Radical Love Live

The third of three parts. Mark and Kelly talk with Maria Francesca French, author of Safer Than the Known Way: A Post-Christian Journey. In this episode, we talk about what happens after the deconstruction, evolution, and rebirth of faith. ***** Special thanks to our sponsors at Quoir, publishers of The Quollective. The Quollective isn’t just another media platform. It’s a grassroots,  justic...

The second of three parts. Mark and Kelly talk with Maria Francesca French, author of Safer Than the Known Way: A Post-Christian Journey. In this episode, we talk about figures who have influenced and inspired the direction of our faith journeys. ***** Special thanks to our sponsors at Quoir, publishers of The Quollective. The Quollective isn’t just another media platform. It’s a grassroots, ...

The first of three parts. Mark and Kelly talk with Maria Francesca French, author of Safer Than the Known Way: A Post-Christian Journey. In this episode, we talk about what are the breaking points that changed our direction from the belief systems of our youth. ***** Special thanks to our sponsors at Quoir, publishers of The Quollective. The Quollective isn’t just another media platform. It’s a gr...

Mark and Kelly are back, and talk about what has been going on with their faith, growth, and evolution over the last 3 years. ***** Special thanks to our sponsors at Quoir, publishers of The Quollective. The Quollective isn’t just another media platform. It’s a grassroots,  justice-fueled toolbox for people who want to change the world—and still laugh while doing it. ---- Use promo code radic...

Talking with Dr Thema about finding healing-and maybe even joy-amid religious abuse, racism, inequality, and pandemic. Dr. Thema Bryant-Davis is a licensed psychologist, ordained minister, and sacred artist who has worked nationally and globally to provide relief and empowerment to marginalized persons. Dr. Thema, a professor at Pepperdine University, is a past president of the Society for the Psy...

A conversation with punk-rock pastor Jay Bakker of Revolution Church (and son of TV icons Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker) about the innovative work that he is doing with Revolution Church, including a largely online congregation and an invitation for listeners to comment and dispute the sermon afterward; pastoring a church through pain, doubt, and uncertainty; how study and theology led him to affirm L...

Jonathan Merritt is an award-winning writer on religion, culture, and politics. He serves as a contributing writer for The Atlantic , a contributing editor for The Week , and is author of several critically-acclaimed books including Learning to Speak God from Scratch: Why Sacred Words are Vanishing - and How We Can Revive Them. We were pleased to welcome Jonathan as one of the speakers for our rec...

Aaron Niequist is a liturgist (creator of the New Liturgy series) and author (The Eternal Current). We had the opportunity to talk with Aaron online about the everyday liturgies that form us, the spiritual practices that help us connect with one another and others, the ways that the world is forcing us to make terrible binary choices about what we believe, and what the future of spirituality looks...

Paul Vasile is a church musician, composer, consultant, and is the director of the organization Music that Makes Community. Paul also serves as Director of Music at Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis. In this conversation, he talks about the many transformations of his spiritual background, keeping those disparate elements connected, and using music to help heal communities and invite people i...

Jennifer Allen is a seminarian at General Theological Seminary who is looking forward to her work in the Bethany House and Garden Project in Topeka KS. This project will bring together diverse groups in the area, including those victimized by poverty, trauma, and trafficking, and create a space that ministers to the soul while restoring the land. ***** Special thanks to our sponsors at Quoir, publ...

On February 23, 2020, Radical Love Live hosted our 2nd live event on the theme of Marginalization/Wilderness, and were honored to have activist and educator Alicia T. Crosby as one of our featured speaking guests. The night before the event, she talked openly with us about her background in and outside of congregational church spaces, curating spaces built around inclusivity and equity, how wildly...

A rousing conversation the day after our Premiere Live Event at NYC's Cathedral of St John the Divine, we bring our guests into the studio: David Gungor of the Brilliance, faith futurist Maria French of H&Co, and author and theologian John Thatamanil of Union Theological Seminary. Beginning with our reflections on the previous night's event, the group launches into a wide-ranging conversation abou...

A discussion about recent data on people who are "Unchurched" (that is, who haven't been in regular church services in the last 6 months), leads to a conversation about the things that can keep people out of spiritual institutions, including hurtful experiences, not being able to be honest and authentic, or being otherwise marginalized. We talk about what happens to wanderers in the spiritual wild...

In a world with many different belief systems, Kelly talks about some of the reasons that some religiously unaffiliated give for why they aren't part of a religion or institution and talks about the challenges that people in religion systems with exclusive claims face when engaging with other faiths, and Mark describes the concept of "interspirituality" as a way to look at faith traditions and as...

In the last decade, several studies, including the 2014 Pew Research Religious Landscape Survey and subsequent follow-up studies have shown church attendance numbers to be declining across denominations, and for the first time reported that the religiously unaffiliated were the largest "religious" group in the country. In this episode we discuss these data and the reasons why there are a growing n...

What is Dualism? The idea of either/or has crept into many parts of our lives, including spirituality, and continues to drive theology, policies of exclusion and inclusion, and has a tremendous impact on how our spirituality is lived out in the world. In this episode, we talk about spirituality in terms of dualism and what an alternative way of looking at things might be. ***** Special thanks to o...

What is the future of spirituality? We gathered a group of friends, family, neighbors and others with a range of spiritual beliefs and experiences--including those without belief in a spiritual or religious system--to talk about what spirituality is, the current challenges of engaging with spirituality, and what the future of spirituality looks like. Mark and Kelly also share their own unique defi...

Stories are important to our spiritual identity. Co-creators Mark and Kelly take time to talk about their own very different backgrounds: their earliest spiritual experiences, the crises that sent them onto their separate journeys in the wilderness, the events that led them back to their personal spiritual moments of awareness, and the passions that led to the development of Radical Love Live. Per...

Today's religious and spiritual institutions are in crisis, with declining attendance and the challenge to stay relevant, welcoming, and inclusive, and many spiritual seekers and refugees who have left or never felt welcome to explore at all. Co-creators Mark Dilcom and Kelly Wilson talk about the Radical Love Live series of events at the Cathedral of St John the Divine in NYC and the reasons why...