Kwok ’n’ Roll

The Pope issued a sweeping warning about artificial intelligence — but what does it actually say, and was he right? In this first episode of the AI & Theology series, I sit down with Dr. Tracy Trothen, professor of ethics at Queen's University, Canada, to unpack the Vatican's intervention, the rise of grief bots, and what AI means for how we make meaning, face death, and define what it means to be human.

🎙️ AI & THEOLOGY — Episode 1

📖 Topics: Pope Francis's AI encyclical, grief bots and digital afterlife, transhumanism, biohacking, Catholic social teaching, marginalized voices in AI governance.

Tracy J. Trothen and Randall Reed, Understanding Religion and Artificial Intelligence

What does it mean to practice erotic justice in a time of political crisis? Christian social ethicist Marvin M. Ellison joins Faithful Provocations to explore the intersection of faith, sexuality, and public life — from his upbringing in the American South wrestling with his family's history in slavery, to his critical work on same-sex marriage activism, to what his congregation in Maine has done to protect immigrants from ICE raids.

In this conversation, Marvin reflects on Augustine's theology of hope, what White Christians must reckon with in the MAGA era, and why "erotic justice" — the title of his book — remains an urgent framework for faithful living today.

📚 Erotic Justice by Marvin Ellison

Can you search for life on Mars — and still believe in God? 

An Episcopal priest and NASA astrobiologist, Pamela Conrad spent years working on rover missions designed to look for signs of life on Mars. In this conversation with Kwok Pui Lan, she makes the case that faith and science are not enemies — they are two different lenses pointed at the same reality.

Topics covered:

• Why curiosity is at the heart of both science and faith
• What the Mars rover missions revealed about life — and about creation
• Why the US-China moon race is a colonial problem, not a scientific one
• How to read Genesis without reading it literally — and what a medieval rabbi says about it
• How her book A Believer's Journey Through the Stars is structured around sound, light, and time
• Why "darkness" and "blackness" are not the same thing — and its implications for race
• Why she prefers "we ARE creation" over "creation care"
• The Society of Ordained Scientists and its mission in an age of disinformation

📖 A Believer's Journey Through the Stars by Pamela G. Conrad

 

Postcolonial theologian Kwok Pui Lan dialogues with Indian ecofeminist theologian Aruna Gnanadason — former director of the Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation program of the World Council of Churches — to ask the question no one in faith circles wants to answer: Is India sliding toward authoritarianism, and what does the church do about it? From the uncanny parallels between Modi and Trump, to the BJP's manipulation of the women's movement, to what indigenous Indian women can teach the global church about earth care and resistance — this conversation is urgent, grounded, and prophetic.

Aruna Gnanadason is the author of Listen to the Women, Listen to the Earth, and a decades-long leader in Asian feminist and ecofeminist theology. 

Peter Carlson grew up evangelical — fluent in scripture, certain of God's love, but told by his church a very different story. Today he's a queer theologian and editor of the Queer Lectionary, inviting queer people — and everyone — to reclaim the Bible on their own terms.

In this conversation, Peter shares what it means to read scripture through a queer lens, why Zacchaeus may be the queerest story in the Bible, and why the church needs to start asking those in the margins: "Where are you finding God?"

✦ What is the Queer Lectionary?
✦ Why queer readings of scripture matter for everyone
✦ The Zacchaeus story — and what most preachers miss
✦ Responding to critics who say the Bible's meaning is clear
✦ Queer theology as a practice of embodiment, not just identity

Peter Carlson is an Episcopal queer theologian and editor of A Queer Lectionary (Year A and Year B), a multi-voice collection of sermons on the Revised Common Lectionary.

🎙️ Kwok Pui Lan is a postcolonial theologian exploring faith, social justice, and cross-cultural dialogue.

In this episode of Faithful Provocations, theologians Kwok Pui Lan and Mary E. Hunt take on one of the most urgent questions of our time: What happens when the boundaries between church and state collapse? Drawing on theology, history, and contemporary politics, they examine the roots of Christian nationalism, the dangers of a state-sponsored faith, and what faithful resistance looks like in today's political landscape.

This is Episode 4 of Faithful Provocations — a series of honest, theologically grounded conversations about faith, justice, and the world we live in. This concludes the current run of Faithful Provocations. We'll return when the moment calls.

What does the Bible really say about the tyrants — and what happens when a world-class biblical scholar has lived the abuse of power herself?

Gale A. Yee — the first Asian American and first woman of color to serve as president of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) — joins Kwok Pui Lan for a conversation that spans scripture, power, racism in academia, and the urgent question of tyranny in our political moment.

Dr. Yee opens with a provocation: she is writing a scholarly article on tyrants. Not because it's an abstract exercise, but because we are living through one. From there, the conversation moves through her groundbreaking work in Asian American biblical interpretation, her personal encounters with racism and tokenism in the academy, and what the Bible — read honestly and without apology — has to say about those who seize power and call themselves kings. This is biblical scholarship with stakes. And it is long overdue.

📌 About Gale A. Yee: Professor Emerita of Hebrew Bible at Episcopal Divinity School and former president of the Society of Biblical Literature. A pioneering voice in feminist, intersectional, and Asian American biblical studies.

In this episode of Faithful Provocations, Kwok Pui Lan and Mary E. Hunt dissect the DOJ's new report on "Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias" — and reveal what it's really doing: imposing white Christian values on everyone.

They discuss:

• The DOJ report's three chilling next steps — Christian sermons at the Pentagon, faith-based housing discrimination against LGBTQ people, and churches endorsing political candidates

• How mainline denominations (Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans) have already ordained queer people — the majority of Christians don't support this discrimination

• Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Parker's landmark book Saving Paradise — how Christianity traded love of the world for crucifixion and empire

• Why the cross became the normative Christian symbol only at the time of the Crusades — and what early Christians actually depicted (fish, bread, people sharing a meal)

• Mary Hunt's argument: "The cross is not glory, but failure" — and what should replace it

• How atonement theology was weaponized during colonization — Filipino theologians exposed how suffering was used to justify brutal colonial policies •

Marco Rubio's Vatican visit to patch tensions between Pope Leo and Trump — and why it won't work

Elections have consequences. The same people who brought you a war in Iran now want to sell you a new Christian crusade. Feminist and postcolonial scholars are pointing out what's going on — and we won't stop.