Complexified

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Spiritual Readiness, Pentagon-Style: Who Measures a Soldier’s Soul? Oct 05, 2026

Show notes

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 develop tools to assess the spiritual readiness of the force.

Hegseth has made own conservative Christianity a prominent part of his leadership of the military.

At the speech where he announced the new office, he explained why.

Today, RNS national reporter Jack Jenkins joins us to examine what Hegseth is building.

Will this office help service members draw strength from their own deepest beliefs?

Or will the Pentagon decide which beliefs make someone spiritually fit to serve?

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The Rise Of The Jim Crow Theobros Sep 28, 2026

Show notes

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.

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The Texas Sharia Panic: How a Rallying Cry Became a Curriculum Sep 21, 2026

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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 journalists Fiona André and Ulaa Kuziez

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Bratwurst and Beer: How the Far Right Replaced Germany's Churches Sep 14, 2026

Show notes

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 of the Berlin Wall.

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The 9/11 Generation: 25 Years Later Sep 11, 2026

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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, Brooklyn's official borough historian and an early advisor on Mamdani's mayoral campaign, traced that arc — from the shadow of 9/11 to the present moment. As a teenager, Dandia was surveilled by the NYPD as part of its post-9/11 Muslim surveillance program; he later joined — and won — a class-action lawsuit against the department. In conversation with Religion News Service Events Host Niala Boodhoo and Islam reporter Ulaa Kuziez, the panelists unpacked what a quarter-century of living post-9/11 meant for Muslim American identity, faith, and belonging — and what the future might look like for a community that had just seen one of its own elected to lead America's largest city.

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Erika Kirk’s Turning Point Sep 09, 2026

Show notes

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.

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Saint, Sinner, Superstar: Dolly Parton’s Complicated Christianity Sep 03, 2026

Show notes

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 radically different beliefs.

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How One City Became an American Flashpoint Aug 24, 2026

Show notes

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 monitors.

This is the story of how Springfield became a microcosm of 2026 America.

As Supreme Court clears way to deport Haitians and Syrians, faith leaders grieve, prepare for what’s next

As Springfield's 15,000 Haitians brace for deportations, local churches train to resist ICE

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High Church on Chicago’s South Side Aug 17, 2026

Show notes

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 Chicago for a remarkable night with the White Sox. But this was not just any old night of baseball. This was high church!

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Put on a Pedestal, Kept Out of Power: How The LDS Church Is Losing Women Aug 10, 2026

Show notes

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. So what happens between a deeply Mormon childhood and the decision to walk away?
Amanda Henderson speaks with RNS columnist Jana Riess on the declining numbers of LDS women.

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