The Shwell Audio Magazine

The Shwell EXTRA No. 1: Ira Glass on Evangelicals, Heretics, and His Film 'Come Sunday'


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Ira Glass, the longtime host of NPR's This American Life, king of public radio, and all-around mensch, is the producer of a new Netflix original film Come Sunday. The film, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jason Segal, Condola Rashad, Danny Glover, and Martin Sheen (as Oral Roberts), follows the real-life story of Bishop Carlton Pearson (Ejiofor)—a prominent pentecostal evangelist from Tulsa, Oklahoma who falls from grace when (he believes) God spoke to him whilst watching a TV news report on the Rwandan genocide to say that there is no hell (or that if it does, it's empty) because Jesus's death on the cross brought salvation to all of humanity for all time. Pearson loses his ministry, is put on (ecclesiastical) trial for heresy, and becomes a pariah to the religious community that celebrated him for more than 20 years. 

Ira joined Cath for a conversation about faith and doubt, hell and heresy, how Christians and other religious communities are portrayed in the media, growing up Jewish, what he learned from Pearson's story about the nature of belief, and how a nice atheist like him wound up making a film like this. 

It's a humdinger. 

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The Shwell Audio MagazineBy Cathleen Falsani and Kelley Weber