News and commentary for the week of July 1 - 7, 2009 with Mike Kaspar and Nathan Callahan.

An interview with Mark Ellingsen author of Sin Bravely: A Joyful Alternative to the Purpose-Driven Life.

Ellingsen demonstrates that awareness of sin is shown to lead to freedom and joy, as the pressure is removed to do and be good all the time. The book's other primary aim is to flesh out an alternative approach to life to Rick Warren's and the dominant American Christian vision. This alternative, life of brave sinning, is rooted in the worldview of the Protestant Reformation (esp. of Martin Luther). When people sin bravely, believing everything done is done in sin, people can get out of the way and recognize that all the good done is done by God despite individual seedy motives. This awareness leads to freedom and joy, since the pressure is now removed to do and be good. In addition, total dependence on God entails a self-forgetfulness that leads to happiness.

The bolder one acknowledge's their sin, in failing to take credit for the good done, the more focused on God the individual becomes. Correspondingly this self-forgetful lifestyle is a promising counter-cultural alternative to the cultural Narcissism which so dominates in many segments of contemporary American society. Ellingsen provides practical ways to sharpen these insights, to 'own' them. He aims to clarify why the lifestyle of brave sinning and total dependence on God lead to happiness, with an emphasis on current neurobiological research on happiness and brain function. Ellingsen, then, demonstrates both the how and why brave sinning leads to joy, while in so doing offers readers practical advice on living this way.

Mark Ellingsen is Associate Professor of Church History at the Interdenominational Theological Center, Atlanta.

News and commentary for the week of June 24 - 30, 2009 with Mike Kaspar and Nathan Callahan.

News and commentary for the week of June 17 - 23, 2009 with Mike Kaspar and Nathan Callahan.

News and commentary for the week of June 10 - 16, 2009 with Mike Kaspar and Nathan Callahan.

News and commentary for the week of June 3 - 9, 2009 with Mike Kaspar and Nathan Callahan.

An interview with Sasha Abramsky author of Breadline USA: The Hidden Scandal of American Hunger.

Trapped in a triangle of the housing market collapse, rising energy costs, and an increasingly dysfunctional healthcare system, America's working poor are now battling an even more formidable enemy: hunger. This time, the battle is taking place well outside of the media spotlight, which has focused on obesity, another food-related epidemic affecting the poor.

Breadline USA tells the stories of Americans in all types of communities who struggle to put any type of food on the table come the end of the month when money runs out and the social safety net isnt there to catch them.

Sasha Abramsky is a freelance journalist. His work has appeared in The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, New York magazine, The Village Voice, and Rolling Stone. In 2000 he was awarded a Soros Society, Crime, and Communities Media Fellowship, and he is currently a Senior Fellow at the New York City-based Demos Foundation. He is the author of American Furies: Crime, Punishment, and Vengeance in the Age of Mass Imprisonment and Hard Time Blues.