Lean Back: Critical Feminist Conversations

I eagerly devour every episode of this podcast because it’s fun, enlightening, and inspiring. Laura and Erin put words to the frustrations and challenges the younger generations face, while highlighting opportunities for personal growth, awareness, and community activism. Lean Back is a highly entertaining podcast by two super smart women with plenty of piss and vinegar.

Listening to two laymen provide a 2D caricature of the Christian theological understanding of grace was almost laughable. They seem to be highly unfamiliar with both the literature and historical tradition. Augustine, Athanasius, Basil, Chrysostom, Bernard of Clairvaux, Aquinas, Theresa of Avila, Calvin, Pascal, Edwards, Rutherford, Lewis, N.T. Wright, and so many more for 2000 years have thought and written about grace and to have these two boil it down to “it’s conditional”, is to demonstrate a profound lack of understanding of Christian theology and Christianity itself. They talk about Christian theology teaching that someone can “deserve God’s grace” or being more “worthy” or God’s grace. That maybe be colloquially used in Lisa’s Catholic context but is by definition the opposite of grace and has been declared heretical. To make matters worse, they pit Jesus against some kind of weird bastardized and simplistic version of semi-Pelagianism (a category I’m not sure they’d even be aware of). Yikes…

They literally admit on Twitter they’re going to spend their time sitting around on the internet making fate dating profiles just to “oWn tHe riOteRs,” and my wife who has an ACTUAL PhD is wondering if this brainless NPC got a doctorate in psychology or some other useless narcissistic study track that made her feel like she actually mattered at the end of everyone’s day.

A friend of mine recommended this podcast to me years ago, but I didn’t get around to listening to it until last year. I was going through a particularly difficult time in my life where I felt like I couldn’t get out of my own head, found myself slipping into daily bouts of despair, etc. And honestly, this podcast saved me. Lean Back has this uncanny ability to snatch the rug out from under your feet while giving you the threads to make a better and stronger one. It’s both earth-shattering and grounding. I truly can’t thank Laura and Lisa enough for pouring so much of their time into this. Thank you, thank you, thank you.