What Part of You Has Come Here to Die? Recovering a Wild Christianity with Martin Shaw

2026-03-10

“What part of you has come here to die?” It’s a question that Martin Shaw—one of our great living storytellers—is famous for asking. Shaw offers these kinds of provocations to a Western world where Christianity has largely been domesticated and desperately needs to recover its wildness. Prayer doesn’t feel real to you? Rip up a twenty-dollar bill every time you pray. On your phone too much? Smash it with a hammer. Have something you need to confess but are afraid to tell another living soul? Dig a “confessional hole” in the ground with your bare hands and shout it into the earth. In this episode of A Commitment to Reality, Shaw joins Dave Hanegraaff to explore how to recover a wild Christianity in a world where faith for many has become cold, abstract, and domesticated. Thank you for joining A Commitment to Reality, hosted by Dave Hanegraaff. Follow A Commitment to Reality wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube for full episodes + clips: https://www.youtube.com/@ACommitmenttoReality (Timestamps below.) 0:00 — Intro / Friends in Common Recovering Wild Christianity 2:20 — Belief is cool again—Atheism is for old people 3:45 — Aesthetic Arrest 6:45 — You don’t want persona, you want presence 8:00 — Make a covenant with limit in a culture of excess 13:55 — Growing up the son of a preacher man 17:15 — The cost of becoming religious 23:05 — What is myth? (And why is it not what we think?) 27:30 — On Sectarian Christianity 30:00 — Theology without practice is the theology of demons 31:35 — Night vigils and reclaiming initiation rites 35:50 — What part of you has come to die? 42:15 — His home burned down—Discussion of losing everything. 45:00 — What is a saint? 46:35 — Death — how can we breathe new life into death? 50:40 — The value of a good cry 53:45 — How to tell our stories differently 56:00 — On your phone too much? Smash it 57:10 — Struggling with prayer? Rip up money when you pray 59:20 — Confessional holes—dig a hole with your hands and confess into the earth 1:00:40 — In a world that feels unreal, what feels real? 1:02:30 — Johnny Cash had a Boy Named Sue. Glen Hansard has a Boy Named Grace: Dave tells the story of naming his son Grace.