When Politics Show Up in Pastoral Care with Rev. Dr. Hillary Raining

In this episode of Hunger for Wholeness, Ilia Delio talks with Episcopal priest and spiritual director Rev. Dr. Hillary Raining about what happens when public life shows up in the parish—how pastors can hold political tension without letting church life collapse into partisanship, and why hope and joy remain non-negotiable in a polarized age. Together they explore a renewed mystical imagination for Christianity: experience that leads to transformation, and transformation that bears fruit in justice.

Hillary reflects on leading a large Washington, D.C. congregation where worship must flow into weekday service while also tending the inner life. Along the way, the conversation names the fatigue and anxiety many younger adults carry (economy, climate, AI) and re-centers practices that steady courage: prayer, community, and a lively sense of God’s presence. Later, Ilia and Hillary speak candidly about serving as women in systems marked by patriarchy, and what an integrated, humane faith might look like now.

ABOUT REV. DR. HILLARY RAINING

“The emotional and physical lives of our ancestors… fundamentally affect our emotional and physical lives as well… The practice of gratitude… changes—not only those who practice it—but also the generations that follow.”

The Rev. Dr. Hillary Raining is an Episcopal Priest serving as Rector at St. Columba’s in Washington, D.C. She is also the founder of The Hive (www.thehiveapiary.com), an online spirituality and wellness community. Actively involved in the Episcopal Church, she served on multiple committees and as a professor and consultant for various Seminaries. She is also a published writer and a sought-after public speaker. With several degrees and certifications in theology, liturgy, psychology, trauma integration, yoga, and forest therapy, she seeks to empower others through healing and spiritual direction while leading innovative ministry projects.

Coming up on October 22, at 7 p.m. ET: The Story of the Noosphere with Brian Thomas Swimme and Monica DeRaspe-Bolles—a clear and compelling exploration of Teilhard’s vision of a planetary mind and how our attention, creativity, and compassion help shape it. Learn more and register at christogenesis.org/events.

Transcript

Robert: Welcome to Hunger for Wholeness. I'm Robert Nicastro. Today, Ilia opens her conversation with the Rev. Dr. Hillary Raining, Episcopal Priest, Spiritual Director, and Founder of The Hive, an online spiritual wellness community. Hillary reflects on her mission as rector, where politics intersect with pastoral care, and how to find joy even in the harshest of moments. Later, Ilia and Hillary speak candidly about serving as women in systems still marked by patriarchy.

Ilia: We're delighted to welcome Reverend Dr. Hillary Raining, who is just appointed as the new rector of a very large Episcopalian church in Washington, DC. So Hillary, we're delighted to have you and maybe for our listeners, just tell us who you are and what you're doing in DC.

Hillary: I'd be honored and thank you for having me on. This is just a delight. I always like to joke, long-time listener, first-time caller, it feels like today. So yes, I am. I'm the new rector of St. Columba's in Washington, DC, Episcopal Church there. We are a very vibrant church. We have a water ministry that helps people who are in need of shelter, food, and a place to do their laundry and take a shower every day. We're a church that really tries to actually go out into the community as well. So you'll have a large worship service on Sunday, but then you'll actually be able to do something with that worship on Monday through Friday, which I find is one of the things I love about the churches here. 

I'm also the founder of something called The Hive, which is an online spirituality and wellness group that really seeks to try to help people go from kind of casual Christian and casual faith into something much more deeper, something much more aligned with, let's say, the way the mystics would pray. So not Christianity 101, but maybe something that has a little bit more of sustenance to it in some ways. So yeah, those are some of the things that I love to do. I also write, I'm a yoga teacher, force therapy guide, a mom and a wife and just a bunch of different hats in a given day.

Ilia: So the integrated person you're bringing these many, many levels into your position, which is an important one today as a faith leader, as someone who is really trying to form people for a transformative, transforming people for a transformative world the challenges, what kind of challenges do you face in your role as an Episcopalian priest?

Hillary: How much time do we have? It's an interesting role because I think we're moving into a time when we are, we have the invitation to evolve as humans. We have a moment to keep evolving as part of the body of Christ. And I hope at its best, the church's role is to help that evolution happen, right? to help people step into that peace. 

The things that really challenge that are a combination of the world itself continuously following a path of violence, a path that watches us take more and more of our ecological resources than we have any given right to at any given moment, watching us continuously take away rights and take away the freedoms and et cetera that we have that should be inalienable as a very certain document says. 

On top of that, though, I think there is the challenge of Christianity having not met where that evolution I was just talking about could meet. In some pockets it does, but I think that we have found that the theology that the current church has, you might call it a little bit pot-bound, right? You know, we have some constraints, we have kind of a limited scope of what could be. And because of that, I think that people don't actually understand it to be the wide, cosmic, incredible thing it is to be part of that Christ nature. So in some ways, a lack of imagination is one of our largest challenges that the church has.

Ilia: The church is not meeting, it's not that it's not meeting the needs of the world, it's not meeting the world, and not just the needs, but the world itself and what's driving this world. And it has been a great concern to me because it does raise the question, what are we doing as faithful people or as believers and what is the role of religion or church today? 

And I am concerned sometimes that it can be kind of shrunk a little bit to social work, which is not a bad thing because honestly, there are many, many people in need. I'm in Chicago this semester and there's just a lot of homeless here and it's just really concerning that people who once had jobs now are left on the streets and all their belongings, just they're sitting on them. And we can't solve all the problems of the world, that is for sure, but we can help this world move in a new direction, which hopefully would resolve some of the problems. Where do you find the people who come to your church? Where are they? I mean, do they receive your message? What do you preach on? You know, what's being conveyed here?

Hillary: I think that's a really great question. And I've watched that change over my ordained life. So I've been a priest for about 18 years now, almost 18. And I would say at first, when I was first ordained, depending, I've worked at different congregations, and I would say people were looking for messages of comfort. They kind of wanted to feel confirmed in what they were doing as a person. And I always felt as though the gospel is there to comfort the afflicted and perhaps afflict the comfortable a little bit. 

So sometimes my messages would often be almost a call to say, hey friends, the gospel is not just for us to walk away and feel a little anesthetized about how well we're doing. So that was already sometimes a challenge from the pulpit. However, what I've watched evolve, at least in the Episcopal tradition, and I know it's very different in other Christian traditions, but from where I've been seeing, people have changed in some ways for a very positive. They're actually coming to church and they will leave find a way to actually make a difference in the world or in their life. So I do think it has become more action oriented. 

But to your point, it has almost become, and sometimes a little bit tunnel visioned in that it has to include something that is either always social, just and minded, or a political sermon is almost expected now, or it's either hated or expected. It’s real feast or famine. And I find that what we've lost in that discourse, or at least haven't claimed as much as we could, is how much mystery, how much power is given to us actually by God to make some of those changes so that social justice becomes something we do out of that gospel initiative rather than making it the only thing the gospel is about.

Ilia: Right, it's not the goal of what we do, it is actually the result of ourselves doing in God or God doing. we're living in such volatile times. I mean, the recent murder of Charlie Kirk, or however we thought about him, was really tragic. I mean, a young man with two small children. I mean, I did not agree with his views, which I found very inflammatory at times, but still he was he was doing his best as he felt that God was calling him. So we can't… who are we to say this person is wrong or right? How do we navigate in these times from a Christian perspective, when there's such distinct differences of opinion and people feel very volatilely strong about their opinions? How do we navigate a way of a common humanity? Is that possible?

Hillary: Two big questions, how and is it possible? I think it must be possible because God calls us to it, right calls us to be one. So I have to believe in that, which leads me to the, how do we get there? For me, the emphasis of hope has become such a bedrock in my preaching and in my pastoral care. To have hope means that we actually think that there could be something that we could make a difference with, that we could join God on this cosmic dance of trying to bring those together. And if we lose it, what do we have? We will not have the initiative to keep walking that journey. So first and foremost, I think a bedrock of hope is deeply important. 

The second piece, I think, I actually turned to Paul in this and to Philippians, where he calls us to joy over and over again, not in some sort of Pollyanna, just be happy all the time, toxic positivity. I remember that Paul is writing this from a prison cell himself, and he is calling us to embrace joy so that we will keep going as well. And that joy, that abiding joy, can actually be proclaimed even in the harshest of moments. It's why we say in the funeral service that we make our song at the grave, "Hallelujah." So with that hope and joy as our clarion call, moving into that direction means that we will have the strength to lament, we'll have the strength to do the hard work of mending, we'll have the strength to put ourselves out there perhaps into a place where we may be martyred. And that I think is the only way that we can truly be Christ-like. 

When we watch Jesus do that same thing, I have to think that part of his journey was the disciples and the joy that they had together and the joy that he had in healing. That to me cannot be lost, but I watch it happen a lot, especially with a lot of my younger parishioners. The younger generations are losing hope. And I think you hear it when they talk about not wanting to bring new life into this world, not sure if they will be able to ever buy a house, if they will ever be able to have a job that feels like a vocation. And if the church isn't there to help with that hope and make it tangible, then I'm not sure what we're doing.

Ilia: I see it too as I was just teaching the undergrads 18, 19, 20 years old, they're very anxious. And you know, very deeply concerned on many fronts. One is now they're worried that AI is going to take over all the jobs that they're being educated for, and there's going to be nothing left for them. And then you add to that global warming and the ecological crisis that persists. And then on top of that, you have a very volatile political culture because we can't reconcile our differences or have a civil dialogue. 

And so how do we navigate and what is the role of the church today? And the thing is, I think you're saying this clearly as well, you can't just placate it, right? Like Jesus said, "Just give up your cross, follow me." Well, what does that mean? And so I think you're on the right track and I love what you're doing with, is it the Hive?

Hillary: That's right, yes.

Ilia: So, I mean, I've always thought that this is, I think the genius of Christianity is that the transcending God of other monotheistic religions is actually the God within. I mean, the reign of God is within you. The Father and I are one, as Jesus said. So pointing to something that's already within us, this infinite depth, and I think what I'd like to call the divine depth or the God depth, and a lot of people have, they're like, no way, I don't have that. for the people in Silicon Valley. They're like, of course we're gods

Hillary: Watch me work as a god like, yes, they know.

Ilia: But religion, I think, and here I'm gonna speak from a Catholic perspective it has made us kind of guilty of a weak flesh and that we really are unworthy. Oh Lord, I am unworthy that you should come into my life and under my roof. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa So we've had this idea that we're unworthy. So how can we possibly be the dwelling place of God? How can we possibly be what the power of this infinite love? And that's the secret. 

I mean, that is the Christian, if we, if Christianity can maybe reclaim its original inspiration, I think it might have something vital to offer because it seems to me, and maybe to you, that young people, I mean, when we teach them, gosh you have an infinite, you have a center of divine love already within you. like, "Where do I find that? Can I find an app for that?"

Hillary: I think you're absolutely right about this, and they're looking for it. When you look at the data that does social surveys on how people think about God and religion, the way people think of the church continues to lower. They use words like "judgmental." They use places like "it's unsafe," phrases like that. And I can understand it when what counts as Christianity in the modern is so volatile. 

On the other hand, you see them talk about spirit, about believing in something bigger than themselves. Those stats keep going up. And to me, that's the good news, because if we can help teach people how to step over that fear, right? Remember the Bible's number one commandment is fear not, right? We hear it from all over. If we can learn how to access that place where fear is no longer the roadblock, but rather the indicator of evolution this way, then I think we'll be able to walk a better path. And you bring up the Roman Catholic tradition as well as I think the mystical tradition that it holds. This is why I'm so convinced the mystics knew what they were doing and have always known what they were doing.

Ilia: Yeah, they were so radical, you know?

Hillary: So radical. They did, and what's fascinating is they've always been almost like the minor chord in the tradition, but I think they're about to become the major chord. if we do this right, if we don't miss our moment, because they have been able to find that access place where they feel the presence of God within and without. Doing things that now science knows can help us do that, like meditation, like deep prayer, like deep theological study that goes beyond just the brain into the heart. 

If we can help more and more people access those ancient tools that their tradition already has, well then suddenly I think we'll be on the way to getting over the fear and evolving, just as the brain has evolved to be not just our fear portion of our brain ruling us, but the frontal cortex where we can feel more and do more and think more rationally at the same time.

Robert: Pastoral care strengthens our communities. And our communities are the building blocks of our planet. text, Ilia asks how lived experience, echoing the wisdom of the mystics, shapes pastoral wisdom here and now. Later, Hillary reflects on navigating patriarchal attitudes and institutions.

Ilia: One thing I think we have to reclaim is Christianity as a mystical religion. It's not a dogmatic religion. And I think where we have gone wrong, I think Jesus was a mystic, I think first and foremost, as well as prophetic. So how we transformed a mystical religion into an abstract, analytical, concrete, dogmatic religion has been the biggest puzzle to me of Christianity and how we allowed this to happen. With all our… as we began to formulate the mysteries into doctrines, and then the doctrines into dogma, and then the dogma becomes so concretized that if you don't believe this, you're out. You just can't, you won't be saved. 

I mean, and that kind of crazy downward spiral that went from Jesus and the disciples was all about experience. Jesus was all about the senses, sight, taste, touch, and he was very relational. He was like a process person. We made Jesus into a scholastic, and we made this kind of top-down, a priori thinking of deduction. Here's what God is, and then from God we have all these attributes and categories and missions. And then like Christianity may have lost its way along the way. And I wonder, whether Catholic or Protestant, if we can admit that the car went off the wrong road and get back on the highway, which now is what nature tells us in terms of creation it's an evolutive nature it's change, it's complexifying, dynamic, it's relational. And you're right, modern science is reclaiming for us experience. Experience is the name of the game. 

Hillary: It's so true. I think it was Richard Rohr who says, "Theology without prayer, without experience, if you will, is just philosophy." And there's nothing wrong with it, but we lose just that deepness you're describing. I'm very aware that we sit as children of the Reformation and the Enlightenment. And there's so many good things that have come from it. Just as you've named the fact that now science can help us see the wideness of creation, we wouldn't have had that without empirical data and all the fruits of that. 

On the other hand, we've made that the only thing, the only pathway that looks rational. And so religion tried to, just as you say, become like an academic pursuit to look as rational as possible when that was never our lane to begin with. It's that we have a rational faith because we've experienced something and then science gets to come up alongside it and point us to new evolution of understanding. And that's the beauty of it. If we can allow religion not to be so concretized as to ignore all the things that the rest of the world also knows to be true, then we can start to help keep that spirit moving.

Ilia: As you're talking, I'm reflecting on a conference I went to last week at MIT on AI and women. all women, computer engineers, programmers, app developers, and then me.

Hillary: Thank God you're at that table because we need these sorts of voices alongside something that's going to certainly reshape the way humanity works. So thank God for that.

Ilia: You know what's interesting was that there were very, very, very few men, maybe two out of 700 or 650 or whatever it was that attended this thing. And you know, there is a deep, deep running current, both through religion and science that is deeply patriarchal. And it goes right to this discussion, right? Because the male mind, which tends to be more left brain and analytical and logical and rational, as we know, as if women don't have powers of analysis logic, but there is this bias that runs through culture and our culture as you know, very much so. We are currently living in a very kind of male, almost toxic male culture. It's about power and abstractions abstract ideas. 

So the emphasis on spirit, on relationship, on compassion, on love, these are considered more feminine or right brain characteristics, and they're also considered weak. So the idea is that going back to the old myth of Adam and Eve, Eve was weak because she was made from the rib of Adam, so she could never have a fully formed intellect, which I think is hilarious, but there are a lot of people who probably think that, that women—

Hillary: Oh, definitely. I've had people shout that at me from protests that I've had to walk. So yes, they're definitely out there that believe it. Yes.

Ilia: It's just, and quite honestly, it's running right through our evangelical problem, the concerns of evangelical Christianity. Women should be married. I once dated someone who said, "Yeah, I'm looking for someone to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. I'm out of here."

Hillary: Peace out. Not me.

Ilia: Where is the door so I could just fall out of here? So what I realized is that not only do we have something vital to offer, the future has to belong to women if we're going to survive. We're not going to survive on patriarchy. It's killing us, actually. The male principle is actually destroying us. And I had nothing... I love men, don't get me wrong. I think they're my best friends and stuff. So it has nothing to do with whether I like men or not. I don't want to reduce it to that simple idea. It's something much deeper. It's something the way we have conditioned ourselves to think. And I always go back to this David Noble and his book on the religion of technology, where he makes a very strong case for patriarchy, both in science and religion. I brought this up at the conference last week and I said, "Technology is primarily a male discipline." you know, better health, more, more, more, more, right?

Hillary: We'll never die. Yes, that sort of feeling.

Ilia: Exactly, it's Adam going back to God. You know, it's getting that God likeness and we're getting closer to God and men are leading the way. Whereas women are never and women told me they have developed apps and been at tables where major decisions are made at Microsoft and Google. And they're kind of either left out or marginalized from the conversation. So they can be brilliant women and probably their ideas are helping to make this new app come into being and they're dismissed. They're just forgotten. 

And to me, this is a deep problem. We have a deep, deep problem. I admire that you are a rector of a very large church, in the Catholic Church, we cannot accept women fully into ordained ministry. And there's no good theological reason, people have tried, but even they're so weak. Because Jesus is born of a woman, and basically when he died, it was a woman who showed up. And he himself, Jesus, showed very feminine principles. Julian of Norwich calls Jesus our mother exactly. That was actually a very common description for Jesus in the Middle Ages. So did Brutus of Clairvaux, the feminist.

Hillary: Many people. Back to the mystics again, they knew what they were doing, right? So many of them talk about the side wound that Jesus received at the crucifixion as the birth canal where water and blood and new Christians flow from it's all there. It's all there.

Ilia: Like a pelican feeding her hen, her brood. It's all there is right. And we have what? Suppressed it, right? If you go into the centurion DC, you can just step into the Basilica of Immaculate Conception in Washington DC and there's Jesus, mighty power Jesus, like mighty man like, come on.

Hillary: A pretty strange thing to do with the most vulnerable depiction of God that we've ever had, right? Jesus is vulnerable. Jesus is willing to be born as a baby and to die as a human the most gruesome death. Like, and then to put him as Tron is such a strange take on the story, isn't it?

Ilia: Well, that's the problem. I mean, we've constructed Christianity into whatever we think it should be. And I think we've really lost sight of the gospel and of Jesus of Nazareth, quite honestly. I mean, the ship has just sailed far out into the sea, and it's like, doesn't even see the land that Jesus was born on anymore.

Hillary: Born on, of a woman, for example. I would definitely agree with so much of that. I think, again, not to quote Richard a second time, but I think it's Richard Rohr's seminary professor who turned to them and said, don't forget, gentlemen, that there's more Aristotelian thought in what counts as Christianity than Jesus these days. because it is that idea of male equals good, women equal bad like lightness and darkness. That is such a part of the Platonic Aristotelian worldview that counts for what theology is. You know, there's a good and there's a bad, et cetera. 

What we know from science and life, nothing is black and white. Nothing is just one thing or another. And yes, I mean, the patriarch, even the word mystic gets, first of all, kind of relegated to the realm of feminine, strange, woo-woo ideas. Right so that's why I say it has to become the major chord, because if we don't embrace it, we won't be able to access it. And the patriarchy is very strong. Very strong. Even in the Episcopal Church, I'll tell a story in a moment about it, but neither would a full matriarchy be right either, right? What we are actually looking is for an integrated faith that absorbs every aspect, male, female, and everything in between on the spectrum. You know, it's unfortunate that we are locked into just one mode of how humanity could be.

Ilia: Absolutely, Hillary. I mean in the Jungian sense, the anima and the animus need to be reconciled in order to really move toward wholeness. We ourselves biologically hormonally, have male hormones and female hormones. Everyone does so there's something that's so off in this whole patriarchy business. How has it been for you as a woman within the Episcopal ordained ministry?

Hillary: Well, I've been blessed to be in the Episcopal church and so have been able to be a priest, for example. So in some ways it's been an absolute blessing. When I was born, they had just already been ordaining women for a few years at that point. So I never knew that it would be not allowed for me to be a priest. So when I was four years old, I was sitting on the floor of my sister's bedroom, watching the sun come in and little dust particles floating on that ray of light. And I thought, "Ah, that's the Holy Spirit. I'm supposed to catch it and give it to people." And that's what a priest does. 

So I ran out of the room and told my mom I should be a priest. And because I was Episcopalian, she called my priest, probably to talk me out of it because it seemed a strange thing for a four-year-old to say, but he brought over communion and he said, "You know, Hillary, like if God wants you to be a priest, you'll be a priest." 

So in that regard, it's been a holy place. And I give such great thanks for my sisters in Christ who have gone before to absolutely make the trail possible. On the other hand, it's still a church that's trying to figure out what that means, especially people who are first-generation, younger women who have gone through the priesthood, right? People who went straight to seminary, such as myself. A lot of times I'll still show up in the room as though I'm a young person. I'm solidly middle-aged, but people will still be like, "Who is this cute thing who is trying to pretend to wear daddy's clothes? And what are you?" You know, like I get a lot of that. 

And then outside of the Episcopal Church, I still get told more than once a year that I'm going to hell and I'm bringing other people to hell with me. One example, when I was a teenager, I had a really wonderful friend and he was Baptist and I would go to his youth group and read Bible with him all the time. And his mom said to me one day, "David wants to be a pastor someday and I think you'd make an amazing pastor's wife." And I said, "Well, actually I hope to be the pastor someday." And she goes, "Well, I'll pray for you because you'll lead yourself and that congregation straight to the gates of hell." I'm like, "So for one minute, you want me to marry your son to the damnation in the same breath?" And it's kind of, I have, those are a dime a dozen in my life, those kinds of stories. So it really is a strange thing to be on the fault line of both of those traditions.

Robert: In the next episode, Ilia and Hillary trace patriarchal and institutional problems back to their root cause—our very concepts of God. As we continue wrestling with patriarchy, institutions, and politics, may we keep choosing the patient work of listening deeply, speaking the truth with kindness, and caring for one another. As always, I'm Robert Nicastro. Thanks for joining us.