows how to handle it when an anonymous letter arrives with only one word. https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/blog/loving-god-more

You can get a signed copy of my latest book, The Edge of the Inside, or in whatever form you prefer: https://www.edgeoftheinside.com/

Join the online community and get access to exclusive content and experiences: https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/online-community

Trying to make sense of faith? Download my free Deconstruction Field Guide. It's a ten-page resource to help you navigate what's next so you don't have to do it alone. https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/opt-in

Links:

• https://link.amazon/B063CH5xV
• https://davidpgushee.substack.com/
• https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61570977503638

For seven weeks, Job has been waiting for God to answer him. In part seven of the Job in Exile series, God finally shows up in the whirlwind and then wants to talk about lions, ravens, mountain goats, and two creatures that sound like they wandered off a monster movie set (yes, we get into whether Behemoth is a dinosaur, complete with a disturbingly catchy children's song). God never answers a single one of Job's questions about his suffering. If God actually blesses Job's questioning and protest at the end rather than his surrender, that reshapes how we bring our own hard questions to God. Pour a glass and sit with one of the strangest, most beautiful endings in the Bible.

Watch the episode on video: https://youtu.be/lPIXQHMSGjk

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My new book, The Edge of the Inside, is now available. You can get a signed copy or in whatever form you prefer: https://www.edgeoftheinside.com/

Join the online community and get access to exclusive content and experiences: https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/online-community

Trying to make sense of faith? Download my free Deconstruction Field Guide. It's a ten-page resource to help you navigate what's next so you don't have to do it alone. https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/opt-in

Just when you'd expect the Book of Job to reach its climax, a new character barges in. Elihu is young, angry, and completely certain he has the explanation everyone else somehow missed. In part six of the Job in Exile series, we see Elihu do the one thing the story keeps refusing to do: he shows up with a confident answer. The uncomfortable part is how familiar he sounds in many churches today. This episode argues that your posture around your faith matters more than the beliefs you hold within it, drawing on the apostle Paul, Brian McLaren, and decades of research suggesting it's fundamentalism, not orthodoxy, that tracks with prejudice.

Watch the episode on video: https://youtu.be/hVxsZ69QFwo

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My new book, The Edge of the Inside, is now available. You can get a signed copy or in whatever form you prefer: https://www.edgeoftheinside.com/

Join the online community and get access to exclusive content and experiences: https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/online-community

Trying to make sense of faith? Download my free Deconstruction Field Guide. It's a ten-page resource to help you navigate what's next so you don't have to do it alone. https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/opt-in

Joshua Colburn spent twenty years inside a megachurch, and now he's known as the "Original Sinfluencer." In this conversation, he and Jeremy dig into why humor and satire might be the most honest tools survivors of church trauma have, how fear gets used to keep people in line, and the day Joshua grew his hair out as an act of rebellion the moment he walked away. The heart of it is his story of being diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia only after leaving, and realizing the church had spent years reading his neurodivergence as a gift of the Holy Spirit and leaning on it to keep him from seeing the harm. If you love the church, parts of this will be hard to hear. If the church left a mark on you, this might be the episode that helps you heal from it.

Watch the episode on video: https://youtu.be/zWrTv6TlI4k

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My new book, The Edge of the Inside, is now available. You can get a signed copy or in whatever form you prefer: https://www.edgeoftheinside.com/

Join the online community and get access to exclusive content and experiences: https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/online-community

Trying to make sense of faith? Download my free Deconstruction Field Guide. It's a ten-page resource to help you navigate what's next so you don't have to do it alone. https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/opt-in

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Find Joshua online on all platforms at:

• @originalsinfluencer
• @joshuacolburnmusic
• @prezmoymusic