Rabbi and Journalist Jay Michaelson (#366)

Religion on the Mind

Religion & Spirituality, Religion, Spirituality

4.7 • 542 Ratings

🗓️ 8 December 2025

⏱️ 103 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In today’s episode, I’m joined by writer, rabbi, journalist and fellow “weird religious person” Jay Michaelson for a thought-provoking conversation that already has me scheming ways to have him back on the show! We articulate the tension between liberal theology and ecstatic spiritual experience: why do people whose politics we agree with have boring prayer services while the charismatic communities offer genuine transcendence amidst their rigid theology? Jay opens up about overcoming his own "Christophobia" (yes, he wrote an article called "How I Finally Came to Accept Christ in My Heart"), and we dig into his concept of "small-r religion"—the intentional, piecemeal approach to meaning-making that liberal religious folks practice versus capital-R traditional religion. It gets juicy as we wrestle with whether this progressive, open-minded approach can actually compete with conservative religion's appeal in our current moment of nihilism and meaning crisis. Can pluralistic spirituality be effective at fighting back against the wide road of AI slop, economic despair, and rising authoritarianism?? I push back on Jay's darker assessments while he challenges my therapeutic optimism, and we land somewhere fascinating between acceptance, the narrow road, and what we can actually control. This one covers everything from Buddhist meditation to Trump to whether my hypothetical gay Christian clients need liberal churches. I hope you enjoy. Jay's Substack | Both/And with Jay Michaelson Jay's Book "God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality" Jay's Website | Jaymichaelson.net ___________________________________________ 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	My name is Sherlock Holmes.
0:02.0	It's an unusual name.
0:03.0	Introducing Young Sherlock, a new Guy Ritchie series.
0:07.0	What game are we playing today?
0:09.0	Discover the origins.
0:10.0	It's cleaving. Those days are surely behind me.
0:12.0	Of crime's most iconic mind.
0:14.0	There has been a break-in.
0:17.0	Astoned. You should be a detective.
0:19.0	Starring Hero finds Tiffin, Donald Finn and Colin Firth.
0:22.5	If you start wearing a hat like that, I will no longer be friends with you.
0:25.9	Young Sherlock, new original series. Watch now only on Prime Video. Hey, everybody, I am getting Josh
0:32.3	this audio note away from my office, which is why I'm recording it on my laptop, which is why it doesn't
0:38.8	sound very good. So please forgive me, but I wanted to let you know that for patrons of this
0:44.4	podcast, we are going to be hosting a Christmas party Zoom hang on Tuesday, December 16th at
0:51.4	5 p.m. Pacific, 8 p.m. Eastern. That's Tuesday the 16th, 5 p.m. Pacific, 8 p.m. Eastern. That's Tuesday the 16th, 5 p.m. Pacific, 8 p.m.
0:57.8	Eastern. We don't know exactly what we're going to do for it yet, but we are going to try and make it
1:02.4	fun. We're going to play a game or two. We may get a special guest to join us. Also, Joy will be
1:09.6	joining us for that little party. And we'll do some
1:13.4	Q&A, but we're going to kind of mix it up. So if you are able to join live, that will be awesome.
1:19.8	We'll send links out to everybody who is a member of the Patreon campaign. And if you're not yet,
1:26.3	and this is your reason to do it,
	...

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