Good God

In Christianity, it feels like denominational lines are becoming less important. Fellowship Southwest is a new organization that demonstrates this by connecting people of faith to the work of the church in the world, particularly these days to serve refugees on the border of the U.S. and Mexico. Marv Knox is the coordinator of Fellowship, and he and George talk about this new kind of organization...

Terry Greenberg leads an effort in Dallas to reduce unintended teen pregnancy. She and George talk about the lead causes of teen pregnancies and how they can be avoided through conversation, education and the support of the faith community. Visit ntarupt.org and TalkAboutItDallas.com to learn about these local efforts. Watch their conversation here and listen on Apple Podcast or wherever you get y...

Robert Hunt is back on Good God talking about evangelism in a pluralistic world. How can Christians engage in relationships with people of other faiths or no faith and still offer what we believe is a life of beauty and truth? Dr. Hunt says, “We don't begin a dialogical process because we somehow caved in on the truth we know in Jesus Christ. We begin the dialogical process out of the absolute con...

Why is it so important for people of faith to have relationships with those of another faith tradition? Today, George continues a conversation with his good friend, Imam Omar Suleiman, about how they became friends and what that means for making a difference in their communities. George says: “To have gotten to know one another and to have a proximity to pain and to stand beside one another over t...

If you feel behind on your fluency and understanding of the Muslim faith, start catching up today in this episode of Good God. Omar Suleiman, an imam and an activist who is very engaged in multifaith work in the Dallas area, talks about the origins of Islam, explains the nature of the Quran and how it's interpreted, and how Islam is historically closely connected with Christianity and Judaism.

Robert Hunt, a United Methodist professor at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University , explains the cultural implications of the United Methodist decision to adhere to traditionalist views of marriage practices. Dr. Hunt says that by excluding missiologists, people that are experts in global culture and the church, from the decision making process, the United Methodist church fai...

What's all the fuss in Dallas about Confederate monuments? What do they mean? Why should we care? We'll be talking with Gerald Britt from CitySquare about just that and other matters of race and public life in Dallas on Good God.

Are you sure you're clear on how someone might immigrate to our country through a legal process? It's not as easy as you might think. Bill Holston from the Human Rights Initiative is back on Good God with some amazing stories about people he has represented in immigration court. Tune in to hear these stories and learn more about the real world of immigration.

Rabbi Andrea Weiss is back on Good God this week talking about her work as a Hebrew Bible scholar. You'll love hearing her talk about the prophets, metaphors for God, and why women's experiences need to be considered in biblical interpretation.

Rabbi Andrea Weiss coordinated a big project: A letter every day for the first 100 days of Trump's presidency from a different religious scholar each day. She published all the letters in a book called American Values, Religious Voices: 100 Days. 100 Letters. In this episode, she and George talk about how and why she thought of this project and what exactly is in all of those letters. Listen today...

Poet Malcolm Guite, on how God comes to us through the arts: "When God comes to us fully and richly as a person, and in and through the lives of other people, it's almost like we're scared, like God's got too close, so we abstract him again. We turn God into a bunch of propositions and put him back up into some intellectual realm. He's always getting past that and coming back to us. One of the way...

If you want to hear about the history of race justice and social activism in Dallas, tune in to this episode with Gerald Britt . He was at the front lines with civil rights leaders like Peter Johnson, Zan Holmes, Martin Luther King III and many others, fighting for equality and opportunity for the black community.

The border crisis is all we can think about these days. Images from the news stain our minds and still our hearts. Most Americans agree that we need good immigration policies, but that the current policies aren't working and are inhumane and immoral. Bill Holston, a Dallas immigration lawyer at the Human Rights Initiative of North Texas, Inc., talks about his work with immigrants and refugees and...

Today on Good God, Richie Butler and George talk about the economic and racial divides in Dallas. They also discuss the Botham Jean murder indictment and the implications of that tragedy on Dallas and our wider culture.

Miguel Solis, DISD Trustee and president of the Latino Center for Leadership Development - LCLD, discusses the challenges of education, immigration and leadership facing Latinos as they become the majority of the U.S. population in coming years, with Dr. George Mason on Good God.

Today on Good God, George talks with Bob Mong, the president of the University of North Texas at Dallas , about the importance of higher education for under-resourced populations. UNTD is being intentional about reaching that group and serving the community. In the second half of the episode, they discuss Mong’s previous career at the Dallas Morning News: the launching of the religion section in t...

As always you can see the video and read the full transcript of this podcast at www.goodgodproject.com.

This week on Good God is Richie Butler, pastor of St. Paul UMC in downtown Dallas. He and George talk about being called to pastoral ministry, and the work Richie has been involved in to help Dallas become a more equitable city. We also learn about DFW Year of Unity - a project that brings together people from different backgrounds to find commonalities. Learn more at yearofunity.com. As always yo...

We've all seen how a pyramid structure of debt and loyalty is the way gratitude is often used in the public square. Diana Butler Bass studied this public system, and says: "It led me into some really interesting historical exploration of how hierarchically structured political systems, whether it was Medieval Europe or Ancient Rome or 19th century American south, often deploy gratitude as a mechan...

Are you ever guilty of feeling a sense of entitlement in your relationships and friendships? Did you know that the opposite of entitlement is gratitude, and that practicing gratefulness can pull us out of that scarcity/entitlement mindset? Diana Butler Bass is on Good God talking about her book, Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks. She describes the spiritual practice of gratefulne...

Neil Cazares-Thomas is back on Good God talking about the history of Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, and how it came to be a place for all Christians to find a spiritual home regardless of their sexual identity. He tells wonderful and heartbreaking stories about the life of the Cathedral during the AIDS epidemic in the 80s, and his own spiritual journey that started as a British Mormon.

Byron Keith Sanders is back on Good God talking about racial inequity in Dallas and the ways in which we can help create a better Dallas for the next generation. Conversations like this are so important in fostering an awareness among white people of what life is like in Dallas for people of color. Byron shares a recent personal experience of having the police called on him for block-walking with...

Cheryl Allison, an actress and film maker, made a documentary called Shatter the Silence, about the Me Too movement specifically in Dallas. Listen to her talk about that process and why it is an important topic for all of us, woman and men alike. Shatter the Silence premiers April 28.

Neil Cazares Thomas is the pastor of Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, a mostly LGBTQ faith community. He and George talk about the theology behind affirming LGBTQ identifying people and their faith. Here’s an excerpt from their conversation: Neil: It's incumbent on us if we really want to follow the way, the truth, the life, then we have to take up that place of discipline or discipleship and to under...

Rev. Starsky D. Wilson is a pastor, a foundation president for child wellbeing, and activist. In the wake of Michael Brown's death by police brutality, he was charged with leading the Ferguson Commission, and they helped elect black leadership, advocate a political agenda that was created by the people, and change laws. His vision is to create a place where people's life expectancy is not determin...