Spiritual Misfits Podcast

Poet and host of Poetry Unbound  Pádraig Ó Tuama joins Caro for a conversation we're sharing on the same day his new collection, Love Between Men, is released.

Pádraig and Caro talk about being a misfit across Catholic, charismatic and ecumenical Christianity, and about why belonging isn’t always a good thing. They discuss reading the Bible as art and argument rather than rulebook, and why the word “nothing” has become a loving word for God in Pádraig’s writing. 

Pádraig reflects on the exorcisms and reparative therapy he went through in his twenties, and on the poems he later wrote in response. He also talks about learning to make friends with anger, and about how to write, or simply notice, when the world and your own life both feel like a polycrisis.

Along the way he reads poems, including “F*cked Up Families of the Bible,” “The Exorcist,” and “Our Lady of the Garden.”

Content note: this episode includes discussion of conversion therapy and exorcism, and contains strong language.

Connect with Pádraig's work here:
https://www.padraigotuama.com/

Get Pádraig's new book 'Love Between Men' here:
https://www.coppercanyonpress.org/books/love-between-men-by-padraig-o-tuama/

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How do you know when it’s time to leave a community you love but no longer believe in? And what happens when your body knows before your mind does?

Steve Schallert grew up the child of missionaries in a quiet, Quaker-ish corner of Germany, found Jesus through the radical peace activist Daniel Berrigan at 19, and then spent a decade inside YWAM, an organisation he says he never really agreed with. In this honest and generous conversation, Steve shares why he never “deconstructed,” what it cost him to finally walk away, and how he’s learning that the healing of the world and the healing of ourselves are the same work.

Mentioned in this episode: Daniel Berrigan, the Catholic Worker movement, the Plowshares movement, Ched Myers, Dom Hélder Câmara, Community Peacemaker Teams (formerly Christian Peacemaker Teams), Parker Palmer, St. Stephen’s University, and Steve’s podcast, Good on Wood.

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What does a 2,000-year-old book about a talking statue have to say about ChatGPT? And can AI form us, or only perform for us?

Pope Leo XIV chose artificial intelligence as the subject of his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, and presented it with Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah, at his side. What do we make of this unique moment?

In this episode, Will is joined by biblical scholar Robyn Whitaker and professor of Learning Informatics Simon Buckingham Shum to dig into what this moment is revealing about the machines and us.

Guests

Rev. Assoc. Prof. Robyn Whitaker is Associate Professor of New Testament at Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity, and Director of the Wesley Centre for Theology, Ethics and Public Policy. She is an ordained Uniting Church minister and author of Even the Devil Quotes Scripture.
https://victas.uca.org.au/faith-in-the-public-square/

Prof. Simon Buckingham Shum is Professor of Learning Informatics and Director of the Connected Intelligence Centre at the University of Technology Sydney. His work sits where human-computer interaction, learning and AI meet. He is part of Meeting Ground (the community behind Spiritual Misfits).
https://simon.buckinghamshum.net/

Mentioned in this episode

• Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html
• Yuval Levin, “Idols of the Valley,” The New Atlantis: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/idols-of-the-valley
• Vanessa Andreotti and the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures collective, Burnout from Humans: A Little Book About AI That Is Not Really About AI (free): https://burnoutfromhumans.net
• Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination
  
  

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In the latest episode of our Future Church Series, Will and Caro listen to two short excerpts from Rev Dr Sally Douglas’s keynote: one on silence and prayer as listening, and one on the names we use for God.

Sally argues that much of what passes for prayer is us talking at God, and that our busyness can be a quiet way of keeping God at a distance. She also makes a bold claim: addressing God only as male is a form of idolatry. And the tradition gives us plenty of other alternative ways of addressing God. 

You can listen to Sally's full keynote from Future Church Conference here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RnZX5PQefI&list=PLDqN433ivCxY&index=3

Connect more with Sally and buy her books here: https://www.sallydouglas.net

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Will, Caro, Mitch and Becca unpack the purity culture they grew up in: Focus on the Family books, True Love Waits banquets, journals of letters to a future spouse, and the very real fear of dying in your sleep after masturbating.

But this isn't just a look back. They explore what changed their minds, what (if anything) was worth keeping, and what might a better sexual ethic look like now?

Want to reach out and let us know your thoughts or suggestions for the show? Send us a message here; we’d love to hear from you.

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Wes Crawford is a church historian and pastor of twenty years, currently vice provost and associate professor of church history at Abilene Christian University.

His new book One Nation Over God names what sociologists call "civil religion" — the way a nation, in the absence of a shared faith, starts borrowing the shape of one: sacred texts, rituals, symbols, calendar days, revered people — and traces how that borrowing, in American life, has tangled love of country with love of God to the point of idolatry.

We also talk about what this looks like translated into an Australian context — Southern Cross tattoos, January 26, and Pauline Hanson's recent talk of a "Judeo-Christian monoculture" — and ask what it actually means to love a country enough to critique it.

Learn more and order the book here: https://www.eerdmans.com/9780802885470/one-nation-over-god/

Want to reach out and let us know your thoughts or suggestions for the show? Send us a message here; we’d love to hear from you.

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Will Small is joined by Steff Fenton, Kelly Woods and Jono Ingram to discuss the complex nature of hope, the work of cultivating an alternative imagination and a vision of how it might look in community. With beautiful opening words from Alisha Fung and Paul Banks, and a closing benediction from Matt Cutler this was a rich and memorable evening that may just restore a little hope where it's needed.

Presented in partnership with Simba Sessions, Sonderverse, Beyondering Podcast and Northcote Uniting Church. 

Want to reach out and let us know your thoughts or suggestions for the show? Send us a message here; we’d love to hear from you.

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Chelsea Kim Long grew up inside a world that had an answer for everything — until her body didn't cooperate with the script. A traumatic birth, postpartum depression, infertility, and eventually an impossible decision during a quadruplet pregnancy each cracked open a theology that had no room for what she was actually experiencing. In her new book Faithfully Dissident Daughters: Reclaiming Christian Womanhood Beyond Patriarchy, and in this conversation, she traces how patriarchy in the church has limited our understandings, and points towards a more expansive approach to faith and community.

Connect with Chelsea's work here: https://www.chelseakimlong.com/

Want to reach out and let us know your thoughts or suggestions for the show? Send us a message here; we’d love to hear from you.

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Paul Banks spent his early childhood living in an intentional Christian community — it wasn't perfect, but it 'spoiled' him for church spaces that never quite replicated the taste of an integrated communal life in the same way. 

Paul has moved in, out and back in to communities of faith across his journey. In a sense, he has never stopped pursuing spaces where art, story and community come together in meaningful and transcendent ways. 

Paul and his wife are the founders and hosts of Simba Sessions, a monthly night of poetry, storytelling and music in Kyneton, Victoria.

The next Simba Sessions is taking place on September 11. More info and tickets are here: https://events.humanitix.com/simba-sessions-fundraiser-timothy-coghill-will-small-kavisha-mazzella-and-special-guests

Want to reach out and let us know your thoughts or suggestions for the show? Send us a message here; we’d love to hear from you.

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Will and Caro discuss some surprising findings from the recent Spiritual Misfits listener survey and then continue their series looking back at excerpts from Future Church Conference keynotes — this time, Simon Buckingham Shum's exploration of AI and the Church. His talk pushes past the "AI will save us / AI will doom us" binary and asks a much better question: not is AI good or bad, but what is the quality of each interaction, and who is it being trained to serve?

Watch Simon's full talk from Future Church Conference here:
https://youtu.be/Q5zLFaK-pDw?si=JH6Pq3hwzW-pYR4y

Check out the Center for Humane Technology's podcast, mentioned in this episode: Your Undivided Attention
https://www.humanetech.com/podcast

Slides from Simon's talk can be viewed here:
https://simon.buckinghamshum.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Simon_FCC26.pdf

Want to reach out and let us know your thoughts or suggestions for the show? Send us a message here; we’d love to hear from you.

The Spiritual Misfits Survival Guide (FREE): https://www.spiritualmisfits.com.au/survivalguide

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View all episodes at: https://spiritualmisfits.buzzsprout.com