Of This World

Hosts and Commonweal contributors Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and Nick Tabor chat with historian Joseph Slaughter, assistant professor of history at Wesleyan University, about why so many evangelicals support Donald Trump—and why the word "evangelical" may no longer mean what it once did. Together, they trace three competing definitions of evangelicalism—doctrinal, cultural, and political—and how the...

Hosts and Commonweal contributors Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and Nick Tabor chat with journalist Jonathan Cheng, China bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, about his new book, Korean Messiah: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea's Personality Cult (Knopf). Together, they trace Kim Il-sung's upbringing in Pyongyang - once known as the "Jerusalem of the East", and how a Presbyterian...

Hosts and Commonweal contributors Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and Nick Tabor chat with journalist Elise Ann Allen, the Rome correspondent for Crux, about her new book,  (Penguin Random House). Together, they discuss how Allen came to know then-Bishop Robert Prevost while investigating an abuse scandal in Peru, the formative decades he spent as a missionary amid poverty, terrorism, and political uphea...

Hosts and Commonweal contributors Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and Nick Tabor chat with historian of Islam Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, professor of religion at Carleton College and author of A History of Islam in America: From the New World to the New World Order (Cambridge University Press), which examines Muslim political life in Trump’s America. In this episode, the three discuss the grassroots faith-bas...

Hosts and Commonweal contributors Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and Nick Tabor chat with economist Branko Milanović, senior scholar at the CUNY Graduate Center, about his new book, The Great Global Transformation: The United States, China, and the Remaking of the World Economic Orde r (University of Chicago Press). Together, they discuss the end of the neoliberal era, the rise of what Milanović calls "...

Hosts and Commonweal contributors Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and Nick Tabor chat with Gary Dorrien, professor at Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary, about the life and legacy of Jesse Jackson and the Black social gospel tradition. They explore Dorrien's own intellectual journey from rural Michigan to the academy, his groundbreaking trilogy on the Black social gospel, Jackson's relati...

Hosts and Commonweal contributors Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and Nick Tabor chat with Jonathan Sheehan, professor of European History at UC Berkeley, about his new book On the Altar: A History of Sacrifice from the Sacred to the Secular (Princeton University Press). They explore the long, contested history of Christian sacrifice from the early church and the cult of the martyrs through the Reformati...

Hosts and Commonweal contributors Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and Nick Tabor chat with reporter Daniel Silliman about his tenure at Christianity Today, his bombshell reporting on Ravi Zacharias, the current state of Evangelicals‚ and more.    Episode production and original music by Joel Myers.

Hosts and Commonweal contributors Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and Nick Tabor discuss Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump with author Molly Worthen, professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.    Episode production and original music by Joel Myers.

Hosts and Commonweal contributors Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and Nick Tabor introduce the podcast and discuss the book Christianity's American Fate: How Religion Became More Conservative and Society More Secular by David Hollinger, the Preston Hotchkis Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. Episode production and original music by Joel Myers.