► Listen on Amazon
► Listen on Apple
► Listen on Spotify
► Listen on YouTube
You can find previous episodes of “The Stone Chapel Podcast” at Lanier Theological Library.
“The Stone Chapel Podcast” is part of the ChurchLeaders Podcast Network.
This episode has been edited for clarity and space.
Melissa Cain Travis
Hi. I am Dr. Melissa Cain Travis, Assistant Professor of Christian Apologetics at Houston Christian University.
David Capes
Dr. Melissa Cain Travis, Melissa, good to see you. Welcome.
Melissa Cain Travis
Thank you. I’m glad to be here.
David Capes
This is your first appearance on the podcast. We always like to introduce people to our listeners on the podcast. So, for people who don’t know Melissa Cain Travis, who is she?
Melissa Cain Travis
I am an Assistant Professor of Christian Apologetics at Houston Christian University. I’m newly back after being away for five years. I taught here before for about seven years, and now I’m back and very happy to be so. My husband and I have lived in Texas since 1999. We moved here as newlyweds, and we have loved Texas, and that’s why we decided to stay. We’re originally from North Carolina. We have two grown sons. One is 19, and one about to turn 22, He is a senior at Sam Houston State, studying software engineering. And then our younger is now doing an apprenticeship with his dad. They are Lamborghini mechanics.
David Capes
Lamborghini mechanics! Wow, that’s highly specialized.
Melissa Cain Travis
Yes, it is very specialized, and they love it. We have a cat named Johannes Kepler! He’s a big, fluffy Maine Coon, black and white kitty named after my intellectual hero.
David Capes
You’re co-writing a book entitled. “The Reconstruction Project: Recovering Truth and Rebuilding Faith.” It’s an exciting project. Who’s your co-author?
Melissa Cain Travis
My co-author is Dr. Andrew Ike Shepardson. He lives in the Denver area, and then a friend of ours, Dr. Doug Groothuis, wrote the foreword for our project, and we were very honored by that.
David Capes
I ask everybody if they’ve written a book, or they’re writing a book, the big idea, the thesis, of the book. So what’s the big idea of the book?
Melissa Cain Travis
I guess the big idea is that the apologetics conversation has changed a lot over the past decade. Decade and a half. Ike and I have both observed this. We’ve gone from having to respond to the so-called “New Atheism” arguments for the existence of God. The “New Atheist” arguments were all about how there was no good evidence for the existence of God, or all religion is evil, or what have you. And now the conversation has turned more towards questions about the goodness of the Christian faith.
People are seeking meaning, value and purpose in their lives, and some of them have become more open to asking spiritual questions. And Ike and I are both convinced, as are a lot of our associates in the apologetics world, more broadly speaking, that the conversation really needs to adapt and place more emphasis on those kinds of topics, meaning of life, happiness, things like that.
David Capes
If you were teaching apologetics today, and you were just doing the old questions, you would not be up to, what’s happening in culture.
Melissa Cain Travis
I wouldn’t say that some of those topics aren’t still very important. And obviously my specialty is science and faith, and I still very much believe we need to be prepared to answer questions about the intersection of science, faith and philosophy. People still have those kinds of objections. I just think that the questions we’re hearing more frequently and the questions that matter most to us as human creatures are not those types of questions.
We’re looking for spiritual fulfillment. All of us are by virtue of being made in the image of God. Those related topics are the ones that I tried to emphasize in the book, while also pulling in topics that are what you might call classical apologetics. Topics like the harmony of science and faith and things like that.
Ike having skills as a pastor, has brought in a beautiful pastoral tone to our chapters, and we’ve both contributed intellectual rigor to the topics. And our hope is that the book will serve seminary students and university students in a classroom in a context where they may only get one book, one textbook on Christian apologetics. I won’t call it a complete one-stop shop, but it is comprehensive enough and treats the topics at a depth sufficient for someone to have confidence and having conversations around the 12 topics that we treat.
David Capes
The book is not yet published as of the time of this recording. When will it be published?
Melissa Cain Travis
The release date is February 1, 2026.
David Capes
Good. Let’s go ahead and go over those 12 topics you were talking about. I bet you there’ll be several that have a hook in them for whoever’s listening right now.
Melissa Cain Travis
Yes. this is a book that we intended to be used in a classroom, and so one thing we tried very hard to do with the topics that we cover is make them stand alone. If you are someone looking to adopt a textbook for a course, if you’re a Christian layperson who wants to learn more about these topics, you don’t have to read the chapters in order. We love that. If there are just a couple of these topics that are pressing for you right now because you’re in an evangelistic conversation with a friend or a family member, then the book will serve you well. You don’t have to pick it up and read it cover to cover to be
prepared on that topic. So, you could do chapter by chapter, and don’t have to read them in order.
All of our chapters are phrased as an objection to the Christian faith.
- Chapter one is, “Christianity Is Unnecessary for a Good, Meaningful Life?”
- Objection number two, “God and Human Suffering Are Incompatible.”
- Number three, “Christians Are Hypocrites.”
- Number four, “Christian Ministries Are Abusive.”
- Number five, “Christianity As Misogynistic.”
- Number six, “Christians Want to Control Women’s Bodies.”
- Number seven, “Christianity’s Intolerance Has Spawned Violent Crusades and Inquisitions.”
- Number eight, “Christianity Is Colonialist.”
- Number nine, “Christianity Is Anti-LGBTQ.”
- Number 10, “Christianity Has Obstructed Scientific Progress.”
- Number 11, “Christianity Is Anti-Science.”
- And number 12, “Evolutionary Theory Has Ruled Out a Creator.”
David Capes
So why did you state these as objections?
Melissa Cain Travis
Because of the general ethos of the book. We’re calling it the reconstruction project, especially to appeal to those who may be going through what’s popularly known now as a deconstruction journey. Or those who have had a deconstruction journey in the past, but now they’re inching their way back towards questions surrounding religious faith. These are objections. Because when you hear these stories, or you read memoirs from people who have left Christianity behind, that’s the kind of phrasing we hear. Often, that’s how they frame their reasons. They say, these are the objections I had, and no one had good responses. And so bit by bit, my faith deconstructed.
David Capes
A lot of college students go off with faith, and they find a professor, they find somebody that loves to deconstruct, but they don’t help them do the reconstruction. They love to tear things down, but they’re not very helpful about what do we put in this place? Or do we put nothing in this place? Or is it just all up for grabs?
Melissa Cain Travis
I agree, and that is even happening at universities that identify themselves as Christian universities. I was an undergrad from 1995 to 1999 and I studied at a Christian liberal arts institution. My professors at the time, were all conservative Christian believers. But I even remember having fellow students that began to wrestle with their faith. For instance, in the “Canon and Criticism” class, they would hear things that they had never heard before, and that really shook their understanding of what Scripture is, for example. But exactly as you’re saying, these professors didn’t help them come out of the class with a cohesive and confident view of Scripture. They just said, let’s tear it apart and look at all the different
theories for how we ended up with a Canon, for example.
David Capes
You’re asking a lot of socially conscious kinds of questions?
Melissa Cain Travis
Those are first and foremost in the minds of a lot of people, especially those who are Christians, who have family members struggling with things like sexual orientation and gender identity. Or who are really persuaded by arguments coming out of the field known as critical theory. I should say, philosophy known as critical theory, and are just at a loss for how to have those kinds of conversations.
But then also people on the outside of the faith who are looking at Christianity. And have these deep-seated misunderstandings about what it is Christians believe and Christian attitudes towards them based on whatever community that they identify with socially.
David Capes
You begin with the statement “Christianity is really irrelevant to having a meaningful, purposeful, good life.” You begin there because that seems to be a very prevalent kind of question. We talked early about a course at Yale. Tell us about that.
Melissa Cain Travis
Yes. In the history of Yale University, at the time we wrote the book, was on happiness. It held the record for the most well-attended class in all of Yale University’s history. That demonstrates that the idea that there could be a way to learn how to be happy struck a massive chord with these university-age students. From that all sorts of publications, websites, books and even a scientific field emerged called “The Science of Happiness”. This goes to show that this is a deep-seated need among humanity. Believers and non-believers alike are drawn to that which they believe gives their life meaning, value and purpose. And so, I wanted that chapter to be first and foremost, because I think everyone can relate to these existential angst issues.
David Capes
At Harvard, they’ve started this Human Flourishing Project, which I think is adjacent to what you’ve just described here, because the language of flourishing and human flourishing is all over the Academy right now.
