Committing Faith in Public

Before his retirement from Phillips, Gary Peluso-Verdend met with several faith leaders for a series of interfaith conversations. On this episode, Gary talks with the Rev. Barbara Prose, who until recently served at Tulsa, Oklahoma’s All Souls Unitarian Church.

Email Kurt Gwartney with your questions, comments, or possible guests for this podcast.

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It has become cliché to note that America is highly polarized. Polarization has become something like the weather: something to complain about rather than act on. Braver Angels is an organization dedicated to depolarize America and to revive the spirit of our democracy.

One cannot imagine a more important contribution to reviving civic faith of America and in America than helping citizens of opposing views to know each other. Here in Oklahoma, we have a Braver Angels alliance. In this episode of Committing Faith in Public, senior vice president at Oklahoma State University (Tulsa) Chris Benge and All Souls Unitarian Church pastor Barbara Prose talk about the alliance to which they give leadership.

Mr. Benge has given decades of service to Oklahomans and is a Republican. The Rev. Prose pastors a progressive congregation, is a social justice advocate, and identifies as a Democrat. How many places can you hear a civil and honest conversation between persons who identify with different parts of the political spectrum? Join host Gary Peluso-Verdend and listen in to this special episode of the podcast. To learn more about Braver Angels in Oklahoma, email [email protected] or [email protected].

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What does one do with the master of divinity degree these days? The answer is not necessarily simple! In this episode of committing faith in public, the Rev. Loren Richmond (MDiv 2013) talks about his journey after seminary. He has been a church pastor, a church planter, a hospital chaplain, and a student in an MBA program specializing in nonprofit management.

In this very challenging era for the institutional church, Loren is trying to equip himself and, through his podcast, prepare others to face challenges with knowledge, courage, and humility. Loren relates lessons learned through experience and often as a result of things not going as expected. Before the end of the podcast, Loren is joined by his young son. Thus, we the audience experience one of the other challenges of post-seminary, bi-vocational ministry: parenting.

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Marcia McFee, PhD, is one of the speakers and is worship designer for this year’s Remind and Renew, January 25-27, at Phillips Seminary and online. She is a visiting professor at Redlands University where San Francisco Theological Seminary finds its home.

With a PhD in Liturgical Studies and Ethics, and related work in cultural anthropology, she brings a rich perspective on the intersection of liturgy, ethics, culture, and both ecclesial and public life. About halfway through the interview, podcast host Gary Peluso-Verdend set aside the script and spent the remainder of the time talking with Dr. McFee about the rituals and public displays on January 6 this year.

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The Rev. Dr. Chelsea Yarborough is one of the speakers this year at Phillips’ Remind and Renew event, January 25-27, in Tulsa and online. She is assistant professor of liturgical studies at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, IL.

Dr. Yarborough recently completed her PhD at Vanderbilt Divinity School. She is a professor and minister known for exploring liturgy in the context of black theology and preaching outside the pulpit. In her wide-ranging conversation with Committing Faith in Public host Gary Peluso-Verdend, she talks about ritual as protest, social reimagining as distinct from social repair, and coupling repentance with penance as genuinely difficult work.

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Victoria Loorz, MDiv, is one of the speakers at this year’s Remind & Renew Conference at Phillips and online, January 25-27. Rev. Loorz is a "wild church pastor," an "eco-spiritual director" and co-founder of several transformation-focused organizations focused on the integration of nature and spirituality.

After 20 years as a pastor of indoor churches, she launched the first Church of the Wild, in Ojai CA and began to meet others with the same sense of call to leave building and expand the Beloved Community beyond our own species. She then co-founded the ecumenical Wild Church Network and Seminary of the Wild.

The Rev. Loorz and Committing Faith in Public Life host Gary Peluso-Verdend talk about her extraordinary work around ritual and communities seeking connection with God, among themselves, and with the particular places in creation, e.g., marking Ash Wednesday in the ashes of a California wildfire. She also muses about ritual work toward social repair and species repair. (And GPV apologies for mispronouncing Ojai, California).

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On this special edition of Committing Faith in Public, Gary Peluso-Verdend walks and talks with Woody Guthrie Centerexecutive director Deana McCloud through the exhibit, “Songs of Conscience, Sounds of Freedom.”

This traveling exhibit debuted in Tulsa and is at the WGC through October 11. Listen as Gary interviews Deana regarding select items from the collection that sweeps from the Revolutionary War to the murder of George Floyd and the commemoration of the Tulsa Race Massacre. Their tour ranges from Frank Sinatra to Mickey Guyton, from liberation jazz to John Lennon, from Bob Dylan to Shemekiah Copeland.

The podcast includes song clips from various artists. Phillips’ senior director of communications Kurt Gwartney accompanied Deana and Gary (he took the photos). Enjoy and learn!

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One of the most unfortunate pieces of data from graduate seminary graduating student interviews is which courses graduands wish they had fewer of: history. In this pivotal era of the churches’, the nation’s, and the planet’s lives, there is a great deal of re-imagining and re-telling history happening; and that work directly feeds our current sense of what is necessary today for faithful living.

The Rev. Dr. Lisa Barnett, Assistant Professor of American Religious History at Phillips Theological Seminary, knows the critical importance of knowing history: learning what we did not learn in public schools, re-learning to correct the fictions that served the interests of the ruling classes in another time, and mining history for models of resistance and ally-ship.

Dr. Barnett sat down with Center for Religion in Public Life director, Gary Peluso-Verdend, on a tropical summer day in Tulsa to talk about her background, her love of history, her call, her teaching, and answering the persistent question, “So what?”

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