S4 Ep406: Warping Democracy: Are the Current Arrangements of Economic Power Inevitable? Can We Imagine a Different Story?
Theological reflection opens the social imaginary to the hopeful possibility that the future will NOT, inevitably, be the present extended into perpetuity. If democracy has a future, economic power will need to either restrain itself (ha!), or be restrained.
28m Oct 07, 2021
28m
S4 Ep405: The Soul Of A More Perfect Union: Repentance For America's Original Sin
We continue the conversation on democracy, drawing, again, on religious and spiritual truth about human beings and repentance. Healing and justice in the story of race in our country-- and fulfilling the promise of democracy-- require the insights of theological anthropology, which give us understanding of the mystery of the human heart. Here's how you can support us: Leave us a review on your...
30m Sep 30, 2021
30m
S4 Ep404: Why Calling Systemic Racism The "Original Sin" Of Democracy In America Is Not Just A Metaphor
Much stilted and unimaginative thinking, in Christian circles, limits the deep descriptive power of "corporate sin" to illuminate our shared public life. While the concept of sin contains within itself a cluster of meanings that function internally to those who are Christian, the explanatory power of "corporate sin," used as an interpretive tool, can deepen public conversations about racism in ...
31m Sep 23, 2021
31m
S4 Ep403: Does Racism In The Fabric Of American Democracy Invalidate The Ideals Of The Declaration of Independence?
Chris says "No" to the question our title asks; Shayna pushes back. Running underneath the conversation is the acknowledged reality that American democracy's future is far from certain. 
28m Sep 16, 2021
28m
S4 Ep402: Will American Democracy Survive? Are We Good Enough to Practice the Necessary Virtues?
Alexis de Tocqueville observed American democracy (such as it was) in the 1830s, and wondered if we could sustain it. Religion (such as it was) was part of the story he told; religion was a force in society without which, he thought, democracy would seed its own destruction. Was he right?
27m Sep 09, 2021
27m
S4 Ep401: Does American Democracy Have A Future? Also: Meet Brandon Edwards, Our New Associate Producer!
We begin again with an introductory tease for a series of shows on American democracy. What is the story? Is there a future? Does God have any interest in American democracy?
30m Sep 02, 2021
30m
S3 Ep346: The Impulse Of Anarchy: Summer Replay from January 2021
27m Aug 26, 2021
27m
S3 Ep346: If I Have White Skin Do I Have To Be White? Summer Replay from June 2020
23m Aug 19, 2021
23m
S3 Ep346: What If We Don't Want To Heal: Summer Replay from November 2020
25m Aug 12, 2021
25m
S3 Ep346: We're Not Politically Divided Anymore: Summer Replay from November 2020
23m Aug 05, 2021
23m
S3 Ep346: How To Save The Republic: Summer Replay from November 2020
23m Jul 29, 2021
23m
S3 Ep345: Lefties And Evangelicals: Common Ground In Critiquing Materialism And Consumerism, Or Dream On? (Summer Replay from December 2020)
26m Jul 22, 2021
26m
S3 Ep345: Stillness In An Agitated Culture (Summer Replay from December 2020)
26m Jul 15, 2021
26m
S3 Ep345: Hopeful Or Hopeless: What Story Are You Telling Yourself About America's Future (Summer Replay from December 2020)
27m Jul 08, 2021
27m
S3 Ep344: It's Not About Politics: The Cult of the Individual (Summer Replay from January 2021)
27m Jul 01, 2021
27m
S3 Ep343: Toxic Individualism and Conservative Thought (Summer Replay from January 2021)
27m Jun 24, 2021
27m
S3 Ep342: One Defining Feature of Our Culture Today Is... (Summer Replay from January 2021)
26m Jun 17, 2021
26m
S3 Ep341: Gun Violence And The Sacred
In what context did the Second Amendment arise? What understanding of “sacredness” was it connected to? How has that changed? As we emerge from pandemic time, mass shootings have increased. What In God’s Name takes up this disturbing and unsurprising trend.  Our show pushes back against the unexamined, often unconscious ways that we frame public questions using political or economic modes of ...
25m Jun 10, 2021
25m
S3 Ep340: "What The Hell Is Wrong With Us?" Locating Societal Dis-Ease in the Return of Mass Shootings
Governor Newsom says, in response to the latest mass shooting in San Jose, “What the hell is wrong with us?” Shayna reframes the question as, “What is wrong with white men?” pointing to the fact that most mass shooters are male. Recognizing that mass shooters do not arise in a vacuum, the question then does return to us.  Our show pushes back against the unexamined, often unconscious ways tha...
26m Jun 03, 2021
26m
S3 Ep339: Fault Lines Exposed: How the "Sacred" Migrates from Religion into the Secular World
Sociologists of religion talk about the genesis of the sacred, as in, what is the human experience that leads to classifying certain things as “sacred?” Sacred things may not be religious; over time, what was once considered sacred may lose its sacred quality, and other, new things, may acquire sacred status. The current fault lines in American society and culture are revealed more clearly wh...
26m May 27, 2021
26m
S3 Ep338: Redemptive Language In The Sea Of Lies: The Destruction and Creation of Worlds
Republican Liz Cheney’s lonely stand against the Trumpists is a political story, on one level. On another level, we ask: what deeper story is this a part of? What happens when the coherence of a world is blown apart by the corruption of language in the service of lies? And what public redemptive language do we have, to fight back? Our show pushes back against the unexamined, often unconsciou...
27m May 20, 2021
27m
S3 Ep337: Opioid Abuse: An Individual Problem, Or One Symptom Of A Sick Culture?
We re-visit the opioid disaster in our country. With litigation beginning this week in West Virginia, and with recent statistics from the CDC showing that opioid deaths increased during pandemic time to their highest yet, it’s time to reflect again on the stories we tell ourselves about meaning and purpose. Why can’t our society talk about the opioid disaster? What does systems thinking revea...
25m May 13, 2021
25m
S3 Ep336: Re-Visiting the Opioid Disaster: Exposing the Gods Who Demand Human Sacrifice
We re-visit the opioid disaster in our country. With litigation beginning this week in West Virginia, and with recent statistics from the CDC showing that opioid deaths increased during pandemic time to their highest yet, it’s time to reflect again on the stories we tell ourselves about meaning and purpose. When did neo-liberal (libertarian) free markets, and the profit motive, become gods? Ou...
26m May 06, 2021
26m
S3 Ep335: Relationship-Building as Cultural Transformation: Angela Pape in Conversation
Relationships as the fundamental building block of our common life: why the community organizing model is crucial for our time. Community organizer Angela Pape joins Shayna and Chris in conversation.  Our show pushes back against the unexamined, often unconscious ways that we frame public questions using political or economic modes of thinking. We aim to be part of a growing movement of people...
27m Apr 29, 2021
27m
S3 Ep334: Why Is Community Organizing The Right Model For This Moment? Angela Pape in Conversation
What is faith-based community organizing, and why is it so important at this moment in the unfolding story of the intersection of faith and American life? Community organizer Angela Pape joins Shayna and Chris in conversation.  Our show pushes back against the unexamined, often unconscious ways that we frame public questions using political or economic modes of thinking. We aim to be part of a...
25m Apr 22, 2021
25m
S3 Ep333: Making the Last Words of George Floyd Quilt Film: Tears that Break the Heart of God
What role does contemporary “white shock” have to play in the larger story of systemic racism/inherent alienation in our American history and culture? How is God present in our tears? These questions rise, as Chris introduces his new short film documenting a quilt project memorializing the last words of George Floyd. Our show pushes back against the unexamined, often unconscious ways that we...
26m Apr 15, 2021
26m
S3 Ep332: George Floyd and Derek Chauvin: What Is The Larger, Deeper Story?
What is the deeper story, the bigger story, the longer story, the theological story, that George Floyd’s killing is part of? And how does this chapter end? Our show pushes back against the unexamined, often unconscious ways that we frame public questions using political or economic modes of thinking. We aim to be part of a growing movement of people who are critical of the narrowness of politi...
28m Apr 08, 2021
28m
S3 Ep331: Can We Be Transformed Without Cost? The American Dream and the Suffering God
Can a Christian anthropology of suffering be translated into non-Christian language, such that that anthropology can enter public conversation NOT as specialized religious language, but as a generalized insight into human nature—an insight that leads to richer connections and more humane ways to order our common life?   Our show pushes back against the unexamined, often unconscious ways that w...
24m Apr 01, 2021
24m
S3 Ep330: Is There Anything More Important Than Winning? Reading American Culture Against the Biblical Narrative
If we just stay committed, will we eventually win?  Our show pushes back against the unexamined, often unconscious ways that we frame public questions using political or economic modes of thinking. We aim to be part of a growing movement of people who are critical of the narrowness of political and economic categories, and who want to revive a vision of human flourishing that is grounded in th...
22m Mar 25, 2021
22m
S3 Ep329: Allow Ourselves To Be Touched By Others' Pain? Pandemic Time a Year In
Is it true that to come out of pandemic time better than we went in, we must allow ourselves to be touched by others’ pain? Our show pushes back against the unexamined, often unconscious ways that we frame public questions using political or economic modes of thinking. We aim to be part of a growing movement of people who are critical of the narrowness of political and economic categories, and...
28m Mar 18, 2021
28m
S3 Ep328: 9/11 Response v COVID Response: Have We Lost the Ability to Act Collectively?
What are the questions we should be asking ourselves as a society about our year’s experience with pandemic time? How has our society’s performance in the last year contrasted with our response to 9/11? Our show pushes back against the unexamined, often unconscious ways that we frame public questions using political or economic modes of thinking. We aim to be part of a growing movement of peo...
24m Mar 11, 2021
24m
S3 Ep327: When US COVID Deaths Were Below 70,000: How Are You A Year Later? Replay from May 7, 2020
We’ve certainly blown past 100,000 Covid deaths in the United States. That was a potential threshold scenario we considered with sadness in this replay from May 7, 2020, when Covid deaths had just gone over the 65,000 mark. What In God’s Name is about to embark on a mini-series of shows reflecting on the last year of pandemic time. In preparation, we go back to the beginning months. What have...
22m Mar 04, 2021
22m
S3 Ep326: How Are You, A Year Later? "Do Not Be Troubled" Replay from March 2020
How have we aged, how have we grown, over the last year?   It’s time to remember where we were when pandemic time began, as a baseline to consider the future. Today’s show is a replay from March 2020.   What rings true, now, in hindsight? Our show pushes back against the unexamined, often unconscious ways that we frame public questions using political or economic modes of thinking. We aim ...
26m Feb 25, 2021
26m
S3 Ep325: The Separation of Church and Mob
We re-ask Shayna’s question from two weeks ago: is the church in a particularly good position to be a model for building community? Are the spiritual resources available to faith communities especially helpful in creating healthy connections between people? What does the parable of the Good Samaritan have to do with countering the impersonal forces that reduce humans to commodities? Is there ...
31m Feb 18, 2021
31m
S3 Ep324: Cancel Culture and the Death Spiral: Why Any Society Needs Forgiveness to Survive
Cancel culture. What is it? Can it have any role in building the beloved community? Or is it more closely akin to old retributive systems of justice, like “an eye for an eye?” Our show pushes back against the unexamined, often unconscious ways that we frame public questions using political or economic modes of thinking. We aim to be part of a growing movement of people who are critical of the ...
28m Feb 11, 2021
28m
S3 Ep323: Alone, Our Vision Is Too Narrow, Our Strength Too Limited
If toxic individualism is the spiritual disease of today’s United States, what is the healing balm? Today we peel back layers of “beloved community.” What is beloved community? How does it come to be? What are the prime features? Are faith communities uniquely situated to nurture this kind of community? And what characteristics will individuals need to strengthen, when they commit to such a co...
26m Feb 04, 2021
26m
S3 Ep322: It's Not About Politics: The Cult of Selfishness
Toxic individualism. The phrase captures one feature of our era here in the United States: the apotheosis of individualism, or as Paul Krugman in the New York Times put it in a column last July: the cult of selfishness. What is the difference between a view of the human being that sees the human being as participating in divinity, versus being divine? How does that distinction play out in real...
27m Jan 28, 2021
27m
S3 Ep321: Freedom or Order? Why We Should Be Paying Attention to Tensions in Conservative Thought
Toxic individualism. The phrase captures one feature of our era here in the United States: the apotheosis of individualism, or as Paul Krugman in the New York Times put it in a column last July: the cult of selfishness. Try this for a definition: toxic individualism results when the individual is separated from a higher moral order, and the individual then becomes the location for the sacred. ...
27m Jan 21, 2021
27m
S3 Ep320: One Defining Feature Of Our Culture Today Is....
Toxic individualism. The phrase captures one feature of our era here in the United States: the apotheosis of individualism, or as Paul Krugman in the New York Times put it in a column last July: the cult of selfishness. Shayna traces our current condition of individualism run amok—of individualism untethered to a higher moral order—as having arisen out of decades of erosion of respect for the ...
25m Jan 14, 2021
25m
S3 Ep319: "If The Old Institutional And Moral Safeguards Of A Nation Are Forgotten, Then The Anarchic Impulses In Humanity Break Loose"
We recorded this show before the chaos began in Washington, surrounding the Electoral College certification; it just wasn’t that hard to see what was coming. Our thrust: the richness of the intellectual tradition of conservative thought is being squandered. What passes, in unexamined conversation and in lazy journalism, as “conservatism,” is not. “Repubican” does not mean “conservative.” Cons...
27m Jan 06, 2021
27m
S3 Ep318: You Can't Legislate the Spirit: Willie Bodrick on the Limits of Politics on the Issue of Race
“You can’t legislate the heart; you can’t legislate the spirit.” Willie Bodrick (Twelfth Baptist Church, Roxbury MA) responds to the question of the limits of politics and legislation to bring needed transformation and healing to the painful history of race in our country. Why can’t laws change hearts? What does this mean for other contentious issues in our common life? And while we note the l...
12m Dec 31, 2020
12m
S3 Ep317: It's Not Political: Re-Imagining Public Space, Re-Claiming Higher Good
Laura Everett (Massachusetts Council of Churches) and Willie Bodrick (Twelfth Baptist Church, Roxbury MA) reflect on how the life of the spirit is present in public space, as part of our common life, and how it’s important to discern that spirit within the conflicted story of race in our country. This is an excerpt from a What In God’s Name webinar from October 28, 2020. The full webinar is on...
12m Dec 24, 2020
12m
S3 Ep316: Lefties and Evangelicals: Possible Common Ground in Critiquing Materialist Consumerism, Or Dream On?
Divergent voices with different starting points, and different assumptions about the world, share a critique of modern America: we are too focused on the material. What makes for a meaningful life? What constitutes human flourishing? We may not find unanimity in a positive answer, but there is increasing agreement, in certain quarters, in rejecting purely economic or material measures of meani...
26m Dec 17, 2020
26m
S3 Ep315: Stillness In An Agitated Culture: Re-Orienting to Higher Power
What is the stillness that is poised, potent, powerful? How might obedience to a loving authority—either a person, or a high ideal—help create a stillness in us that leads us to fuller living? How does the dominance of political and economic modes of thinking and acting (what we understand as “culture”) make talk of stillness marginal, if not meaningless? What kind of society do we want to cr...
25m Dec 10, 2020
25m
S3 Ep314: Hopeful Or Hopeless: What Story Are You Telling Yourself About America's Future?
Hope. One way to understand the human emotion of hope is seeing it as a particular kind of story we tell ourselves about the future. Chris outlines two different possible stories about the future of our American society. One story is more hopeful, the other bleaker. How might your view of the nature of human goodness affect the story you tell yourself about the future? Would you see divine in...
27m Dec 03, 2020
27m
S3 Ep313: What Will Your Legacy Be? Can Simply Considering Your Legacy Change the Culture?
Through the lens of legacy: looking at societal connection from the perspective of what we leave, when we leave. This week’s death of Pat Quinn, one of the co-founders of the “ice bucket challenge” to raise funds for and awareness of ALS, prompts our show today. Mostly, we live as though we will always be here. Lack of awareness of our limitations, including the limitation of finite time, lea...
23m Nov 26, 2020
23m
S3 Ep312: What If We Don't Want To Heal? Seeking Common Ground Versus Reckoning With The Truth
When you’re with Uncle Bob at the dinner table, do you try to reconcile with him by listening sympathetically to his ideas, or do you confront him with the truth so that he will, at some point, repent of his errors? If someone is acting poorly, do you try to see things from her point of view, or do you stand with conviction for a better way? Can we approach our fellow Americans with BOTH conv...
25m Nov 19, 2020
25m
S3 Ep311: The Good News: We're Not Politically Divided Anymore. The Bad News...?
We’re not politically divided anymore. It’s more complex than that, and potentially more dangerous. What happens when there is no commonly accepted authoritative voice for what is so, and what is not so, in the world? What happens when half the people think a certain kind of behavior is shameful, and another half think it is praiseworthy? Our show pushes back against the unexamined, often unc...
23m Nov 12, 2020
23m
S3 Ep310: How to Save the Republic
Some things stay the same, no matter who wins the presidential election. What are those things? How can we address them? Is it true that our political problems do not have political solutions? Our show pushes back against the unexamined, often unconscious ways that we frame public questions using political or economic modes of thinking. We aim to be part of a growing movement of people who ar...
22m Nov 05, 2020
22m
S3 Ep309: When The Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Curious: Sarah Drummond on Good Leaders (and Good People)
What In God’s Name talked with Sarah Drummond, Founding Dean of Andover Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity School, last winter, before the pandemic changed our lives. The insights that Sarah offers from her book “Dynamic Discernment: Reason, Emotion, and Power in Change Leadership” are helpful to us all, as we negotiate change in these challenging times. What is discernment? What are its constit...
25m Oct 22, 2020
25m