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If you’ve ever felt like “being faithful” meant getting smaller, staying quiet, or handing over your God-given authority, this conversation is for you. We’re joined by writer, lay theologian, Christian mystic, and meditation teacher Chelsea Kim Long as she shares the heart behind her book Faithfully Dissident Daughter and a definition that stops people in their tracks: staying rooted in the love of God and the way of Christ while dissenting from distorted expressions of faith that harm, exclude, and diminish human dignity.

We dig into how women are trained, in both culture and church, to distrust their bodies and intuition, and why belonging can become a weapon when institutions decide who is “in” and who is “out.” We keep returning to a grounding question that helps untangle inherited shame: “Who told you that?” From there, we explore what happens when we stop organizing Christian faith around hierarchy and start imagining communities built on collaboration, shared leadership, and mutual care.

Chelsea also describes a real-life alternative: a neighborhood faith community with no building, no paid staff, and no belief tests, where meals, discussion, children’s formation, and honest spiritual practice count as church. We talk discernment, deconstruction, progressive Christianity, feminist theology, and the divine feminine, using the fruit of the Spirit as a practical way to evaluate what actually brings life, healing, and deeper connection with God.

If this resonates, listen, share it with a friend who’s wrestling with faith and belonging, and then subscribe, rate, and leave a review so more people can find these conversations. What part of your faith are you ready to reclaim?

For more information about our guest visit her website at chelseakimlong.com