Oh, church, when did we lose our way?

Welcome to the Deconstructionist podcast.

I'm your host, John Williamson, and we're back with an all-new episode this week.

But before we get to that, if you like the work we're doing here,

please consider rating, reviewing, and subscribing, and telling a friend. Also, check out the new website. We recently

renovated it a little to ensure all the latest episodes are streaming straight from the site,

and also updated all the links there as well. So go to www.d.comstructionist.org for all of your

latest. This week's guest is Dr. Thomas Kaysen. Thomas is

Professor and Chair of Biblical Studies at Stockholm School of Theology, University College,

Stockholm. He has authored numerous books and articles in English and Swedish, including

moral infringement and repair and antiquity and impurity and purification in early Judaism and the Jesus tradition.

Today, he's here to talk about his brand new book, Dirt, Shame, Status,

perspectives on same-sex sexuality in the Bible and the ancient world.

Although we've covered the topic of same-sex relationships on prior episodes from different angles,

this is the first time we've really had

someone on to dig deep into the handful of scriptural references and looked at the context of the

times in which they were written to try to understand how this topic might have been viewed in

ancient times. Word of warning, there are times in this interview where we discuss ancient

practices that would be clearly considered

sexual assault in modern times, and there is some language that could be considered offensive

to some. But it's a really important conversation if we want to understand how this topic was

viewed back in the time these Bible passages were written and what these few references

...