Happy New Year! This week on State of Belief, Interfaith Alliance’s radio show and podcast, we’re celebrating the holiday by revisiting more of our favorite interviews from years past. If you missed them the first time, you won’t want to miss them again!
We’ll kick off this week’s show with host Rev. Welton Gaddy’s 2009 conversation with New York Times science writer Nicholas Wade, who had just written “The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures.” In the conversation, they explore why humans may have been “hardwired” for religion.
Next, we’ll hear Welton’s 2010 conversation with Blair Scott, then-Communications Director of American Atheists, on that organization’s public billboard campaign calling Christmas a myth. Scott later left the group in 2012.
Then we’ll revisit a 2013 march to the White House featuring a diverse group of faith leaders and supporters protesting the increase in deportations of undocumented immigrants under President Obama. Welton spoke with United Methodist Bishop Minerva Carcaño, who led the procession and faith service, and presented a petition, signed by more than 4,000 people, calling on Obama to halt all deportations.
Finally, you’ll hear Welton’s 2008 interview with Jonathan Curiel, author of “Al’ America: Travels Through America’s Arab and Islamic Roots,” who will explain what coffee, ice cream, the poet Rumi and the Alamo all have in common. In 2011, Curiel joined the staff of the Wikimedia Foundation, and his latest book, “Islam in America,” was published in 2015.
