Katie Langston grew up in a tradition where certainty was the point—where a missionary lesson literally stacked paper cups, prophets on the bottom and Jesus on top, and showed you that pulling any one of them brings the whole thing down.

In this solo episode, she makes a case that a lot of what people describe as losing their faith is something more specific: a loss of certainty.

The episode traces where the demand for certainty came from; why fundamentalism is a modern movement in anti-modern clothes; and why so few people still claim to have it.

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Chapters

00:00 Cold open: fast and testimony meeting
02:35 Jenga towers, Christmas lights, and a stack of paper cups
04:45 Pope, king, God: where the questions came from
06:45 Establishment, association, authenticity
08:40 Fundamentalism is a modern movement
12:55 Postmodernity in one sentence
14:45 A nine-year-old asks the postmodern question
17:15 What the Pew numbers actually show
18:50 Cross-pressure: Charles Taylor and C. S. Lewis
20:25 "I just miss being able to say I know"
22:20 Brueggemann: orientation, disorientation, reorientation
25:30 Embrace the questions, grieve, find people who can hold them
27:15 Scrupulosity, OCD, and accepting the risk
31:20 Hope and trust, not knowledge

Resources

• "God Invites Your Questions" — katielangston.com/podcast/god-invites-your-questions-grace-duddy-pomroy.
• "Am I Even Allowed to Think This?" — katielangston.com/podcast/am-i-even-allowed-to-think-this-jana-riess.
• "Were We Better Off Believing in Charms?" — katielangston.com/podcast/were-we-better-off-believing-in-charms-cristina-gagliano.
• "Who Gets to Tell You What's True?" — katielangston.com/podcast/who-gets-to-tell-you-whats-true.
• "Where Have All the Women Gone?" — katielangston.com/podcast/where-have-all-the-women-gone.
• Charles Taylor, A Secular Age*** (Belknap/Harvard, 2007)
• C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity*** (1952), Book III, ch. 11, "Faith"
• Walter Brueggemann (1933–2025), The Message of the Psalms** (Augsburg, 1984) and Spirituality of the Psalms* (Fortress, 2002)
• Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition*** (1979)
• Sealed: An Unexpected Journey into the Heart of Grace — Katie Langston. Second edition, 2026. katielangston.com/books/sealed-an-unexpected-journey-into-the-heart-of-grace
• Thirteen Lives (2022).