Kirk, Dobson & Evangelical Complexity with Bonnie Kristian (#373)

Religion on the Mind

Religion, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.7 • 542 Ratings

🗓️ 12 January 2026

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

I sit down with returning guest Bonnie Kristian, deputy editor at Christianity Today, to examine tensions in contemporary evangelicalism in light of her upcoming book, In Defense of Evangelicalism. First up, we look at James Dobson's complicated legacy and how his parenting advice represented both progress and problems for its time, and why his use of psychology credentials to bypass evidence-based research troubles me as a clinician in the field. We then tackle the media's panic over "spiritual warfare" language at Charlie Kirk's funeral, where Bonnie points out that Pope Francis uses the same Ephesians passage about wrestling "not against flesh and blood." We also get into Peter Thiel's bizarre Antichrist lectures, which turn out to be less apocalyptic theology and more libertarian fearmongering dressed in biblical metaphor. Throughout, we wrestle with a core question: how do we navigate religious language in public discourse when biblical literacy has collapsed, and when do passionate warnings cross the line into spiritual abuse? Previous Episodes with Bonnie: ⁠Episode 306 | Dan is Getting Libertarian-Curious⁠ ⁠Episode 21 | To Consider Inerrancy, Infallibility & Inspiration⁠ ⁠Episode 6 | To Consider ALL the Atonement Theories⁠ ___________________________________________ Follow Dan on IG: www.instagram.com/dancoke/ Or Twitter: twitter.com/DanKoch Faith deconstruction resources: www.soyouredeconstructing.com/ Join the Patreon for exclusive episodes (and more) every month: patreon.com/dankoch Email about the "sliding scale" for the Patreon: youhavepermissionpodcast@gmail.com YHP Patron-only FB group: tinyurl.com/ycvbbf98 Website: www.dankochwords.com/yhp.html Join Dan's email list: www.dankochwords.com/ Artwork by sprungle.co/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back everybody to religion on the mind.
0:13.6	I am your host, Dr. Dan Koch, licensed therapist, and occasional researcher in the
0:19.4	psychology of religion, just here and there,
0:21.9	a smattering of research. And I am excited because returning guest, I would say, pretty good
0:30.2	friend of the pod. Definitely some of your episodes, Bonnie, are some of the most popular,
0:35.5	especially in the you have permission early days.
0:37.8	You're first time back since the name change.
0:40.0	Yeah.
0:40.4	You're a journalist and author, and you are now deputy editor at Christianity today.
0:44.7	Bonnie Christian, I'm so glad to have you back.
0:47.2	Yeah, thank you.
0:47.8	I'm happy to be back.
0:48.9	We got a few things to get to today.
0:51.0	You've been deep in book writing land.
0:56.1	I actually reached out to you back in September. So I've had to wait. I've been a very good, patient boy, but I've got a few things on
1:03.1	deck. So after we talk about James Dobson and Charlie Kirk, we're going to talk about a piece you
1:09.3	wrote about spiritual warfare language.
1:11.7	And then I'd like to get into some Peter Thiel, Antichrist Lecture stuff and another piece
1:16.7	about evangelicals that you wrote a while back, but we'll see what time allows for.
1:21.8	Let's start with James Dobson. So he passed since we've last spoken. You know, his death, not a big news event the way Charlie Kirk's
1:30.1	death was, but his legacy, I would argue, looms much larger in evangelicalism than Charlie Kirk.
1:36.5	I have sort of contended on earlier episodes of this show that in terms of the lived day-to-day
	...

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