Love is simple, Says Reverend Paul Anthony Daniels, because ‘in his most visceral form’ it amounts to three things: spit, semen and sweat. Ok, maybe four. Sometimes there is blood. “Sharing love in this way is so visceral.”

I have a confession, I tell Daniels. I’ve never been in love – at least on the distinctive film, but find myself that I have it older, so I’m a little stunned to hear how he describes it with such an honesty. You know, to be a priest and everything. God is in people, he says. Which means, God is in sex too.

Daniels loves love. He is looking for it in everything he does, he tells me, but especially with people. It is part of his work as a bishopical priest and a ‘mediator of Christ’s love in the world’. Ceremonies he is a steward of the sacraments – the eucharist, baptism, marriage, confirmation. I invite people into a relationship with God through those holy ritual acts. But it’s also more than that. “

Reverend Paul Anthony DanielsPhoto: Carianne older

It’s the more A part that makes me sit in his apartment in Los Angeles’ Koreatown, while drinking from a whiskey glass, about desire, salvation and all the irresistible ways people gather. Daniels (34), a graduate of Morehouse College and Yale Divinity School, is not your average bishopic priest. He is something of a pioneer. A crook in a spiritual collar.

Although Faith has been central to Daniels since childhood in Raleigh, North Carolina, he also grew up with a sustained appreciation for music – Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan, John Mayer. In 2007 he auditioned for season 7 of American idol and up to Hollywood week. “As soon as I walked to the hotel in Pasadena, I knew I had no intention of being one of the young people they were going to pay attention to,” he says. “All the producers had their eyes on David Archuleta.”

He returned to Raleigh and dug deeper into what eventually became his calling. Being openly gay and Christian meant that he had the ability to say “things that could open doors of possibility to people.” Daniels has made it in his life since then. Hence the whole spit, semen, sweaty thing. There is a larger context to all thisHe wants me to know. It also helps that he often keeps lectures on these topics – ‘Sexual Socials as theological questions’ – in addition to being a PhD candidate at Fordham University.

Most people nowadays have what Daniels calls a “consumer connection built around the consumption of material things – brands, clothing, objects.” The worst cases of this are on social media. He meets it on Instagram (his favorite dating platform) and the different apps he visits regularly. Social media, he says, became a “place of worship – meant.”

Jason Parham: How can you, as a priest using appointments and hookup apps, navigate your relationship to desire?