5. Rev. Katie Nakamura-Rengers (Episcopal) – Standing in Awe: Faith Beyond Certainty

🎙️ 5. Rev. Katie Nakamura-Rengers (Episcopal) – Standing in Awe: Faith Beyond Certainty

In this deeply grounding episode of The Sacred Slope, Alexis Rice is joined by Reverend Katie Nakamura-Rengers (@katienakamurarengers)—an Episcopal priest, musician, and bridge-builder whose ministry invites us to slow down, release certainty, and rediscover faith rooted in presence and relationship. Reverend Katie was recommended to The Sacred Slope by Reverend Joseph Yoo (@joseph.yoo), and you will know why once you listen. 

In a moment when Christianity is often pressured to be louder, faster, and more confident, this conversation offers a counter-witness: awe. Drawing from Anglican and Anglo-Catholic traditions, Reverend Katie reflects on how liturgy, silence, music, and embodied worship form us not through rigid rules, but through mystery and relational love.

Alexis and Katie explore why Jesus resists moral “protocols,” how God is encountered in the space between people—especially where power shifts—and why faith doesn’t require having all the answers to be deeply alive.

✨ In this conversation, we explore:
• Why faith doesn’t need certainty to be faithful
• How stillness and silence shape us in a distracted age
• Why rules exist for people—not people for rules
• Finding God in the space between us
• What embodied, sensory worship offers deconstructing Christians
• Why awe is a spiritual practice, not an intellectual failure

🕊️ Reverend Katie closes the episode with a prayer for listeners who may not have been prayed over in a long time—especially those who feel spiritually tender, tired, or unseen.

💛 A note to our listeners:
If this episode helped you breathe or loosen your grip on certainty, please share it with someone who may need that permission right now. Following, rating, and reviewing the podcast helps The Sacred Slope continue reaching those seeking faith grounded in love, not fear.

#Christianity #Deconstruction #OpenAndAffirming #ProgressiveChristianity #Exvangelical #FaithAfterEvangelicalism #WomenInMinistry #QueerTheology #MentalHealth #TheSacredSlope

Transcript

Alexis Rice (00:00)
something that hit me that I hadn't thought about before is a more non-denominational evangelical background. We are very used to like a lot of you seen the righteous gemstones? Yeah. Okay. So like, you could argue that, a lot churches really brought

Rev. Katie (00:11)
I love the Righteous gemstones.

Alexis Rice (00:19)
technology into the present to use screens and use theater and all this stuff and use as ways to modernize church stuff. sometimes I think a block for people who are like, well, I can't do this theology anymore over here. maybe I could try a mainline church. But then we were always taught, ⁓ church is so boring over there.

And have lost feel like we're talking at if constant TikTokers. we can only tolerate 15 and then we got to go to the next thing. And you mentioned five senses, and reflection. what do you wish people actually understood more about those quiet, unseen parts, or engaging the senses?

having this slowing down. why do you find actually so important in our day and age?

Rev. Katie (01:12)
going to come with that question from a little bit, just kind of a direction. much of my ministry in the last 10 years, maybe longer, has been with call the street home, people who term or sometimes short term houseless.

And I get a lot of questions from folks who are less used to that environment that kind of ministry often I'll hear it should I give this homeless person money or not? Like, what is God asking for me? What are the rules? What would the social worker say? even like, what would God say? Like, protocol?

and this took me years and years and years and years to like learn. But what I've learned is there is no protocol. just isn't. And when I read scripture, there's all these moments where Jesus shows again and again that a relational God. She is a relational God.

It just isn't about following rules the same way every single time. Jesus to the Samaritan woman when she asks him to heal her daughter, the first thing he says is, take the children's food and give it to the then he turns around and he heals the daughter. And then the next thing you know, he's telling this parable about the good Samaritan.

I think Jesus is showing there is no guidebook for this kind of relational work. And that's not to say that everything is relative, because I actually don't believe that. don't think that everything goes. I think that there is such a thing as right and wrong. I think there is such a thing as sin. But I think...

Jesus is showing over and over that the rules and the laws are created for us human beings, nurture, not that we're created to follow these rules and these laws. And so that leaves so much more, I think,

up to the acts just of faithful following and standing in faithful awe of the mystery of god and the mystery of god's love the mystery of god's compassion mystery of god's presence we believe god took human form

and lived like one of us. I mean, that's crazy. Like, how do we explain that? I mean, I don't know that like any other world religion that as its core precept. I mean, what an amazing thing. And so when we talk about, yeah, the importance of stillness, the importance of quiet, the importance of like sort of letting...

In my Anglo-Catholic tradition, grew up in letting worship and music and liturgy like wash over you and surround think it's this acknowledgement that we can the presence of God without fully understanding God,

without fully trying to explain, right? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin, right? To use that metaphor. Or fully trying to explain laws of Leviticus they apply today. Are they still important? Yes. the study of scripture is still important it contributes to this mystery of how God is in relationship with us. I think it's through that silence and through that quiet and just kind of

basking in the presence of God and the mystery the questions that we really stand in honor and awe

Alexis Rice (04:35)
There's a lot of pressure right now to make faith louder, faster, sharper, more screens, better branding, shorter sermons, bigger stages. But what if the thing we're missing isn't better production? What if it's presence? Today's conversation is about the quiet parts of faith that don't translate that well to TikTok. It's about stillness, scent, song, silence.

The kind of faith that isn't trying to convince you of anything, just inviting you to notice where God already is. My guest today is Reverend Katie Nakamura-Rengers. She's an Episcopal priest, musician, and bridge builder whose ministry has been shaped by relationship. And by the way, Reverend Joseph Yoo recommended

Reverend Katie Nakamura Rengers, because is so awesome. So I'm so excited that you're able to listen and learn from her today about her walk and her I'm so excited that I get to elevate these often unsung heroes to you and that they can share their wisdom that isn't always covered

in media spaces, but this quiet, unbelievably beautiful work that these people do. I often feel sometimes a little bit guilty about kind of like when I think about what I do in my life the selfish choices I make and then hearing from these priests who dedicate their lives to putting their actions where their words are. It's just

It's really inspiring. And especially right now, it's been so inspiring to me.

If you've ever been told that a church has to be loud to be alive or certain to be correct or that mystery is weakness or that slowing down means you're losing your faith, this conversation might just feel like permission to breathe. I'm Alexis Rice. Welcome to the Sacred Slope where the slippery slope

become sacred ground. Let's get started.

Alexis Rice (07:32)
Welcome back, friends, today. I'm so happy to welcome Reverend Katie Nakamura-Rengers. Hi. Hi. Good to see you too. Reverend Katie, or Katie, is a visionary Episcopal priest storyteller and a bridge builder.

Rev. Katie (07:40)
Hey, good to see you.

Alexis Rice (07:49)
who blends music, ministry, and missional imagination. Reverend Katie has a Bachelor of Music from Northwestern University, where she first honed her gifts in worship and community life. She's a Master of Divinity from Virginia Theological Seminary with a thesis focused on the speeches of Acts. Katie's took shape in Birmingham, Alabama, where she founded the Abbey.

It's a worshiping community in Avondale that opened its doors in early 2015 as a radical experiment in sacred hospitality. And in January 2020, Reverend Katie took her entrepreneurial and missional gifts to the national stage, joining the presiding bishops team as staff officer for church planting, where she supports innovative and justice oriented faith communities across the Episcopal Church. Reverend Katie is a thoughtful writer and public theologian

and has penned reflections in spaces like spirituality and practice, earth and altar, and her substack often exploring themes of hope, grief, hospitality, and what it means to give the church away in an age longing for belonging. Reverend Katie lives in Birmingham with her husband Josiah, also priest, right? I've met so many Episcopal priests, pairs.

Rev. Katie (09:06)
Gracias.

Alexis Rice (09:11)
it's amazing, like both of you, I bet you guys have the most interesting discussions.

Rev. Katie (09:17)
We do. It's got its challenges, but like it's really a beautiful life.

Alexis Rice (09:22)
That's so cool. Reverend Katie also lives with their two young daughters forming a home filled with music, theology, and grace. So welcome. Thank you for being here.

Rev. Katie (09:30)
Thank you for that intro. Yeah, just a lot more lovely and well thought out than I could say about myself. So I appreciate that.

Alexis Rice (09:38)
You're welcome. Can you share a little bit of your faith story? So how did your journey bring you to the Episcopal Church and eventually into the moment or time that you realized, I want to dedicate my life to this work?

Rev. Katie (09:53)
Yeah, absolutely. I'm one of the few people, I don't know what percentage of us it actually is, but it's increasingly small, who was born Episcopalian. my father grew up in a Japanese American Methodist church, I believe. And then my mother was Disciples of Christ. she grew up in Gadsden, Alabama.

kind of blue-collar town. But when they moved to Birmingham, they were looking for a church to belong to, as you do in the 80s, and saw a line of people out the door of the soup kitchen at this inner-city, urban, Anglo-Catholic Episcopal church. Anglo-Catholic meaning...

kind of have a proclivity towards celebrating the saints, toward really emphasizing sacraments, liturgical worship, of an Anglo, almost Catholic-looking, pre-Vatican II Catholic-looking tradition. But there's a lot of also kind of social progressivism. So our rector at that time who baptized me

was a friend of Jonathan Myrick Daniel, who was a martyr of the civil rights movement in Alabama and had just been very active in voting rights. And then at that point in the eighties, embracing Episcopal church at the LGBT movements, which was just starting to get its legs under it. And this is in midst of the AIDS crisis.

So they saw this line out the back door of the soup kitchen and said, that's the kind of church we want to belong to. I was raised in this Episcopal church that was, now I look back on it, it was a little wild, right? It's like embracing all kinds of people. also, at that time, they managed a group home for adults with intellectual disabilities.

And so many of the women from that home would come and join us for worship and sing in the choir. And it was just this mismatch of people who called the streets home, folks that were a little on the margin, and then these families, right? With kind of hippie era parents. just say that because that's the church environment that formed me, that sort of taught me like,

this is who God is, this is what the church is, this is who the church is for. tried to never let go of that, even though the Episcopal Church can tend to sometimes be seen a church, honestly, of like a lot of privilege it's 90 % white. wasn't formed in that assumption. I was formed in a very different environment.

I did do my Bachelor of Music at Northwestern University. I was a flutist.

loved it, like what an amazing experience. I also came to a point, you know, around my sophomore or junior year where I was like, I just don't know. I don't know about spending my life in a practice room ⁓ and dealing with the ego of conductors and like other musicians. I didn't know about the egos of Episcopal priests at that

Alexis Rice (12:44)
Okay, I don't know that

Rev. Katie (12:46)
⁓ yes, we have

Alexis Rice (12:48)
I love the inside baseball.

Rev. Katie (12:50)
Yeah, I think I wanted to do was turn around and study God. I like learning, I like studying, an don't know that I saw myself being a priest so much as I saw myself, well, I'm going to go to graduate school and...

study religion, I'll probably get a PhD in New Testament studies. Because like God is so interesting. God is just really interesting. And in the Episcopal Church, they tend to sort of shuffle you into an ordination track. I mean, like not in a bad way, but, you're interested in God, you should be a priest. So I'm like, I mean, okay. ⁓ So I went to seminary thinking, well, I'm gonna do two years or three years, whatever it takes to get vested in the pension fund.

and then I'll go back and do a PhD in New Testament. I got placed after seminary in this 35 person Episcopal church in this blue collar town called Fayette, St. Michael's Episcopal Church. And I was like 25 years old and I had no earthly idea what I was doing. I had no idea. But I find

a funeral for someone I'd never and there was a man in the congregation, he would bring his toy poodle to me, you know, every other day. Do you think he's sick? Should I take him to the vet? Listening to people's story, like just being part of the community, being part of this town, being part of people's lives.

and realizing, ⁓ you know, I thought it's God that's really interesting. It's actually like people who are just fascinating. And I think it's because people reflect God. that's always been a deep piece of my spirituality. you ask, like, how did I decide to be a pastor, to be a priest, even though I was already ordained, I think it was in that small church.

getting to be part of the story of so many people's being introduced to their stories that I kind of said, I think I really am called to be a priest.

Alexis Rice (14:50)
were you taught about God as a child? I've shared with you, there's going to be, you know, a chunk of people who listen to this podcast who were potentially taught pretty different things about the same God that we worship than maybe what you learned. we learned about, we are born basically evil, we are born sinners we are born.

Jesus is here to save because we're so bad. I don't know, just, you all this stuff, and I'm just wondering, were you taught the same way or what were you taught about God young since you were born and raised Episcopal?

Rev. Katie (15:24)
Yeah, that's such a good question. in some ways it's harder for me to answer, right? Because it was just so ingrained and I've never switched traditions. I've never kind of held it up against another tradition knowing that what some of what my, I guess my friends, you know, were taught. just to say it again, like I'm in Birmingham, Alabama.

So this is the heart of the Bible Belt. This is the heart of Southern Baptist culture. grew up in this little Episcopal bubble, right? But my entire peer group was learning something probably somewhat different, some of them very different than I God.

So in Episcopal Church in particular, we have this saying, sort the Latin, it's something like, lex orendi, lex credendi. I hope nobody catches any errors in that. But it's basically to say, the way that we pray shapes the way that we believe.

went to Sunday school, although this was not a church that was full of It was really very highly intergenerational. And I learned Bible stories in Sunday school, we didn't get hammered with a lot of theology or even a lot of morality.

I think ethics is a different thing that goes deeper, there wasn't a lot of, you've got to behave this way. mean, there was very, very little of that. Instead, was a, whether you find it boring or not, you've got to be in this worship And these services would go on for, it was kind of unusual in the Episcopal Church, but like an hour and a half.

because you're singing, there's a lot of chanting. So liturgy is very old. It's like based on some traditions that are pretty ancient in the church. many times like those are chanted. they're waving incense, right? ringing bells. And theology behind that kind of worship, which is very beautiful.

I mean, ancient, it's traditional, but there's a beauty to it. It incorporates all five behind that is that if you people into a beautiful worship experience, that then helps send them out to do good in the world. inclined to

for your fellow human beings and to try to be in good relationship with your neighbor. And so that kind of that mystery of God. Like we're not gonna try to always put this into words. We're not always gonna try to like reduce this to creedal statements. I honestly, I don't know if I ever heard our priest say anything about

And I just described the church that was very welcoming and affirming of LGBTQ people. But he didn't preach about it. He didn't talk about it. It was just an act of, we're going to be open to this. We're going to be part of this beautiful worship together. We're not going to single anyone We don't have any kind of creed that says this is wrong or that this is right.

But we're going to live into the mystery together welcome in the kingdom of God. How is God present in this worship? How is God present in scripture?

Alexis Rice (18:37)
I think

something that hit me that I hadn't thought about before is a more non-denominational evangelical background. We are very used to like a lot of you seen the righteous gemstones? Yeah. Okay. So like, you could argue that, a lot churches really brought

Rev. Katie (18:49)
I love the Righteous gemstones.

Alexis Rice (18:57)
technology into the present to use screens and use theater and all this stuff and use as ways to modernize church stuff. sometimes I think a block for people who are like, well, I can't do this theology anymore over here. maybe I could try a mainline church. But then we were always taught, ⁓ church is so boring over there.

And have lost feel like we're talking at if constant TikTokers. we can only tolerate 15 and then we got to go to the next thing. And you mentioned five senses, and reflection. what do you wish people actually understood more about those quiet, unseen parts, or engaging the senses?

having this slowing down. why do you find actually so important in our day and age?

Rev. Katie (19:49)
going to come with that question from a little bit, just kind of a direction. much of my ministry in the last 10 years, maybe longer, has been with call the street home, people who term or sometimes short term houseless.

And I get a lot of questions from folks who are less used to that environment that kind of ministry often I'll hear it should I give this homeless person money or not? Like, what is God asking for me? What are the rules? What would the social worker say? even like, what would God say? Like, protocol?

and this took me years and years and years and years to like learn. But what I've learned is there is no protocol. just isn't. And when I read scripture, there's all these moments where Jesus shows again and again that a relational God. She is a relational God.

It just isn't about following rules the same way every single time. Jesus to the Samaritan woman when she asks him to heal her daughter, the first thing he says is, take the children's food and give it to the then he turns around and he heals the daughter. And then the next thing you know, he's telling this parable about the good Samaritan.

I think Jesus is showing there is no guidebook for this kind of relational work. And that's not to say that everything is relative, because I actually don't believe that. don't think that everything goes. I think that there is such a thing as right and wrong. I think there is such a thing as sin. But I think...

Jesus is showing over and over that the rules and the laws are created for us human beings, nurture, not that we're created to follow these rules and these laws. And so that leaves so much more, I think,

up to the acts just of faithful following and standing in faithful awe of the mystery of god and the mystery of god's love the mystery of god's compassion mystery of god's presence we believe god took human form

and lived like one of us. I mean, that's crazy. Like, how do we explain that? I mean, I don't know that like any other world religion that as its core precept. I mean, what an amazing thing. And so when we talk about, yeah, the importance of stillness, the importance of quiet, the importance of like sort of letting...

In my Anglo-Catholic tradition, grew up in letting worship and music and liturgy like wash over you and surround think it's this acknowledgement that we can the presence of God without fully understanding God,

without fully trying to explain, right? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin, right? To use that metaphor. Or fully trying to explain laws of Leviticus they apply today. Are they still important? Yes. the study of scripture is still important it contributes to this mystery of how God is in relationship with us. I think it's through that silence and through that quiet and just kind of

basking in the presence of God and the mystery the questions that we really stand in honor and awe

Alexis Rice (23:12)
you mentioned your ministry. Can you tell us ministry

Rev. Katie (23:16)
Alexis, you mentioned substack in the introduction. lot of my substack, not all of it, but a lot of it has been devoted to telling stories from my ministry at the Abbey. And the Abbey is the that I started in Birmingham in 2015. So it's been 10 years and we opened as an Episcopal church and coffee shop. So not a church.

in a coffee shop, but we ran a coffee shop and that was our church. we started this coffee shop thinking this is a way to, we're so naive. This is a way to attract people to the Episcopal church. Like we're gonna do the kind of this cool new thing. It's gonna be a space

that's safe, it's set up for spiritual conversations and reflections. There'll be a priest as the barista behind the counter. ⁓ It'll attract younger people. The Episcopal Church is very old. I'm just gonna say that. Like, average age is up there. And so we're always looking for ways of attracting younger adults. And what we found was that in that context, we're kind of in an urban...

pretty diverse neighborhood context. There's just nothing better than a coffee shop to not attract people, but to be open to the neighborhood. I mean, you put this sign on your door, it's like, we're open for these, you know, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and the door is unlocked, you don't need a key, you don't need a priest to be there. It's not limited to a certain group of people or to a Sunday morning.

you're gonna have the like traipsing through.

And that is so much closer, think, to the world that Jesus inhabited The way our culture and our churches are set up today. criticizing our churches because I think our current churches and their buildings and their Sunday morning worship, they're set up for a particular culture, American culture. ⁓

But this coffee shop was set up to where had university professors and we had young adults and we had, this is 10 years ago, we had like the hipsters and their skinny jeans and glasses. And we had kids and we had people from the housing project across the railroad tracks. And we had people in homelessness and they're all sharing this space with our 22 year old baristas.

I came to realize so clearly that I find God in those spaces in between people. Like I find God in that space in between you and me. So much more in some ways than I find God in nature or in a church building or in singing my favorite song. I love all those things, right? My degree is in music. And nature is nice.

But I am particularly tuned to recognize God in the ways people encounter each other. And I started to notice that God is most particularly present for me to notice. And those encounters where there's some kind of power shift. Sometimes it's only for a few seconds.

shift where you see that person in a different way you forced to ask somebody help or to see them as your neighbor, to see them as a full human being in a different way. And we had to close the coffee shop after four years and then COVID hit. And now that ministry, but the ministry continued.

The community is now gathering for dinner church in the hall of a historically Black Baptist congregation on the north side of the railroad tracks, which is in the midst of this housing project. And they have a new priest in charge and are learning all kinds of new things about what it means to be people in God's world.

Alexis Rice (27:10)
that's beautiful. As we close, there might be some people who haven't been prayed over in a long time. And I was wondering if you could be thinking of them and praying over them.

Rev. Katie (27:19)
I would love to. And in the Episcopal just say, the Lord be with you and the people respond and also with you. Also with you. Yeah. So let us pray.

Blessed Lord Jesus, you are God of incredible love and compassion and mystery. And don't know fully how you think and how you work. And we stand in awe of that mystery. We stand in awe of those questions. And we know that

simply in asking them, it guides us closer to you and closer to your eternal truth and eternal presence. I am lifting up all the listeners of this podcast to you that whatever slope they are finding themselves it might be holy, that it might be sacred, that they might encounter your Holy Spirit in every step that they take.

they might have the attentiveness to reconcile and to see and be attentive to your love in the world and particularly to your love as it's made present between them and the neighbor who is sitting next to them. The neighbor sitting next to them on the bus, on the train, the stoop, their front lawn, the cubicle at work.

on the other side of a Zoom screen and that you'll continue to be present in their journey.

as long as they live and to offer them patience and compassion and wisdom for that journey in the spaces between you, God, and them and their neighbor. In the name of Jesus and that Holy Spirit of yours, we pray, amen.

Alexis Rice (29:18)
Amen. Reverend Katie, it's been so wonderful to chat with you. And I think your ministry and the way that you talk about God is deeply inspiring. And it's really needed right now.

Rev. Katie (29:31)
Thank you. Thank you for your questions and this for conversation, Alexis. What a joy.

Alexis Rice (29:36)
One last question. What do do for fun?

Rev. Katie (29:40)
⁓ I neglected to mention my, I call it my other church, which is my long distance running group. run extremely slowly, we do it for a long time and we gossip and shoot the breeze. Sometimes we talk about God and sometimes we just tell jokes and talk about the ones of us who aren't there.

Alexis Rice (30:03)
It sounds like so much sounds great. I usually run alone and now I'm thinking, that would be really fun to do that with others. you so much, Reverend Katie.

Rev. Katie (30:13)
You too. Take care.

Alexis Rice (30:15)
Thank you for joining us today on The Sacred Slope. If you'd like to nominate a pastor, priest, or clergy member anywhere in the world, send me an email at Alexis @ thesacredslope.com. Music was by Brett Rutledge, Eddie Irvin, and Sean Spence. May the fruit of the spirit guide you this week. I'm Alexis Rice. Go in peace, friends.