This time on The Tentative Apologist Podcast we sit down for a conversation with theologian Michael Hardin. Michael is a scholar who has studied the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Rene Girard and who also counts Girard as a personal friend.
Michael is also a visionary and activist, and together with his wife Lorri he founded the ministry Preaching Peace (http://www.preachingpeace.org/) which seeks to propagate the transformative power of the gospel of non-violence. Michael has spoken around the world as part of this ministry. He was also interviewed for the documentary “Hellbound?”
Michael is the author of several works including his important 2010 book The Jesus Driven Life which Greg Boyd lauds as “a clear and compelling vision” and Walter Wink praises as “a brilliant study” and a “magisterial synthesis”.
As I discovered in our wide-ranging conversation, Michael is provocative, iconoclastic, penetrating, disturbing, and always thought-provoking. Frustratingly, he doesn’t fit into the standard categories of “conservative” and “liberal”, and thus he resists easy classification. Whether you agree with him or not, I think everyone who engages him will find a challenging voice calling for peace in a world so often beset with violence and retribution.