MARSCAST

302. Trad Wives, Feminist Churches, and the Jesus Who Transcends Both

Critics call the Bible misogynistic. Some point to the Gnostic Gospels as the "real" feminist Jesus. But Dr. Andrew Compton argues that the canonical Jesus, the actual Jesus, treated women in ways so countercultural that Christianity attracted more women than men across the Roman Empire. In this episode of MarsCast, we examine what the Gospels reveal about Jesus' heart for women: how he taught them, healed them, protected them, and elevated them as moral exemplars, and what a troubling passage in Deuteronomy tells us about God's posture toward women all along. Plus, Dr. Compton exposes the twin errors pulling churches in opposite directions: a leftward drift into intersectional categories and a rightward retreat into a "biblical womanhood" that looks suspiciously like suburban North American culture with a Proverbs 31 verse attached.

301. From Liberation to Disappointment: Tracing the Feminist Arc

Millions of women were promised that liberation would bring fulfillment, so why are so many of them exhausted, angry, and searching for something more? In this first episode of a three-part series, host Jared Luttjeboer sits down with Dr. Andrew Compton, professor of Old Testament at Mid-America Reformed Seminary, to trace the arc of feminist ideology from the Industrial Revolution through today's intersectional moment, and to ask a question the culture rarely entertains: what if feminism itself is the source of women's disappointment? This isn't a conversation about women's ordination or culture-war point-scoring, but a pastoral and historical reckoning with what women have been told will make them happy, and why it hasn't.

300. Steady As She Goes: Faithful Politics Across a Lifetime

Every generation believes its political moment is the worst in history, and every generation is partly right. But what if the real crisis isn't the news cycle, but our inability to outlast it? For its 300th episode, MarsCast closes out its series on political exhaustion and the church with a fittingly long-view conversation: Dr. Alan Strange, president of Mid-America Reformed Seminary, draws on decades of lived history, from the cultural upheaval of the '60s to the gender revolution of today, to offer something rarer than political analysis: perspective. He and host Jared Luttjeboer explore how ordinary Christians can cultivate a "steady as she goes" rhythm of faithfulness that spans decades rather than despair-fueled news cycles. The answer, it turns out, is older and quieter than anything trending online.

299. The Church and Political Formation

In this third episode of our series on political exhaustion and the church, host Jared Luttjeboer presses Dr. Alan Strange on the most practical question yet: how should the local church shape how their people think about politics during ordinary times so they're not starting from scratch every election season, already entrenched and already tired? Dr. Strange argues that proactive discipleship means resisting two temptations at once: the urge to baptize a political platform as the Christian position, and the impulse to fight the culture war on the world's own terms. The church that waits for election season to address politics will always be playing catch-up. Tune in to hear what faithful, formative engagement actually looks like, and why the algorithm will never give your congregation what the church alone can.

298. What Political Exhaustion Reveals About Our Theology

When Christians treat election results or political victories like theological verdicts, something has gone wrong, but what? In this episode of Marscast, Jared Luttjeboer sits down with Dr. Alan Strange to diagnose the deeper theological fractures hiding beneath political exhaustion. The Reformed tradition has always offered a richer answer than either Christian nationalism or quiet withdrawal, and that answer begins with recovering the distinction between optimism and hope. If you've ever felt spiritually hollowed out by a news cycle, this conversation will be for you.