Everything Happens with Kate Bowler · Everything Happens Studios

There Is More Good Among Us Than We Think with Bishop Michael Curry

February 17, 2026·40 min·2 clips

Bishop Curry says: 'If it doesn't smell like Jesus — I don't care how many Bible passages are quoted — it's not Christian.'

The opening starts at the kitchen-table end of theology. Kate tells listeners about Joyful Anyway, her coming book on April 7th, 2026, and talks about joy as something that can sit beside pain, questions, and ordinary life. Then the question gets heavier. The word Christian, she says, carries a lot now: power, exclusion, nationalism, and a certainty with very little room for grace. The guest does not stay abstract. He turns toward Jesus, the one who stops when a woman touches the hem of his garment and receives care from the woman who anoints him. The test is bodily. If a faith does not have that smell of mercy, no stack of religious language can make it Christian. He keeps going. The soldiers who tortured Jesus are met with forgiveness, and that becomes part of his measure for Christian life. The conversation is serious, but it is not stiff. A hymn from his grandmother comes back, then his father's comic impatience with hearing it again. The sermon keeps catching itself before it floats away. He admits he wants to be like Jesus most of the time, because pretending to walk on water would be silly. Even the joke has theology in it. The standard stays impossible, but honesty, family memory, and laughter keep it human. Kate's closing beat stays small. She thanks listeners as ordinary people doing the boring, needed work of loving others. That is the episode's bet: the good among us may not come with slogans, but it can still be smelled in mercy, forgiveness, and daily care.

As heard by us

A reflective Christian conversation about faith, grace, and love over performance.

Kate Bowler's conversation with Bishop Michael Curry centers on a Christian faith that resists power, exclusion, nationalism, and hard certainty. Curry keeps returning to a Jesus-centered vision shaped by love, grace, forgiveness, and mercy rather than performance.

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Why you'd press play

Play this if you want faith talk that stays human, honest, and unfussy.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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