Mending Divides

In this episode, activist Shane Claiborne echoes Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s framework that the Church is not the master or the servant of the State, but the consciousness of the State. This is a framework that gives us the freedom as Jesus-followers to actively and wholeheartedly engage with politics. It is our job that when the State causes harm to our fellow image-bearers, we critique the State at the ballot box because of our convictions of love and God’s desire to see human flourishing.

LINKS:

• Download the free Peace & Politics Practice Guide: https://globalimmerse.org/podcast

Shane Claiborne Bio:

Shane Claiborne is a prominent speaker, activist, and best-selling author.  Shane worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, and founded The Simple Way in Philadelphia.  He heads up Red Letter Christians, a movement of folks who are committed to living "as if Jesus meant the things he said." Shane is a champion for grace which has led him to jail advocating for the homeless, and to places like Iraq and Afghanistan to stand against war. Now grace fuels his passion to end the death penalty and help stop gun violence.

Shane’s books include Jesus for President, Red Letter Revolution, Common Prayer, Follow Me to Freedom, Jesus, Bombs and Ice Cream, Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers, Executing Grace, his classic The Irresistible Revolution, Beating Guns, and his newest book, Rethinking Life (to be released February 2023). He has been featured in a number of films including "Another World Is Possible" and "Ordinary Radicals." His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages. Shane speaks over one hundred times a year, nationally and internationally. His work has appeared in Esquire, SPIN, Christianity Today, TIME, and The Wall Street Journal, and he has been on everything from Fox News and Al Jazeera to CNN and NPR. He’s given academic lectures at Harvard, Princeton, Liberty, Duke, and Notre Dame. 

Music from Epidemic Sound: We Are Giants by Silver Maple:https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/ICEht6ut6b/

In this episode, author and pastor Dominique Gilliard helps us think beyond our left/right binary by rooting us in the biblical text. For Dominique, the question “where is it written?” is central to how he thinks about civic engagement and is a practice that can help keep us from getting swept up in our culture wars. In continually turning back to the texts, Dominique reminds us that we should be the ones modeling a biblical move toward peacemaking.

Links:

• Dominique’s Recommendation - The Sum of Us Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/19VMtc487rqmrb6GC8eRvd
  

Dominique’s Website: https://dominiquegilliard.com/

Buy Subversive Witness:

Follow Dominique on Facebook: @DominiqueDGilliard

Follow Dominique on Instagram: @dominiquedgilliard

Follow Dominique on Twitter: @DDGilliard

Dominique Gilliard Bio:

Music from Epidemic Sound: We Are Giants by Silver Maple: https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/ICEht6ut6b/

Angela is a pastor and journalist compelled to help people connect with their political other. Her experience as a political moderate who lives in an urban setting and pastors in a rural setting, as well as her life story, led her to the research and writing of Red State Christians in the wake of Donald Trump’s election. Deeply self-aware of her social location and the communities she is called to, Angela speaks about the need to live with both dissonance and discernment - acknowledging the need to let the dissonance we experience when we are close to our political other shape and grow us and allow the Spirit to work within us.

Links:

• Download the free Peace & Politics Practice Guide: https://globalimmerse.org/podcast

Angela’s Website: https://www.angeladenker.com/

Buy Red State Christians: https://www.angeladenker.com/current-projects

Angela Denker's Bio:

Angela Denker is a Lutheran pastor and veteran journalist. She's written for many publications, including Sports Illustrated, The Washington Post, and FORTUNE magazine. Denker has appeared on CNN, BBC, and SkyNews to share her research on politics and Christian Nationalism in the U.S. Her book, Red State Christians: Understanding the Voters who elected Donald Trump, was the 2019 Silver Foreword Indies award-winner for political and social sciences. 

Music from Epidemic Sound: We Are Giants by Silver Maple: https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/ICEht6ut6b/

In this episode, we talk with pastor and activist Carlos Rodríguez about leveraging our votes for the sake of those on the margins, being willing to have conversations and debates with those we deeply disagree with, and not allowing our political beliefs to insulate and isolate us from those who are experiencing the pain of broken policies. With both joy and deep conviction, Carlos invites us not just to flip tables, but to go and build better ones.

 Links:

• Download the free Peace & Politics Practice Guide: https://globalimmerse.org/podcast

Carlos Rodríguez's Bio:

Carlos A. Rodríguez is a pastor, an activist, and a communicator. He's the CEO of The Happy Givers and the author of Simply Sonship and Drop The Stones. Together with his wife Catherine, they have three gorgeous children and have moved to Puerto Rico to continue relief efforts all over the Caribbean post hurricane Irma and Maria. Support their non-profit work at TheHappyGivers.com

Music from Epidemic Sound: We Are Giants by Silver Maple: https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/ICEht6ut6b/

Dr. David Gushee is one of the world’s leading Christian social ethicists who tackles the most polarizing issues of our day by asking the question, “As followers of Jesus, how shall we live?” In this episode, he asks that question in relation to politics. David guides us on a journey into the heart and history of democracy and makes the case for Christians to engage in it thoughtfully and proactively. No political system is perfect, but democracy gives us the opportunity to engage in politics for the sake of justice, peace, and human flourishing. And, if we are not careful, one manifestation of Christianity could lead to democracy’s end. 

• Download the free Peace & Politics Practice Guide: https://globalimmerse.org/podcast

Dr. Gushee's Bio:

Dr. David P. Gushee (PhD, Union Theological Seminary, New York) is an ethicist, pastor, author, and advocate. He is the Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University, and Chair of Christian Social Ethics at Vrije Universiteit (“Free University”) Amsterdam, and Senior Research Fellow, International Baptist Theological Study Centre.

Gushee is the elected Past-President of both the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Christian Ethics, signaling his role as one of America's leading Christian ethicists. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of more than 25 books and over 175 academic book chapters, journal articles, and reviews. His most recognized works include Introducing Christian Ethics, Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust, Kingdom Ethics, and The Sacredness of Human Life. With his Changing Our Mind (more than 25,000 sold) and After Evangelicalism, he charts a theological and ethical course for post-evangelical Christians, a course he more personally relates in his memoir, Still Christian. Altogether his books have sold over 100,000 copies and been translated into a dozen languages.

Music from Epidemic Sound: We Are Giants by Silver Maple: https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/ICEht6ut6b/

As a soldier serving in the US military, Diana Oestreich heard God’s call to disarm her gun while on the battlefield and turn towards peacemaking. As we hear from her in this episode, Diana’s radical conviction of peacemaking offers us a renewed sense of our own calls to be Everyday Peacemakers. She invites us to remember that at the core of how we vote and engage in politics must be an other-centered practice because we all belong to each other.

Links:

• Download the free Peace & Politics Practice Guide: https://globalimmerse.org/podcast

Diana Oestreich Bio:

Diana Oestreich is a soldier-turned-peacemaker and author of Waging Peace. She heard God’s call to love her enemies in the most unlikely place: on the battlefield of Iraq. Diana is a Peacemaker, Author, Activist, Veteran, and former sexual assault nurse. Speaking across the country, she empowers us to identify our own rural, urban, political or religious divides to cross our own “enemy lines” in order to remake the world and heal all that’s tearing us apart.  

Music from Epidemic Sound: We Are Giants by Silver Maple: https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/ICEht6ut6b/

In this episode, Osheta and Jon share personal stories that led them to care so deeply about peace in the public square. Offering a brief overview of the history of Christian engagement in politics, and critiquing our tendency toward nationalism or apolitical withdrawal, Jon outlines a framework for engaging politics as kingdom citizens. Inviting us into her experience as a Black woman who is directly impacted by broken policies, Osheta shares why it’s important to understand the role of power, generational trauma and “rest as resistance” for those on the margins in pursuit of peace. She tells her story as a former Christian Nationalist and Apolitical Anabaptist that led her to embracing Contemplative Activism as her guide to following Jesus in politics. 

In this episode:

• Defining the terms “peace” and “politics”

Links:

Download the free Peace & Politics Practice Guide: https://globalimmerse.org/podcast 

Contemplative Prayer with Global Immersion (Weekly on Tues, Wed and Thur at 7am PST): https://share.hsforms.com/1KMGPA1DaSxOQs9GOp3gDowc3ovn

Conflicted Allegiance: https://globalimmerse.org/public-programs/conflicted-allegiance/

Learn more about Global Immersion: https://globalimmerse.org/

Osheta Moore Bio:

Pastor, speaker, mother, wife: Osheta Moore is passionate about peacemaking, racial reconciliation, and community development in the urban core. Osheta (pronounced o-she-da, and no, it doesn’t mean anything, she says, “my dad just made it up”) serves as Pastor of Community life at Roots Covenant Church alongside her husband. Osheta is passionate about equipping the church to be everyday peacemakers. She is the author of Shalom Sistas, an invitation to women to practice the Hebraic concept of Shalom in their everyday lives, and her most recent book, Dear White Peacemakers, is a love letter to White Christians on their anti-racism peacemaking journey. She is also completing her two-year program to become a Spiritual Director so that she can help equip peacemakers with practices and prayers for the journey. Osheta has “flying in a hot-air balloon” at the top of her bucket list, and she is firmly convinced that everything is better after a nap.  Follow Osheta on Instagram @oshetamoore for encouragement to practice everyday peacemaking and invitations for White Peacemakers on their journey towards anti-racism.

Music from Epidemic Sound: We Are Giants by Silver Maple: https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/ICEht6ut6b/

Politics and Peace. 

In the midst of today’s violent political rhetoric, the weight of oppressive systems crushing those on the margins, and family holidays becoming more complex to navigate, it’s hard to imagine how politics and peace have any connection. 

We think they do, so much so that we are committing an entire podcast season to it. 

Friends, politics doesn’t have to be such a scary word. It can simply be defined as the “ordering of society.” 

Every society has to make decisions about how we order ourselves. 

Everything is political, so we're going to talk about it. 

This season, we are going to have the conversations that equip us to leverage our votes for the benefit of those on the underside of our broken systems. We are also going to have the conversations that free us up to have hard and healing conversations with family and friends who might think differently than we do. 

Co-hosted by writer, speaker and peacemaker Osheta Moore, and our co-founding director, Jon Huckins, this season will be filled with dynamic interviews (with amazing guests each week!) and tangible practices that help us mend divides this election season. 

We hope you’ll join us on the Everyday Peacemaking podcast for this season. Episodes will be released starting mid-September.

Learn more about Global Immersion: https://globalimmerse.org/

In this episode, we hear from Irish poet and peacemaker, Padraig O Tuama who focused on the power of language to restore broken relationships and provided conversational tools for disarming everyday conflict.

Follow Padraig and his work here: http://www.padraigotuama.com/

Music for this episode is by Scott Holmes: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Scott_Holmes/

Learn more about Global Immersion here: https://globalimmerse.org/

In this episode, we hear from Israeli peacemaker, Robi Damelin who insists that the work of reconciliation is a process that requires hope and that, over time, over takes our way of being.

Follow Robi and her work here: https://www.theparentscircle.org

Music for this episode is by Scott Holmes: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Scott_Holmes/

Learn more about Global Immersion here: https://globalimmerse.org/