Beliefs

The case for Interfaith America with Eboo Patel

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.

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

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 - with Father James Martin, S.J.

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.  

 

Ethics for humans: Professor Christine Firer Hinze

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.  

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

     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.

Bishop John Michael Botean and the Romanian Catholic Church

Bishop John Michael Botean is the head of the Eparchy of St. George in Canton, Ohio. Botean's diocese, which permits priests to marry, is the only one of its kind outside of Romania. This week on Beliefs, host Bill Baker interviews Botean at his cathedral in Ohio.

How to be uncomfortable: faith and toxic perfectionism

Jana Riess is a senior commentator and author of the popular column, Flunking Sainthood for Religion News Service.

Sharing her personal experience with writing critical commentary on an aspect of her Church’s teachings, Riess stumbled into a strong backlash and an opportunity to re-think her opinion.

Then she did what sometimes seems unthinkable in the public sphere – she apologized and reconsidered. 

Jana Riess spoke with Beliefs producer Jay Woodward to sort through the experience. 

Satanic pregnancies and other misconceptions

Spiritual advisor to President Trump Paula White was recently filmed in her church giving a sermon that employed idiosyncratic and fiery rhetoric. What is the new language of spiritual warfare? Where is it coming from and where is it taking us? 

Andre Gagne is Associate Professor in the Theological Studies Department of Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec. His work focuses on the Christian right, charismatic Dominionism, fundamentalism, religious violence and the interpretation of the Bible. 

This week on Beliefs, Gagne discusses spiritual warfare rhetoric through the lens of Paula White's recent sermons.

 

The Voice Of The Bible - with Narrator Stephen Johnston

Stephen Johnston has narrated and sold more translations of the Bible than any other person in history. He graduated from college with a BA in Radio and Television and planned to become a news announcer. In 1976 he was approached about narrating the New Testament on cassette. The rest is scripture.

He has international reputation as a narrator; receiving many awards including an Emmy, the New York Film Critics Award, the National Silver Microphone Award and the Army Commendation Award.

Stephen joins Beliefs from his home in California.

Into The Dark - A Conversation With Thanatologist Rev. Mary Bredlau

The Rev. Mary Bredlau officiates 350 to 500 funerals a year.

For Bredlau, an Episcopal priest and former Roman Catholic nun, there’s nothing more important than this painful ministry. Bredlau is a thanatologist, certified by the Association of Death Education and Counseling.

Beliefs producer Jay Woodward sat down with her in her adopted hometown of Las Vegas, Nevada.