Religious freedom is a foundation principle of the United States, a concept enshrined in the  U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment states that, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Here, church and state are separate, which prohibits the federal government from interfering in Americans’ religious practices. But as hundreds of religious groups in the U.S. have claimed psychedelics as sacraments, the country’s drug laws have at times interfered with groups’ ability to obtain and use what they consider to be essential parts of their religion, including substances like peyote and ayahuasca.

Welcome to Micro-Chop, a newsletter dissecting beatmaking, DJing, music production, rapping, and sampling — written by me, Gino Sorcinelli. Micro-Chop publishes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for paid subscribers. Free subscribers receive Monday’s newsletter. Give feedback, send questions, or just say hi by emailing me at gino@bookshelfbeats.com. (The back cover art for Skull Snaps’ Skull Snaps album.) After putting out a slew of singles to modest success between 1963 and 1970, the funk and soul group The Diplomats switched their name to Skull Snaps and released a self-titled album on the GSF label in 1973.

Are you sick of me telling you that the guests we have for these Q&As are the nicest and more talented writers I know? Well too bad, because they all are. I’ve been lucky enough to meet and befriend so many ridiculously talented but also unbelievably kind people in my years in this business. Patrick Schumacker and his writing partner Justin Halpern (whose 6 Answers you’ll read next week) are no exception.

A friend, “Moses,” reached out to me in search of a “pithy” explanation of how the Eastern Church fathers understand predestination. I provided an answer that was relatively brief but not quite pithy. I, then, decided to follow that reply with a more thorough treatment of the topic. In a word, I offered a brief history of the doctrine of predestination, in the Christian East and West. Below is part 1 of that history, covering the Latin views prior to Augustine and the Augustinian shift.

I am counting both of these as Ws. Yeah, Elon bought twitter and not Tesla, but we are rounding up here. But everyone is dropping one of those right now. And I wanted to spare you from my uneducated half guesses. So instead of making wild, silly predictions that I will never look back on, I wanted to draw a line in the sand and make a declaration. One prediction that I am confident is right.