The Holden Village Podcast

Austen Hartke is the author of Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians, a new book on theology and personal narratives published by Westminster John Knox Press in 2018. He is also the creator of the YouTube series Transgender and Christian, which seeks to understand, interpret, and share parts of the Bible that relate to gender identity and the lives of transgender individu...

Conie Borchardt (she/her or they/them) is a listener, a vibration, and a heartist working for personal healing and collective liberation. A Gen X-er born to new and old immigrants from Europe and Asia on land first familiar to the Dakota nation and now known as Minnesota, Conie is curious about the influences that form and inform us and telling the stories of where we've been and where we are...

Minnie Chung has been a Registered Nurse in various fields, i.e. psychiatry, oncology, surgery, ophthalmology, for 18 years. She came into nursing wanting to help others and found joy in doing so. In the process, nevertheless, she herself experienced and also noticed compassion fatigue in many other healthcare providers. She studied bioethics to explore if she could address this issue through ethi...

"I want to share a technique that I teach Health Care Providers. It is a tool to tend to our hearts and stay connected to the heart of care. A way to summon a sense of interest and discovery about our feelings. It's difficult to be judging when you are curious."As the Washington State Poet Laureate for 2014-16, Elizabeth Austen traveled to all of the state's 39 counties, offeri...

Dr. Roy Hammerling, a PhD graduate of the University of Notre Dame in Church History, has been a Professor of Religion at Concordia College for over 20 years. His books include A History of Prayer: The First to the Fifteenth Century and The Lord’s Prayer in the Early Church: The Pearl of Great Price. He has written articles and lectured on Martin Luther, the history of Christian Spirituality, reli...

"We're all woven together in an inextricable garment of destiny... Unity is not something we need to seek, it's something we have to remember. Unity is reality... The question becomes, how are we going to live that out together?"Joe Davis is a nationally touring writer, speaker, and performer based in Minneapolis, MN. He is the frontman of emerging soul, funk, and spoken word e...

"She had been carrying this poem around with her for so many years. It changed the way I thought about language and art... A lot of times, poetry is a very private thing. People come to poetry to have that personal relationship..."Kai Carlson-Wee is the author of RAIL (BOA Editions, 2018). He has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the...

Dr. Fred Niedner is an ordained Lutheran pastor who spent his adult life teaching biblical studies in Valparaiso University's Department of Theology. In his alleged retirement, he does teaching that requires no grading, writes for multiple publications that support the ministry of proclamation, and risks a fortnightly editorial on the Sunday op-ed page of the Chicago Tribune's northwest...

Glenn is a native of Bray in Co Wicklow in Ireland and has been living in Northern Ireland since 1987. For 15 years he has worked on Skainos Square a transformative urban regeneration project in the inner city of Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is currently pursuing doctoral studies in Isaiah looking at the issue of imagination and community transformation. He enjoys sport, particularly rugby, cycli...

"Dehumanization is on the rise. We have to be really thoughtful in our understanding of what it is and how it functions. Dehumanization is when someone proposes there is an us and them and the them is a threat to the vulnerable, our culture, or our physical existence. When someone proposes a them that might be a threat, the fear becomes real even if the threat isn't."The Rev. Terry...

"The powerful way in which Dr. King expressed beloved community is that this is hard work, but it is good work and beloved community becomes generative. Yes, it's difficult to talk with family and friends about racism, difficult to be defined, and not be grandiosing yourself, those are hard concepts, but when you do it, the community thrives, it generates itself, people want to be apart...

Over the past 25 years Scholtz has pastored four congregations in diverse contexts as an ordained minister in the Methodist Church of Southern Africa (MCSA). He has also served as the interim senior pastor at Hyde Park UMC in Tampa, Florida. He’s passionate about communicating the gospel in ways that bring the scriptures alive for people navigating the challenging intersection of faith and life in...

Verlon Brown works the streets of Seattle with homeless addicted people, the very people his mother told him to avoid. He also serves as pastor at Central Lutheran Church on Capitol Hill. Before moving to Seattle, he worked with homeless people in Washington, D.C. and then served as Holden Village Pastor in the early 1990s. He also plays harmonica in a blue-grass band. Musical Excerpt from Blues V...

David left his native Belfast in 1985, during the civil conflict in Northern Ireland, never intending to return. He studied biological sciences in Scotland and worked as an actor and director but felt called back home to become a Methodist pastor, with an explicit vocation to peacebuilding and community ministry. He is now Superintendent of Belfast Central Mission, one of the oldest Christian char...

Justin Kiggins, Ph. D., is a Neuroscientist and open science advocate living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area. With a background in music and engineering, Justin has spent over a decade seeking to understand how the brains of birds and mice makes sense of the world around them... how patterns of light and sound become the meaningful signals in the brain that represents objects, concepts,...

Jim Martin-Schramm joined the Religion faculty of Luther College in 1993. He is an ordained member of the ELCA and holds a doctorate in Christian Ethics from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He is the author, co-author, or co-editor of several publications including Eco-Reformation: Grace and Hope for a Planet in Peril; Earth Ethics: A Case Method Approach; and Climate Justice: Ethics,...

Rev. Dr. Lee currently serves as Associate Dean for Community Life and Director of African American Church Studies at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC. He has spent twenty years in congregational life as a worship leader, Christian educator, and pastoral leader. He works with churches, and denominational leaders on matters of Christian formation, leadership education and faithful dive...

Laura Norton is a Bellingham, WA artist whose “grace and grit in modern calligraphy” bring alive words of justice and faith using bamboo and metal pens, goose quills, sable brushes, Japanese stick ink, wax, and acrylic—on walls, windows, silk, clothing, and paper. In addition to teaching art and calligraphy, she delights in giving presentations on the arts’ connection to faith and justice. Laura’s...

Seth McClellan has made documentary and fictional films that have played at many film festivals and on TV, including King in Chicago about Dr. King’s work with the Chicago Freedom Movement and Little Wound’s Warriors about youth on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He also teaches at Triton College and lives in Oak Park, just outside of Chicago. To learn more about Holden Village, visit: www.holdenvi...

"White talk involves routines in speaking that sound like they are advancing the conversation, but really are ending the conversation. These patterns are ways of saying I don't want to talk about this. I'm skeptical about it. I'm a good person. I'm not going to understand this stuff at a systemic level, so I'm responding to it as though it's about the person I am...

Moses’s basic theological training was in Makumira Univesity College of The Tumaini University from 1997 to 2002, where he graduated with Bachelor of Divinity. He was ordained in 2002. His first appointment was Tumaini Lutheran Seminary from 2002 to 2004. He was assigned to teach both the Bible School and Secondary School. He taught Basic Mathematics and Bible Knowledge in Secondary school and The...

Jeff Kerssen-Griep is a Professor of Communication at the University of Portland, where he especially enjoys teaching Intercultural, Interpersonal, and Barrier-crossing communication courses. His research and workshops help teachers and other group leaders see and shape the skilled interactions that drive engaged, diverse learning/work environments. He also backs contra dance fiddlers on guitar in...

Professor Rebecca Wee has taught poetry, creative nonfiction, composition, and literature courses at Augustana College in Rock Island, IL since 1994. Wee has been a published poet since 2001 and a mother since 2003. In 2015 she married to Bradley Levinson, a professor of education and anthropology, and she hails from a family of teachers, Lutheran pastors, poets, ranchers, and politicians. To lear...

Kaethe Schwehn is the author of the post-apocalyptic novel The Rending and the Nest, a collection of poems entitled Tanka & Me, and a memoir, Tailings, which details a year she spent living at Holden from 2001-2002. Kaethe teaches at St. Olaf College and lives in Northfield with her husband and two children. To learn more about Holden Village, visit: www.holdenvillage.org or to listen to more...

Katie Sharar has lived and worked in the U.S./Mexico borderlands since 2003. In this place, she has studied, taught college and adult basic education, accompanied people leaving detention and migrating from south to north, and crossed herself between Mexico and the U.S. thousands of times. She grew up in California, attended college in Minnesota, and moved immediately after graduation to El Paso/J...