Act Two: Jews for Jesus, for Just One Day
Alex Edelman grew up in an Orthodox Jewish household in Boston. But one year, unexpectedly, his family decided to celebrate Christmas – for what he says are very Jewish reasons.
There are 49 results
Prologue
What does God get out of us praising him? Or is it actually for us? (7 minutes)
Prologue
What does God get out of us praising him? Or is it actually for us? (7 minutes)
Act Two: Details of the Devil
Religion professor Elaine Pagels explains the roots and evolution of Satan in religious texts.
Prologue
Ira talks to Father Thomas Santa about the kind of confession that he finds among the most difficult to listen to — and not because what’s being confessed is too big or too horrible — but because, as Father Santa explains, they aren’t sins at all.
Prologue
Ira admits there is a question he’s wanted to know the answer to since he was a kid in Hebrew school: Why is it that Jews don’t sacrifice animals anymore? Especially since the Old Testament is so clear that God wants it? Ira talks to religious studies scholar Jonathan Klawans to find out. Jonathan is the author of a book covering this subject, Purity, Sacrifice and the Temple.
Prologue
When Dave Hill was in his late 20s and still basically living at home, he hung out with his mom a lot. But once she used particularly sneaky tactics to get him to attend a church fundraiser.
Act Two: Team Spirit In The Sky
This past Christmas a story swept the internet about a football coach at a Christian high school in Texas who inspired his team's fans to root for the opposition: A team from the local juvenile correctional facility. Among the thousands of emails that the coach received in response to his actions, one stood out to him.
Act Three: Lions And Lambs
When Barack Obama chose Rick Warren of Saddleback Church to give a prayer at his inauguration, gay and lesbian groups cried foul, because of Warren's past remarks about homosexuality and gay marriage. But Rick Warren's constituents—Christian conservatives—also got angry.
Prologue
One day at church camp, David Maxon challenged the devil to show himself. Just then, a huge thunderstorm started, and David felt sure the devil was behind it.
Prologue
Host Ira Glass talks about the way most political apologies go, and chats with a man named Derek Jones about similar sorts of apologies among preteen girls and King David, in the Old Testament.
Prologue
Host Ira Glass reads from the Ten Commandments. Not the original Ten Commandments, but some of the newer, lesser-known ones.
Prologue
In the 1930s, the designer of the U.S. Supreme Court made a frieze to adorn the courtroom walls.
Prologue
Two stories about people who suddenly realize they're the only ones around who value the separation of church and state. Paul Williams, a city councilman in Janesville, Wisconsin, wants to make sure a Salvation Army built with public money doesn't proselytize.
Prologue
Host Ira Glass talks about the story of Cain and Abel, and the question in the story, "Am I my brother's keeper?" It turns out that the story doesn't really answer that question very satisfyingly.
Prologue
Host Ira Glass talks with Erin Einhorn, a reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News, who went to Poland to find the Catholic family that had sheltered and saved her mother from the Nazi concentration camps during World War II. She found that in Krakow where she was living, in a country where Jewish populations had been vilified and then exterminated by the Nazis, Judaism was suddenly trendy.
Prologue
How does the Devil work? We hear stories from five different people who say they found themselves inexplicably doing something random and bad, something which made no sense to them at all. Host Ira Glass explains why this might be, cadging a bit from C.S.
Prologue
A story of faith lost, thanks to a book about extraterrestrials and a Rabbi.
Prologue
Host Ira Glass talks to Bible scholars Paulene A. Viviano of Loyola University and John Spencer of John Carroll University about the story of the golden calf in the book of Exodus.