2008
- play show:
Date: 19 November 2008
Nerdy, Bright and Baha'i
Actor Rainn Wilson is best known for playing loners, oddballs and weirdos. Exhibit A: Dwight Schrute, the abrasive nerd-in-residence on NBC’s “The Office.” Dwight’s interests include beet farming, science fiction movies and violent weaponry of all kinds. In real life, Rainn is a devout Baha'i, and this week he lets us in on how he balances his 'Office' life with his faith life.
Rainn Wilson, star of The Office and The Rocker
- play show:
Date: 12 November 2008
Anne Rice, 'Called Out of Darkness'
You probably know Anne Rice as a Gothic novelist who trades in witches, blood and all things horror. But you might not know that 10 years ago she renounced her dark past, coming to see cult classics like Interview with the Vampire and The Witching Hour as describing her own quest for God. In 2005 she began writing novels about the life of Christ, trying to bring the Gospels—not vampires—into living color. Now Anne Rice has written a new memoir, describing her surprising journey from Catholicism, to Atheism and back again.
Anne Rice, author of Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession
- play show:
Date: 5 November 2008
Religion in an Underground Bunker
What happens when you think the world is coming to an end....and it doesn't? On March 15th, 1990, 750 members of a fringe religious sect braced themselves for the end of the world by nuclear holocaust. When midnight struck... nothing happened. In the aftermath, they were forced to re-examine everything they knew about their leader, Elizabeth Claire Prophet (pictured.)
Erin Prophet, author of Prophet’s Daughter: My Life with Elizabeth Clare Prophet Inside the Church Universal and Triumphant
- play show:
Date: 30 October 2008
Fuzzy Ethics 2008
Attack ads. Rivers of money flowing into candidates’ war chests. Charges of registration fraud and voter suppression. Sound bites flung around like ammo. All this funny business may be hurting our nation’s politics – and its soul.
Rev. Bob Edgar, president of Common Cause, former member of Congress from Pennsylvania
- play show:
Date: 23 October 2008
Voting With a Conscience
This week, we sit down with two religious thinkers to talk about the issues that matter to people of faith. They grapple with the moral questions raised by everything from abortion to war to environmentalism – and remind us that no one party or candidate will claim this year's "values voters."
Dr. Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Associate Professor of Politics and African American Studies at Princeton University
Dr. Richard Land, Vice President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention
- play show:
Date: 16 October 2008
Bargaining with God
Shalom Auslander has got a bone to pick with God. Raised an Orthodox Jew, he reflects on what he learned about the Big Man Upstairs – an angry god who writes rules, punishes you for eating a cheeseburger, and walks around drunk in His underwear.
Shalom Auslander, author of Foreskin’s Lament
- play show:
Date: 9 October 2008
How God Predicts Our Politics
This election season, pollsters have been trying to get a grip on the Catholic vote, the Jewish vote, and the Evangelical vote – but maybe they’ve been asking the wrong questions. A study by Baylor University suggests that it’s not your religion that determines how you vote, so much as the way you imagine God’s “personality.” Is your God warm and fuzzy or down right angry?
Dr. Christopher Bader, assistant professor of sociology at Baylor University
- play show:
Date: 2 October 2008
The Wondering Brain
Think back to the most vivid dream you’ve ever had. Was it scary, wonderful, or just plain weird? Did you try to figure out what it meant for your everyday life? As dreaming, thinking creatures, we have always asked ourselves these questions, and we have long looked to religion to provide the answers. One of the most profound religious visions of all time was recorded in the 6th century, when Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly... or did the butterfly dream he was Zhuangzi?
Kelly Bulkeley, author of Dreaming in the World’s Religions: A Comparative History
- play show:
Date: 25 September 2008
Setting a Higher Bar
"Religious tolerance" may sound nice, but that doesn't cut it for Gustav Niebuhr. Mere "tolerance" of other faiths feels begrudging, he says, and we can do better. The good news is, people do--every day. Niebuhr tells us the stories you won't find in police reports or press releases, stories of ordinary people searching for common ground.
Gustav Niebuhr, author of "Beyond Tolerance: Searching for Interfaith Understanding in America"
- play show:
Date: 18 September 2008
Witches, Goddesses and Public Radio
Margot Adler stands out in two worlds that we, admittedly, find pretty interesting-- public radio and paganism. Radio junkies know her as an NPR reporter and master storyteller. And pagans consider her a preeminent scholar of earth-based religion. The former Jewish-atheist joins us to talk about the changing perception of the "witch word" and why if you look far enough back, all of us come from a Pagan heritage.
Margot Adler, Pagan Earth Religionist, NPR correspondent, and author of Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today
