Patient conversations for strained and faithful communities.
CBF Conversations brings people into measured interviews about faith under pressure. Its best moments sit with grief, doubt, Scripture, politics, and congregational conflict without rushing toward tidy answers.
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CBF Conversations is an interview-driven Christian show with a pastoral temperament and a wide view of church life. It moves slowly on purpose. The conversations tend to begin with a book, an essay, or a ministry concern, then widen into questions about grief, Scripture, leadership, politics, and communal repair. Recent episodes show that range clearly. Sarah Bessey reflects on Rachel Held Evans and the continuing force of her writing. Patton Dodd speaks about grief around a father who was present as a wound and absence. Leanne Friesen argues for giving mourners room, including room for doubt and unfinished faith. Daniel Silliman traces how religious language and politics shape public life. Julie Faith Parker revisits Eve and the value assigned to women in biblical interpretation. Robert P. Jones considers the spiritual cost when Christian imagery is drawn into authoritarian agendas. Andrew Hale brings the focus back to congregations under strain, where conflict requires courage, curiosity, and relationship. Trish Leigh’s episode turns toward habits, behavior, and the brain. The show is not a polished studio performance in the usual sense. It feels closer to a thoughtful church hallway conversation that has been given enough time to become serious. Questions are broad and generous, and people often carry long stretches of the episode. That can make the pacing uneven, particularly when sponsor reads take up a lot of space. Still, the loose structure fits the subject matter, because these conversations are less interested in winning an argument than in making room for complicated faith. CBF Conversations will make the most sense to listeners who already know church vocabulary and care about the future of congregational life. It is especially suited to pastors, seminary-adjacent readers, ministry staff, and lay leaders who want humane conversations about hard things. Its strength is not provocation. Its strength is patient moral attention.
Made for: Best for pastors, ministry leaders, seminary-minded listeners, and reflective Christians who want long-form conversations about faith, grief, church conflict, Scripture, and public life. It assumes comfort with church language and theological framing.
What sets it apart: The show stands apart through its gentle interview style and its willingness to let difficult subjects stay complicated. It connects personal grief, biblical interpretation, congregational health, and public Christianity without turning them into quick advice segments.
The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is a Christian network comprised of individuals and churches that work together to spread the hope of Christ. Our diverse community includes partners all over the globe, and our fellowship supports a wide range of missions and ministries that give people meaningful opportunities to put their faith to action. With a deep respect for freedom, diversity and equality, we encourage autonomy while inviting collaboration. CBF’s podcasts launched in early 2016 to share the stories of CBF church starters from across the Fellowship and interviews of people partnering to do groundbreaking work in renewing God’s world. The vision is to share ideas, stories, and innovat…
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
CBF Conversations makes the institutional and economic consequences of Christian belief visible through searching interviews about power, race, leadership, and public life.
CBF Conversations follows the material consequences of belief through interviews about books, public arguments, and church life. The host asks direct questions about how theology operates when faith meets political power, racial hierarchy, grief, and institutional conflict,…
Naomi gets to be bitter here, if you've had enough tidy answers to grief.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A reflective episode on how Rachel's words keep speaking to communities under political and spiritual strain.
Rachel comes through as a writer whose work kept meeting the moment after it was written. A guest remembers returning to her essays and finding that the voice people miss still carries through what she left behind, including A Tale of Two Gospels and its contrast between a…
A searching reflection on the grief of loving a father who never became the man he could have been.
The episode treats family grief as the ache of what never got finished between a child and a father. It sits with the image of a man who may have had goodness in him but never fully became good, and it understands mourning as something shaped by missed conversations, unrealized…
A careful pastoral argument for letting grief speak before theology tries to answer.
This episode treats grief as something that needs space before it needs explanation. Its pastoral center is clear: people in pain are not helped by tidy answers or corrected emotions.
A measured account of how Nixon's spirituality and the evangelical world around him entered presidential politics.
Presidential Religiosity traces Richard Nixon's political character through the religious language that gathered around him, from the image of a "fighting Quaker" to the evangelical currents he met as Dwight Eisenhower's vice president.
A measured look at Christian imagery, political power, and the spiritual cost when the two become too closely joined.
The episode reads the claim that Trump sees himself as the king of Christianity as a doorway into a larger concern: what happens when Christian imagery is absorbed into authoritarian politics.
A measured conversation about the belonging and harm that can sit side by side in youth group and white evangelical life.
This CBF Podcast Conversation follows a teenage boy's experience of youth group as both a source of deep belonging and a place capable of real hurt.
A church-world conversation on why racial justice requires more than personal goodwill.
The episode moves racism out of the realm of blatant prejudice and into the harder territory of habits, assumptions, and structures that can survive even among Christians who reject racial superiority.
Two Bible translators unpack Scripture's hardest passages, from Revelation's 666 to the Witch of Endor.
Live sermons with Easter-shaped urgency.
A podcast episode featuring musician Tim Timmons discussing the film 'I Can Only Imagine 2' and themes of church conflict and worship.
Andy Hale interviews Jason Kirk, senior editor for The Athletic and co-host of the Vacation Bible School podcast, about his novel 'Hell Is a World Without You'.
Andy Hale interviews Dr.
Adrian Gibson defines trauma as the embodied experience that can remain after an overwhelming event, with the nervous system carrying its response.
Rachel's voice still matters.
Patton Dodd says he avoided writing The Father You Get for years because his father, Bill Dodd, and a troubled father figure made fatherhood and "God, the father" painful subjects.
CBF Conversations speaks with Leanne Friesen about Grieving Room and the line, "Your sister is dying.
["CBF Conversations speaks with Dr.
An interview with Julie Faith Parker discussing the misinterpretation of Eve in the Bible and the value of women.
Robert P.
Dr.
A neuroscience discussion on why quitting undesirable behaviors is harder than adopting positive ones.
Erin Hicks Moon discusses her book on the spiritual practice of wrestling with God, using a story about strength and toughness as a grounding text.
An interview with Tzvi Novick discussing his article on Gaza and Jewish memory, exploring how contemporary Jewish communities balance religious and secular modes of remembrance.