Conversations at the margins of faith. Excavations interviews scholars, survivors, and spiritual truth-tellers doing the work of recovering what religion buried: centering marginalized voices, bodies, and the theologies that were never supposed to survive. Hosted by Connie Chen.
On this episode of Excavations, I'm joined by Mattie Mae, PhD candidate at the University of St. Andrews and Bible scholar specializing in gender and sexuality in the New Testament. We talk about what "childlike faith" actually meant in the world Jesus lived, who gets called childlike and why, and how that same language has been used to infantilize disabled people in church spaces. We talk about Internal Family Systems therapy and what it looks like to do inner child work through an IFS lens,...
30 Aug 2026
The Sacred Erotic: A Threesome on Root Work
This Excavations episode is a threesome on the sacred erotic convened by Tamice. Connie sits down with Tamice and Gary to excavate the erotic as root work, as power, as what the body already knows. Audre Lorde said the erotic is power. This episode says Jesus is Lorde. Dr. Tamice Spencer-Helms Dr. Gary Green Support the show Topics: eroticism, spirituality, power, root work, feminine energy, kink, biblical stories, embodied spirituality, divine energy, liberation spirituality, authen...
9 May 2026
Faithful Without God: Marxism, Christianity, and Getting Free
What does it mean to live by Christian ethics without God at the center? What happens when Marxist theory meets the bars of Rikers Island, the wards of outpatient psychiatric care, and the walls of San Quentin? In this episode of Excavations, Connie sits down with Chris Alfonso (Jean-Paul Fartre), a Marxist scholar, organizer, and abolitionist, to trace the surprising theological architecture inside radical thought. They explore the structural parallels between Hegel's dialectic and Christian...
3 Apr 2026
Queer God, Queer Sex: A Conversation with Ciarra Jones on Bodies, Pleasure, and Divine Love
What happens when you stop apologizing for your body and start reading it as sacred text? In this episode of Excavations, I sit down with Ciarra Jones (@thegardeningtheologian) to talk about what it actually means to reclaim the body after religious trauma. We go deep on queer sexual ethics, the theology of pleasure, disability justice, Eve as liberator, and why so much of Christian tradition has needed us to stay at war with our own flesh. This is a conversation for anyone who grew up being ...
12 Mar 2026
The Shame Cycle: Sex, Sin, and Scripture
What happens when desire meets doctrine and neither will back down? In this episode of Excavations, Connie Chen sits down with Colten Barnaby for a wide-ranging, unfiltered conversation about the tangled roots of faith, sexuality, and identity. They dig into what it means to grow up Christian with a body full of desires you've been taught to distrust, how worshiping a male God shapes the way we relate to ourselves and others, and why shame doesn't just disappear when you leave the pew. From t...
5 Mar 2026
Hospicing Whiteness: Learning How to Die So We Can Live
Join Connie Chen and Dr. Tamice Spencer-Helms for a rich conversation exploring hospice work as a powerful metaphor for helping whiteness face its own death and transformation. Together, we reflect on the sacred interconnectedness of birth and death, the vital role of embodiment in spiritual practice, and the possibility of resurrection that emerges when we embrace grief, ritual, and our shared humanity. In this episode, we explore: How the disembodiment of whiteness disconnects us from ourse...
4 Jun 2020
Episode 2: 8:46
From the perspective of an Asian American artist, I explore the Instagram blackout designed to prompt reflection and amplify black voices after the death of George Floyd. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, please consider leaving a review here on iTunes and supporting me on https://www.patreon.com/conniechen If you would like to suggest topics for future episodes or send in comments, please email excavationspodcast@gmail.com • Website: https://www.connie-chen.com • Instag...
25 May 2020
Episode 1: Unclaimed Bodies
Welcome to the inaugural episode of Excavations, where I share my response to a photo I stumbled upon on April 9th, 2020 and have not been able to look away from since. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, please consider leaving a review here on iTunes and supporting me on https://www.patreon.com/conniechen. If you would like to suggest topics for future episodes or send in comments, please email excavationspodcast@gmail.com Website: www.connie-chen.com Instagram: https:/...
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