Humanize Me

How can secular people care for each other when the chips are down? Jason Callahan is the chaplain for the Thomas Palliative Care Unit at VCU Massey Cancer Center in Virginia and instructor for the Departments of Patient Counseling and Pastoral Care at VCU. Jason is a seminary-educated secular chaplain, endorsed by the Humanist Society and nationally board-certified by the Association of Professional Chaplains.

Bart eats some humble pie with an apology he felt compelled to make after the realization that he hasn't always come across the way he intended.

Listener questions abound on this episode, posed in real time by Humanize Me producer John Wright, featuring topics raised on the podcast's Facebook group. On this episode: When to come out as an unbeliever to your pastor, what Bart's been reading lately, whether atheists can enjoy worship music, and who to thank for the pleasure of living, among other things.

Gleb was involved in starting it. Bart signed up to it. Now, they're both committed to it. What is the Pro-Truth Pledge? How do we separate fact from fiction? And why did a group of scientists come together at this moment in history to do this?

Bart chats with Vanessa Zoltan, a research assistant at Harvard Divinity School where she graduated who has been involved with the Humanist Hub at Harvard University and is well-known for her approach to reading books like Harry Potter as a sacred text.

Bart’s son Roman joins him for this chat, recorded on Father’s Day, in which they contemplate the nature of ‘fathering’ and the attributes of an ideal father figure in someone’s life. What are the factors that make someone a good mentor? How can fathers establish a reality model for the person they’re mentoring but stretch to understand their world too? Is religion based on a father complex? To what extent did Bart’s own values stick with Roman, and what does Roman think now?

Like Bart, Drew Bekius is a former Christian minister who stopped believing and left the faith he held for so long. Bart and Drew talk about their journey, the view on the other side of faith, the plight of unbelieving clergy, compassion for those in that position and what they're both doing now that they're no longer evangelical pastors.

Ex-Mormons. Ex-Scientologists. Ex-Jehovah Witnesses. Ex-Evangelicals. They were all there at sunset at Morris Bird's bi-annual gathering on the beach, cooking ribs and meeting each other. Some had travelled for hours to get there, desperate for community with those like them.