Exiles Denver: Curious Conversations in a Time of Polarization

Preston Sprinkle

This October (4-5), Theology in the Raw is hosting its 4th Exiles conference and its first ever 2-day event on the road! We’re so excited to engage in some of the most pressing conversations happening—or that should be happening—in the church today. 

Our first session will dive deep into the need for Discipleship in this Election Year. Every four years, the U.S. goes through political turmoil and the church often gets caught up in the polarization. The 2020 election saw the church get torn apart with debates about masks, lock-downs, questions about race, and who we should vote for. While these are important issues for sure, many Christian leaders expressed a deep frustration over how to disciple their people in these polarized times. 

We’re going to address this head on at Exiles. We’ve got several speakers ready to help us explore what robust Christian discipleship looks like in this polarized year. Russ Moore, Kaitlyn Schiess, and Derwin Gray will walk us through this from different angles. And then our friends from the Church Politics podcast, Chris Butler and Justin Giboney, will do a live podcast reflecting on the conversations. 

Our next session will look at Sexuality After Purity Culture. We all know about the shortcomings (or, in some cases, toxic nature) of purity culture teachings in the 90’s and 2000’s: assumptions about every person being straight, transactional theology about God rewarding sexual purity with  marriage and sexual fulfillment, blaming women for male lust, inconsistent or one-sided concerns about modesty, and so on and so forth.

But what have we replaced purity culture with? Deconstructing purity culture without reconstructing a healthy, gospel-centered view of sexuality in its place only leads to more pain, misplaced expectations, and bad theology. We’re going to talk about all of this at Exiles, and Rachel Joy Welcher, Tony Scarcello, and Christine Emba will lead us in our provocative and challenging conversation. 

Lastly, we’re going to discuss the source of so much toxicity and polarization in our world today: Media consumption. Specifically, we’re going to discuss Fake News, Propaganda, and what Healthy Media Consumption looks like. Our passion for who we should elect, which policy we should vote on, what injustice we should care about, which war we should support or denounce, and what cultural issue we should fight against has been shaped by the means through which we are getting our information. This is a huge problem. Every medium has biases, agendas, certain spins they put on their information, and things they want you to feel and not feel by the information they give you. “The medium is the message” says Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan, and I think he’s right. And while we couldn’t get Marshall to speak at Exiles (he died 45 years ago), we do have two amazing Christian leaders who have explored this topic with thoughtfulness and faithfulness: Patrick Miller and Jay Kim

The Exiles-2 day in Denver is going to be honest and raw! As always, bring your curiosity and your questions, since we’ll have plenty of time for audience Q & A. 

I really hope you can join us for these super important conversations this Fall! If you cant make it to Denver, you can stream live and watch on demand for 7 days! Click here to register now!

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