Breakwater Festival is an annual three‑day Estuary gathering designed to offer a respite from the turbulent tides of online exchange. Inspired by influential thinkers such as Paul Van der Klay, Jonathan Pageau, and John Vervaeke, the Estuary movement has sparked a vibrant, ongoing conversation that fosters honest dialogue, shared meaning‑making, and community building. While these conversations have flourished online, Breakwater Festival seeks to bring them into embodied, real‑world contexts by partnering with local Estuary groups to host interactive, in‑person gatherings. In doing so, we aim to create true harbors for meaningful conversation, collective sensemaking, and deep, lasting connection rooted in local communities.
FESTIVAL THEME:
Cross Pollination: Conversing Across Religious Lines
Cross‑pollination plays a pivotal role in increasing the resilience, quality, and yield of crops. At this year’s Breakwater Festival, we explore how this dynamic plays out when beliefs encounter diversity. In an increasingly pluralistic world, how should we approach religious questions across difference? Does exchange deepen and strengthen what we hold sacred—or introduce tensions that diminish it? How do we discern when encounter builds resilience, and when it risks changing something essential? This festival invites us into that shared space: where difference is not avoided but engaged with honesty, curiosity, and care. Where encounter can both challenge and renew; and where something new may emerge.
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Paul Vander Klay
Paul Vander Klay is a Christian Reformed pastor, speaker, and online content creator known for his thoughtful engagement with philosophy, theology, and culture. He is also the Initiator of the Estuary Movement. His life and work is dedicated to navigating the fields of faith, meaning, secularism, and the intersection of religion with modern intellectual life.
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Jared Smith
Jared Smith is a one-man metal band, a YouTuber, and an atheist who loves religion. Composing and filming under the moniker Heliocentric, Jared has released three albums and dozens of documentary-style videos, amassing millions of views on his Atheist Church Audit series. He holds two degrees in theology — one of which was likely scribbled in crayon — and challenges his nearly 100,000 subscribers to deepen their understanding of and expand their empathy for the religious communities around them.
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Nathan Jacobs
Nathan A. Jacobs, Ph.D., is an artist turned scholar turned writer/producer/director. His newly published book, "Leibniz, Classical Theism, and the Problem of Evil: Why Classical Theism Must Affirm That Our World is the Best of All Possible Worlds" (Routledge Studies in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy), represents his latest scholarly contribution to the field. Jacobs film work includes KILLING POE (2016), BECOMING TRULY HUMAN (2017), and of HOUSE OF DAVID (2025), the $100M Amazon Studios Original biblical epic series.
ALSO FEATURING:
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Joseph Folley
Joe Folley is a writer and YouTuber who runs the channel Unsolicited Advice, where he explores ideas drawn from philosophy and related fields. He studied at the University of Cambridge, completing his BA in 2021 and his MPhil in 2022. His academic interests include Epistemic Logic and the Divine Hiddenness Problem, topics that reflect his broader engagement with questions about knowledge, belief, and religion.
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Elizabeth Oldfield
Elizabeth Oldfield is the host of The Sacred podcast and the author of Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times. A former Director and now Senior Fellow of the think tank Theos, Elizabeth is also Chair of Larger Us, supporting change‑makers to bridge divides and transform relationships. She appears regularly across major media including BBC television and radio, the World Service, The Financial Times, and The New York Times.
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Glen Scrivener
Glen Scrivener is a speaker, writer and ordained minister. He serves as the Director of Speak Life in the UK, an evangelistic ministry that seeks, through preaching and media, to captivate both church and world with the love of Jesus. He is a YouTuber, podcaster, the author of ten books including the award-winning The Air We Breathe, and he is the creator and presenter of the digital evangelism course 321
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Justin Brierely
Justin Brierley is a writer, speaker and broadcaster, known for hosting conversations between Christians and non-Christians on radio, podcast and video.
He is director of the media company ‘Think Faith’ and currently co-hosts the Re-Enchanting podcast and is the creator of the award-winning Surprising Rebirth Of Belief in God podcast documentary series and the faith debate show ‘Uncommon Ground’. Justin is married to Lucy, a church minister in Surrey, England and they have 4 amazing children.
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Naomi Brehem
Naomi Brehm is a speaker and thinker, a former dancer and novice poet. She
co-hosts the Speak Life Podcast, seeking clarity through conversations in the intersection of modern life and Christian faith. Following a Masters in Physics, Naomi trained with OCCA The Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics and now works part-time with Speak Life while studying Theology. She has been speaking at churches, schools and universities across the UK and internationally for 14 years, her poetry has featured on Radio 4 and her favourite things in life are offline or outdoors. Normally both.
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Nemo the Mormon
Nemo the Mormon is a British content creator and commentator known for his thoughtful analysis of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Through his widely followed YouTube channel, he explores church history, doctrine, and contemporary issues with a clear, evidence-based approach. His work encourages open, respectful dialogue around faith, doubt, and institutional accountability, making him a prominent voice in conversations about belief and reform in modern religious communities.
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Bethel McGrew
Bethel McGrew, Ph.D., is a failed mathematician and former high school teacher turned writer. She has been featured in a smattering of outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, First Things and The Critic and maintains a Substack with a modest following. Her writing on Jordan Peterson and C. S. Lewis has appeared in essay anthologies from Lexham Press and Davenant. Her work centers on religion, politics, philosophy, the arts and whatever else she randomly feels like holding forth about. She is committed to helping her readers unite prose and passion. She also tweets. A lot.
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Nate Morgan Locke
Nate is a filmmaker, preacher and “Reformed Mythologist”, known for teaching on storytelling, theology and creativity. He has degrees in Theology and Literature from the University of London, and an MDiv from Westminster, Philadelphia. Nate has written and directed multiple short film series for Christianity Explored and Speak Life, and makes videos on YouTube and Instagram. He grew up in Narnia and has seen the world as a fairy story
ever since.
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Cassidy van der Kamp
Cassidy is an American filmmaker, YouTube creator, and event organizer based out of the Netherlands. She is best known as the founder of the Breakwater Festival. As the driving force behind Breakwater, she has helped create a space that brings together thinkers, creators, and seekers for in-person dialogue and collective sense making. She sits at the intersection of independent media and grassroots event-building, with a focus on cultivating environments
where deep conversation and authentic
engagement can flourish.
