Mike (00:04.374) Hello, on the podcast today, we're honored to chat with Dr. Hanna Reichel, an associate professor of Reformed Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. Hanna is an internationally recognized Barth scholar, and their research interests include Christology, Theological Anthropology, Eschatology, Theological Epistemology, Political Theology, Queer Theology, and the Theologies of the Digital. Hanna holds a doctorate in Systematic Theology from Heidelberg University. and an MDiv in theology, and a Bachelor's of Science degree in economics. Hannah is the author of the brand new book entitled After Method, Queer Grace, Conceptual Design, and the Possibility of Theology, which is published by Westminster John Knox Press. Hannah, so excited to have you on the show today. Hanna Reichel (they/them) (00:54.492) Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's great to have an opportunity to chat. Mike (00:58.486) So I had to give like a very succinct bio. You have an extensive background and lots of research interests and you're on different boards. Can you talk, is there anything that I missed that other people should know about you? Hanna Reichel (they/them) (01:10.888) Um, no, I mean, as you were reading it, it sounded like a lot of apologies. So I recognize that that's a high degree of abstraction. I'm sorry for that. Mike (01:22.695) No, it's fantastic. So I thought we'd start a little bit with kind of your journey in academia and also if you want to integrate how your faith has shaped your journey. Hanna Reichel (they/them) (01:33.636) Yeah, thank you. So up front, right? So English is my not my first language. I grew up in Germany. So you will find the accent in the background every now and then also me looking for the right words and not always finding the right words. Yeah, so my both my parents are ministers in the Lutheran Church. So I kind of grew up. with the strong sense of like a faith background that just permeated my world. But then both my parents worked in diverse ministries. So I also, both in like church and then parachurch organizations, lots of more international and ecumenical contexts. And that... from early on really shaped my upbringing, not just because we moved around a lot. And so I grew up in different places, right? And different kind of contexts that were also shaped differently faith-wise, places such as Venezuela and the Ivory Coast and Lebanon and Argentina and so on. But so I really grew up with this understanding that church was this very weird and wonderful, wide and large. body, right, that weirdly connects us to other people all around the globe, that you can, you know, come to a totally different place and you may actually not feel like you share much with people culturally, socially, politically, and yet at the same time, like you're there and you're part in some way of that same body and the same family. And that is just very miraculous in many ways, right? And that gives us an opportunity to also be with one another. Mike (03:19.81) Yeah. Hanna Reichel (they/them) (03:23.752) in a way that we do have to kind of grapple with these differences all the time, right? It makes it hard. But also somehow like there's a foundation for that precedes us and that is not merely rooted in who we are and what we like and what we like about one another or not, right? But that kind of is a different kind of foundation. But then at the same time, right, the concrete manifestations of church also often are a very narrow place in different ways, right? They're tied to particular, yeah, you know, expressions that faith has taken in particular contexts and where people really believe vastly different things about what is important and how, what it means to be body of Christ in the world and how that faith gets to express itself. And so I feel like that tension has marked. uh my upbringing a bit so both in like the sense of there is this foundation but then also it's something that in every concrete place is a struggle to navigate right how to actually create belonging together um and how to turn that uh vague feeling of belonging with god and therefore belonging together into actual community um Hanna Reichel (they/them) (04:45.764) Yeah, and I have been, so I think like growing up in different contexts and always feeling like very impressed but also awkward in them to some extent has and maybe some sense of itinerancy, right? Like not ultimately having a home in any of these settings has definitely shaped me a lot and it has also raised a lot of questions for me and that ultimately I think led to my ending up in academia, which was not my original plan. There were a couple of experiences that were really formative for me, faith-wise, that happened in other contexts. One was, also several, to maybe just flush out some of these things. So for example, I attended a Catholic high school. and it was a boys school. I actually chose it because it was a boys school. I wanted to kind of, at that point, they were admitting more openly, but somehow that fascinated me. But then I was a Protestant in that setting and there was like weekly and daily communion services where like throughout my time at high school, I was sitting there and not, you know, not welcome at the table at the same time. And, That was even at my graduation service. I remember that, right? That graduation service where somehow this is a moment of a milestone for me personally and a celebration and also a celebration for the whole class. And then me and a couple of other Protestants at the same time are singled out. And I grappled a lot with that question of on whose invitation am I here, right? And so this is one point that I think became really significant for me in my faith to say right at the end of the day, the invitation is extended by God and whether you other person here in this pew like it or not, you know, I will remain here in this community. And obviously that doesn't just extend to the Protestant Catholic divide, but that was a place that it asserted itself for me in that context. I spent some time after high school in Hanna Reichel (they/them) (07:13.52) Argentina, doing something like a social service type work with grassroots organization, right? With some understanding that I came from a very privileged place, you know, and wanting to give something back, you know, with these youthful idealisms. And very quickly when I landed there, kind of realized I'm not giving anything back, right? Like I don't. I don't know how to work in this context. People who have very little formal training have way of an advantage on me in terms of just knowing how the world works that they're moving in that I do not. And they're actually giving me an education and information by taking me along in the work that they're doing. They're actually investing in me. They may not have any degrees or any access to Hanna Reichel (they/them) (08:11.072) much of the world that I have access to and they're taking me along and investing in me so that I maybe at some point can, yeah, you know, have a different impact in the places that I am in. And that was very humbling. And that was also context where I encountered the church in again in a different kind of ambivalence maybe. So, right, in Argentina, the church has a history of being really complicit with the dictatorships that the country has visited, has experienced. And so, and obviously, like the longer history of the colonial history that the church was not just complicit in, but also driving to a great extent. And at the same time, in many of the. concrete struggles that I was able to witness and participate to a degree. I also then found people of profound, like militant faith kind of committed to the struggle of peoples on the ground and making a great difference thereby. So for example, in settings, and these were often not explicitly faith or religious settings. So for example, there would be a movement for landless people and to just appropriate basically. um, land that was owned maybe by an international corporation or was just not cultivated. And then just to create, uh, homes for people there, uh, with very little resources. And then you would have, you know, the police or even the military trying to, uh, get them out. And then priests and nuns would say, well, we're celebrating a mass here. You cannot evict us or, um, well, maybe arrest me and I can write a letter to the Vatican and that will give us a completely different type of, um, publicity and kind of political weight in the situation. So that was deeply formative for me. And then another context was I went to study in Lebanon where, and at that time I was already studying theology because after the Argentina thing, I was like, okay, I have all these big questions. I need to somehow figure out things. Hanna Reichel (they/them) (10:37.652) about justice and solidarity and God and the world and, yeah, and the role of the church and the role of faith and all of that, and whether a better world is possible on some of these faith grounds that at the same time have often been so bad in their impact on people's lives. And then also with the distinct impression that even like often the very, where the church kind of went in public stands or denounced injustice, that sometimes that was done with good intentions, but also with very little understanding of like how actual things work. So particularly, right, economic systems and like larger political. trajectories and power constellations and so forth. And so I felt like, okay, I need to get a better understanding of all of that I need to do. And this is where this other degree came in of like, I have these theological questions and it seems to write, it also seems the right place for me to work out many of my questions. But, and I need to know more about history and politics and economics. And I felt like I could read up on history and. politics, but I did not understand economics at all. So that's why I studied it. I did not end up understanding it to be very honest. But yeah. Yeah, and then during my theological studies, I went to Lebanon for a year because I again was very interested in this and kind of the tensions and or. intersections between faith and politics and all the political constellations and violence. And many from Germany, and it makes a lot of sense, many theologians go to Israel at some point, right? And I was always driven to kind of look on the other side of the fence. So like, I'm going to go to Lebanon. I want to learn Arabic. I want to learn Islamic theology. I want to understand the conflicts from a different side. Hanna Reichel (they/them) (12:54.516) And in that context also, what really came to life for me were kind of the doctrinal questions that often are very abstract. So how we think of God as like one God or in a Trinitarian sense, because there are different faith traditions on the ground that conceptualize God differently. Are they speaking of the same God? And what difference do our different understandings make for how we think of community, for how we think of? our relationship to the world around us. And same with the Christological questions where like we studied in seminary, or at the university at that time, different Christological heresies that were alive maybe in the third, fourth and fifth century. And then suddenly you have concretely existed communities that still organize around these different beliefs. It's not just an extinct heresy somewhere in a corner of church history. And to kind of... get a better grasp of what is at stake, right? What are the different questions that people are asking? How are these live commitments and community forming and not just abstract and metaphysical questions? So that kind of always drove me deeper into theology and into doctrine and into questions of method. Yeah, and this is how I eventually ended up. teaching theology, mostly because I'm still trying to understand it. Mike (14:27.186) Yeah, no, I love how you just explained your journey and what an amazing background having traveled to so many different countries Seeing how people have expressed their faith in so many different ways How you've been able to adapt? Into these different cultures And to see the beauty of these different Faith communities around the world And also recognizing some of the harm Right? You pointed out whether it was politically, um, through the church or other ways. Um, were there any times in your journey, Hannah, where you were feeling maybe, uh, more harmed and by the church, maybe you're in a specific country and you saw maybe the way that the church expressed certain beliefs. Um, or the way that the church treated people where you felt like maybe, do I really belong here or should I just leave the church? Did you ever encounter those feelings? Hanna Reichel (they/them) (15:43.67) Um Hanna Reichel (they/them) (15:47.796) So I definitely encountered a lot of dissatisfaction with church as actually experienced, but somehow for me leaving it was never a choice. And yeah, I've, and I think it's a totally legitimate option, right, for people who get harmed as well. And I don't think that salvation or whatever we mean by it can only be found in the church in the strong sense that sometimes the historical church has asserted. But because, I mean, we talk about faith, right? And faith, our beliefs and faith is also maybe a trust in God. Hanna Reichel (they/them) (16:38.444) It was, but for me it was maybe primarily something like, this is God holding on to me, right? Like, this is not something that I can let go because of what I like about it or not. And that faithfulness that I experienced from God, kind of, like I have a relatively relaxed relationship too, like yeah, I can leave the space or that space, but I will not. fall out of that relationship. At the same time, it directs me back, right, to other people who claim to be held by the same commitment. I do have that conversation a lot, especially with queer students, where I often give them the advice, I mean, not the advice, that's the wrong thing, but I feel like often there are, or there are students, people more broadly speaking, right, who for their own experience come to the point where they're... now asking basically for permission to leave and I think we need to give them that permission. I don't think church in and of itself is an end in itself and so it's also not something that demands our ultimate allegiance and our ultimate sacrifice in any kind of way. So personally my sense of vocation and calling is to work from within the church and to create better versions of it wherever I am to the extent that I am capable of doing so and also relying on other people to kind of, you know, call me out on the things where I'm not doing that. And I also think that that's not necessary. Not everyone has to do that. I don't know if that makes sense. I'm down to the first question now. Mike (18:26.986) Yeah, I'm curious about some of the challenges that some of your LGBTQ students have expressed with the church, kind of questions that they asked you or issues that they brought up that they're wrestling with because especially here in the states, we see a lot of Christianity aligned with some alt-right political systems that are... discriminating against different communities right now, especially we see it with the transgender community. And so I can imagine seeing a lot more trans folks leaving the church, that they're feeling like, my Christian church particularly is voting and supporting people who are discriminating against me and setting up systems that are gonna continue to oppress me, this is one example. But I'm curious about, as you've had those conversations, what have been some of the big challenges you've noticed, especially within the queer community? Hanna Reichel (they/them) (19:37.104) Yeah, well, I mean, I do also to say I think it is a distinct challenge maybe in the American context, and also in many other places in the world, right. And it sometimes feels as if questions of sexuality and gender are kind of the new, like, you know, occupy the place of theological controversy and even status confesionis in so many places that in other centuries, more typically doctrinal things have occupied. So, right. And that puzzles me to some extent, right? So why should something so human, right? Just who we are, who we are attracted to, how we choose to express. ourselves in the world, how we relate to others. Why should that be kind of a deal breaker for our ability to have communion with one another? But yeah, right? So many church contexts are extremely patriarchal. I mean, this is also something that's still very live with many of the students that come here and I assume in other places as well, right? That... They are women or non-male people who have not felt, have felt something like a sense of call and that doesn't get affirmed in their context. And that's even seen as, you know, it's held against them or they're put into their place. And then queer and trans folks were just, you know, our budding sense of who we are gets denounced as sinful. and even, you know, identified with sin. And that is, and sometimes in ways that are, you know, on the surface of, on the surface, slightly more loving than others, and sometimes very violent. And that is extremely harmful. It is extremely harmful. Hanna Reichel (they/them) (21:53.912) Yeah, I mean. Hanna Reichel (they/them) (22:00.44) It's also not, so in my own journey, I've also had the wonderful experience of people in communities of faith, precisely because of their faith, being able to recognize and affirm people differently. When I was a very young child, I was like five and six and told everyone I was a boy and I was growing up in them. in a context that was quite sexist. And there was this elder gentleman in my congregation who was a farmer over seven years old. And he was like the first person who just used a masculine name for me. And it was like very odd and he totally got it. Or I have my own kind of personal sayings of just people that. became mentors to me or examples to me in my faith journey, where I've often found that people who had like the most profound spirituality were actually quite capable of being much more capacious in their love and in their openness to see God expressed in different lives differently than from what they were used to. And so, I mean, I feel like that is something that I have benefited from a lot, but if you don't get that, then the church can be a very bad place. Mike (23:27.767) Yeah. Mike (23:35.594) Yeah, what did you find? Like, I love that story you just shared about that gentleman who came alongside you and affirmed you. I want to I ask this as a general question for those Christians in churches right now who have met LGBTQ individuals in their church and are trying to find ways to like appropriately support them and affirm them. even if they're wrestling themselves with the theology behind it. But they're like, I need to love this person and affirm them, but I don't know how. Hanna Reichel (they/them) (24:10.172) Ha! The connection was breaking up. Appropriately support them, is last I heard. Mike (24:25.218) Can you hear me okay? Hanna Reichel (they/them) (24:26.456) I can hear you now. Sorry, can you repeat the last sentence or two? Mike (24:29.422) Oh, sure, sure. Can you give some general advice for Christians and churches right now who are encountering LGBTQ brothers, sisters and siblings in their congregations and really trying to do a better job of loving them, affirming them, even if that person is struggling with their own theology on what this means? Hanna Reichel (they/them) (24:57.584) Yeah, and I'm not sure if I'm the best person to give advice. I mean, and I think there's also always a need for contextual discernment. I would say, first of all, listen, right? And make space. So for, yeah, make space for people to ask questions, for people to explore who they are and how they find, where they find God in their lives. and listen to those experiences, especially if they're different from your own. When people tell you who they are, believe them, right? That sounds very simple. And sometimes our sense of who we are changes, and that's okay too. Um... Hanna Reichel (they/them) (25:46.936) Yeah, and so maybe, right, leaning into that love that precedes us, and just if we, you know, if as people who profess God, believe that God exists and God is love and God loves the world and God loves God's creatures, I think we can... be slightly more relaxed, right, to encounter a difference in the world and listen before we need to put a name to it or comport mentalize it or precisely understand where it fits into our own world. And if in churches we can be communities that make space for that, listening and learning together, I think that would go a long way. in the concrete space of churches that are figuring that out, it can be important for those who are ready to do that to affirm that very openly, right, to put signs in the windows, to make clear statements, so that first of all people who are not sure if they're welcome can hear that, can hear that actively, don't need to ask, don't need to feel their way into that. and also don't have to do all the work themselves, right? Sometimes there's a vicarious office of allyship that I think can be a very priestly office, as people who may not have as much to lose as others stand in for those who may have. Mike (27:35.538) I love the way you put that a priestly office of allyship. That is beautiful. Hanna Reichel (they/them) (27:35.892) I'm not going to put that previously on. Mike (27:45.114) So your latest book, After Method, Queer Grace, Conceptual Design and the Possibility of Theology, what are some of the key topics that you wanted to focus on as you were thinking about queer theology and impact on all of us? Hanna Reichel (they/them) (28:07.556) Yeah, so in some ways this book is a is a guild book, right? So I'm trying to bridge conversations that I see happening in different pockets of academic theology that are not talking to one another and kind of openly denounce one another. But in some ways, these also reflect maybe kind of factions that you get in the church around issues of, yeah, theological commitments and also including questions of gender and sexuality. So Right, but in that academic or like scholarly version of it, I talk about systematic theology or like a theology that is more, that takes its orientation from commitments to truth and to sound doctrine and to the doctrines we have inherited and expressing them again and trying to put them into coherent ways of thinking and expression. And what sometimes is called constructive theologies or maybe sometimes contextual theologies or liberation theologies or. um, uh, there was something else that now eludes me, um, that, um, take their orientation from, um, the real lives of real people and how faith hits the ground basically. Um, and sometimes at least, and it doesn't have to necessarily be this way, I think, right? I mean, this is why I wrote the book. But partially in my own upbringing, I've seen these conversations as very disjunct. And in many of the places I've been, they have seemed to be sometimes even mutually exclusive, kind of denouncing one another. And I think on grounds of method and of like what counts as sound theology, how do we work up our theological precepts and propositions and what counts as an argument and what doesn't, what are the right sources, what are the right. articulations and once more kind of zooming back and saying, again, right, if we believe in God and that this is God's world, then probably there are important commitments in either of these conversations. And at the same time, we can be slightly more relaxed and maybe even recognize that if we turn like the standards that we have developed for thinking about theology into such... Hanna Reichel (they/them) (30:31.201) exclusionary boundaries to the conversation of who gets to talk with us and how. Then we're missing out on maybe we're also like turning into an idol or into a model of salvation, something that really isn't. So right there for the catch line is kind of method cannot save us. Hanna Reichel (they/them) (30:54.108) But that if we allow ourselves to listen to one another, we have much to learn from both sides and not to aspire to maybe like integration of all the things. I think particularly the queer side of the conversation has very sound, visceral reactions and theoretical reactions to like projects of integrating everything into a maybe even better system of thinking, but also on the doctrinal side, I think there are good hunches about. God's reality exceeding the ways of thinking and talking about them that we come up with and maybe orient ourselves a little bit more by these both these cautions but then allowing ourselves to be more open to the conversation and I bring in the The language of design theory because I found it first. It's the one as a metaphor, right? It allows you to bridge the systematic like if you build something it has to have some sort of coherence Otherwise everything falls down Mike (31:47.054) Hmm. Hanna Reichel (they/them) (31:51.936) And the constructive, obviously, there's a design and building metaphor there. But to kind of say, right, what are the worlds? What are the buildings? What are the landscapes? What are the tools that our theological conceptions are building for us? Taking into account how they actually interact with the world, what impact they make, how they are used, how they're maybe also misused. and to kind of make that part of our reflection as theologians. It's not something, you know, I mean, design theory gives a lot of good examples of well-intentioned design that then ends up excluding certain bodies or certain abilities or even being outright harmful, but also designs that get, you know, things that get used in totally different ways than they were intended. And what I really like about design theory is that it takes seriously the user. It takes seriously their experience. Whereas I think there's some temptation often in theology to say, if we just get the ideas right, then people have to understand them. And if we teach them to understand them, then they will use them in the right ways. And to say, it's often not that way around. People encounter ideas. They encounter things. And then they do stuff with them. And whether we intend it for that or not, it is part of the design. The design is not only what the designer put into it. Mike (32:49.071) Hmm. Hanna Reichel (they/them) (33:16.888) It is also how things get used. So that would make us as professional theologians just one stakeholder among others who have to think more critically about the other factors that we have to take into account and are not just a misunderstanding. So for example, right, because it sounds very, it is very theoretical. So in design, you can have the door that you have to pull or push, and typically the handle should signal what it is for. And sometimes, and this is the famous case of the Norman doors, doors are designed in a way that they actually communicate to you how to use them, but that's not how you use them. So you run into a door and kind of just actually don't get in, because you're not supposed to push, you're supposed to pull. So fixing a door to a sign to the door. Mike (34:00.95) Right. Hanna Reichel (they/them) (34:12.152) doesn't fix the problem, right? Our, the affordances of the door, the way the door communicates to you long before you consciously read the sign will make you interact with it in a certain way that is different from that. And to think about theology in that way, right? Like then there are of course doors that are supposed to grant access, but some are also supposed to remain shut in certain situations. There are security doors, there are doors that are heavy for a purpose. but then some people can operate them easier than others. And to just kind of think through theology in that way. Think of particular doctrines in that way. The doctrine of sin is one, right? So we talked earlier about how sin can be weaponized against, and has been weaponized so often to tell people not just that they're doing things wrong, but they're being, that they are wrong. They are bad. And to... Mike (34:46.519) Hmm. Hanna Reichel (they/them) (35:08.932) So both to discredit and also pathologize their experiences, their desires, and their ways of relating to one another and to the world. So one can ask, is that what sin language is for? Is that kind of the theological purpose? It is. fulfilling, right? And you will find queer theologians who say, for good reasons, right? Who push back against that application of the language and say, we're not sinful. Our desires are no more or less sinful than other people's desires. And you will find queer theologians who will say, actually, we are sinful and so are you. This is not a design that you get to yield to exclude some people. while you get to uplift others. If anything, right, and this is very Calvinist, maybe like total depravity type of thing, but like if anything, sin as a condition that we find ourselves in that alienates us from one another, that afflicts us, that we suffer under, and that also expresses itself in wrong ways of relating to one another, in harmful ways of relating to one another is something that we all live under, and that should put us into solidarity with one another. And actually, this is the good news. First of all, the first person to extend solidarity here is God. So the sin is already contained. And we do all the time experience it in our lives. And again, by sin, I don't mean particular wrongdoings or what we culturally identify as such. But I think there's, I mean, actually, I find it so fascinating that a lot of critical theory, queer theory in particular, I think. Mike (36:38.21) Hmm. Hanna Reichel (they/them) (37:06.68) identifies, right, something that I, as a theologian, would call sin, right? Pervasive structures in the world that limit our agency, that make us unfree, and that force us, basically, into harmful ways of relating to one another, that exacerbate themselves, even if we don't want it, even if we are good intentions, and so forth. That is, that can also, right, happen in all kinds of Mike (37:32.762) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Hanna Reichel (they/them) (37:36.052) beyond them, but many of these critical theories actually have ways of talking something that I think could give us theologians back sin language in a different way that is not moralizing, but is both highly critical and actually invites us into practices of solidarity more than pathologization. Mike (38:01.302) Wow, that's fascinating. That's that's a super helpful way of looking at that seeing solidarity rather than Division and kind of bringing people together because you're right like We see the sin in the systems right now, especially towards LGBTQ folks, right? I'm thinking about all the Laws right now that are going after parents who are trying to support their transgender kids, right? They're trying to have doctors medically care for their kids to help them with their transition, and that's being restricted. In very ways, I would say that's a very sinful legislation, because it's very harmful to that child and to that family who's being harmed and all these barriers are put in place. So I do really appreciate the way you phrased that, because sin is not only within us, but it's also within systems. and it's very important that we call it out. And I think queer theology does a really good job of calling that out. Mike (39:10.998) Well, Hannah, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Before we go, is there anything that you'd like to share about your new book for those who are interested in getting a copy? Hanna Reichel (they/them) (39:22.204) the book that we just talked about. Mike (39:25.27) Yes. Hanna Reichel (they/them) (39:30.556) I'm already more interested in my next book, typically, but I really like the cover design. It was done by an amazing artist, Jakob van Loon. And I also want to give a shout out to Micah Cronin, who came up with the phrase, Queer Grace, in a paper that is still unpublished. I'm very, you know, that is very frustrating. Yeah, so what I. Maybe the thing that I want to share is this idea of queer race that we find that they're in light of all the harm, all the frustration and all the unease that being in the world sometimes presents, right? There can be and I see that in myself, there can be a temptation to negativity, to critique. And I think critique is immensely, immensely important. And that there is something that actually still precedes all that, right? And that we can live out of and live into. Ultimately, that is God's queerness. That is not just, you know, a queerness that is kind of created by the exclusions that we do in terms of, you know, society. But it's first of all, this amazing ex- spilling over exuberance of being that then cannot be put into any system. And I think that's something that, you know, many queer people find in unexpected places in their lives, but can maybe also invite others to experience in other places and other, you know, there are other languages for us. It doesn't necessarily, a queerness name is a version of it, obviously. I think an important one. Yeah, but so I'm right now already interested about the next book, which is also, I mean, it is coming out of the, um... Hanna Reichel (they/them) (41:32.412) Temptation to negativity, tentatively titled against humanity. But it's trying to kind of cash in on these hunches that the conceptions that we use, while they try to name certain things, they also always have edges and boundaries. And what happens at these boundaries? And I'm particularly interested in the boundary that language of humanity draws, right? Even as we try to uplift human dignity and affirm human rights. And that continues to be incredibly. important work, but from the reports that we get at these boundary negotiations, right, like from Black friends, from queer and Crip friends, of like how humanity language and from decolonial perspectives as well, for how that language is not unambiguously good and also creates sharp edges of dehumanizing both other humans and the more than human creation. So how do we how do we Maybe not conclusively find the best way to draw this boundary, but to better take into account what happens at this boundary is what I'm next excited about. Wow. 25 points. Ha ha ha. This is my, ah, this is, yeah. If I had a superpower, it would be the time somehow being able to twist and turn and expand time all the time. Mike (42:44.018) Wow. How do you find time to do all this, Hannah? Hanna Reichel (they/them) (43:03.55) Yeah. For the time being, as most as always. Mike (43:07.031) Yeah. Mike (43:10.198) Well, I love seeing all those books in the background. You are a voracious reader. You got so much going on right there. Well, Hannah, thank you so much for being on the podcast, for sharing out your new book. Folks, I wanna encourage you all to check out After Method, Queer Grace, Conceptual Design, and the Possibility of Theology. I'll have a link in the bio of the podcast episode, in the YouTube video, as well as on the blog. Take care. Hanna Reichel (they/them) (43:36.068) And thank you so much for your curiosity and for this conversation. Mike (43:41.347) Thanks, Hannah. All right, so I'll go ahead and stop.