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What happens when politics becomes more than politics - when it shapes our identity, our faith, and our relationships with the people we love?

In this episode of Two Kens, my longtime co-host, Ken Fong, and I begin with a lighter subject: Ken Fong’s previous interview with Arasha Lalani, the Indian-American actress and comedian known professionally as Arasha, has gone viral. We reflect on what makes a conversation come alive. Acting and preaching, we suggest, are not monologues. At their best, both are active, engaging dialogues that invite us to listen, respond, and discover something new.

From there, we turn to a more sobering subject: Natalie Harp, one of Donald Trump’s most devoted supporters, often called his “human printer.” Recent reporting about Natalie and her family raises difficult questions about the intersection of faith, politics, grief, and family relationships.

Natalie’s father, Robert Harp, was a respected business professor at Biola University who, according to her brother Preston’s accounts cited in reporting, was skeptical of Trump’s claims to Christian faith. Following his tragic death by suicide, Natalie’s political profile grew. Her brother pursued a very different ideological path. Their story offers a glimpse into the complicated ways political commitments can intersect with family life.

As two former evangelical pastors, Ken and I explore the tensions between traditional evangelical convictions and MAGA politics, the challenges of discussing mental health and grief in religious communities, and the human longing for belonging, certainty, and protection.

We don’t presume to know all the private motivations behind this family’s experience. Instead, we ask what its story might help us understand about a nation increasingly divided by political identity.

Join us for a candid, compassionate conversation about faith, family, Trumpism, and the search for common ground.

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Ethicist Dr. Gushee returns to the podcast and continues the discussion of his most recent book, After Evangelicalism: The Path to a New Christianity. We talk about the election, the Biden victory, and the 70 million voters who embrace the Trumpian version of reality. He calls it a moral crisis. Gushee remembers Rachel Held Evans, and gives honorable mention to Blake Chastain and Brad Onishi; we talk about high profile Trumpian evangelicals Paula White, Jerry Falwell, Jr., Robert Jeffress, and Eric Metaxas. Gushee takes issue with Metaxas' version of Bonhoeffer. After a review of the Georgia Senate races, we focus on Gushee's proposal for a new Christian Humanism. With David's permission, Ken reads a passage from David's new book about Martin Luther (the dominionist) and Erasmus (a Christian humanist).

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This episode was first aired December 4, 2020

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REPRIS - Ken welcomes his good friend of the podcast, Dr. Theon Hill. Just recently, Christianity Today published Dr. Hill's review of the recent full-length feature film that's getting high marks and a great review: Till (starring Danielle Deadwyler as Mamie Till and Jalyn Hall as Emmett). Just this fall, Dr. Hill hosted a conversation at Wheaton College featuring author David Tell (Remembering Emmett Till), who was also the lead investigator in the Emmett Till Memory Project, and Emmett Till's cousin, Rev. Wheeler Parker (Argo Temple Church of God in Christ in Summit, Illinois). That fateful summer of 1955, Pastor Parker, accompanied Emmett on that visit to Money, Mississippi. He witnessed both the incident at the market when Emmett "whistled" at Carolyn Bryant, and was in the house in the middle of the night when Emmett was kidnapped by her husband. Dr. Hill shares their conversation. Ken and Dr. Hill discuss the relevance of the Emmett Till story on race in America and in the evangelical church.

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This episode first aired November 22, 2022

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REPRISE - Dr. Peter Enns returns to the podcast to discuss his brand new book Curve-ball - When Your Faith Takes Turns You Never Saw Coming* or How I Stumbled and Tripped My Way to Finding a Bigger God. Pete admits it's the longest title in the history of publishing. The popular professor, author (see show notes for his many other books), and podcaster (The Bible for Normal People) drops his guard like never before sharing his spiritual and intellectual journey from his days as an aspiring baseball player to progressive Christian thinker. "Wrestling with God and Scripture is very old and completely normal. Actually, it's God-activated," he says. In reviewing the book, Ken and Pete talk about Noah, Jonah, and Jesus as archetypes in the struggle. Richard Rohr, David Bentley Hart, Thomas Oord and Rachel Held Evans get honorable mention as guides. Evolution is a major "curveball" for many Christians. Pete is especially interested in the chaos and "weirdness" of physics and quantum mechanics, all of which have opened Pete's mind and heart to a much bigger and more profound notion of God. While Pete avoids the clichéd use of the overused and misappropriated descriptor, "deconstruction," he traces a normal, natural, and healthy evolution in our understanding of faith and our relationship to the God of the Universe.

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This program first aired May 19, 2023

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Today’s Beach Talk begins with a review of the loss of feminist champion Gloria Steinem. Betsey recalls her non-religious college years, when feminism was opening new possibilities for women and challenging assumptions about marriage, work, and identity. We talk about another big loss - Dolly Parton, admired by all of us, including Gloria.

Ken reviews Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s fascinating new book, Live Laugh Love—and reflects on how far some of those cultural conversations have taken us.

From there, we wander into apocalyptic thinking, from AI to the Rapture and Left Behind, and ask whether our energy might be better spent facing real problems through cooperation, creativity, and problem-solving.

And, of course, we talk politics—but also about something more personal: how do we stay connected to friends and family whose political views are very different from our own?

SHOW NOTES | Ken’s Substack: Apocalypse Now

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REPRISE: Today, we welcome a conversation with Dr. Christian Smith, one of America’s leading sociologists of religion. He studied at Wheaton and Gordon College, earned an M.A. and PhD at Harvard, and currently serves as the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame. You may know him from his groundbreaking research on adolescent spirituality, but in this episode, we dive into the sweeping themes of his current book, Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America, released in April 2025 from Oxford University Press.

We examine the profound cultural and generational shifts that have contributed to the decline of religion in America—what Dr. Smith refers to as a slow but steady obsolescence. From the rise of the “nones” and the “spiritual but not religious,” to the scandals, the loss of clergy credibility, and the overwhelming politicization of faith, especially within evangelical circles, we unpack it all. Dr. Smith is data-driven, deeply thoughtful, and committed to honesty—he doesn’t just describe the trends; he interprets them with nuance and care.

We also talk about the fears that drive some religious communities to build protective bubbles—Christian schools, worldview camps, media silos—and how those moves may be accelerating the very decline they fear. This is a conversation about cultural change, generational transitions, science, sexuality, and what it means to seek moral grounding in a rapidly shifting world.

This episode invites us to ask: When has religion truly been good? And can it be good again? As James Baldwin once said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” SHOW NOTES

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Twenty-five years ago, we woke up to a terrible tragedy.

We remember the images. The first plane. The second plane. The towers collapsing. The Pentagon burning. The field in Pennsylvania. We remember the smoke, the sirens, the stunned faces—and the terrible realization that the most powerful nation on earth was suddenly, frighteningly vulnerable.

But we also remember something else.

For a brief moment, we seemed to remember how to be Americans together.

We stood in line to give blood. We gathered in churches and synagogues and mosques. We put flags on our cars. We embraced strangers. We grieved together.

And then something changed.

Twenty-five years later, the question for us isn't simply what happened on September 11, 2001. We know what happened.

The harder question is: What happened to us afterward?

How did the trauma of that morning reshape our understanding of God? How did it change American Christianity? How did fear of terrorism become fear of Islam—and eventually, perhaps, fear of one another?

We went to war. We expanded government surveillance. We embraced a doctrine of preemptive military action. We spent trillions of dollars. And somewhere along the way, the extraordinary unity we experienced after 9/11 began to fracture.

So today on this special edition of the Two Kens, Ken Fong and I go back—not simply to the morning America was attacked, but to the 25 years that followed.

We two former pastors are asking questions that are both political and deeply personal: Where was God? What did we become? And what, if anything, can we learn from 9/11 before fear teaches us the same lessons all over again?

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In Part One of my conversation with Scott Chesebro, we talked about a life shaped by curiosity - by people, places, questions, and a willingness to look beyond the boundaries of his own religious and cultural experience. Scott has never understood faith as simply a system of beliefs about heaven and hell. For him, it has been a way of being in community and of remaining open to the lives and experiences of others.

In Part Two, our conversation becomes more intimate. Scott is living with an incurable lung disease and has made the deeply personal decision to enter hospice. Yet this is not simply a conversation about illness or dying. It is about how a person looks back on a life well lived - and what he hopes to leave behind.

We talk about Norene, his partner in marriage and tireless companion; about raising their two sons on Chicago’s South Side and now watching their grandchildren grow up there; about race, public schools, faith communities, and the former students who continue to visit him. We talk about travel, including a journey through West Africa and along the Slave Road, and the curiosity that has guided Scott since childhood.

And eventually, we arrive at the question all of us must face: What do you want the people you love to remember?

Scott’s answer is both simple and profound: “I’m not afraid to die. I just don’t want to leave.”

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Become a Patron - Click on the link to learn how you can become a Patron of the show. Thank you!

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