New Michael Tait Allegations & David Zahl on Grace (#331)

Religion on the Mind

Religion, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.7 • 542 Ratings

🗓️ 23 June 2025

⏱️ 86 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Joy Vetterlein joins me at the top of the episode to discuss the latest round of allegations against Michael Tait, and our evolving reactions and perspectives through this ongoing story. After that update, David Zahl joins me to discuss his new book The Big Relief and his take on grace as Christianity's most radical contribution to the world. We dig into the Lutheran distinction between law and grace, connecting it to Carl Rogers' unconditional positive regard and examining how contemporary culture often delivers moral instruction without the container of acceptance that makes change possible. Dave argues that whether it's progressive activism or conservative piety, we're often just "shouting at people to change and then resenting them when they don't," while true transformation happens when people feel safe enough to be vulnerable. We explore evidence for divine grace through romantic love, recovery programs, and those surprising moments when someone sees us at our worst and chooses to stay. We also get beautifully sidetracked by our mutual obsession with Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys as examples of pure gift. In the end, we're all just looking to be accepted exactly as we are. www.christchurchcville.org/david-zahl Highlights 35:58 The Role of Therapy in Grace 44:47 The Absence of Grace in Socio-Political Discourse 51:49 The Concept of Divine Acceptance 1:05:57 The Burden of Performance and Conditionality 1:10:47 Experiencing Belonging and Grace ___________________________________________ 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 you have permission. This is a little, kind of an emergency
0:09.5	mini-pod, an emergency segment, a current events segment. Wanted to check back in on the
0:17.4	updating story with Michael Tate, former singer of a newsboys and founding member of DC Talk,
0:24.1	had an episode about this a couple weeks ago.
0:26.3	If you've got kids in the room, maybe just skip ahead to the main episode with David Zoll,
0:31.2	which is a great one, by the way, and come back to this later because there's going to be
0:36.6	some rough language in here.
0:39.0	Joining me today for this little debrief is our very own Joy Vetterline.
0:43.0	Thanks for being here, Joy.
0:44.0	Hi, Dan.
0:45.3	So we are recording this on Friday afternoon for a Monday morning release.
0:49.3	So it's possible there will be more developments over the weekend.
0:52.5	But here's where we currently stand.
0:55.1	The Roy's report released that big splash initial reporting on three male alleged victims of
1:00.7	various levels of sexual assault and other manipulative actions back on June 4th.
1:06.4	And then a week later on June 10th, Michael Tate released a statement in which he conceded that, quote,
1:12.8	recent reports of my reckless and destructive behavior, including sexual activity, are sadly,
1:18.4	largely true. He also said that the drug abuse was true. He admitted that he had on multiple
1:23.9	occasions touched men, quote, in an unwanted sensual way, unquote.
1:29.8	Now, since June 4th, six more men have come forward. This time, they've come to the Guardian,
1:36.1	the UK paper, and two of them alleged that Tate sexually assaulted them, four-sided
1:43.1	unwanted sexual advances or harassment. Two of them
	...

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