Hard to Believe #020 – Pastor June Joplin
Until last summer, June Joplin had been serving as pastor at Lorne Park Baptist Church in Toronto. Then she delivered a sermon that would change her life. In the months since, she has been interviewed by the New York Times, Vox, and the CBC, and her story has been featured in major news outlets far and wide. She spoke to John about what led to her wanting to be a pastor, what led to her coming out, and her hopes for Christianity and herself as she considers what comes next.
You can find more about her at her website, PastorJune.com
She is on Twitter @beloved_june
You can contribute to her GoFundMe here.
The Christmas Chronicler – Gerry Bowler on Santa Claus – Hard to Believe – A Podcast About Belief
It's our final episode of season one. We began the season looking at the lasting legacy of the X-Files and how the landscape of conspiracy theories in the 1990s contrasted with those of today. So closing the season right before Christmas, it only seemed right that to examine history’s most successful actual conspiracy – that of hundreds of millions of parents the world over, duping their children by willing into existence a magical elf-man who flies on a sleigh delivering presents for free to all good children.
And who better to ask the greatest living Christmas historian, whose books on the subject include Christmas in the Crosshairs, The World's Greatest Christmas Stories, The World Encyclopedia of Christmas, and Santa Claus: A Biography. He lives in Canada, in some corner of the country where it's always Christmas.
Check out his Amazon author page here.
