This week on Beliefs, we return to a conversation with one of our favorite guests, scholar and writer Susan Jacoby. Secularism and atheism finds a full-throated defense in this episode. Jacoby takes us on a journey of where we were just one year ago: presidential politics on the rise, the rise of secularism, no pandemic in sight, and a world less complicated. Jacoby brings together the threads of various moments in history to identify her view that religion and politics have never comfortably coexisted.  

Beliefs

Beliefs Archives: Celebrant of Atheism & Humanism Susan Jacoby

From Our Archives:  We revisit a conversation from our first season with the Rabbi of Congregation Beth Elohim. She describes the clarity she feels from what she calls the unfinished business of America. Reparations for slavery, the rights of women to control their bodies, and opposition to xenophobic oppression; all a part of the central moral character Rabbi Timoner feels is her purpose. As a rabbi, as a Jew, and as a social justice activist.  

Beliefs Archives: Protest and arrest - Rabbi Rachel Timoner on faith, reparations, protest, and justice

Speaker, Pastor and Scholar Dr. Christopher A. House resigned from Liberty University recently in protest of President Jerry Falwell Jr’s deleted tweet featuring both blackface and KKK characters. To speak to us about the moment when belief becomes action, Beliefs producer Jay Woodward asked Dr. House for a conversation.    

Quitting Liberty: Dr. Christopher A. House

Writer and historian Jemar Tisby, Pastor Tyler Burns of New Dimensions Christian Center in Pensacola, Florida co-host the podcast Pass The Mic for their organization The Witness - A Black Christian Collective.  We gratefully thank Religion News Service reporter Adelle Banks for leading the conversation.   

Black Voices Matter: with Jemar Tisby, Pastor Tyler Burns, and guest host national reporter Adelle Banks

  The steady call to reopen churches –amplified by Presidential encouragement- is thrilling to some and alarming others. How do we return to worship when the act of group singing, chanting, and praying can be so dangerous?  How can churches be told to cease their primary function?  Beliefs producer Jay Woodward spoke with RNS opinion columnist Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin, and RNS Editor-In Chief Bob Smietana to assess the tensions facing churches across the country.  

The call for congregation

A ministry of song and service, with devotion to the most invisible among us.   The husband and wife singer-songwriting team of Al and Andi Tauber, Urban Mennonites:  They seek and value the simple life – in much the same way as their Amish and Quaker spiritual cousins, but their calling returns them to urban spaces; to pressing societal concerns.  This episode of Beliefs was produced by Monique Parsons in collaboration  with KALW's The Spiritual Edge, the University of California’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture, and Religion News Service. 

Al & Andi Tauber: Street ministry into song

We all have Beliefs on where our soul goes upon death.  What remains is just that – remains.  How do we honor the vessel that held the person we used to know? From earth to water, and even to the sky, delivering the body back to dust contains deep ritual for many faith traditions.   Bill Baker speaks with Hamilton College Professor S. Brent Rodriguez-Plate  to find guidance on the comfort of the ritual of passing. 

The ritual of remains.

 To understand who we are,  and what our numbers signify, we turn to the math, to the staticians.  Some among us combine psychology, algebra, opinion, and faith to read the rivers of American opinion.    Greg Smith is associate director of research at Pew Research Center.  He helps to coordinate the Center’s domestic polling on religion.  As the world gets stranger, we look for answers - from the divine, and from the numbers...   

America leans in to faith

 For decades, the political influence of faith has been seen in the might and the dominance of the Religious Right.   A new book from Religion News Service political correspondent Jack Jenkins called American Prophets, The Religious Roots of Progressive Politics and the Ongoing Fight for the Soul of the Country charts the so-called Religious Left.   Beliefs producer Jay Woodward and I spoke with Jack about his new book and the emergence of a powerful new political identity.  

Progressive faith and politics

Houses of worship across the world are adapting to the challenges of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Keeping congregants feeling tied to their faith, themselves, and one another has been a challenge felt by all. But what if faith isn't at the center of the congregation? How are humanist, atheist and agnostic spiritual communities handling the isolation caused by the pandemic?    James Croft, a clergyman at the Ethical Society of St. Louis, spoke with Beliefs producer Jay Woodward this week to share insight on how his congregation has handled the past several weeks.

The Strength of Self: James Croft and the Ethical Society of St. Louis

 On Feb. 3, 1943, the U.S.A.T. Dorchester  - carrying 902 service men, merchant seamen and civilian workers was sunk in the cold Atlantic.  Among those lost were four Army chaplains whose rescue efforts became the foundation of post-war interfaith activism.     Our guest today is Eboo Patel,  Founder and President of the Interfaith Youth Corps. He sees the beginnings of a new interfaith understanding coming with the trauma and international struggle against the novel coronavirus.     Religion News Service Editor-In-Chief Bob Smietana spoke with Eboo Patel for Beliefs. 

The case for Interfaith America with Eboo Patel

 Last episode we spoke to Father James Martin to ask simple questions about God, suffering, and the pandemic. His episode is the anchor of a daisy chain of conversations taking us around the world – faith to faith, place to place.   Father Martin nominated our next guest, Sister Norma Pimintel, the Executive Director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley. Her position servicing immigrants and refugees in the borderlands gives her unique perspective. If the pandemic can come for anyone from Prime Ministers to Louisiana Parishioners... what will we learn about human equality in the face of such a threat? Sister Pimintel spoke to Beliefs Producer Jay Woodward from her office in Texas.  This episode is part of a series of interviews speaking to the moral, ethical and spiritual takeaways from the global pandemic experience.  

God in the time of coronavirus, part II- with Sister Norma Pimintel

It’s a personal note from me this week. Not usually appropriate for news the way I prefer it, but these are very different times. My friend Father James Martin wrote a short piece that ran in the New York Times called, ‘Where Is God In A Pandemic’. Like so many other people, I wanted to know what this man – whom I admire – would say to me, to us, during a moment of universal human suffering. We spoke, as everyone must these days, on the phone.    

God in the time of coronavirus - with Father James Martin, S.J.

Asking how ethics occur naturally, or emerge through faith takes us to speak to Professor Christine Firer Hinze.  Hinze is a professor of Christian Ethics at Fordham University and the director of the Francis and Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies.  

Ethics for humans: Professor Christine Firer Hinze

     This week's guest, Martin Doblmeier, is a documentary filmmaker specializing in content touching on faith, religion, and spirituality. He joined me for a discussion on his recent PBS film: "Revolution of the Heart: The Dorothy Day Story”.       'Revolution of the Heart: The Dorothy Day Story' traces Dorothy Day's journey from a young communist journalist, to a Catholic convert, to the co-founder of The Catholic Worker newspaper and the first "houses of hospitality," which sheltered New York City's homeless during the Great Depression.

The Dorothy Day Story: A conversation with documentary filmmaker Martin Doblmeier

An exploration of ideas behind the news of religion.

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