This week Paul reacts to the presidential election. He outlines his feelings about it, as well as what he thinks we need to be doing between now and January 20th, when Donald Trump will be inaugurated into his 2nd term. He'd love your feedback, particularly about how we can be prepared to combat whatever may be coming that infringes on basic human rights, democracy, and freedom.

This week Paul welcomes his friends and fellow seminarians Kari Niedermaier and Matthew David Morris on the pod. They discuss the election, how their varying spiritualities inform their views on the present and possible future state of the US post-election, and what it means to simply be a human in this time and space. We hope you find this conversation as enriching as they did being a part it!

In a late drop, this week Paul looks at the one-man-show All The Devils Are Here as a way of exploring humanity's potential for evil. Patrick Page's show All The Devils Are Here traces how Shakespeare created "the villain", but also looks at our own potential for it. None of us exempt. So how do we approach evil, deal with it, and understand how people get there?

In this episode Paul breaks down Rainn Wilson's book Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution. Rainn Wilson is most famous for playing Dwight Schrute on the TV show The Office, and in 2023 he published Soul Boom, which has led to his podcast of the same title. Rainn Wilson is a deeply spiritual person, and has some great thoughts on how vital an authentic and robust spirituality may be to healing our nation's and world's ills. In this episode, Paul talks about the book, why what Rainn Wilson is getting at is so important, and invites us into the movement.

This week Paul looks into Pastor and US Senator Raphael Warnock's idea that a vote is "like a kind of prayer". Is it? Perhaps yes, but also maybe not so much. Here Paul unpacks that metaphor a bit, while also naming just how important it is to vote. Are you registered to vote? Get registered at www.vote.gov.

This week Paul goes back. Way back, exploring how historical events in the Christian Church's history still ring through today and why that may just be at the root of its struggles. What happens when the empire get baptized?

This week's text is the story of The Passover, and because of that Paul takes a deep dive into the problematic way that Christendom appropriates this story on Easter. In it Paul also calls his fellow Christians to look at and listen to their hymns, theologies, doctrines, and liturgies with a more critical eye, particularly as they pertain to Christian supersessionism and antisemitism.

As we approach the one year anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel and Israel's ongoing subsequent response, this week Paul uses the story of Joseph, his brothers, his grandfather, and his great grandfather Abraham to take a raw, unanswered, and frustrated look into Israel, Gaza, islamophobia, and antisemitism, and Christianity's role in all of it.