Humanize Me

Bart chats with his friend, the actress Maggie Wheeler, who is a director of the Golden Bridge Community Choir in Los Angeles, where people join together at all levels of singing ability and form a harmonious whole. They explore how singing brings people together and how her choir is actually an exercise in community-building.

A special year-end edition of Humanize Me.

Bart chats with his old friend Mark Yaconelli about his latest project, The Hearth Community, gatherings in which people explore, craft, and share stories from what they have lived. They talk about how these gatherings compare to Christian church, how they're different, and what role such things can play in shaping a secular world.

What to do when you've made a mistake. After all, we're all human.

That's the name of Jim Gilliam's book, wherein he describes his journey out of fundamentalist faith, through serious illness and into internet-facilitated activism and a software company that helps leaders connect with their people. Bart chats at length with Jim at his offices in Los Angeles about connected humanity.

How does a secular humanist respond to the election by many of his fellow Americans of a brash, impulsive man who they know deep down doesn’t really care about them? Slowly. Thoughtfully. Bart Campolo reads aloud his careful thoughts on the election of Donald Trump, and advocates an approach which involves trying to understand those who voted for him and listening with compassion and curiosity.

Like Bart, Katherine Ozment is trying to figure out how best to find meaning, purpose and belonging in a secular age. In this conversation Bart asks her about her journey, which is similar to so many stories we've been hearing recently from the audience of Humanize Me.

Irshad Manji is an author, speaker and founder of the Moral Courage Project, espousing a ‘reformist' interpretation of Islam. She's featured in all kinds of media to speak out when others have wanted to shut her up, and chats with Bart here about a wide range of relevant and interesting subjects.

Last week's episode hit a nerve, or perhaps that should be many nerves. It's late at night in his apartment in Los Angeles and Bart takes a few minutes to touch upon the many responses to the episode with his wife Marty about whether he's being ‘too nice' about Christianity.

If it were up to Bart’s wife Marty, the rest of the world probably still wouldn’t know about their deconversion and this podcast wouldn’t exist, so her joining him for this episode is a pretty big deal. Rather than focusing on their marriage per se, however, Bart and Marty open up to each other about an immediate and excruciating question that every former believer must face sooner or later: How long do we hold our tongues once we realize that what we used to believe – and that many of our loved ones still do – is not just untrue, but also genuinely harmful?