Listen Live on KKFI
Every Sunday at 3:00amAbout the Show
Inspired
Inspired is the nation's leading public radio show about faith, ethics and spirituality. Each week we offer you analyses of the big headlines alongside lesser-told stories – those of Orthodox Jewish artists and African-American atheists, Muslim feminists and spiritual seekers. Through these stories, a rough sketch of our country’s religious landscape begins to emerge. It’s a marketplace of beliefs and ideas too complex for sound bites, and too important to ignore.
This week on Inspired:
Journalists’ Roundtable
Julie Zauzmer, religion reporter at The Washington Post, and Jonathan Merritt, contributing writer at The Atlantic, discuss the beliefs driving recent headlines at the intersection of faith and politics.
They analyze enduring evangelical support for President Donald Trump and his encouragement of Israel to block two Muslim congresswomen from visiting that country. Then they consider the fallout from the president’s allegation that American Jewish votes for Democrats are tantamount to “disloyalty.” They also tackle Democratic presidential candidates’ attempts to reach out to religious voters.
On the second part of our roundtable, our panelists examine religious responses to mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, and to ICE raids in Mississippi. They consider a Trump administration proposal that would cement rules that allow federal contractors’ religious beliefs to play a role in who they hire and fire. The conversation then moves abroad, where India’s Hindu nationalist-led government recently rescinded the semi-autonomous status of Muslim-majority Kashmir.
Julie Zauzmer, religion reporter at The Washington Post and author of Conning Harvard
Jonathan Merritt, contributing writer at The Atlantic and author of Learning to Speak God from Scratch
God Land: Author Lyz Lenz on the Heartland and Her Heart
Writer Liz Lenz grew up in a Christian household she describes as much like the Duggar’s. Several years ago, she and her husband tried to found a church that would accommodate both their religious beliefs, an endeavor that eventually led to the dissolution of their marriage. At the same time, she watched churches close across the Midwest, and wondered what was happening to faith in the heartland. In her new book, God Land, Lenz examines a changing Midwest that the 2016 elections showed was a torn as she was.
