Amy Leach discusses her new book, The Salt of the Universe: Praise, Songs, and Improvisations (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2024). We discuss freedom, fundamentalism, and the Ellen White/Ted Wilson prohibition of pickles. 

Leach grew up in Texas and earned her MFA from the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Her work has appeared in The Best American Essays, The Best American Science and Nature Writing, and numerous other publications. She is the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award, and a Pushcart Prize. She is also the author of Things That Are (Milkweed 2012) and The Everybody Ensemble (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2021). She lives in Montana. 

From Australia, Signs Publishing Book Editor Nathan Brown talks about his latest book, Do Not Be Afraid, the Adventist adult daily devotional for 2025. Inspired by Jesus’s repeated comforting words and his own graduate research, Brown “reminds us that even in a world drowning in fears, we can rise above them and live lives characterized by courage and confidence.” We also explore his two decade career as a prolific man of letters and his new activist work with the JustLove Collective. 

A BFA graduate of Southern Adventist University, Darcie Denton is a 25-year-old artist from the Chattanooga area who has had three solo shows and exhibited various works throughout the U.S. Her artwork revolves around themes of sacredness, memory, gratitude, and beauty, and she explores these through paint, print and other traditional media, as well as video documentation of her life experience. A part of the Passionfroot.co, Darcie shares her work and life to an online audience of over 80,000 followers. Her work is on the cover of the next issue of the Spectrum journal.

https://www.darciedenton.com/about

https://www.instagram.com/passionfroot.co/

Daniel Weber was the Communication Director of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in North America and is now chair of the Dept. of Visual Art, Communication and Design at Andrews University.

We debate about the value and propriety of Adventists making public declarations about their political views, particularly candidate support. In addition, we discuss the history and meaning of Adventist social values, particularly separation of church and state.

Hot off the co-publication of our article with the Miami-Herald on 3ABN, its author, Alva James-Johnson, an award-winning journalist, talks behind the scenes on the story as well as how she become a reporter. We learn about her first publication for Insight magazine, her early work as a beat reporter, why she teaches at Southern Adventist University now, and why she thinks that seeking truth as an Adventist includes asking journalistic questions.

Retired teacher Janice Jensen, a longtime supporter of Spectrum (Advisory Council), recently published a memoir about losing her nine-year old son to drowning and how that changed her in many way, including her beliefs. Now a grief-recovery volunteer faciliator, Janice talks about heartbreak and how she supported her daughter and devastated husband as they struggled to rebuild their lives together. She has taught in Syria, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Oregon and Washington. Her 2024 book, One Ripple at a Time (She Writes Press) also explores how Janice’s solo visits to over 70 countries caused her to abandon dogma and find new meaning in water, movement, and spirituality.

I talk with Greg Kewdar about his film Sing Sing which will probably be nominated for the Academy Awards. It stars Coleman Domingo plays Divine G, an innocent man incarcerated at the New York prison. He is part of the longstanding Rehabilitation Through the Arts program and it's the men who create in this space that bring the story of conflict and redemption to life.

I interview journalist Eliza Griswold about her just released book, “Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church.”

She embedded for several years with four pastors in Philadelphia and shares on their personal and public struggles as they pursue their radical Christian vision while dealing with the realities of misogyny, racism, and attendance decline.

Griswold is currently a contributing writer to The New Yorker and a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. She won the Pulitzer Prize for her 2018 book, “Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America.”

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Erik VanDenburgh, president of the Hawaii conference speaks to me while driving a truck and 26 foot trailer to Gillette, Wyoming, to attend the International Pathfinder Camporee. He shares interesting details about the logistics involved in getting over 250 youth and support staff from the islands 3,400 miles across sea and land. A former youth leader, VanDenburgh explains why experiences like this matter and how his clubs are sharing the aloha spirit in Adventism.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I interviewed Alan Reinach, Esq, president of the Church State Council, the education, advocacy, and legal services ministry of the Pacific Union. He is representing his client, Jeffery Lemasters Tahir, who until recently worked security at Disneyland. They talk about the Sabbath observance issues involved in the case and why the Adventist Church takes an interfaith legal and mission approach to religious liberty protections. 
Reinach is a graduate of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill School of Law in 1987, and of the State University of New York at New Paltz, with special honors in history, in 1984.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.