we trace the faith that built this place, broke this place, and might yet be the thing that heals it.
Season 3 of the underview traces the faith that built Northwest Arkansas, from frontier revivals to megachurches, from the invisible church of enslaved people to the Spanish-language masses reshaping our region today.
This season asks hard questions about religion as both meaning and power. Circuit riders crossed 600 miles to preach personal transformation. Cumberland Presbyterians established Cain Hill a decade before Arkansas was even a state. But religion also watched as indigenous nations were removed, split congregations over slavery, and enforced the color line at its front doors. In hush harbors, enslaved people found in the same Bible a different gospel, one of liberation, and built a cathedral of resistance.
We explore how what we believe about God shapes what we believe about each other, and how Sunday’s message becomes Monday’s action. This is the faith that built this place, broke this place, and might yet be the thing that heals it.
Arkansas leads the nation in Christian nationalism. Sociologist Andrew Whitehead, author of Taking America Back for God and American Idolatry, defines the framework, traces its history, and names what to listen for in our pews, schools, and civic life.
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the underview co-hosts answer a season of critique from both directions, explain the method behind twenty five faith conversations, play five unnamed Northwest Arkansas pulpits they would not interview, and name what they kept running into. White Christian nationalism, and what comes next.
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Every tradition this season put faith at the center. A Vietnamese Buddhist nun in Fayetteville does not. Sư Cô Janna Panna on why faith ends in wisdom, the debt of gratitude she owes strangers, the hand-built statue of compassion on Crossover Road, and why compassion is a verb.
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A Springdale pastor who is working for a Christian nation from his own pulpit lays out the vision with rare candor. Ben Gibson of Phillips Chapel Free Will Baptist on free grace, family discipleship, and what a nation brought back to Christ would ask of Northwest Arkansas.
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A Fayetteville faith leader on what it cost to open one door. John Ray of Vine & Branch Church on losing 90% of his congregation over women in ministry and LGBTQ inclusion, naming White Christian Nationalism in Northwest Arkansas, grief, and why he would do it again.
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Inside Bentonville's Hindu temple with chief priest Swamiji Venugopala Swami Gattu. Vedic teaching, the word Hindu, Om, Holi and Deepavali, belonging in the Bible Belt, and a definition of wholeness that begins with the soul. Northwest Arkansas faith, season three.
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A Colombian church movement born from American evangelism returns to the Ozarks. Pastor Alejandro Rojas of Iglesia CENTI Arkansas on teoterapia, healing, Spanish-language faith, deportation touching his congregation, and belonging in Northwest Arkansas.
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Listeners take the mic: mutual aid lost in rural Ozark churches, a door opened at a Bentonville mosque, the cost of standing early, Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris on the prophetic middle, and what holds when the poles move. Faith in Northwest Arkansas, in your voices.
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Fellowship Bible Church started in a Bentonville living room in 1983 with seven couples and a year in the book of Acts. Pastor Mark Schatzman on welcome versus belonging, following your people into ministry, and the hubris hiding inside a bike trail he didn't build.
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Rev. Ashley Mathews of Christ the King Anglican Church on planting an ancient tradition in Northwest Arkansas: liturgy, the via media, and what belonging costs in a region growing faster than it can explain itself.
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A Bentonville minister with a doctorate in economics and the Bible on what scripture really says about money, work, and enough. The Disciples of Christ open table, the prosperity gospel, charity versus justice, and faith a mile from the world's largest company.
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Part 2, Shahid Sheikh, president of the Bentonville Islamic Center, shares the story of NWA's Muslim community, from garage prayers to a food pantry serving all, and what Islam actually teaches about belonging, economics, and mercy.
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Part 1, Shahid Sheikh, president of the Bentonville Islamic Center, shares the founding story of NWA's Muslim community, the five pillars of Islam, and what it means to build belonging in a place that didn't have a mosque twenty years ago.
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A small Arkansas church, planted in 1843, belongs to one of the oldest and least-known traditions of American Protestantism. Elder Tom Griffin and Deacon Paul Lindsey on Primitive Baptist faith, and a church built to endure rather than grow.
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Pastor Gary Wheat of the Assembly in Siloam Springs explores 24 years of leading an Assemblies of God church born on Arkansas soil, rootedness, hope, community service, and faith across traditions in NWA.
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the underview sits with Walton Family Foundation Home Region Director Robert Burns on the 2030 strategy, belonging, and faith in Northwest Arkansas.
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Minister Marshall Brown of Flagstone Church of Christ in Bentonville explores what it means to be "the least Church of Christ church" and whether that's a departure from the Restoration Movement or a return to its radical origins.
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A Southern Baptist pastor in Greenland, Arkansas on getting too close to the fire of political power, the work of repair after a church divides, the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation, and what the SBC tradition looks like when it's pastoring a place.
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Pastor Jonathan Lowder Sr. of The Historic St. James Missionary Baptist Church in Fayetteville on faith, belonging, the prophetic tradition, and what Northwest Arkansas owes the people who don't yet have a place here.
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Retired pastor Darrel Harvey on forty years in ministry, a life that fell apart, and the permission to doubt. A Northwest Arkansas conversation about faith, belonging, certainty, and wholeness, and why it's hard to follow Jesus inside a superpower's civic religion.
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Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris on FUMC Bentonville's 193-year history from slavery to inclusion, her call to ministry through tragedy, and the Methodist tradition of being handed a community and told to love them.
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Rev. Evan Garner of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Fayetteville explores what it means to belong before you believe, reckon with a history of enslavement, and build a parish where wholeness means all of the people. Not most. All.
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Father Jason Tyler traces 180 years of Catholic life in NW Arkansas from 1847 baptisms of enslaved people to a multilingual congregation of 2,100+ families. A conversation about solidarity, immigration, and belonging at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Fayetteville.
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Historian Rachel Whitaker reveals the KKK's deep integration with 1920s Northwest Arkansas church culture, traces the line from frontier social enforcement to organized violence, and lifts up stories of congregations that chose welcome over exclusion, including one tied to the Little Rock Nine.
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Historian Rachel Whitaker traces faith's arrival in NWA from the 1820s through the Civil War revealing how early churches functioned as institutions of social control, how denominations fractured over slavery, and how enslaved people built congregations as acts of resistance.
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Monica Kumar joins as co-host of Season 3 of the underview, "the faith of Northwest Arkansas." This episode is Monica's story and how she views faith, belonging, and how place is shaped by what people believe.
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A framing for the faith of Northwest Arkansas. Five words the season is built on faith, religion, theology, church, and why discernment begins with holding the terms apart, and what this season is and isn't asking.
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Season 3 explores how faith has shaped Northwest Arkansas. From circuit riders to megachurches, hush harbors to City Councils. This opening episode gives a beginning point of to view religion as both a system of meaning and power.
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in this third season of the underview, the faith of Northwest Arkansas, we trace the faith that built this place, broke this place, and might yet be the thing that heals it.
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