Humanize Me

This week we air Bart's interview on the podcast Re-Enchantment with host Daniel Shkolnik. We don't do this often, but we liked this interview a lot, and Daniel is a guy committed to the ideas we share so passionately.

John Engle, known for his work with Haiti Partners, joins Bart to answer the question, 'What have you learned from your work in Haiti that may be relevant to the tough times we're going through here in the United States this year?'

Bill Deresiewicz is an award-winning essayist and critic who has written a new book. The book warns that the art we all love - music, books, films and much more - is in jeopardy. Based on his own deep research and interviews with artists and content creators, Bill is worried that the digital economy isn't supporting that art that sustains our souls, and that we are in the middle of a big transformation.

A scandal for the ages has emerged about of one of the most prominent evangelical Christian leaders of the Trump era. In this episode, Bart and John attempt to answer the question, 'What would make a humanistic response to the situation with the Falwells?'

Mega is an improvised satire from the staff of a fictional mega church, hosted by Holly Laurent and Greg Hess. In this conversation with Bart Campolo, Holly and Greg talk about satirizing American Christianity, what makes it funny, and the mental gymnastics it takes to twist Jesus into a capitalist. But it doesn't take long before they're also talking - very personally - about being haunted by the evangelicalism of childhood, how to live authentically, recovery from trauma, undoing some of the Christian cultural lessons about sexuality after you're married, marriage itself and more.

In this Part 2 with Mark Oppenheimer, recorded later after both had listened back to their first conversation, Mark and Bart return to take the earlier convo in a practical direction. Including: Facebook versus Letter to the Editor, steel-manning, don’t act in ways you wouldn’t let your kids act, diversity including identity and ideology, features of the 'new puritanism', the importance of hearing from the young and old, keeping kids off social media, how we may be living in the most humorless time in American history, and the importance of being committed to something.

A recent blog post by Esther Perel caught Bart Campolo's eye. In this brief, bonus episode, Bart reads his unauthorized edit of Perel's piece, which is about what we've lost in the pandemic, and how to cultivate collective resilience and 'tragic optimism'. Perel's original essay can be found at: https://estherperel.com/blog/anticipatory-grief?fbclid=IwAR3rD-qfdtNrUdQPgehl2f6156YJOEMTNooRjgZIaOcNtrUw1D5mnXuXxPM

Mark Oppenheimer is a friend of this podcast who is a signatory to a recent open letter published by Harper's Magazine, in praise of open debate and tolerance for differing opinions, and against some aspects of 'cancel culture', dogmatism and censoriousness. In this conversation with Bart Campolo, Mark chats about why he signed the letter, the limits and boundaries of free speech, the likeliest paths to progress, the effects of added scrutiny on writers at present and some of the reasons he thinks liberals have gotten less 'liberal'.

'Hi Bart, I know in your podcast you talk a lot about people in 'suddenly interfaith' marriages, where one is a believer and the other has since left, and obviously there are obstacles, but what I want to know is: Does anything work? Is intimacy possible between people of radically different worldviews?' Bart's perspective: Sometimes. And there are some things that make it harder and other things that make it easier.