The Allender Center Podcast

Rev. Rob Schenck, former evangelical activist and founder of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute, recounts a dramatic reorientation from political power to truth-telling and repair. He discusses moments that cracked his assumptions about faith, how religion gets co-opted by politics, and the work of repentance and facing real suffering. Short, candid reflections on moral compromise and reclaiming a gospel grounded in reality.

Stephanie Isbell, MA, LCPC, a narrative-focused trauma clinician working with neurodivergent adults and families, explores neurodivergence, trauma, and story. She discusses masking and its energy cost. She explains developmental misattunement, late diagnosis identity shifts, sensory profiling, and relational approaches for couples and parents. She highlights community responses and the unexpected gifts of neurodivergence.

Becky Allender, memoirist and longtime collaborator with the Allender Center, shares how Narrative Focused Trauma Care shifted her life. She recounts stepping out of a supporting role, surfacing ungrieved losses, and discovering new tenderness toward herself and family. The conversation explores somatic practices, group facilitation surprises, shifts in marriage patterns, and the path from blog writing to a memoir.

What if healing from purity culture requires more than naming how you were hurt? What if it also means asking how you participated? In this episode, Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen sit down with their colleague Dr. Lauren Sawyer, to explore her new book, Growing Up Pure. Lauren names something many haven't had language for: as teens, we weren't only victims of purity culture; we were also moral agents within it. We made choices. We found belonging. We sometimes resisted in small ways. And at times, we participated in systems that harmed others and ourselves. That tension between vulnerability and agency, harm and complicity can feel destabilizing. Yet Lauren invites us to see accountability not as punishment, but as a sacred, even hopeful, practice. What if repentance wasn't shame-driven, but a pathway toward integration? What if healing meant not only tending to the wounds purity culture caused, but also examining how we were formed by—and sometimes upheld—it? This episode is honest, nuanced, and tender. It creates space to grieve the damage of purity culture while also imagining a different story. One rooted in the belief that we are made in the image of God as embodied, relational, sexual beings… and that restoration is possible. About the Allender Center Podcast: For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth. At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology. Stream each episode, plus find transcripts, additional resources, and more at: theallendercenter.org/podcast To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, visit: https://theallendercenter.org/2025/11/podcast-support/

Billie Hoard, a trans high school teacher sharing lived experience and theological reflection. Paul Hoard, counseling psychology professor exploring theology and psychology. They discuss how disgust shapes relationships, purity politics, nationalism, and church practices. They talk about Jesus inverting contamination logic and practices like communion that challenge exclusion.

Who gets to tell the story? This week, Pastor James A. White returns to the Allender Center Podcast to explore why that question sits at the heart of Black History Month. Marking 100 years since Carter G. Woodson launched Negro History Week in February 1926, this episode examines how history has long been shaped by those in power — and how it remains at risk of erasure when we refuse to name the truth. From the creation of racial categories to modern claims of "colorblindness," division has been strategically constructed to preserve power, while silence continues to support a distorted narrative. But this conversation isn't only about what has been. It's about what is unfolding now. The same grasping for power, the same fear-based narratives, the same temptation to flatten difference are still at work today. Black history reveals both the cost of erasure and the brilliance of resilience. And it invites us to ask: What story are we participating in now? About Our Guest: James White is an architect of identity-driven leadership who designs environments where leaders and organizations align values, systems, and culture for lasting impact. As Senior Pastor of Christ Our King Community Church, he integrates strategy, story, and spiritual formation to develop leaders who strengthen both communities and institutions. James served for more than two decades as an Executive Vice President within large-scale, multi-million-dollar YMCA nonprofit systems—first in the Raleigh–Durham Triangle and later with the YMCA of the North in Minneapolis. In these executive roles, he designed leadership formation systems that developed emerging and senior-level leaders, aligned mission with operational execution, and strengthened organizational culture across complex community-based institutions. He has facilitated cross-sector leadership labs for executive teams in both for-profit and nonprofit sectors, creating learning environments focused on identity clarity, values alignment, governance structure, and systems coherence. Over the course of 40 years, James has engaged audiences across academia, think tanks, business, nonprofit organizations, state and local government, and professional sports organizations throughout the United States and Canada. At the core of his work is a simple conviction: identity shapes leadership, and both individuals and institutions have the opportunity to design a better story. Related Resources: Listen to "The Narratives of Marginalization" with Pastor James A. White and Linda Royster on the Allender Center Podcast. Explore Racial Trauma & Healing offerings from the Allender Center. About the Allender Center Podcast: For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth. At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology. Stream each episode, plus find transcripts, additional resources, and more at: theallendercenter.org/podcast To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, visit: https://theallendercenter.org/2025/11/podcast-support/

Jamie Haigh, therapist focused on men's vulnerability and recovery, and Blake Roberts, therapist exploring holistic masculinity and healing, talk about the hidden 'three percent' of shame that blocks connection. They discuss loneliness, addiction, addictive coping like pornography, risk versus redemptive risk, play that connects instead of conquers, and how to build layered, nonperformative safety for men.

Laurie Krieg, author and parent-educator who teaches faith-informed sexuality and parenting, shares a steadier, gospel-rooted approach to talking with kids about sex and pornography. She urges many small, age-appropriate conversations, reducing shame, repairing relationships, and becoming a calm, trusted anchor as children face online exposure and confusing feelings.

Kat Armas, theologian and writer focused on decolonial theology and spiritual formation, explores how 'empire' shapes imagination, faith, and daily life. She talks about liturgies as embodied practices for resisting dehumanization. Conversation centers on reclaiming embodiment, imagination, and small communal practices to stay rooted in love and belonging.

Faith, hope, and love are beautiful words—but for many of us, they don't feel simple or safe. When they've been wielded to control, silence, or shame, these core concepts can carry weight, confusion, and even fear. In the wake of spiritual abuse, what once promised life can feel distorted or out of reach. Today, Dan and Rachael step tenderly and courageously into what it means to reclaim faith, hope, and love after harm. Rather than treating faith as certainty, hope as optimism, or love as obedience, they reframe these virtues as deeply human, relational realities: faith as trust, hope as imagination for a future shaped by goodness, and love as a force grounded in honor, freedom, and delight. Together, they name how spiritual abuse exploits fear and shame to protect power—fracturing our ability to trust ourselves, others, and even God. Healing doesn't begin with forcing a set of dogmatic beliefs, but with safety: learning to listen to our bodies, recover discernment, and engage relationships where difference and nuance are welcomed. This conversation is for anyone longing to rediscover a faith that makes room for personhood, courage, and love that does not demand fear in return. ===== About the Allender Center Podcast: For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth. At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology. Stream each episode, plus find transcripts, additional resources, and more at: theallendercenter.org/podcast To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, visit: https://theallendercenter.org/2025/11/podcast-support/