How does someone who attended Jerry Falwell’s college, who obtained a graduate degree in biblical studies while in Israel, and who became a senior pastor at a prominent church wind up leaving Christianity?
In this episode, we spoke with Kent Dobson, author of Bitten by a Camel: Leaving Church, Finding God. As the blurb says:
“Dobson was climbing the ladder of Christianity, too: a worship leader, teacher, and ultimately senior pastor of one of the largest and most prominent churches in America. But he was growing disillusioned with the faith, at least inside the shell of organized religion.
One Sunday morning, he preached to his congregation, ‘I don’t know what the word God even means anymore.’ He soon left the church, but his quest for God became more intense than ever.”
We discuss whether or not you’re wired for change, what American culture is wrestling with, what we lose when we lose religious institutions, what one pursues when they pursue God outside of a formal religion, and what the next iteration of “spirituality” might look like for upcoming generations. In Kent’s words:
“I have a feeling that something new wants to be born in the world.”
Get in Touch with Kent
Authors Mentioned
Reading List
Additionally, we asked Kent for any other relevant authors, and he was kind enough to share the following:
- Bill Plotkin: Nature and the Human Soul; Soulcraft; Wild Mind. “This is the best way I’ve found to start a deeper conversation about wholeness and the descent to soul in the 21st Century.”
- Clarissa Pinkola Estes: Women Who Run with the Wolves
- Robert Bly: Iron John; A Little Book on the Human Shadow
- David Whyte: Crossing the Unknown Sea, Work as Pilgrimage of Identity (plus all his poems)
- The work of Michael Meade, especially the Living Myth podcast
- John Neihardt: Black Elk Speaks
- Edward Abbey: Desert Solitaire
- Johanna Macy: Widening Circles; Coming Back to Life; Active Hope
- “All the poetry of Mary Oliver will mess up your life and save it at the same time.”
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