A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar

Gender, Faith, and Privilege after Transitioning: Paula Stone Williams

• Randy Knie & Kyle Whitaker • Season 5 • Episode 20

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What happens when a successful religious leader transitions genders and loses everything? Reverend Dr. Paula Stone Williams takes us on her extraordinary journey from privilege to authenticity.

Paula once stood at the pinnacle of evangelical success – CEO of a large nonprofit, television host, magazine editor. But beneath this accomplished exterior lived a truth she'd known since childhood: she was transgender. When she finally answered what she describes as a "calling" toward authenticity (instigated by the TV show Lost, belive it or not!), the cost was staggering. Paula lost her jobs, her pension, and virtually all professional connections overnight, earning less than $6,000 annually for four years after transition.

This conversation reveals Paula's unique perspective as someone who has experienced life on both sides of the gender divide. Her observations about male privilege are particularly illuminating – "I'll not live long enough to lose my white male entitlement. I brought it with me," she notes, while describing the jarring experience of suddenly being dismissed, patronized, and underestimated in professional settings after transition.

Rather than abandoning faith after being rejected by her religious community, Paula describes developing a deeper, more nuanced spirituality. She frames this transformation as moving from a "left-brain heavy faith" focused on doctrine toward one embracing intuition and mystery, leading to a more authentic connection with Jesus's teachings.

Paula brings refreshing nuance to often polarized conversations about transgender issues, distinguishing between different manifestations of gender dysphoria while expressing concerns about some current treatment approaches. For church leaders navigating these complex waters, she offers practical advice from her extensive experience leading religious communities.

Through her book As a Woman, viral TED Talks, and speaking engagements worldwide, Paula now shares the wisdom gained from her journey, through both profound loss and unexpected discovery. We hope this conversation informs and challenges you as much as it did us.

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Cheers!

Randy:

I'm Randy, the pastor, half of the podcast, and my friend Kyle's a philosopher. This podcast hosts conversations at the intersection of philosophy, theology and spirituality.

Kyle:

We also invite experts to join us, making public a space that we've often enjoyed off-air, around the proverbial table with a good drink in the back corner of a dark pub.

Randy:

Thanks for joining us and welcome to A Pastor and a Philosopher. Walk into a Bar. I've heard a lot of messages and sermons in my life. I mean, I can't tell you how many. How many do you think you've heard in your life?

Kyle:

I've heard probably literally thousands, and I'm not a pastor so I can't yeah.

Randy:

Yeah, I heard a sermon last. I think it was April or May. I was in Raleigh. Somebody came up on stage and started talking and it was one of those moments where this person starts talking and everything in your mind just stops because you're just so singularly focused on what the person is saying from up front. And not only did that happen to me, but you could feel it in the room. When this person started talking, everyone started listening. All the background noise, all the distractions, all the typing on computers and phones just stopped.

Randy:

And this person captivated us because her story is so remarkable. It's a story of a person who lived a vast majority of their lives as a male and felt called into life as a transgender woman. And this isn't something that just happened out of you know, spontaneously. This has been a journey of their life orientation. But when they spoke about it it had me on the edge of my seat, because this is a conversation that our world is talking about and our world is kind of manipulating and using for gain, for power. But when she spoke about it it felt very human to me. It felt very real and relatable and beautiful. So that person is Paula Stone Williams, reverend Dr Paula Stone Williams. She lives in Colorado, she is a trans woman and she's written a book that you are loving right now and she's done some TED Talks that have just exploded. She's a fascinating person.

Kyle:

Yeah, and really fun to talk to An amazing speaker. As you will see, watch her TED Talk. Ted talks you won't be surprised literally trains people for doing ted talks right.

Randy:

so knows what, knows what she's doing tell me about your thoughts on the book it's so good so I'm not all the way through it yet.

Kyle:

I'll say I'm only about halfway through. I just started it today, though, so if that tells you anything I got, I got through half of it pretty fast makes me angry with smart people like you.

Randy:

Yeah, yeah, but go ahead.

Kyle:

Well, but no, it's a page turner. I mean, I'm listening to it, so I would imagine I would want to turn the page if it was in my hands, but it's like edge of your seat kind of.

Kyle:

You're enthralled by the story and it's captivating but also devastating. Some of that comes out in the conversation. It makes you want to at certain points, talking about what it cost to transition when she did yeah, highly, highly recommend that book. It's called as a Woman and it sounds like she's working on another one that I'm also really excited to get into. So I knew nothing about her before you set up this interview, learned pretty much everything I know about her today and then had a really wonderful conversation and I hope to have another.

Randy:

Yeah, yeah, I mean I enjoy people who surprise you with how they don't fit into a box and I would say that Paula's that in a number of ways.

Kyle:

Yeah, like she says, things about gender that I straightforwardly disagree with, but obviously she has a standing to say those things that I lack and she says some other stuff that is rather controversial in this conversation and openly claims to have been canceled by both sides, and I believe her. I see why.

Randy:

So, yeah, listen with an open mind, but there's a lot here yeah, I mean, I don't think I don't like forming rules by saying like if you're in the middle or you're getting canceled by both sides, that means you're on the right side.

Kyle:

It might just mean you're wrong, yeah, yeah. However.

Randy:

I do appreciate a person who's willing to not settle into a fundamentalism that says I'm going to say all the right things so I can keep my tribe happy. I enjoy a person who's willing to be honest and vulnerable, even if it costs them something. So it seems like that's Paula. I'm excited to share Paula Stone Williams with you listeners. Reverend Dr Paula Stone Williams, thank you so much for joining us on A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar.

Paula:

I'm happy to be here.

Randy:

Yes, paula, I've heard from you a bunch and been around you and just am growing to love you more and more. And who you are and what you bring, can you share with our listeners? Just this is a huge question. But just who are you? What do you do? Why are we talking? Who is Paula Stone Williams?

Paula:

Sure, I was the CEO of a large religious nonprofit, the host of a national television show, the editor at large of a national magazine. I was a successful, well-educated white American male. But like Thomas Merton said, it's a tough thing to climb to the top of the ladder of success only to realize when you get there that your ladder has been leaning against the wrong wall. So I knew from the time I was five or six that I was transgender and somehow thought I got to choose. When I found out I did not get to choose.

Paula:

I didn't hate being a boy, I just knew I wasn't one, Went to college, got married, had kids, built a career. Didn't hate being a boy, I just knew I wasn't one, Went to college, got married, had kids, built a career. But the call toward authenticity has all the subtlety of a smoke alarm and eventually decisions have to be made. And so I came out as transgender and promptly lost every single one of my jobs, because in all 50 states you cannot be fired for being transgender. But in all 50, you can be fired. If you're transgender and you work for a religious corporation, you can be fired if you're transgender and you work for a religious corporation.

Paula:

I know I lost all my jobs. I lost my pension, worth about a million dollars. I'd loaned a ministry. I directed about a half million of my own money and I had to threaten a lawsuit to get 80% of that back, which was a good thing. But I got 80% of it back. Because of my first four years as Paula, I earned a total of $23,000, less than $6,000 a year. So since that time things have worked out quite well. I've done three TED Talks that have had over 10 million views. I speak all over the world on issues related to gender equity. I have a book published by Simon Schuster, as a Woman, what I Learned About power, sex and the patriarchy after I transitioned. I've been elected to public office twice here in Colorado, but I did not know any of that at the time. I just knew I was taking a huge risk and was likely to lose pretty much everything.

Randy:

So you just said in you know, maybe three minutes a whole lifetime's worth. I can tell you've done some TED Talks A little bit.

Kyle:

That was. If anybody out there is wondering how to do an elevator speech, there it is.

Paula:

I coach TED speakers, that's one of my great joys, I'm a speaker's ambassador for TED. I coach one of the largest TEDx in North America. So if you want to put together a 14-minute talk and memorize it and figure out how to do it, well, yeah absolutely so.

Randy:

Can you take us into that story, the you know your story a little bit. Can. Do you mind if we just kind of ask you some particular questions, the the experience of it all. Can we start with the gender dysphoria you know? You describe in multiple places that you were.

Paula:

What three, four, five, when you yeah, I was a kid, probably between four and five, it's before we moved from West Virginia to Ohio. I know that and I just suppressed it because I could and I really wanted to get through life without transitioning genders. I didn't want to do it to my wife, I didn't want to do it to my kids. Frankly, I didn't want to lose my job. I had been really quite successful within my denomination of 7,000 churches. I led one of our largest church planting organizations and also was a national leader.

Paula:

But you know, at this some point in life you recognize you've been called and you reject a call at your own peril. And so I knew when I had been called. It actually was rather specific. I was watching my favorite television show of all time, lost, and there comes a time in the last season when the protagonist of the show, jack, if you're a Lost fan, recognizes he's been called by Jacob, the God figure, to die. And if you're a Lost fan, it happens when he was at the lighthouse and saw through the broken mirror his childhood home, and I sobbed. I sobbed for hours because I knew I had been called, fell asleep on the living room floor, woke up about 4 am and sobbed. I sobbed for hours because I knew I had been called, fell asleep on the living room floor, woke up about 4 am and sobbed until dawn. And that was two and a half three years after that before I actually transitioned, because you can't hurry these things, but that was the day I knew I'd been called yeah, that that part.

Kyle:

So I'm working my way through your book. I should say I have not finished it. I'm about halfway through um, and it's wonderful. It's really excellent. Highly encourage everybody listening to this to go out and grab it, read it. I'm listening to the audiobook. It's exceptional. You're really good at speaking and also reading an audiobook. It turns out and there's turned out.

Paula:

We did that in about two and a half days and it usually takes five. I got lucky I had the best engineer at simon and schuster during covet and he happened to live close by and yeah, yeah, I'm curious about this is tangential, but there are moments where you're emotional in reading.

Kyle:

That doesn't happen in audiobooks in my experience yeah was there a conversation about that?

Paula:

to leave that in um, there was, yeah, the engineer was. He had just finished doing a book with Steve Martin and the very first day we had a long conversation about communication, the written word, the spoken word, the difference between the two, and decided then that I would let the emotions flow however they flowed, and they flow pretty freely. Interestingly, I have not listened to it.

Kyle:

It would be difficult to do so I bet you described that experience of watching Lost. Oh, this is where I was going to go. Two things all right. One I also love Lost and I just wanted to note that connection. So I'm very glad that you brought it up. And it gets unfairly maligned in that final season, and so I'm very happy that you're Poor.

Paula:

Damon Lindelof felt terrible, I know right, and Carlton Hughes never apologized for it. And I'm with Hughes, I think it was a brilliant. I'm with Q's, I think it was a brilliant.

Kyle:

I'm a defender. I'm a defender of the end.

Randy:

I'm one of the few that thinks it was well done and I'm very glad your epiphany occurred in the sixth season. I'll just keep my opinions to myself.

Kyle:

I guess we have two other points of connection I want to note. I grew up in Kentucky and my family is from eastern Kentucky on my mom's side, and I was ensconced in the Stone-C and very grateful for it, my whole life to have grown up in that ecclesial context and I was glad to see that represented in your—.

Paula:

Oh my goodness, yeah, we're in eastern Kentucky.

Kyle:

So my mom's family grew up in a place called Mays Lick. Oh, I know, Mays Lick. How about that? Yeah, so we would go out there and visit in the middle of nowhere. I guess to some people that wouldn't be true Eastern, but it's A lot of stones were from there.

Paula:

I had a third cousin who was still there. I used to speak at a little church there when I was in Bible college.

Kyle:

Yes, I grew up in a Little Disciples of Christ denomination and we would take field youth group trips to that old church. That was somehow part of the Stone Campbellbell history. I don't remember the name of it, but yeah, anyway tradition I highly respect.

Kyle:

I was glad to see that in your book. Um, so can you? I don't even quite know how to ask this. A lot of our listeners might be thinking I don't know. They might not quite understand how a kid that young could know that, and they might actually even be a little bit concerned about the idea or the thought that a kid, that young, could know that and they might have been I don't want to say indoctrinated.

Kyle:

they might have absorbed this message that there's like a big risk, and not even just a message from like fundamentalist Christian types but also more secular folks like, say, jk Rowling, for example there's this risk that there's now a pro-trans norm amongst you know, american youth or something, and that there might be this actual risk that you could be pressured into a kind of gender fluidity or into at least a kind of questioning of your gender and you might actually be pressured to transition too early and then regret it later, and then some of it would be irreversible.

Kyle:

This is the kinds of things, the fears, that you hear about. So when that kind of listener might hear you say I knew since I was five, what do you have to say to those kinds of fears?

Paula:

As with pretty much any subject, there's a lot of nuance when it comes to gender dysphoria. There's a lot we know about it, a lot we don't know about it. There are probably different causations of gender dysphoria, depending on age of onset, depending on gender, depending on sexual identity, and there's simply not much we really understand about its genesis. Not much we really understand about its genesis. What we do understand is that the numbers of those who are identifying as transgender has skyrocketed, increased tenfold, in the last five to ten years, and the vast majority of those who are identifying as trans are between 12 and 18 years of age, and that for any of us who are therapists and I am a therapist, my doctorate's in pastoral counseling that's a red flag. Traditionally, about 0.5% of the population has been transgender. That's been consistently true for as long as we've been studying this subject. And the majority of those people do not transition. They just deal with it throughout their lives. Those who do transition, it's interesting that 96% of those are happy in their new gender. So we're probably not interested in the 96%. We're interested in the 4% who were not happy in their new gender, and when we take a look at that 4%, we find out that 96% of them actually liked their new body. They did not like that. They lost family, lost jobs, did not pass in their new gender, and so a small subset of those would detransition. That's historically.

Paula:

In the last five, seven years, we see 10 times as many people identifying as transgender, and we see detransition rates going from 0.004% to as high as 10% in some locations. That is an issue. What's the difference? What's happening? So 75% of those who identify as transgender at this point and first identify as transgender during their teen years, were identified as female at birth. That's something we probably want to pay attention to. Can you say that again, paula? Something we probably want to pay attention to? Can you say that again, paula? 75% of those who identify as trans somewhere between the age of 13 and 19 were identified female at birth. Traditionally, there have been far more transgender people identified male at birth, of those identified male at birth.

Paula:

Traditionally, historically, there have been two different groups those who identified female at birth, who were transgender. There's been primarily one group. So these three groups are pretty well identified, pretty well understood until the last 10 years or so, and over the last 10 years, we see this incredible increase in the number of those who first identify as trans when they are teenagers, and a heavy number of those identifying as female at birth. Well then, we take a look at some other things that we know at this point, which is that one of the comorbidities that goes along with that group is that, if they were identified female at birth, it's pretty common that you also see sexual abuse in the background or body dysmorphia in the background. If they were identified as male at birth, you often will see ASD as a diagnosis autism spectrum disorder and so we do see comorbidities with this particular group.

Paula:

What's alarming us the most is the number of those who are detransitioning, and of course, that feeds the narrative in the far right that it is something that is not actually a diagnosis and that it is something that is being forced upon people anywhere, but it has become a cultural thing for those going through what traditionally every generation goes through. Whether you call it differentiation off of family systems theory, or individuation is what the Jungians call it. All of us get to our teen years and have to figure out who we are, and so, in this particular generation, a lot of those are also experimenting with their gender. It used to be that you had to have therapy for a year and you had to have lived in your new gender for a year before you could receive any kind of medical treatment. That has not been true over the last five or six years, as more and more of the nation has gone to informed consent, even informed consent of teens. As a therapist, I am not in favor of that. So yes, you can pretty much figure out.

Randy:

I have been canceled by both the right and what is informed consent, though, paula, what is informed consent?

Paula:

though, Paula, Informed consent is. You are told before you take these medications that they are in fact have non-reversible side effects and knowing that you choose to take them anyway. It's particularly difficult for those who are identified female at birth, because testosterone is such an incredibly powerful substance. The changes that are made on a female body with testosterone are massive and the majority not reversible. Not quite the same for antiandrogens. Antiandrogens can be stopped, which stop testosterone, but they can be stopped, and testosterone will return to normal levels. Which stop testosterone, but they can be stopped, and testosterone will return to normal levels. And even estrogen has less of an impact on the change of a body.

Paula:

So someone going from male to female and that's a transgender woman. That's what the definition would be. Transgender woman is somebody who was male, identified as male, transitions to female. Those changes are more reversible, with the exception of breast development, unless, of course, surgeries are involved. What concerns us, of course, is seeing the significant rise in those who are detransitioning in favor of seeing medical treatment until 19 years of age, with the exception of one specific subset of transgender people.

Kyle:

What is that? But you might ask that question.

Paula:

There is a group, identified male at birth, who almost first phrase they speak to a parent is something to the effect of I'm a girl, and that is firmly solidly with them from that point on. They never, ever question it. They are very effeminate from a very early age and their sexual identity is almost always attraction to straight males. This group, we know, never detransitions I mean virtually never and so when you have a child who consistently, persistently, from the time they first can speak, say they're transgender and are very public about it, then you pretty much can treat those children at an earlier age knowing that there's no difficulty in stopping their puberty and in shifting it to the new gender because they're not going to be changing their minds. But this is a very, very small subset of those who are currently identified as transgender.

Kyle:

Would you consider yourself in that group or no?

Paula:

No, I would not.

Kyle:

And yet you still knew.

Paula:

I knew, and a lot who fall into my category knew, and my category would be those who function just fine as males but had a strong sense within them from a very early age that they were not what they were functioning as. The difference in that group is again, they function fine as males. They do not show suicidal ideation very early in life if they cannot transition, which is not true with the other group, and then 70% of my group ends up being attracted to females, so their sexual identity is 70% of the time more in line with their birth gender, and so we think it might even be different causation between those two groups, though pretty much all studies that are being done on the subject have been pulled in the United States, so right now the best studies being done are in Scandinavia.

Randy:

So can you articulate for us just why you think it's best for a kid who has gender dysphoria to wait until they're 19 to transition?

Paula:

Because there's a really good chance that they're going to become 19 or 20 or 23 or 25 and say, huh, well, what do you know? I wasn't transgender, after all. You know, we can see so many of these kids who have multiple comorbidities.

Randy:

What are comorbidities?

Paula:

Comorbidities, meaning that they have more than one diagnosis Okay, and you see the gender dysphoria as a diagnosis, with this particular subset that I've been talking about. You also will often see post-traumatic stress disorder related to sexual abuse. You also will see body dysmorphia being not at all uncommon with that. You also will see various eating disorders related to that.

Randy:

Can you tell us, paula, about just you said the word calling. You know you're watching Lost. You feel called, as Jack felt called. What did that feel like? Calling is a strong word and, as you say calling, though, it makes sense. As I watch you navigate in the world currently, it feels like you have a calling right. So what do you mean by that word calling, and how did you know that I feel called to this?

Paula:

Yeah, I use the term all the time, anywhere I speak in the world, whether it's a corporation, a university, a religious group. I don't necessarily see it as theological language. I see it as the language of the soul, see it as theological language, I see it as the language of the soul. That's the soul, the way Jung would describe the soul. Most people work from the level of ego and the ego is interested in two things power and safety. That's all the ego cares about. But beneath the level of ego is the level of soul, what Jung called the self. And at that level, if we're living at that level, we will experience multiple calls in our life, which is that still small voice that says you really need to do this or that or the other. And it virtually never comes as an oh joy of joys moment. It virtually always comes as an oh shit moment because you're called to an area that's terrifying to you and yet you cannot reject the notion of it.

Paula:

It's the hero's journey as defined by pretty much every culture and every language, every age, every ethnicity, every people group. It's the hero's journey. I think probably the Joseph Campbell description of it over the last 20 years or so is the most effective that an ordinary citizen is called to an extraordinary journey under the road of trials. Initially they reject that call because, hey, they're not stupid, it's the road of trials. But then you're miserable because you've rejected the call and you finally answer it and, sure enough, you find yourself on the road of trials. And then it gets worse. You find yourself in a deep, dark cave. That's Dante at the beginning of the Divine Comedy. In the middle of the road of my life I awoke in a dark wood where the true way was wholly lost. It's Shakespeare's Macbeth life has been a tale told by an idiot, full of sand and fury, signifying nothing. It's John of the Cross's Dark Night of the Soul. You become completely and utterly lost and that's when you discover it's okay, because lost is a place too. I want to write that book someday.

Paula:

Lost is a place too, and you spend the time you have to spend and you learn the lessons you have to learn, and then you come out of that place and now the road of trials doesn't feel nearly as difficult as it did, because you've gone through that dark night of the soul and, of course, on the hero's journey, you get to the Holy Grail and realize that's not ever been your destination. Your job is to take the Holy Grail, bring it back and give it as an offering to those from whom you have departed. Only then are you free to move on. That's what's in all of the myths departed, only then are you free to move on. That's what's in all of the myths. And I believe it is a calling that all of us if we have ears to hear it and a heart to feel it and a soul to listen for it all of us receive more than once in life.

Randy:

You had lived your life with this gender dysphoria and you know, knew, since you were four or five, six, and there was that moment, as you watched Lost, that you, you know, spent hours and hours weeping and kind of reckoned with and came face to face with this call that was going to utterly change. And to say change your life doesn't seem like it does justice to what it was about to do, I'm guessing, because you had a family, you were married, you had a career, you had all sorts of power, status, influence. Did you know in that moment that all of that, or not all of it, a lot of that, would go away?

Paula:

Tell us about that reality of what you were facing down go away, or, like, tell us about that reality of what you were facing down. I think denial goes a long way and I think there's no end to white male entitlement. And so I thought well, people really have one of two options. They can either think to themselves oh, I don't know much about what it means to be transgender, but I do know Paul, and so I'm going to listen carefully and pay attention to this, and at that point in time, by the way, most of the Christian world had no opinion on what it meant to be trans. That's really how things were 10, 11 years ago.

Paula:

I thought they could do that. Or they could say, oh, my goodness, we've been wrong about Paul's character all along, and I don't think I was prepared for how many were going to choose the latter of those two, and that was pretty devastating, because I lost my entire denomination and I was a national leader and I knew thousands of people by name, literally, and you know, post-transition, I've had substantive conversations with, I think, 10 or 11 of them. Yeah.

Paula:

It was a total ending of one life and the beginning of another. Yeah, life marked by discontinuity, not by continuity. I spoke a couple of years ago for the Endwell Conference, which is for palliative care physicians, hospice workers, and it was about dying before dying, taken from the chapter in my book that has that title, because I had to start all over again and that's still not easy. I dream about it probably five nights a week. I dream about losing my career. In my previous denomination, my family stayed with me, but of course the dynamics of what a family is are very gendered and so that shifted. Kathy and I remain close as coworkers and as friends, but we're no longer together.

Kyle:

I'm about at that place in the book where you were just talking about, and so you've already at this point discussed a lot kind of excruciating detail about your family, including your marriage, your conversations that you had with your children. Your description of your relationship with your now ex-wife is really moving. It's really emotional. I I welled up when you're talking about your conversations with your kids. I have two very small kids. My kids are three and one and it was hard to get through. I can't imagine how hard it would have been to write. So, to the extent that you're willing to share, can you tell us what it was like to figure out your gender identity as a married person and as a parent and the journey of realizing that, particularly with the marriage, that that relationship was not going to survive it, or at least not in the same form?

Paula:

I thought it was and if I had known it was not going to survive, I'm not sure I would have transitioned. I remember when we went to our marriage therapist who was like amazing and he was 110 years old and he was finally retiring and we were his last clients on his last day and we're both therapists and I just asked him. He had the perfect name, mike solomon I said how many couples are willing to work this hard?

Paula:

and he said one percent. And I said how many couples get this far? And he said one percent. And he said which is what makes it so tragic? Because you're a lesbian and she's not. And that was a two-hour silent drive home because that, that, that's the day I realized that for Kathy to be true to herself, it would have to be the end of the marriage. And, uh, that was devastating and in so many ways still is.

Kyle:

I literally wrote that quote down, cause I wanted to ask you about it. It's powerful and I can't imagine how devastating. I'm not quite sure how to ask this part, and again, feel free to refuse it. Where do you this probably isn't the right way to phrase it where do you place the blame for that tragedy? Or, if I want to put it differently, what do you wish was different about the world? If anything, does that make sense?

Paula:

if anything. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think there's some things that are better today than they were back in the day. I would love it if I had been able to just explore my gender identity at that age.

Paula:

I don't know what I would have decided at that age I in today's world probably would have chosen to transition genders, but I'm not sure.

Paula:

I certainly would love to have had the opportunity to experiment and I love that kids have the opportunity to experiment now.

Paula:

Let's just not treat them medically in ways that can't be reversed. In my case, I would have done anything not to have transitioned, for the sake of my family, for the sake of my career, and when the call came I thought I could continue to live my life as a male. And it's interesting you can talk to my therapist me and we will tell you that suicidal ideation was not a major concern. You can talk to my best friend, who was a therapist, and to my former wife, who was a therapist, and they would both tell you that they thought suicidal ideation was a great concern. So the two of them would be inclined to say well, I might well have transitioned because I wasn't going to make it otherwise. My therapist and I probably don't believe that, but I was very depressed and it was not a good life and probably the marriage was not sustainable at that level of depression and the relationship with the kids was being harmed because of it.

Paula:

My work was being harmed because of it. Could I have continued that it's possible? Yeah, I think I could have. But again, if you ask Kathy or my best friend David, they would say oh yeah, no, we don't think you could have. But again, if you ask kathy or my best friend david, they would say oh yeah, no, we don't think you would have made it is david still your best friend?

Paula:

he's still my best friend. Yeah, he's the one friend, um that crossed over the whole, the whole thing. Yeah, the only male friend who did there were a couple of female friends who kind of did, but really he was the only one.

Randy:

Okay, okay, Paula, totally changing gears. If that's okay, I'm interested. We all are interested in spirituality, but I want to know what your transition, how that has affected your spirituality. How has it affected the way you see God? How has it affected the way you see Jesus? How has it affected the way you see all the things?

Paula:

It has shifted my religious faith a lot. I've always been curious and so, being raised in evangelical denomination where the typical preparation for ministry was Bible college, that did not serve me particularly well. But I moved to New York and ended up in a study group with the head of a seminary, a Roman Catholic seminary, and a group of intellectuals and all of them Catholic, all of them quite liberal, and I had a mentor who was the chairman of the Department of Philosophy at an Eastern University and began really questioning pretty much everything I understood and went through fowler stages of faith and went through that period of doubt, questioning and then coming out the other side to something that is much more nebulous, much more broad, much deeper, I think, much more universal. And I had a lot of guides in that process personal guides who were 10, 20, 30 years older than me, and then people that I read as well. I think through that period of time, probably Richard Rohr had a pretty strong impact than me. And then people that I read as well. I think through that period of time, probably Richard Rohr had a pretty strong impact on me from a psychological perspective.

Paula:

Scott Peck, this would be back in the 90s, 80s, 90s, and today I would say that my faith is. I would say that my faith is much more rich, deep than it was before. I think before, as with a lot of folks raised in evangelicalism, I had a left-brain-heavy faith. For the last 500 years, of course, we have been a left-brain heavy civilization, thanks to Rene Descartes and John Locke, and Isaac Newton.

Paula:

Francis Bacon I mean all of these people really shifted the narrative, as Ian McGilchrist in his marvelous book the Master and His Emissary McGilchrist taught it A neuroscientist and a psychiatrist who taught for years at Oxford. But in that groundbreaking work he talks about how information typically functions in humanity. Information comes into the right hemisphere of the brain, is transferred from there to the left hemisphere of the brain for categorization and analysis and then brought back to the right hemisphere to be placed in context and historically that's how we function at our best. But he says, for the last 500 years we've transferred it to the left brain and left it there. The left brain is interested in what it knows, the right brain in what it experiences, is interested in what it knows, the right brain and what it experiences.

Paula:

And so Christianity went from being a religion that was primarily, or really all religion more right, left, right brain. It became a decidedly left brain. And that exercise as a left brain did not particularly serve me well. Transitioning genders, of course you're really playing around with the chemistry of your body as well, and I found myself becoming much more open to my intuition, much more open to to. You know, pascal, the heart has its reasons. That reason does not know and that, for me, opened me back up, because I think I was.

Paula:

I mean, I wasn't really enamored with the new atheists, but I certainly found myself moving in the direction of probably an agnosticism. That was tepid, that's probably not the right language, that was tired, that was lazy, and what was reborn was a real sense of spirit, capital S and a recognition of all the things that we don't know. And then through all that, I find out. What do you know? I really kind of like Jesus and we're taken by the teachings of Jesus. I really like Jonathan Rauch's new book Across Purposes. Rauch is a gay Jewish atheist and in that book he says who knew that Christianity was a load-bearing wall of American democracy, democracy? And he says you know, the left has given up Jesus for a spirituality that's nebulous and new agey and the right has given up Jesus for Christian nationalism. And nobody is out there talking about loving God, loving neighbor and loving self. Hmm.

Randy:

You recently it sounds like you led a church left-hand church, is it?

Paula:

Yeah, for six years.

Randy:

Okay, and it became what? What was the name that you changed it to?

Paula:

Envision Community Church.

Randy:

There you go, Thank you. You shut it down post-COVID. That is an experience that many, many pastors have had, or many, many pastors currently are looking, facing down the reality of currently. Can you just I'm sorry for you know, like picking up all the scabs of all these wounds, but can you just take us through that reality of what brought about that demise of that church and the grief and the reality of being a pastor who had to, post-COVID, shut down a church?

Paula:

You could talk to any one of a number of the pastors involved there, and you would get different answers from each of them. And so.

Paula:

I begin by saying that I was listening very, very much to a segment of the female population that was talking a lot about the patriarchy and the dangers of the patriarchy and the negative impact of the patriarchy, particularly its impact on Christianity, and so when it was time to start this church, I was not the one leading the charge for that, but I was approached about helping with it and the people who funded us. The primary funding came from a church that wanted three co-pastors, what they called Trinitarian leadership, not one. They wanted a more democratic board structure and they were not able to fund us very very much.

Paula:

Well, I led a church planting organization for 35 years that was extremely successful in starting churches that grew very large very fast, and anytime a new church wanted to start with more than one lead pastor, I would always say no, the buck's got to stop somewhere. And anytime they would want to start with no board or with a kind of a very unstructured church board, I'd say, yeah, no, it's going to be Carver Policy Governance and the lead pastor is going to be on the board, and the lead pastor is going to have the ability to veto names that are suggested for the board. And, yeah, there's got to be enough money there to get a crowd at the beginning. Because if you can't get a crowd at the beginning, which in the United States is roughly 80 to 100 people, then it's really difficult for you to ever grow over 200 in size. And so, after having then started a church with three pastors instead of one, without policy governance, without the ability to veto people who are on the church board, I would say, yep, every single thing I did back in my orchard group days I would do again, and so it was a very good lesson for me.

Paula:

And it also said to me yeah, the problem was not in patriarchal structures or even in hierarchical structures. It was in power abuse structures. It was in ego-based structures, and that was where the problems were. If I were to start a church again, it would be with one single pastor. That pastor would have a particular personality type. It would be with a board that was a Carver Policy Governance Board, where the board is focused on the ends of the organization, the staff is focused on the means, and it would be started with as much funding as possible so that you're able to have an adequate staff and do adequate advertising from the very beginning.

Randy:

So we bump shoulders in the post-evangelical collective in those circles and there's a lot of conversations about. You know those structures are inherently. You know, fill in the blank with whatever derogatory term you want to come.

Kyle:

Let's say critical, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paula:

So what you're saying is, your experience says it's not the structures themselves, it's the brokenness inside of the population that is really good at pointing out what the problems are, but not very good at coming up with any solutions, and I've always been enough of a pragmatist that I'm really not interested in hearing what you think about the problems unless you have some solutions to those problems. Yes, it has been a misogynistic world because it's been a male-only world in evangelicalism certainly, in the Catholic Church certainly, and it has been patriarchal. But it does not have to be. I think there's a lot of to use an overused cliche, throwing out the baby with the bathwater that has occurred. Use cliche throwing out the baby with the bathwater that has occurred. And when I still hear many just railing against any form of church planting that is likely to grow a larger, healthy church, my ankles get up. It's like, yeah, we need these communities of faith and I really kind of don't give a shit. Who is it that's starting them? I don't care what color they are or what their ethnicity is, but there are certain ways in the Western world in which organizations tend to function.

Paula:

Communities tend to function pretty healthy. We're a community based species. We didn't take off when we were at the level of blood kin. We didn't take off till we got to the level of tribe. What brought us together as tribes? It wasn't our need for safety, it was our search for meaning. So go stand around Stonehenge, like I did a couple of months ago, or the carved bodies of Rapa Nui, which I haven't been to, and what is it that brought him? It was our search for meaning. That's what's always brought us together.

Paula:

There's not been a culture in the history of mankind that has not had robust religious communities. Why have we ceded those to the far right? You know, certainly during the left, robust religious communities helped us bring about the entire civil rights movement. Where are those churches now? I really believe we need strong, healthy churches. I don't think the structure of those churches is as important as their message, their theology, how true they are to the message of Jesus, how true they are to the message of Jesus. I know that that invites a million questions and could be seen as rather naive, but I'm older than dirt.

Randy:

I can't tell you how refreshing the pragmatism is and the experience and the honesty is, Paula, but I would love to have you on another time just to talk church.

Paula:

Right, oh, I would love to do it.

Kyle:

I mean, I'm a believer in the church 10 follow-up questions just about ecclesiology yeah.

Randy:

Yes, thank you. This sparked another thought. In kind of going back to our conversation, or the rest of our conversation, I saw you write or say something to the effect of when I was a male, I had the Midas touch. Everything I touched turned to at least silver, if not gold. Right, you said that that has not been my experience as a female. Can you tell us about that world and reality?

Paula:

Yeah, this is what I speak on. All over the world gender equity. I've had women come to me from all seven continents, including two from Antarctica, thanking me for my first TED Talk where I talk about that. This is a world that is weighted in favor of educated white males and it's the reality of things. I don't think they're bad guys. I think they're not aware that they started halfway to the finish line. You know I worked hard for every single thing I got. I don't think I knew I started closer to the finish line than everybody else and when you are a woman or a minority, you realize you don't begin. And I say all the time I'll not live long enough to lose my white male entitlement. I brought it with me. And when I transitioned.

Paula:

I walk in a room, I still think I have a right to control the room. And women, of course, are not taught that kind of. You know, they're taught deference almost as a birthright from the time they're born.

Speaker 1:

So it has been a rude awakening to just be treated consistently as if I have no idea what I'm talking about Mm.

Paula:

Hmm, yeah, I wish I had Did not have new illustrations to use every single time I speak. Yeah, yeah but. I always do.

Kyle:

It's maddening. What's your latest example?

Paula:

The most recent was when I went to purchase a new car and they're doing all the things they do and the guy came back and offered me $10,400 for mine and as soon as I looked at it I just said give me the key, meaning the key to my car, which of course they they hold on to once they've looked at it to price it, of course.

Randy:

And he said no, no, no, what do?

Paula:

I need to do and I said give me the key and he said no, no, no, I can work with you. I said give me the key. You and I both know that number is absurd and if I was a guy you would not have even thought about offering me that number. You would have started at probably 14.5. So give me my blanking key. And I left and went over to the Subaru dealership and got the money for my car that I expected.

Randy:

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Kyle:

And how common, would you say, that kind of experience is now?

Paula:

Uh, every week.

Kyle:

Yeah.

Randy:

Thank you yeah.

Kyle:

I remember sitting in when it hit of course it can never hit me in the way that it's hit. It has hit you, but when it my privilege really like sunk in, maybe for the first time ever was um sitting in a philosophy graduate seminar and listening to. Most of my classes were at least half female, if not more. I know that's unusual in philosophy, but that's the department I was in and listening to most of the class in that one relates stories of just regular everyday interactions that they would have because we'd happen to be discussing those topics. It didn't just come up out of the blue because we happened to be discussing those topics. It didn't just come up out of the blue and it just kind of dawning on me and trying to point it out to one of my fellow males in the room why it should be dawning on him as well.

Kyle:

That I don't have anything comparable to that.

Kyle:

That the sorts of things that I have to deal with, that I would reach for to compare to that, just are categorically different.

Kyle:

That I don't have to like clutch my keys when I walked to my car, that I've never been afraid in certain spaces, um, that that sort of dismissal just doesn't happen to me regularly, and then I would have friends who would teach, cause we, you know, we all taught as part of our graduate training and then many of us went on to teach afterward and I would just hear stories that I couldn't. It was hard for me to believe that this person was telling me the truth because it was so unlike anything I had ever experienced in my classrooms and we had the same pool of students, essentially right, and so statistically it was unlikely that I wouldn't have encountered something like what they were describing if it really was happening. Just unbelievable rudeness Fact-checking you on your phone in the middle of class, demanding that you prove the thing that you just said would never have happened to me, didn't never happen to me. Um, students getting up and walking out because I don't like what you're saying, like, and that's like a regular feature of the experience of my female colleagues.

Paula:

So yeah it is uh unfortunately, ubiquitous to the female experience and has been uh quite a rude awakening.

Randy:

Yeah, did you? I'm assuming you didn't go into, you're feeling called into being, uh, a woman, a trans woman, in thinking, I'm going to, I want, want to, I want to exercise all this influence and I want to, um, I want to point out this gender inequities that are inherent in our culture.

Paula:

that wasn't something that you went into this journey thinking right, no, I had no idea where, what road I was going to take. I had no idea the direction I would end up moving. It all just kind of unfolded.

Randy:

And so here we sit, five months into the second Trump administration. The first one was what it was, but five months in, I mean, we lived through a campaign in which the trans community was really, really foundational, for it felt like to me a Trump victory, scapegoating the trans community in some really really disgusting and ugly ways. And then immediately executive orders start coming out assaulting the trans community. And, um, can you just tell us, paula? Um, what it's like to be a trans person right now in America?

Paula:

Oh, not the best time. Um January 21st 2021, I spoke for the Biden inaugural prayer service as one of the speakers for that. Quite an honor. Spoke to the president vice president prayer service. I was one of the speakers for that. Quite an honor. Spoke to the president, vice president, their families, members of Congress.

Paula:

Four years later to the day, january 21, 2025, I was reading the executive order that said I, as a transgender person, do not exist, and so what a difference four years can make. I was talking about that on npr and I said this at the post evangelical collective too. I said I had renewed my passport back in november, and it's a good thing I did, because had I renewed it in february, would I have the wrong gender on it? And then I wondered should I have said that on npr? Because how do I know somebody's not listening to this? Who has the ability to cancel my passport and they should undo one with the wrong gender? And I mean I thought about it for a couple hours and then I thought, oh, wait a minute, it's npr. None of those people would be listening well, I don't know nothing to worry about there.

Paula:

Um, it's, it is, uh, it's frightening, it's. It's really very frightening to be an elected official and quite public. This is a very liberal county, one of the most liberal in the nation, and it's a liberal town that I live in and it never comes up. My gender never, ever comes up. I'm fortunate in that the world receives me as a woman, so the world doesn't see me as a trans woman. They just see me as a woman.

Paula:

I see myself as a trans woman. I always say I come from the liminal space between genders, from the borderlands between genders, but that's not how the world receives me and that makes my life much easier than for a lot of other trans people.

Paula:

So I'm able to carry out most of my tasks, certainly my tasks related to the coaching I do for TED or the work I do as mayor pro tem there. My gender is not really an issue, it just virtually never comes up. But every time I leave the country now, yeah, you get nervous and you don't know what's coming next. You know I'm assuming that some point I will lose my medical coverage for my medications and you know I'm in a position I can pay for those out of pocket. Most people are not.

Kyle:

Mm hmm, yeah, so a bit more of a conceptual question, because I'm a philosopher, no apologies. So when did you gain the language, I'll say, of thinking of yourself as transgender? Because I'm assuming when you were five and you knew something was up? That was not a category that was available to you like it is to many of today's youth. So when did those new categories kind of come into your consciousness and how, how did it impact you?

Paula:

The language that is commonly used and that a lot of media will attempt to use and I always challenge them on it is that you were a girl trapped in a boy's body. It's like, no, no, I was a boy trapped in a boy's body who somehow knew I was supposed to have been born a girl, and that was my experience from as early as I can remember, and it wasn't something anything could be done about.

Paula:

But then, as I say in my book, I began to every now and again hear something about transsexuals. And then, on the Merv Griffin show, rushed home from school one day to see Christine Jorgensen, the famous transsexual from the 1950s, and it's like, oh, there's a name for us and people would talk about transvestites. Of course that's a paraphilia, what we used to call a fetish, sexual fetish, and I knew that was a definition of who I was, that transsexual was. And it's interesting because the Christian psychology professor who was at Fuller for years and years wrote a book called Sex for Christians, lewis Smedes, and in that he actually had a section on transsexuality and transvestism, defining those. And I mean I think I committed those two pages to memory in my early 20s.

Kyle:

So when did this idea that, because transsexual and transgender are now distinct, obviously so when did this idea of non-binary gender come into your consciousness?

Paula:

Non-binary is relatively new. The DSM-5 puts it under the category of gender dysphoria or being transgender, which I don't believe the term is appropriate for being transgender. I don't think it's a good use of language to begin with. And if people are non-binary or transgender, then what are those of us who are transgender? The non-binary is something that 62% of those non-binary are between 16 and 26 years of age. That means something we don't know exactly what. Again, there are certain comorbidities that go along with being gender non-binary. We see a lot of kids identifying as gender non-binary who in a previous generation, more than likely would have identified as goth. Those are things I can say. You can't say those things, you'll get in all kinds of trouble for it I'll get in trouble with the far left for it.

Paula:

I won't get in trouble with others for it. But we really do not know much about what it means to be gender non-binary. Will it even be a category 30, 40, 50 years from now? Hard to say.

Kyle:

I want to ask more questions about gender, but I said that was my one question, so we're running out.

Randy:

I care about the church. I know you care a lot about the church, paula. I know that there are pastors listening who are very interested in this conversation, care about this conversation, feel it deeply and yet, on the surface, know that if they were to breach this topic in their church, they'd probably lose a large, large percentage of their church. What would you say to church leaders, pastors, elders, people who are in power in church spaces, who are listening to this and not wanting people to know that they're listening to this or listening to this, wishing you know in their world, wishing they could do something about it, but feeling like they can't? What would you say to them, paula?

Paula:

It's not an easy one. It's just not easy. I was talking with one of my best friends the other day and she told me an entire story and when it was over I said, yeah, whatever answer you give on, this is going to be the wrong answer, and I'm so sorry. You just have to decide which wrong answer you're going to give. Life often only gives us those kinds of options.

Paula:

I think it's a time to be prudent and prophetic. It seems like all great truth is paradoxical, so that seems certainly paradoxical. To be prophetic and speak up when you can. So don't shy away from a very good exegesis of Matthew 19 and everything that Scripture says about eunuchs and everything it does not say about gender dysphoria in any way, shape or form, except speaking of eunuchs, which could well be speaking of those who are intersex. I think somebody can speak about that and it's just good, proper exegesis. I think probably the place to start is when people speak against it say you know I'm not going to talk about what my position is or is not, but what I do want to talk about is, as a member of the clergy. The Bible is silent on the subject of gender dysphoria.

Kyle:

It does not speak on the subject.

Paula:

So let's just be honest about that. You're creating language that is simply not there. That may be as far as some of them can go. I mean, right now we desperately need allies who are willing to go further and speak up on our behalf. But I do understand it's a difficult time for a lot of folks who are in ministry to do that, particularly if they're in anything resembling an evangelical or even sometimes post-evangelical church.

Randy:

Yeah, yeah. So for those who are willing to speak up on the community's behalf, what does that look like? Just a little bit, Paula.

Paula:

Yeah, I think it is standing firm and saying let's follow the data on this, let's follow the science on this, let's not follow the rhetoric from the right or the left. Gender dysphoria as a diagnosis has been around for a very, very long time. It has been seen as a legitimate diagnosis from the most respected medical organizations in the world. Let's begin there and then let's take a look at what we're seeing and hearing from the far right and the far left and we can ask those more subtle, nuanced questions Is there a gender binary? Is gender a social construct or is there something about gender that is deeper than social construct? I do not personally believe that gender is social construct. We can have those kinds of conversations following the data.

Randy:

Thank you.

Kyle:

Now I definitely have more questions.

Randy:

Yes.

Kyle:

So in your book just related to this you at one point rattled off some statistics of what's likely to happen in a church if a pastor or a leader comes out in support of something like this. Can you share some of that, because I found it not a pastor. I found it kind of refreshing to hear you know here's like what's likely to happen In churches that have come out in favor of marriage equality.

Paula:

That's the closest we have and that was before the current incredible levels of polarization. So that was four years ago. At that point you were seeing churches lose about 25% of members, 10% of income, sometimes 10% of members, 25% of income, and then within 12 to 18 months you would see them come back. I speak regularly at Denver Community Church, which is a large and very healthy post-evangelical church. They didn't really lose anybody over an 18-month period for their stand on gender. They lost people because of COVID in New York City. Forefront Church that he started lost about 25% of their people, but within 18 months they were back. While they were back in attendance they were not back in dollars. Their numbers were lower. The income level was lower. That, as I understand it's fairly typical.

Kyle:

Yeah, again, not a pastor, but I don't know.

Randy:

It might be encouraging to hear that your numbers might be lower, but it doesn't necessarily mean yeah, again, not a pastor, but I don't know. It might be encouraging to hear more people because of those things than we did over becoming affirming. And by positive I mean I know, like I really know it, I'm not in Lyons, colorado. I'm in Milwaukee, wisconsin, where it's a blue voting city, but it's a very socially conservative city, very traditional, very German, very all the things.

Paula:

You're not Madison. Yes, we're not Madison.

Randy:

Thank you. But what has happened is word has gotten out about who we are and what we believe and who we love, and we've become a little bit of a destination for people who say I love Jesus, I love the church and I love queer people and you can do all those together. So it is, yeah, speaking to what you're speaking to. It's just, it's not a it doesn't have to be a death sentence for a church, and by it doesn't have to be, I mean I don't think it is right, and by it doesn't have to be, I mean I don't think it is right.

Paula:

No, I don't believe it is at all. I believe that there are issues bigger than marriage, equality or trans issues that end up affecting attendance.

Paula:

I think, a bigger issue, for instance, is the substitutionary atonement, and those who no longer teach that will find their numbers decreasing in terms of attendance and giving. And that kind of makes sense, because if you're not concerned that you're going to hell, you probably aren't going to show up every Sunday and you're not going to give 10% of your income, and I find that that's a bigger indicator of a church's likelihood to lose people than marriage equality. At this point, marriage equality, I think, is an issue. You know that ship's sailed and evangelicalism is just trying to figure out how to come along behind it and quietly figure that one out. The trans stuff has been chosen because they knew that that was a group that did not have enough power to fight on their own behalf At this point if they had doubled down on gay issues, as some denominations have. But on the whole, particularly megachurches chose not to double down on gay issues. Most of those will just refuse to tell you what their stance is on gay stuff.

Randy:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no I mean I've said this for a bit now, after having some years of experience that and please, if you're evangelical and you're listening, or you're an evangelical pastor and listening, please know that. I don't think all evangelical churches are like this, but in my experience, fear and shame and guilt and some manipulation worked in is really powerful at getting people to give, to attend, to serve, to volunteer, to do all the things. And when you take those out of the equation, there's a lot of refreshment, there's a lot of healing, there's a lot of life, but there's a lot of disengagement too. You know like.

Paula:

It's true, and I believe that we as a culture have lost our understanding of the need for community, and I think that's far beyond religion. I think we're looking there more, not just in the realm of sociology or anthropology. I think we're Well, yeah, more anthropological. I think you know what has happened with this shift to left brain focus in the last 500 years. You know, the left brain is extraordinarily capable of focusing on the three degrees in front of it and while it's doing that, the right brain's looking at the other 357 degrees making sure you're not getting eaten by a grizzly bear, while the left brain is doing whatever it needs to do. Well, now you've got, you know, culture's focused, with that three degrees of attention, on creation of AI, with nobody looking at the other 357 degree question of yeah, but is it going to eat us? And you know, even Stephen Hawking thought that that was a question that needed to be answered.

Randy:

Yes, Paula. Can you tell our listeners where to find your work? Tell us about the title of your book again, and then where to find all your TED Talks and just where do we interact with you?

Paula:

Yeah, you can find my book pretty much anywhere. As a Woman, what I Learned About Power, sex and the Patriarchy After I Transitioned was published by Simon Schuster, and you can find me at paulastonewilliamscom. I write there pretty much every week and you can go to tedcom and just put in Paul Stone Williams and you will find me. Go to tedcom and just put in paulastonewilliams and you will find me. I'm my book agent. Right now. It's got a book sitting with my publisher.

Randy:

Um, when the enemy is you, how to respond with curiosity and an inquiring mind if someone wants you to speak at their church, can they just go to paulastonewilliamscom and paulastonewilliamscom.

Paula:

Or just email me at my company, which is paula at RLT as in Road Less Traveled, rltpathwayscom. They can also email me at paula at paulastonewilliamscom.

Kyle:

Brilliant. Yeah, very interested in that next book too. We should talk again.

Paula:

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to getting going on that one If you have some time and willingness.

Randy:

I think you made us want to talk about three or four more times, Paula. We'll be in touch. Reverend Dr Paula Stone-Williams, thank you so much for joining us tonight.

Paula:

Oh, it's been delightful being with you.

Randy:

Thanks for listening to A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar. We hope you're enjoying these conversations. Help us continue to create compelling content and reach a wider audience. By supporting us at patreoncom slash apastorandaphilosopher, we can get bonus content, extra perks and a general feeling of being a good person.

Kyle:

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Randy:

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Kyle:

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