Segments
Happy Labor Day! This week on State of Belief, Interfaith Alliance’s radio show and podcast, we will mark the end of summer by looking back at a couple of our favorite interviews from earlier this year. Next week, after we’ve caught our breath from the endless stream of news headlines, we’ll tackle the so-called evangelical state dinner held at the White House this past Monday, the scandal that is engulfing the Catholic Church and the looming Supreme Court confirmation battle.
While John MacArthur, a prominent evangelical pastor and writer, claimed this week that he was unaware of racism in the church until recently, other clergy and religious leaders, such as the Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock, have been on the frontlines in the fight against racism. Dr. Warnock, who has been the senior pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church since 2005, spoke with State of Belief host Rev. Welton Gaddy earlier this year. We will revisit the interview which happened after a group of a group of Nazis rallied in Newnan, Georgia, before moving to Draketown where they burned a large swastika. The symbol of hate burned only 40 miles away from the pulpit from which the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once spoke.
In April, following the release of his new book Faith: A Journey for All, former President Jimmy Carter spoke with Welton in an exclusive conversation about faith, doubt, working across lines of difference and former President Gerald Ford. A devout Baptist who at 93 still teaches Sunday school nearly every week, former President Carter has lived with a passion for justice, a devotion to stewardship of the earth and a commitment to nonviolence and even pacifism throughout his life – from the peanut farms in Georgia to the Oval Office in D.C. to the roofs of Habitat for Humanity homes around the world. This week, we’ll revisit this stunning conversation between two pioneers in transcending exclusionist tendencies in American Christianity.
