Profane Faith

This week I talk with Anna Otaola artist extraordinaire! She also has quite the story being married to a spouse in an evangy org. Yeah...this is also part 2 from last week!

Anna is an artist living and creating in the Denver Metro area in Colorado. She was born and raised in Phoenix, AZ and later went to college in Santa Barbara, CA where she received a Bachelors of Fine Art. Anna has been creating since she was a child, starting with wood and glue and later moving into charcoal, paint, and canvas.

Meraki is Greek for “doing something with soul, creativity, or love - to put something of yourself into your work.” Every piece Anna creates has a story. She creates with love and soul and she leaves a bit of herself in everything she does. She is her truest self when she is creating art that inspires. What she creates with her hands is her way of expanding, liberating, exploring, and processing the world around her.

!!!!EXPLICIT!!!!! I finally get to sit down with my long-time friend, soon to be Dr. Pablo Otaola. We talk about his journey in leaving an evangelical outreach org and just race and religion...all good stuff!

I finally get to sit down with my long-time friend, soon to be Dr. Pablo Otaola. We talk about his journey in leaving an evangelical outreach org and just race and religion...all good stuff!

As a LatinX global citizen and immigrant into the USA, Pablo has developed the agility to quickly understand complex systems and provide on-ramps of learning and development for employees with expertise in developing equitable structures. Through diligent professional and academic study, Pablo has come to understand that organizational learning and change towards DEI requires an understanding of individuals, groups, and systems of various contexts and cultural values. Pablo has built a career of efficiently implementing systematic change, leadership transformation and models that have allowed diverse teams to thrive.

Pablo has leveraged this skill for systems change management and leadership development. Organizations are learning systems that require identity change to have all people thrive. Therefore, learning and organizational change towards DEI are the most strategic levers we can pull to expedite achieving the culture change needed of advancing organizations and preparing them for the future.

Over the years, Pablo has developed various programs that train on organizational change, racial minority and women retention practices, multi-ethnic and religious identity, cultural intelligence, inclusion and diversity, leadership development and gender equity. With a BA and an MA in leadership and organizational readiness towards diversity as well as certifications in Cultural Change, Cultural Intelligence, UB training, and multi-ethnic leadership, Pablo is poised to build upon organizational productive aspects while providing vision and leadership to align with DEI goals.

As a life-long learner and someone who likes to improve organizational gaps, Pablo is finishing a Doctor of Education in Leadership and Organizational Change, focusing on changes towards DEI (May 2021) from the University of Southern California. Pablo’s passion is to take this information to equip organizational leaders to change systems and create new ones that would allow all constituents to THRIVE.

Additionally, Pablo has learned early on that to change a system and equip employees, there is a need to develop diverse training that would increase staff retention via increasing cultural leadership quotients.

Dr. Leah Payne joins me this week to talk about her work, pedagogy, podcasting, and the mess we still find ourselves in today. Good talk, check it out.

Dr. Leah Payne joins me this week to talk about her work, pedagogy, podcasting, and the mess we still find ourselves in today. Good talk, check it out.

Leah Payne (PhD, Vanderbilt University) is Associate Professor of Theology at George Fox University and Portland Seminary. She is also a senior fellow at the Louisville Institute and a Faculty Fellow in the George Fox Honors Program.

Her first book, Gender and Pentecostal Revivalism: Making a Female Ministry in the Early Twentieth Century (Palgrave, 2015), won the 2016 Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies Book Award. Her second book explores the development of political theology in American Charismatic Christianity. In 2015, she and three other colleagues received a Lilly Endowment, Inc. High School Youth Theology Initiative grant to cofound Theologia: The George Fox University Summer Theology Institute , which began in 2017.

In 2017, she and four additional colleagues received a $1 million grant from the Lilly Endowment to create an Institute for Pastoral Thriving at Portland Seminary, which began in 2018. Her work analyzing religion and popular culture has appeared in The Washington Post and Christianity Today. She is also co-host of Weird Religion , a podcast about religion and popular culture.

She currently serves the Foursquare Church as a commissioner on the Foursquare Education Commission.

!!!!!EXPLICIT!!!! Welp, White Supremecy is at it again, figured I'd bring Kathy & Irene on to talk about this B.S. stinking up religious spaces.

Welp, White Supremecy is at it again, figured I'd bring Kathy & Irene on to talk about this B.S. stinking up religious spaces.

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Dr. Kristin Du Mez joins me to talk about her new book and how Christian Evangelicalism is connected to hyper-masculinity and a host of issues that help make trump, trump.

Dr. Kristin Du Mez joins me to talk about her new book and how Christian Evangelicalism is connected to hyper-masculinity and a host of issues that help make trump, trump.

Kristin Kobes Du Mez is Professor of History and Gender Studies at Calvin University. She holds a PhD from the University of Notre Dame and her research focuses on the intersection of gender, religion, and politics. She has written for the Washington Post, NBC News, Religion News Service, Christianity Today, and Christian Century, and has been interviewed on NPR, CTV, the BBC, and by CNN, the New York Times, the Economist, and the AP, among other outlets. Her most recent book is Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.

!!!!!EXPLICIT!!!! This one is dope AF! Skyer J joins me to talk all things Trans Embodiment and how it connects to theology...good deep stuff! Check it out.