Description

Danny Bryant joins Will to discuss his book Unless a Seed Falls to the Ground: Welcoming the Death of the Whiteness Gospel. Part memoir, part theological critique, Danny's work traces his journey from growing up in a fundamentalist cult to becoming a pastor who now practices what he calls "hospice ministry", allowing cancerous forms of American Christianity to die.

In this deeply personal conversation, Danny shares about:

• Growing up as a "misfit among misfits" in a cult that prided itself on exclusion
• How patterns of control and superiority infected even "mainstream" churches he encountered
• His reimagined TULIP framework diagnosing the cancer of white American Christianity
• Why he believes certain forms of faith need to die—not be reformed
• The difference between violent destruction and the natural death that leads to new life
• What it means to "side with the seeds" in our current moment
• How his own motivation for ministry evolved from anger at harm to being grounded in love
• What St. Mary of Bethany Parish looks like as a "field hospital" for the spiritually wounded

Danny draws on voices like James Baldwin, Howard Thurman, Willie James Jennings, and Abraham Joshua Heschel to imagine what might grow after the death of Christianity-as-empire. This is a conversation about grief, hope, and the spacious places that await us when we stop clinging to what needs to die.

About Danny Bryant: Danny Bryant is a pastor and priest at St. Mary of Bethany Parish in Nashville, Tennessee, where he also offers spiritual direction. He lives with his wife Rebecca, their four children, and several pets.

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