Complexified

A University of Kentucky employee asked to be excused from using artificial intelligence at work. He said it violated his beliefs as a humanist. The university granted him a religious accommodation.

It’s a case where the process worked. But it opens up harder questions: Who decides whether a belief counts as religious? How does a court or employer determine if someone sincerely holds it? And what happens to everyone else?

RNS reporter Bob Smietana joins Amanda Henderson to explore what this case reveals about religious freedom, the right to refuse AI, and the broad ecosystem of policy and proceedure of making room for conscience at work.

Read Bob’s reporting: “A Kentucky man becomes the first humanist granted religious exemption from AI.”

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Russell Moore on the death penalty, sacred life and political belonging

In Texas, Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan is scheduled to be executed by firing squad. Earlier this month, the Pentagon announced that his execution would be livestreamed. The backlash led to that proposal being withdrawn, leaving fresh questions about the death penalty—and what it means to make someone’s death a public spectacle.

Meanwhile, in Tennessee, Christa Pike survived a botched execution after two doses of a lethal drug failed to kill her. She was hospitalized and later returned to prison. Together, these cases bring questions about punishment, suffering and the value of human life into sharp focus.

Today on Complexified, we’re joined by public theologian Russell Moore, editor at large at Christianity Today, to explore how Christians understand justice, mercy and the sanctity of life—and what happens when their different answers become a test of who counts as Christian at all.

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Religion has always been part of American politics.

What changes from cycle to cycle is where it shows up and what it looks like. This year it’s turning up in some unexpected places: seminarians running for Senate, a president feuding with the pope, and Black churches organizing marches to the polls after the Voting Rights Act was gutted.

I’m joined for an election midterm roundtable by three of the reporters who’ve been covering all things religion and politics for Religion News Service.

With us today are national reporter Jack Jenkins, whose recent reporting examines faith leaders on the ballot; national reporter Aleja Hertzler-McCain, who has covered abortion measures on midterm ballots; and projects editor and national reporter Adelle M. Banks, who has reported on the March on Washington and the continuing fight for voting rights. Adelle is also the coauthor of Becoming a Future-Ready Church: 8 Shifts to Encourage and Empower the Next Generation of Leaders.

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Televangelist Jim Bakker is dead at 86. And whatever else can be said about him, he was a true American original.

In the ’70s and ’80s, millions of Americans welcomed Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker into their living rooms every day. They laughed with them, prayed with them and sent them money—enough money to build a television network and a Christian theme park.

He was also a convicted fraudster whose empire collapsed amid revelations of deception, sexual misconduct allegations and spectacularly bad judgment.

His was a life of faith and fame, of innovation and swindlery. And his legacy is everywhere.

So today’s question: How did Jim Bakker turn religious intimacy into an American empire?

My guest is Dr. Leah Payne, a historian of American religion at Portland Seminary and author of God Gave Rock and Roll to You: A History of Contemporary Christian Music. She studies where faith, politics and pop culture meet.

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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 anOffice of Religious Affairswith 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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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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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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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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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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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.

RELATED: At TPUSA’s women’s summit, Christian influencers say feminism threatens motherhood

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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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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.

RELATED:

As ICE closes in, Ohio churches line up families to care for Haitian kids left behind

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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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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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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Why Democratic pastors are being attacked for their faith, not merely their politics.

Pastors, seminarians and other faith leaders are running for office as Democrats across the country. Their campaigns are making progressive Christianity newly visible—and prompting opponents to challenge not only their politics, but their legitimacy as Christians.

RNS national reporter Jack Jenkins joins Amanda to examine James Talarico’s rise, attacks involving a “Satanist wedding” and biblical inerrancy, and the theological dispute between Raphael Warnock and Mike Johnson over Matthew 25. Do these candidates represent a durable religious political force, or are they a temporary reaction to Trump?

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Who's behind a mysterious mass-text that invoked faith and economic justice to promote data centers?

A few weeks ago, residents of Prince George’s County, Maryland, received a text message telling them about the benefits of data centers: jobs, investment, economic opportunity.

The message wasn’t signed. It didn’t say who had paid to send it. But it linked to a website belonging to something called the Interfaith Action Movement.

Sounds like a coalition of religious leaders. But the leaders, followers, and houses of worship were not disclosed by the IAM contact.

And the timing was interesting. Less than a week earlier, Prince George’s County had imposed a two-year moratorium on hyperscale data centers. Residents were already fighting over the environmental costs, the economic promises and who would ultimately benefit.

So who was behind this “interfaith” campaign?

RNS reporter Aleja Hertzler-McCain followed the anonymous text to a Seventh-day Adventist faith leader and political consultant with connections in Maryland, New Jersey—and a campaign-finance scandal in Bermuda.

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RNS reporter Bob Smietana on Gloo, the faith-tech company chasing a one-stop IT/AI solution for churches.

Nearly half a billion dollars, gone, over thirteen years.

That's how much a company called Gloo has lost trying to build an all-in-one digital & administrative powerhouse for what it's calling the "Faith & Flourishing Ecosystem" of American churches.

A tech company that can handle email & texting, data analytics, web hosting, podcast hosting, IT infrastructure, sermon-to-social video clips, all the way to AI-generated devotionals and study guides. That's just a taste.

Our guest is RNS reporter Bob Smietana, and we're asking:

What happens if it works? What happens when one for-profit company, one whose SEC filings admit it might not survive the year, becomes the back office for a huge slice of American Christianity?

Who holds that data? Who shapes that message? What happens if all of that data falls into the wrong hands?

Check out more here:

Faith-based AI company Gloo faces moment of truth after $438M in losses — Bob Smietana, July 9, 2026

Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger hopes Gloo can make AI a force for good — and for God— Bob Smietana, March 24, 2025

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When Tradition Becomes Trouble

On the side of a mountain in Switzerland, in the shadow of the Alps, a fanciful event attracting a small but ardent group of Catholic traditionalists gathered to celebrate the consecration of 4 new bishops…

Who were then promptly excommunicated from the Catholic Church along with the bishop who appointed them.

The group is called the Society of St. Pius the Tenth, or SSPX. It has spent decades claiming to defend the true Catholic tradition against a church it sees as too modern, too open, too willing to change. But this time, by moving ahead without Rome’s approval, SSPX triggered excommunications and pushed its whole society into schism.

And it's not the first time this group has run up against the disapproval of the Holy See.

Today, Vatican reporter Claire Giangravè joins us to talk about SSPX, Pope Leo, the Latin Mass, and what happens when longing for an older church becomes a rupture with the church itself.

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Philip Reed-Butler, Black AI, and the future of healing

For the last few weeks, we’ve been talking about artificial intelligence. We’ve talked Vatican positioning, Silicon Valley philosophers, Catholic ethics, corporate power, doomsday language, all circling the question of who gets to shape the future these machines are confining us in.

But most of those conversations begin from the same assumption: AI is a tool built somewhere else, by someone else, to give us answers.

Productivity. Efficiency. Surveillance. Profit.

Today’s conversation starts somewhere else.

Philip Reed-Butler is a scholar, theologian and technologist at Iliff School of Theology, where he directs the AI Institute and teaches Theology and Black Posthuman Artificial Intelligence Systems. He is also the founder of the Seekr Project, a distinctly Black conversational AI project designed around introspection, healing and mental-health capacities.

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Anthropic, the Vatican, and the Moral Branding of AI

Imagine you're an engineer at one of the most powerful AI companies in the world. You've built a system that can write poetry, pass the bar exam, and hold a conversation that feels startlingly human. And then someone asks you: but does it know how to say it's sorry?

That question — about fault, correction, forgiveness — is not a technical question. It's a theological one. And the fact that engineers at Anthropic were asking it, and that they were asking it of Catholic ethicists and Vatican officials, is the story we're unpacking today.

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