Hi, thanks for stopping by 🖐🏼

I'm convinced that for our world to survive, let alone thrive, we'll need a better theological story, something more dynamic than dogmatic, more flexible than fixed, and more consensual than coercive.

In short, we need a better story about love.

Telling a better story means approaching love differently than we have in the past. The old Einstein adage has never been more true: "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." 👈🏼

And that is why I'm on Substack (why I podcast, lead, and teach, too) … I'm trying to re-invigorate thinking around love. In doing so, I'm going to leverage the insight I've found in mimetic theory and open and relational theology.

I hope to help you reason (and give you reasons) to consider love as an uncontrolling, non-violent, non-binary, non-scapegoating energy in relationship with the divine and the world that's meant for flourishing.

Although a caveat comes with my idea of flourishing: my definition of the word contains “lack.” Look, you’re not going to get the thing you want, not exactly. Desire doesn’t work that way. Wanting is fueled by the not having. It’s the lack that produces the energy. So, flourishing isn’t necessarily happiness, completeness, achieving, or filling the gap with anything (including with God); no, the depth of flourishing allows lack to be with you on the journey of love.

Yep, those two paragraphs are both my working definition and my working motivation.

Things You Could Say About Me

I'm a father, husband, lowercase-t theologian, podcaster, with a doctorate in theology, the un-executive executive director of thecurian.network, co-founder of lovehaiti.org, and the author of a few books.

I've spent much of my life as a pastor, and honestly, I still tend to think of myself that way, despite the reality that my former denomination asked me to "surrender my credentials" over my insistence that we treat LGTBQ+ human beings with dignity and grace. This was a vocational watershed moment in my life—absurd and unfortunate, but also … I was honored to play a small role in helping further the story of love.

And since we're saying things about me (and love), well, nothing is more relevant than pointing out that our girl died on New Year's Day, 2015. So, for good or for bad, my theology will always be filtered through the shadow of losing a twenty-year-old daughter. (Again, the “lack.”) 💔

When I'm not writing, I'm usually hiking, wrestling my two-year-old granddaughter (she's the coolest), or raising money for and interacting with my friends at lovehaiti.org, a nonprofit we founded ten years ago to help Haitians with healthcare, education, and wealth creation.

Things Others Have Said About My Writing

After reading indigo: the color of grief, Brian McLaren said, "Jonathan's writing is heart-breaking, heart-opening, and heart-expanding,” and David P. Gushee said “indigo’s theological frame is exactly right in its resistance to Christian cliches and openness to meaning.” Jim Palmer said my writing is "helping people metabolize toxic theology." Oh, and my sister Nancy said my writing is good.

Free subscribers have access to

• The world's first Substack attempt at blending René Girard's scapegoating theory with open and relational theology.

• Compelling insights into anthropology, theology, grief, lack, an open future, and the nature of love.

• Opportunity to give feedback on early iterations of my writing.

• General news and updates about my speaking schedule.

• And sketches that my wife almost never think are funny.

Paid subscribers receive all free content plus

• Access to me on zoom, once a month. Most often, I engage with people around one of three subjects:

  • theology (i.e., deconstruction and reconstruction of faith as informed by mimetic theory and open and relational theology).

  • writing (i.e., assessing a manuscript, creative or theological development ideas, publishing overview).

  • supporting pastors as they and/or their churches go through theological change.

• A free pdf of indigo: the color of grief (or any of my books). Oh, and please make sure to reach out to me after subscribing if you haven’t received something.

• Advanced reader copies of future material.

• Opportunity to participate in book clubs.

• Opportunity to join in periodic zoom group discussions.

• Extra audio and video clips from the podcast.

• And an immeasurable amount of warmth and fuzziness for supporting this creative work that I'm doing. ♥️

Thanks everyone and all my best,
Jonathan
(jonathanfosteronline.com)

AI Disclosure

I used to have a few lines here about AI, but technology changes so fast that it’s almost impossible to cover all the bases. I think what I’ll say is this: Depending on the project I’m working on, I’ll use Grammarly and/or Claude. I don’t ask it to write for me. That doesn’t really make sense; however, I do use it for research and grammar. In my fiction, I’ve been using it to help me locate weak verbs and also for language translation, as the story I’m currently writing has a lot of Spanish in it. Things like that. Yes, it’s helpful. No, it’s not going to write better than me anytime soon. One day? Maybe, who knows? Look, no one knows what the future holds. Literally. We’re making the road as we walk it, so I would say yes, be cautious with technology, but also that the technology-ship has already sailed. There are scary things, and there are good things in life. Meanwhile, love is with us. Always. And AI is changing so much that that’s about all I can tell you.