My name is Dan Koch. Like many of you, I've been on a complicated faith journey for a number of years now.

And while I tend to find myself on the progressive side of Christianity, my goal is not to make liberal converts.

I want this show to be a resource for Christians to my right and to my left, as well as

former Christians and non-religious folks, anyone who finds themselves asking difficult questions

about God, science, prayer, fate, suffering, evangelism, and more. So many of us have been given bad answers to those good questions, often by people with

pure intentions.

I want to say that you have permission to take both Christianity and the modern world very

seriously.

And I hope to facilitate that by introducing you to people seeking God across

the Christian spectrum, engaging hard questions in a multitude of ways. Thanks for listening.

All right, so at the risk of sounding wooden, unnecessary, or like an old man, in order to have the conversation I wanted to have with my guest, Shannon Currants today, I think I have to address the current socio-political climate here at the top so we can kind of get it out of the way.

Trans rights and related topics and policies have become possibly, probably the number one culture war issue in our current moment.

I hope that my listeners know by now that I do what I can generally to stay out of the culture war.

I like to say that I am a conscientious objector to the culture war, having burned my draft

card.

What I mean by that is that I attempt to exempt myself from the inflated rhetoric and all

the terrible arguments made when people are attempting to appeal to fear and passion instead of logic.

Now, that's an incomplete description and a bit reductive of culture war type content, but I think you get the point.

What I see in a lot of the trans rights debates is a collision of bad faith scare tactics and some genuinely

difficult questions around the public good.

As far as cultural hot topics go, this one is especially difficult, in my opinion, because

my reading of what I believe to be the most careful research is contra to what we

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