Episode Archive
Banned Books

Banned Books Podcast

With Donavon Riley & Christopher Gillespie
Episodes
Authors
Topics
60 Glossary

Welcome to Banned Books, where we read and converse with the rebel children, the holy mischief-makers of God, who fight against the kind of useless religious, spiritual, and moral methods of life improvement that seek to smother the glory of God in Jesus Christ. We want to introduce you to those who forgot everything except Jesus Christ and him crucified. Some were faithful to the end, and are safe in Jesus' death. Many lost their way and ended up expressing the biggest bad news of all, that we must stop sinning if we want God to like us.

But, we all struggle with fear of being last, lost, least, littlest, and dead, and so we are here to encourage, challenge, provoke, and maybe even offend you by introducing you to theologians who at one time or another were banned by their church, declared dangerous, or simply vilified for daring to confess that Christ alone is the way, truth, and life. They dare to be called fools for Christ's sake even when their own church throws ever larger stumbling blocks in front of them. This is the Banned Books podcast. Welcome rebel children, holy mischief makers, and fools for Christ. This podcast is for you.

Your Hosts

Donavon Riley
Host
Husband, father, and pastor. Host of Banned Books and Warrior Priest. Author of Crucifying Religion and The Withertongue Emails. He has written hundreds of articles, teaches mixed martial arts, and considers himself a story-teller and friend of trees.
Christopher Gillespie
Host
Husband, father, Lutheran pastor, and media producer (gillespie.media). A coffee roaster (gillespie.coffee) who produces content for 1517, Higher Things, Doxology, CPH Music, and Concordia Theological Seminary.

Reading List

Where "J.R.R. Tolkien" appears across the catalog

  1. Ep. 402: Tolkien - Certainly there was an Eden on this very unhappy earth — 40 mentions · watch from 00:41:33
  2. Ep. 430: Tolkien - The Journey Through the Desert: The Lenten Quest — 38 mentions · watch from 00:00:57
  3. Ep. 383: Tolkien - The 'protestant' search backwards for 'simplicity' and directness ... is mistaken and indeed vain — 32 mentions · watch from 00:02:04
  4. Ep. 436: Schuldheisz - Luther and the Lion — 29 mentions · watch from 00:10:04
  5. Ep. 336: Tolkien - On Christian Preaching — 26 mentions · watch from 00:01:32
  6. Ep. 228: Dreher - A Benda Guide to Child-raising — 18 mentions · watch
  7. Ep. 434: Guite - The Music of Creation — 16 mentions · watch from 00:03:37
  8. Ep. 344: Ambrose - The mystical feast of the altar of the Lord — 14 mentions · watch from 00:04:16
  9. Ep. 404: Auden - A Litany and the Horae Cononicae — 12 mentions · watch from 00:16:48
  10. Ep. 269: Josh McDowell - What about Science? — 10 mentions · watch from 01:58:35
  11. Ep. 405: Barfield - Meaning and Myth — 9 mentions · watch from 00:09:17
  12. Ep. 419: C.S. Lewis - All that Christianity adds to Paganism is the cure — 8 mentions · watch from 00:20:08
  13. Ep. 345: Peterson - We Live in a World Filtered Through the Imagination — 6 mentions · watch from 00:07:04
  14. Ep. 347: Bornkamm - The God of the Old Testament — 6 mentions · watch from 00:04:13
  15. Ep. 349: Martin Luther - The Song of Habakkuk — 6 mentions · watch from 00:05:47
  16. Ep. 371: Pastoral Debrief - On Storytelling and Myth — 6 mentions · watch from 00:25:22
  17. Ep. 421: Chesterton - Mankind would have a much worse time if there were no such thing as Christmas or Christmas dinners — 6 mentions · watch from 00:31:08
  18. Ep. 425: Lewis - Myth Became Fact — 6 mentions · watch from 00:26:41
  19. Ep. 429: Lewis - ''Nature gives most of her evidence in answer to the questions we ask her — 6 mentions · watch from 00:27:48
  20. Ep. 149: An Apologetic Primer on Jehovah's Witnesses — 5 mentions · watch
  21. Ep. 257: Dostoyevsky - The Grand Inquisitor pt. 2 — 5 mentions · watch from 00:17:08
  22. Ep. 359: Table Talk — 5 mentions · watch from 00:32:10
  23. Ep. 381: Kleinig - The Things That Make a Theologian — 5 mentions · watch from 01:07:06
  24. Ep. 270: Matthias Flacius - Rules for Understanding the Sacred Scriptures — 4 mentions · watch from 00:18:28
  25. Ep. 337: Chesterton - Heretics: X. On Sandals and Simplicity — 4 mentions · watch from 00:10:10
  26. Ep. 399: More Questions Answered - Myth and Taylor Swift — 4 mentions · watch from 00:32:35
  27. Ep. 413: Debrief on the Bondage of the Will — 4 mentions · watch from 01:35:18
  28. Ep. 431: Kleinig - The Mystery of Christ and Cosmic Restoration — 4 mentions · watch from 01:09:08
  29. Ep. 432: Ælfric - Homily for Midlent Sunday — 4 mentions · watch from 01:50:39
  30. Ep. 246: Grothe - Set Free for Life — 3 mentions · watch
  31. Ep. 250: Hamann - Interpreting the Sacred Scriptures — 3 mentions · watch
  32. Ep. 259: Hawthorne - Young Goodman Brown pt. 1 — 3 mentions · watch from 01:02:29
  33. Ep. 319: Graff - Baalism in the Life of the Church — 3 mentions · watch from 00:53:02
  34. Ep. 333: Herzberger - The Family Altar at Christmas — 3 mentions · watch from 00:41:51
  35. Ep. 334: MacDonald - The Cause of Spiritual Stupidity — 3 mentions · watch from 00:03:46
  36. Ep. 346: Irenaeus - On the Passion — 3 mentions · watch
  37. Ep. 348: Martin Luther on the Prophet Habakkuk — 3 mentions · watch from 00:01:47
  38. Ep. 362: Olson - Putting Second Things Second — 3 mentions · watch from 00:10:12
  39. Ep. 367: Nestigen - Justification, Vocation, and Location in Luther's Reformation pt. 2 — 3 mentions · watch
  40. Ep. 428: Postman - A great narrative... has sufficient credibility, complexity, and symbolic power to enable one to organize one's life around it — 3 mentions · watch from 02:14:44