Clergy vs. ICE & Thiel’s Antichrist Lectures (Religion News Roundup) (#357)

Religion on the Mind

Religion, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.7 • 542 Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2025

⏱️ 88 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s a Religion News Roundup with podcaster and theologian Mason Mennenga, where we discuss the latest in religion-related current events. In this first episode trying out this new format, we explore why young people seem more open to spirituality than millennials were at their age, discuss clergy getting pepper-sprayed while protesting ICE detention centers, and unpack the wild story of gay billionaire Peter Thiel giving ticketed lectures about the Antichrist in San Francisco. We also chuckle at biblical comedy series called The Promised Land and analyze the surprising data showing Gen Z might be flattening the secularization curve. Along the way, Mason and I test our friendship with jokes about his far-left politics versus my centrist tendencies, debate whether progressive Christianity is just politics in disguise, and somehow end up discussing why good climate news isn't making headlines. We also discover that Mason's faith actually drives his politics more than I expected, and I admit my own confidence in eschatological hope has diminished over the years. It's a wide-ranging conversation that's equal parts serious theological reflection on current events and playful banter between two friends who've finally matured enough to publicly podcast together. Mason's Website | Masonmennenga.com Articles Mentioned: https://religionnews.com/2025/10/21/is-there-religious-revival-among-gen-z/ https://thepromisedlandseries.tv/ https://religionnews.com/2025/10/21/after-clergy-arrests-religious-pushback-to-ice-expands-in-chicago/ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/10/peter-thiel-lectures-antichrist?utm_source=chatgpt.com ___________________________________________ Follow Dan on IG: www.instagram.com/dancoke/ Or Twitter: twitter.com/DanKoch Faith deconstruction resources: www.soyouredeconstructing.com/ Join the Patreon for exclusive episodes (and more) every month: patreon.com/dankoch Email about the "sliding scale" for the Patreon: youhavepermissionpodcast@gmail.com YHP Patron-only FB group: tinyurl.com/ycvbbf98 Website: www.dankochwords.com/yhp.html Join Dan's email list: www.dankochwords.com/ Artwork by sprungle.co/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back everybody to religion on the mind, the show focused on the overlap of psychology
0:14.5	and religion and spirituality. And we're trying a new segment here today. We're calling it Religion News Roundup. And it's going to be a mix
0:25.2	of serious and occasional more lighthearted stories. And joining me for this journey. He's a
0:32.7	podcaster. He's a YouTuber. He's got two master's degrees, an M-Div and an M-A in theology.
0:40.6	Too bad you couldn't just put those together into one doctorate, but...
0:44.5	My mom would.
0:45.3	My mom makes that claim all the time that she, you know, she has two associates,
0:48.6	and she tells everyone she has a bachelor's.
0:54.1	Okay, so I was going to say, this is who you are, and then last... bachelor's. Okay.
0:54.8	So I was going to say, this is who you are.
0:57.5	And then lastly, he asks his baristas to add he-him below his name on his to-go
1:03.0	coffees.
1:04.1	It's Mason Meningia.
1:05.7	That's me.
1:07.0	I am the he-him guy.
1:09.2	So I want to make sure that I'm like sort of the anti-Charlie Kirk at Starbucks.
1:14.7	So I forget what the conservatives were doing with his, you know, whatever name that they were putting on their Starbucks cups.
1:21.5	But to sort of counteract that, I put he-him.
1:24.9	So, you know, I got to let him know who's boss.
1:27.4	They don't say Brandon anymore. Are we past Brandon jokes now?
1:31.3	Yeah. And also, I never really understood that whole Brandon thing. Like, I didn't, I didn't get the
1:35.6	point of what, why that happened, how it happened. It's not that good. It's not that good,
	...

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