Church and Main Podcast Videos

“53% of Americans view their fellow compatriots as bad.” That was the finding in a Pew Research Center survey of 24 countries, and the U.S. was the only one to cross the 50% mark. Even if this month’s election signals a shift, the contempt between left and right won’t clear up overnight. Dennis talk...

In June, a New York Times op-ed titled “I’m Gay, Not Queer. It Matters.” set off a firestorm. Some readers heard a gay man distancing himself from transgender people. Others heard something much more complicated. What does it mean to call yourself queer instead of gay, and what is at stake for LGBTQ...

Fifty years ago, the wider culture looked at American evangelicals with curiosity. Today it often looks with contempt. Is that picture fair, and is there more to the story than a single statistic? Dennis Sanders talks with Bonnie Kristian, author of In Defense of Evangelicalism. She is a former depu...

Four white mainline Protestant pastors are running for Congress this year. A generation ago, that would have been hard to imagine. Could it spark a revival for a tradition many have written off? In this episode of Church and Main, Dennis Sanders talks with Daniel K. Williams, a historian of American...

Dennis talks with psychologist Richard Beck about his latest book, The Book of Love. Richard is a professor of psychology at Abilene Christian University and a Senior Fellow of the Saunders Center for Joy and Human Flourishing. The book weaves Richard’s own faith journey together with the Hebrew Scr...

Saying “Jesus is Lord” can sound like a harmless phrase, but in the Roman Empire, where Caesar was Lord, it was a radical claim. Today, the claim still has rivals, and political and cultural tribes all want our allegiance. Dennis talks with Presbyterian pastor Landon Whitsitt about his book Divided ...

In John 14, Philip asks Jesus to show them the Father. Jesus gives him a pained look and answers, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father." If we want to know who God is, we look to Jesus, and when we do, we find a vulnerable God. Pastor and theologian Kenneth Tanner joins Dennis to talk about h...

What if the church's obsession with growth is just modern-day Baal worship? Andrew Root returns to the podcast to discuss his new book Baal and the Gods of More: Rescuing Church Growth from Idolatry (Baker Academic). Root — Carrie Olson Baalson Professor of Youth and Family Ministry at Luther Semina...