Love In A Dangerous Time

My guest is Sunita Viswanath. She is a life-long organizer and activist, a founder of a nation-wide activist organization, and a Hindu. In New York City, you’ll always see Sunita in the demonstrations for immigration right’s, Black Lives Matter, & against climate change. And she is also a member of the Strategy Team for the […]

——————————————————– A month ago, I was in the San Francisco Bay Area for my sort-of-annual visit to the place where I lived for 37 years, to connect with lots of old friends. As usual, I attended the church where I had been a member for a long time before leaving for New York City, First […]

—————————————————————————— All Rights for All, Without Boarders Last week, the Trump administration launched what they call a “deterrents” program, on the Mexican board, of separating children from their families as they process hopeful immigrants attempting to enter the United States. The entire world was shocked that this brutality was happening. Hundreds of angry denunciations came […]

  It’s still pretty early in the year and all over the country we’re seeing mayors and governors (and even the president) deliver very official “State of” speeches that take a look at the accomplishments of the past year and spell out what the major tasks of the new year will be. Here in New York […]

Have you ever felt that somehow you personally were responsible for repairing this crazy world we live it. That this world where kids are murdered in their school, where Nazis march around chanting hateful slogans, in this world where millions of refugees are refused help when they flee for their lives and the lives of […]

I hope that everyone has listened, at least once, to last week’s program with historian and author, Dr. Nancy MacLean on her very important book, DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America (episode 101). It’s a very scary book about the real world and I think it opens […]

—————————————————— As you Lovers certainly know, this podcast is focused on the apparent crumbling of what we have called for the last few hundred years, The Church. Congregations are shrinking, the influence of churches is ebbing, and churches are being shut down. The church that I’m a part of is going through that process now. […]

……. Russ talks with Tripp Fuller, host of Homebrewed Christianity, the podcast that started the whole progressive Christian podcast niche. His show is focused on real theology, and real theologians. What a way to celebrate the 100th episode of Love in a Dangerous Time? …….. Well, Lovers, we did it! This podcast has accomplished a […]

Interfaith Work in New York, with The Rev. Dr. Chloe Bryer Hey, Lovers – This is Russ and I want to welcome you to Love in a Dangerous Time, where we look at The Church, and the profound changes it’s going through in these Dangerous Times. We’ve got a great program today, but first I […]

…………………………… (Music sections have been re-edited) In the past many years, almost every recording artist has sung Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. It’s an extremely poetic look at the mess the world that resolves at the end into an affirmation of hope in spite of it all: …. And even though it all went wrong I’ll stand […]

This show was supposedto be released on October 23, but my computer has been completely out of commission for three days, and here I am, publishing this very important program (and it really is an important one) a week late on October 30. My apologies to all who have been waiting for it. I do […]

When a Christian truly feels that God want her to do something in particular, like become a minister, start a homeless shelter, become a tutor, paint a mural on the church playground wall, or read the Bible cover-to-cover, we say that we are “Called.” The idea is that we want to help God recreate the […]

Our guests today are Rick Ufford-Chase, the author of Faithful Resistance: Gospel Visions for the Church in a Time of Empire (interviewed in episode 76 of  Love in a Dangerous Time) and Brian McLaren, most recently the author of The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World’s Largest Religion Is Seeking a Better Way to Be […]

There’s a lot of church planting going on these days. And many of these plants are flourishing as alternative worshiping communities, made up of people who usually wouldn’t be caught dead in church. Kristen spoke with  the two leaders of this experiment. An unlikely partnership in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood, where development-fueled gentrification is driving out […]

For the first time, Lovers, we have been invited onto another podcast. Our good friends, Charles Bretan and Chris Henson (the very Jew and Gentile who walked into that Bar …. Mitzvah) invited Kristin and me onto their podcast to have a rich and exploratory conversation about the biblical question: Is there a difference between […]

In 1985, Rev. Frank Dew planted a small Presbyterian church in Greensboro, NC called “New Creation” that focused on relationships, community, and social justice.  For over 30 years, this diverse group of people has come together to discuss the Scriptures, break bread, and share a meal together, much like the early Christians in Acts. This […]

This episode has no agenda other than to talk through some of the big issues that arose this week with the emergence of organized and armed racists folk in Charlottesville, VA. Neo-Nazis, The Klan, The Alt-Right – lots of racists – lots of anti-semites – lots of anger – lots of weapons. It was a […]

This week, with the violence and terror that has descended on Charlottesville, VA, we are reminded of the importance of continuing the work of dismantling systemic oppression by effectively engaging systems of power through nonviolent forms of resistance wherever we are – whether we are marching in the streets or having a conversation with a […]

For the past year or so, we’ve occasionally done an interview series called “Conversion(s)”, in which very active people of faith tell their stories about how they got there. The idea is that there are many moments of conversion in each of our lives, when we have “growth spurts’’ toward understanding and faith coupled with […]

How many times have you heard someone try to stand in the way of work to end poverty by saying, “The poor will always be with us”? It’s as if they are saying that God wants a certain percentage of us to be living in poverty. We have heard quite a bit of this in […]