Hi, My name’s Gaia and I started a podcast a little over a year ago called FTS. It’s about religion and unbelief. I’m an atheist but I love studying and talking about religion and with people of belief. I’ll use this TT to record episodes, places of worship I visit and people I talk to.
I just thought I’d let you listen to a part of Season 3, Episode 1 ---- So here we go.
Hi, you're listening to Face The Sun. My name is Gaia, and I'm your host. Welcome to a show where I discuss matters of religion, belief, and unbelief. Today I am starting SEASON 3. We will discuss topics that I've been pondering about for this past year. I would love to hear your feedback on what you would like to have as topics of discussion.
Please feel free to reach me at [email protected] . My next episode will be an interview I conducted with Justin Good. He's a professor of philosophy and he wears a lot of other hats as well, which you'll hear about in that episode. From there. I will air a conversation I had with a friend of mine - about her family leaving Puerto Rico and coming to the states and the journey that they had with the church.
I started a series back in January 2020 that I titled “52 in 52” or “52 Places of Worship in 52 weeks”. The idea to visit 52 places of worship that year. That was pre COVID. I couldn't get to those 52 places in 2020 because of the pandemic.
I've gone to one place recently. It was an Episcopal church that I will record as one of my 52 places. I think that will put me at number 11 and I anticipate on going to more places in 2021 and 2022 as the restrictions for this pandemic are being lifted.
For episode ideas for this new season, I am going to do a part two on Street Epistemology.
I meant to do that last season, but I didn't get to it. I did get to a lot of other hot topics. I covered last season topics like racism, LGBTQ, and abortion. So…all light topic…
Those are really such heavy hitters that they, they wore me out. And I was - I was kind of worn out, you know, I was a little teary at different times.
And part of it, I had a personal story, in regard to the church and prayer and how that feels - that it feels a little like waving the magic wand of prayer and hoping that terrible. horrific things don't happen to you. Even though there are plenty of other ways for people to get involved, to make sure that terrible things don't happen and don't occur.
And then also with abortion. I gave a personal story of why I changed from being a Catholic pro-lifer to a Protestant pro-lifer to a woman who believes WE should have the rights to do whatever WE damn well, please, with OUR own bodies. And there was a very, very tragic, frustrating, horrifying experience I had with that, that I was very open with.
And so all of those episodes were helpful, but exhausting. I'm very grateful for those who reached out to me via my email and called and checked in and were very encouraging for this year.
I AM also going to talk about Women and their roles in marriage and in the church. There's a mentality of…I don't know how to best to say it… I'm going to try to be cautious with my words or cautious with my thoughts here, but I have certainly plenty of thoughts on this. I'm a feminist as way back as my preteen years. So, I have very definite views of women and how they are, or are not, valued in church. There's a book that I'm reading called The Making of Biblical Womanhood - by Beth Alison Barr.
I'm curious about churches who have a stance on complementarian versus egalitarianism. I'm also curious about having difficult conversations. There's lots of opportunities to have difficult conversations in churches and places of worship, especially when it comes to women, especially when it comes to their rights as women and their roles as being equal.
And I do think that it's a disservice for men to not see women as equals or you know, use a different phrase, like, yeah, “we're equal”. “We're just separate, you know, that ki
