The following is a guest blog by Bret Powell
There’s nothing new about podcasts, but the subscription-based digital downloads seem to be opening a new door into something that looks an awful lot like “community.” More than just a cult-following of artistic enthusiasm—of the kind that develops around eccentric films, music, television dramas, and many other types of media—these podcast communities are tuning in for a no-boundary brand of discussion and post-modern explorations of society. While the fear to express alternative political and religious opinions has left many feeling marginalized or “herniating on the fence of ambivalence—” teetering somewhere between definitive party platforms and the complexity of social issues, or between denominational identity and the failure of religion to meet the challenges of the culture in a way that does more than simply inoculate it with nostalgia for some golden era of the past—such frustrations are now the vital pulses of a different kind of community: a church. Instability and doubt are now a cause for gathering and commonality. This is the church of honesty and empathy, of expressiveness and profanity, of nuance and complexity, of story and therapy. Here, Jesus is still the Son of God…if you want him to be. But without a doubt, Satan is any semblance of hatred or shaming. Continue reading “The Men and Women of Pod”