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PODCAST

Complexified

Institute of Religion Politics and Culture, Amanda Henderson, Iliff School of Theology

For too long we have avoided talking about religion and politics. But the truth is, religion and politics are about daily life. When we avoid the hard topics connected to religion and politics, we become stuck in the status quo. On Complexified we dive into the places where religion and politics collide with real-life, so we can get unstuck- so we can make real change. We dive into our most entrenched problems to better understand the hidden histories and experiences of real people on the front

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All Episodes

36:20

Spiritual Readiness, Pentagon-Style: Who Measures a...

Complexified ·

2026/10/05

Soldiers are trained for physical combat. But war also confronts them with death, killing, grief, guilt and questions of meaning.The military has long employed chaplains to care for those needs—across religious traditions and for service members with no religion at all. Now Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says that system needs more power. He has created an Office of Religious Affairs with what he calls “real teeth.” Its director will report directly to him, oversee funding and policy, and

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33:18

The Rise Of The Jim Crow Theobros

Complexified ·

2026/09/28

Across YouTube, podcasts and church conferences, a new group of pastors and influencers is promoting an openly racist and baldly antisemitic vision of Christian America. They present themselves not as extremists, but as respectable religious leaders defending truths that others are afraid to say. Today, RNS reporter Bob Smietana takes us inside this emerging movement—who these men are, what they believe, and why these old ideas are finding new life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit

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35:14

The Texas Sharia Panic: How a Rallying Cry Became a...

Complexified ·

2026/09/21

Republican leaders across Texas are repeatedly warning that Sharia is an urgent threat to the state- making it a rallying cry as we head into the midterm elections. The Muslim community, who has long stayed quiet, is now organizing and speaking out.Today: how the drumbeat of Islamophobic language became school curriculum, and how the small population of Muslim Texans begins to use American strategies- to work for their place in Texas. To understand what is happening in Texas we are joined by RNS

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24:30

Bratwurst and Beer: How the Far Right Replaced...

Complexified ·

2026/09/14

A state in Germany has seen the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party win nearly 44% of the vote—making it the state’s largest party and bringing it within three seats of a governing majority.While Catholic and Protestant churches had been prominent opponents of AfD in this election - their influence failed to stem the tide of the growing far-right, nationalist movement. How did this happen in a place where churches once birthed the Protestant Reformation and contributed to the fall

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59:00

The 9/11 Generation: 25 Years Later

Complexified ·

2026/09/11

Twenty-five years after 9/11, the attacks' aftershocks — surveillance, suspicion, identity — continued to shape how young Muslim Americans saw themselves and their country. With Zohran Mamdani sworn in as New York City's first Muslim mayor, that history collided with a new political moment.On Sept. 11, 2001, Haroon Moghul was president of NYU's Muslim Student Association. Today, he is a chaplain at Xavier University in Cincinnati. During this live journalism event, Moghul and Asad Dandia,

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27:57

Erika Kirk’s Turning Point

Complexified ·

2026/09/09

One year after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, his widow, Erika, is leading Turning Point USA — appealing to young women through a message of faith, forgiveness and biblical womanhood. Can her vision hold together the movement he left behind? RNS reporter Kathryn Post has followed that transformation. RELATED: At TPUSA’s women’s summit, Christian influencers say feminism threatens motherhood Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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30:48

Saint, Sinner, Superstar: Dolly Parton’s Complicated...

Complexified ·

2026/09/03

Dolly Parton was loved by evangelical Christians, queer fans, atheists and nearly everyone in between. Some saw her as a model of Christian living. But Dolly’s own relationship with Christianity was more complicated. She once said she wasn’t a Christian, even as she called God her best friend. Religion scholar Sarah Dees joins Amanda Henderson to explore Dolly’s Appalachian religious upbringing, the “Gospel of Dolly,” and how a country music superstar became a spiritual icon to people with

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27:29

How One City Became an American Flashpoint

Complexified ·

2026/08/24

In Springfield, Ohio, a small Rust Belt city where thousands of Haitian immigrants had settled… America’s fights over work, migration, race, religion and belonging stopped being abstract. The pressures have accumulated for years. Then, on one night in 2024, Springfield became an American flashpoint. RNS reporter Kathryn Post has followed what happened in Springfield across three reporting trips—from churches transformed by Haitian worship to residents emerging from ICE check-ins wearing ankle

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26:47

High Church on Chicago’s South Side

Complexified ·

2026/08/17

Pope Hats, Hot Dogs and Holy Ground:Baseball has long been called a kind of church. It has its own calendar and rituals, its sacred places and inherited traditions. Its faithful gather at appointed times, sing familiar songs, share food, pass stories from one generation to the next, and keep believing through seasons of disappointment. Like religion, baseball asks people to live with failure, practice hope, and trust that renewal is always possible. RNS Reporter Bob Smietana was recently in

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44:58

Put on a Pedestal, Kept Out of Power: How The LDS...

Complexified ·

2026/08/10

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says it is bringing in new converts at an extraordinary rate. Its practicing members are among the most religiously engaged people in the country.By a lot of measures, active Latter-day Saints appear to be doing well. At the same time…the church is losing nearly half of the people who were raised in it. Even for kids raised going to church every week with families committed to the Mormon faith, one in three leaves. Both of these stories are true

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37:33

The “Pastors In Name Only”: The New (Old) Fight Over...

Complexified ·

2026/08/03

Why Democratic pastors are being attacked for their faith, not merely their politics.Pastors, seminarians and other faith leaders are running for office as Democrats across the country. Their campaigns are making progressive Christianity newly visible—and prompting opponents to challenge not only their politics, but their legitimacy as Christians. RNS national reporter Jack Jenkins joins Amanda to examine James Talarico’s rise, attacks involving a “Satanist wedding” and biblical inerrancy, and

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27:08

Data Centers, Dark Money: The Interfaith Group That...

Complexified ·

2026/07/28

Who's behind a mysterious mass-text that invoked faith and economic justice to promote data centers?A few weeks ago, residents of Prince George’s County, Maryland, received a text message telling them about the benefits of data centers: jobs, investment, economic opportunity. The message wasn’t signed. It didn’t say who had paid to send it. But it linked to a website belonging to something called the Interfaith Action Movement. Sounds like a coalition of religious leaders. But the leaders,

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34:17

$438 Million Later, What Does This Faith-Tech Company...

Complexified ·

2026/07/20

RNS reporter Bob Smietana on Gloo, the faith-tech company chasing a one-stop IT/AI solution for churches.Nearly half a billion dollars, gone, over thirteen years. That's how much a company called Gloo has lost trying to build an all-in-one digital & administrative powerhouse for what it's calling the "Faith & Flourishing Ecosystem" of American churches. A tech company that can handle email & texting, data analytics, web hosting, podcast hosting, IT infrastructure, sermon-to-social video clips,

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31:30

The Catholics Who Broke With Rome. Again.

Complexified ·

2026/07/14

When Tradition Becomes Trouble On the side of a mountain in Switzerland, in the shadow of the Alps, a fanciful event attracting a small but ardent group of Catholic traditionalists gathered to celebrate the consecration of 4 new bishops… Who were then promptly excommunicated from the Catholic Church along with the bishop who appointed them. The group is called the Society of St. Pius the Tenth, or SSPX. It has spent decades claiming to defend the true Catholic tradition against a church it sees

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31:07

Spiritual Technology for the 21st Century

Complexified ·

2026/06/15

Philip Reed-Butler, Black AI, and the future of healingFor the last few weeks, we’ve been talking about artificial intelligence. We’ve talked Vatican positioning, Silicon Valley philosophers, Catholic ethics, corporate power, doomsday language, all circling the question of who gets to shape the future these machines are confining us in. But most of those conversations begin from the same assumption: AI is a tool built somewhere else, by someone else, to give us answers. Productivity.

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36:29

The Business of Being Good

Complexified ·

2026/06/09

Anthropic, the Vatican, and the Moral Branding of AIImagine you're an engineer at one of the most powerful AI companies in the world. You've built a system that can write poetry, pass the bar exam, and hold a conversation that feels startlingly human. And then someone asks you: but does it know how to say it's sorry? That question — about fault, correction, forgiveness — is not a technical question. It's a theological one. And the fact that engineers at Anthropic were asking it, and that they

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28:39

Building God, Fearing Doom: The Theology of...

Complexified ·

2026/06/03

A theology of sorts has been building in Silicon Valley, where questions about digital, biological and spiritual life are beginning to converge.For most of us, AI means chatbots, recipe tips, work tools and strange little images. But in other circles, the conversation is darker and far more existential. Some believe AI could give humanity powers that once belonged to science fiction: curing disease, extending life, even overcoming death. Others look at the same advances and see catastrophe — even

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27:23

Pope Leo XIV and the Case for Imperfection

Complexified ·

2026/05/27

In 1891, Pope Leo 13th looked at the Industrial Revolution — factories, machines, workers being displaced and exploited — and decided the Church had a role to play. The result was an encyclical: Rerum Novarum, translated as “On New Things,” it became one of the foundational documents of modern Catholic social teaching. 135 years later, another Pope Leo sees another technological revolution enveloping humanity: his first encyclical is about artificial intelligence. The Ethics of AI is not a

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23:49

America, According to Hillsdale

Complexified ·

2026/05/20

Who gets to tell America's story?Hillsdale College is small by most reckoning, but punching above its weight in influence, with its ethos and teaching saturating all levels of education far beyond its campus in Michigan. It is showing up in charter schools. In civics curriculum. In state-level fights over history education. In Trump-aligned patriotic education projects. And recently, in Rededicate 250, a faith-filled gathering on the National Mall where conservative Christian leaders, political

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29:01

Separation of Church and State Was a Baptist Idea....

Complexified ·

2026/05/04

The Baptist preacher (and Texas Lieutenant Governor) who stood before the White House Religious Liberty Commission had a message: there is no separation of church and state in the Constitution. That's a shift...For two centuries, Baptists didn't just support the wall of separation between church and state — they built it. They famously asked Thomas Jefferson for it. And then as recently as 1960, Southern Baptist leaders argued that a Catholic president would surely subordinate the Constitution to

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