Peace Talks

Mariah Humphries hosts the Rev. Jin Cho in the latest episode of Peace Talks. Cho details his experience of creating safe and brave spaces to talk about racial justice and of prioritizing curiosity in the people with whom he works for racial unity. Cho's wise words are worth a listen.The Rev. Dr. Jin H. Cho is an Anglican priest committed to helping local congregations have courageous conversations about race and justice. He received his doctorate of ministry from Fuller Seminary for his proj...

Peace Talks is delighted to welcome Lisa Rodriguez-Watson to the show. She and Mariah Humphries engage in a meaningful conversation about why truth is hard, how to stay integrated, and what hope there is for the church. As a resident of Washington, DC, she offers unique insight into how to have a healthy relationship with politics.Lisa Rodriguez-Watson, for nearly two decades, has served as an urban church planter, collegiate minister, seminary professor, international missionary and communit...

David Swanson joins Mariah Humphries for our latest Peace Talks episode. Love and concern for the church permeate their conversation as they discuss hope in community and purpose in Sabbath keeping. David previews his new book, Plundered: The Tangled Roots of Racial and Environmental Injustice and, in general, challenges many assumptions Christians make about each other.David is an author and the founding pastor of New Community Covenant Church who lives with his family on the South Side of C...

Mariah Humphries is joined by Dr. Natasha Sistrunk Robinson for this intimate and practical Peace Talks episode. Dr. Robinson covers all the bases from the spiritual practice to telling the truth to the connection between peace and change.Dr. Natasha Sistrunk Robinson is President & CEO of T3 Leadership Solutions, Inc., Natasha Sistrunk Robinson Ministries, and the Visionary Founder and Chairperson of the nonprofit, Leadership LINKS, Inc. She is a graduate of the Naval Academy, a former U...

Gregory Thompson's Peace Talks episode is both hard-hitting and thoughtful. He tackles why the dinner table is the BEST place for political conversations and why the church is the best place for cultivating the moral skill of discernment needed for such topics. Don't miss this one!Gregory Thompson is a writer, artist, cook, and creative leader who works at the intersection of contemplative, the critical, and the convivial. He currently serves as Co-Founder and Creative Director of Voices Unde...

This Peace Talks conversation with Sandra Maria Van Opstal goes deep into the people and places that shape us. Sandra shares with host Mariah Humphries how reading Scripture with people on the margins inspires her and working in her garden connects her. Sandra Maria Van Opstal is a second-generation Latina pastor, activist, author, and a powerful leading voice on the intersection of faith and justice. She is executive director of Chasing Justice, a BIPOC-led movement that mobilizes the next g...

Season 8 of Peace Talks is off to a great start! Bill Haley reminds us why social and historical awareness matters as Christians, even as he shares his own worries for this election season and encourages us to rest in God's loving presence.The Rev. Bill Haley is the founder and Executive Director of Coracle, as well as an Anglican priest and spiritual director. He has devoted many years to ministering in urban contexts, especially in inner-city Washington DC. With his wife Tara and four...

Bishop Todd Hunter and Director of Content and Community Katie Haseltine recap our recent interview with Rachel Marie Kang. Stick around after their conversation for a contemplative meditation led by Peace Talks host Vanessa Sadler as a way to reconnect your heart to God's.Support the show

In the final interview of Peace Talks season seven, Vanessa Sadler hosts poet Rachel Marie Kang. Their conversation gracefully moves from one moment to the next and reveals the many layers of poetry—as activism, as a holding space for grief, as a way to name. This beautiful interview will stir you to something more.Rachel Marie Kang is a New York native, born and raised just outside New York City. A mixed woman of African American, Native American (Ramapough Lenape Nation), Irish, and Dutch d...

Bishop Todd Hunter and Director of Content and Community Katie Haseltine recap our recent interview with Makoto Fujimura. Stick around after their conversation for a contemplative meditation led by Peace Talks host Vanessa Sadler as a way to reconnect your heart to God's.Support the show

Peace Talks welcomes the distinguished Makoto Fujimura to the podcast with an in-depth interview on the meaning of art today's world. Fujimura describes art as a means of slowing down, a discovery of your past, and a way to break the cycle of violence. Fujimura shares with hosts Vanessa Sadler and Suzie Lind stories of his own life which reveal that "...broken pieces can give us something new." You don't want to miss this one!Makoto Fujimura is a leading contemporary artist whose work has bee...

In this special episode of Peace Talks, Rev. Bill Haley and Bishop Todd Hunter talk about the online conference they are co-hosting called, "Do You Want To Be Well?"The threads of Christian nationalism, racism and white supremacy, and patriarchy are not often discussed constructively in the same conversation—and we rarely explore paths toward healing. This online conference will offer something different: opportunities for hope, healing, and spiritual practice.⁠To register for the conference,...

Bishop Todd Hunter and Director of Content and Community Katie Haseltine recap our recent interview with W. David O. and Phaedra Taylor. Stick around after their conversation for a contemplative meditation led by Peace Talks host Vanessa Sadler as a way to reconnect your heart to God's.Support the show

Peace Talks is delighted to welcome W. David O. and Phaedra Taylor to the show. Vanessa and the Taylors discuss the limitations of "thoughts and prayers" and the expansiveness of the "collect" as a prayer form. They also talk about their new book which will be released in June 2024, Prayers for the Pilgrimage: A Book of Collects for All of Life.W. David O. Taylor is an Associate Professor of Theology and Culture at Fuller Theological Seminary and the author of several books, including A ...

Bishop Todd Hunter and Director of Content and Community Katie Haseltine recap our recent interview with Jon Guerra. Stick around after their conversation for a contemplative meditation led by Peace Talks host Vanessa Sadler as a way to reconnect your heart to God's.Support the show

Peace Talks continues its series exploring the impact of the arts on spiritual formation, justice, and peace with this engaging interview with guest host, Suzie Lind and Jon Guerra. Their conversation considers why putting your head in the sand isn't always a bad thing and why peace isn't great for headlines. Listen in as they discuss surrendering to life as it comes. You don't want to miss this one!JON GUERRA is a Devotional Music Singer-Songwriter based in Austin, TX. In 2020, he inde...

Bishop Todd Hunter and Director of Content and Community Katie Haseltine recap our recent interview with Steve Prince. Stick around after their conversation for a contemplative meditation led by Peace Talks host Vanessa Sadler as a way to reconnect your heart to God's.Support the show

In this compelling interview with artist Steve A. Prince, guest host Suzie Lind explores how the Scriptures shape art and love infuses it. Prince is a joyful storyteller and "the first recipient of the gift of [his] art." Find out why.Steve A. Prince is a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, and he currently resides in Williamsburg, Virginia. He is the Director of Engagement and Distinguished Artist in Residence at the Muscarelle Museum at William and Mary. Prince received his BFA from Xavier Un...

Bishop Todd Hunter and Director of Content and Community Katie Haseltine recap our recent interview with Sanctuary Mental Health Ministries. Stick around after their conversation for a contemplative meditation led by Peace Talks host Vanessa Sadler on 1 Corinthians 13, as a way to reconnect your heart to God's.Support the show

Peace Talks continues exploring the role of art in faith and life with this tender and encouraging interview with Leslie Roberts and Bryanna Russell from Sanctuary Mental Health MInistries (an organization that equips the Church to support mental health and wellbeing).Leslie and Bryanna share with Vanessa why they've chosen to use art as a medium to give permission, belonging, and support to those struggling with mental health challenges. They also describe the formation, justice, and peace d...

Bishop Todd Hunter and Director of Content and Community Katie Haseltine recap our recent interview with Dr. Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt. Stick around after their conversation for a contemplative meditation led by Peace Talks host Vanessa Sadler on Galatians 5:22-23, as a way to reconnect your heart to God's.Support the show

We are honored to bring you the next episode in our series with prophetic voices in the visual arts, music, and poetry. Dr. Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt challenged how we see things, offered a new way to take in images, and connected all of it to our theology of creation. You don't want to miss this incredible conversation!Dr. Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt is an Associate Professor of Art and Art History at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, and a Little Endowed Scholar. She received her M...

Peace Talks Season Seven kicks off with a fascinating conversation with artist Laura James. Vanessa and Laura discuss what it means for art— and Jesus—to be accessible, how art can help us personalize Jesus, and why "art for the people" is a meaningful category. Whether you consider yourself "artistic" or not, this conversation is for you.Laura James has been working as a professional artist and illustrator for over twenty years. In addition to painting sacred images from various religions, s...

Peace Talks is honored to present this conversation between host Vanessa Sadler and J.S. Park. Part memoir, part manual on grief, and all heart, J.S. (Joon) offers a glimpse into his life as the son of Korean immigrants, as a hospital chaplain at a Level 1 Trauma Center, and as a father. Join us for this tender exploration of how to show up to our own and others' grief. J. S. Park is a hospital chaplain, published author, viral blogger, and teaching pastor. He has spent the past six year...

Vanessa's interview with Dr. Barbara L. Peacock is quite simply a delight. Even as they discuss the most difficult issues facing Christians today, Barbara brings us back to Jesus and joy. You will be challenged and encouraged in equal measure.Dr. Barbara L. Peacock is the award-winning author of Soul Care in African American Practice. She received the Award of Merit from Christianity Today, and the Martin Institute for Christianity and Culture and Dallas Willard Award (MIDWC) announced Soul C...

Our interview with Kaitlin Curtice is like a good conversation with a friend. Kaitlin shares her journey to create spaces of healing care that balance fierce truthtelling and gentleness. She also offers comforting wisdom on how to navigate liminal spaces. Join us for this inviting conversation!Kaitlin Curtice is an award-winning author, poet-storyteller, and public speaker. As an enrolled citizen of the Potawatomi nation, Kaitlin writes on the intersections of spirituality and identity and ho...

In this wide-ranging Peace Talks interview, Rev. Eugene Cho warns against being a one-song karaoke monster as an activist and offers the simple practice of sharing a meal as the precursor to hard conversations. He also laments using the words jerk and overrated in his book titles. Find out why.Eugene is President/CEO of Bread for the World, a Christian advocacy organization urging U.S. decision makers to do all they can to pursue a world without hunger.Eugene co-chairs the U.S. Nutrition CEO ...

Peace Talks is honored to bring you this thoughtful and important conversation with Cindy S. Lee, author of Our Unforming: De-Westernizing Spiritual Formation. Lee unveils what we miss when we choose to see spiritual formation from only one angle. She also describes what healthy—and unhealthy—unforming looks like and explains that the spiritual formation world has always been diverse—we just didn't see it for what it always was. And Vanessa and Cindy talk a lot about doors. Find out why!Cindy...

Peace Talks Season 6 Debuts with an Interview with Lisa Sharon Harper and a New Format!⁠Lisa Sharon Harper is a prolific speaker, author, and activist and the founder and president of FreedomRoad.us. Ms. Harper is the author of several books, including The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong can be Made Right (2016) and Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World (2022). A columnist at Sojourners Magazine and an Auburn Theological Seminary Senior Fellow, Ms.Harper has appeared on ...

Peace Talks is honored to bring you this thought-provoking interview with Shane Claiborne. Every question and answer came down to some version of "Will we believe what Jesus said and act as Jesus did?" This episode will challenge you and inspire you.Shane Claiborne is a prominent speaker, activist, and best-selling author. Shane worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, and founded The Simple Way in Philadelphia. He heads up Red Letter Christians, a movement of folks who are committe...

Peace Talks is honored to welcome Linda Royster and Dan Allender to the show! Our wide-ranging conversation covered trauma as alienation from self, racism as a projection of unhealed wounds, epigentics as legacy and so much more. Don't miss this tender and thoughtful hour.Linda Royster has been called to traumatized populations since 1997. Linda holds a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology Graduate School and is a Licensed Clinica...

Jemar Tisby left it all on the floor in this Peace Talks interview. The list of topics covered is long and fascinating: The lack of attention to racial issues is spiritual malformationPost-2020, racial awareness is crucial but not enoughRacial justice is a way of life, not a side dishBlack History Month is a kind of cultural liturgyJustice takes sidesJemar's description of a Jesus addictYou don't want to miss any of it!Jemar Tisby is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, The...

Peace Talks is pleased to welcome Dr. Tory Baucum to the show! Dr. Baucum is a noted peacemaker and spoke with us about his work in Poland over the last decade. He also covered so much more including how the Bible can be a tool to divide people or bring them together, what he learned hanging out at the Warsaw train station at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and what his abolitionist legacy means to him.Dr. Tory Baucum, Director of the Center for Family Life at Benedi...

Peace Talks is pleased to welcome Katelyn Beaty to the show! Our wide-ranging conversation with Katelyn began with Christian celebrity and continued to find its way to spiritual formation—particularly how the American church values the fast growth of membership over the quiet, slow growth of becoming like Christ. She reflects on the transactional, consumer-oriented nature of American spiritual formation and laments that we are not shaped to believe that pursuing justice is a part of Christian...

You do not want to miss this conversation with Charles Robinson. Charles wonders why Christians are not at the forefront of the environmental movement. We dig into how God revealed Himself to the Native Americans long before the Mayflower and what we all have in common. He also defines justice as the assumed human dignity of all. Charles Robinson, along with his wife Siouxsan, founded The Red Road, an organization dedicated to serving and celebrating Native Americans and ministering the ...

Our conversation with Kristy Wallace and Bill Haley is one for the books. Kristy and Bill share their vision of and stories from The Repentance Project. Engagement that follows awareness and repentance that leads to repair are two of the major themes with lament, resilience, and love sprinkled in. We hope you enjoy this thoughtful conversation as much as we did.Kristy Wallace is the director of The Repentance Project. As an undergraduate student, she studied Afro-American Studies and Public P...

Our conversation with Rich Villodas can't be missed, as it is full of profound, yet tangible applications for a life lived in pursuit of Jesus and justice. Rich Villodas is the Brooklyn-born lead pastor of New Life Fellowship, a large multiracial church with more than seventy-five countries represented in Elmhurst, Queens. Rich holds a Master of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary. He enjoys reading widely, preaching and writing on contemplative spirituality, justice-related matters, ...

We’re delighted to welcome teacher, spiritual director and podcaster Lisa Colón DeLay to join us for a brave conversation about formation, justice and peace! Originally from Puerto Rico and now based in Philadelphia, Lisa has an MA in spiritual formation and a passion for leading others in formational practices. When she’s not interviewing guests like Krista Tippett, Parker J. Palmer and Seth Godin on her podcast, Spark My Muse, she’s teaching in many settings from graduate schools to worksho...

We’re celebrating one year of brave conversations about formation, justice and peace! In this special One-Year Anniversary episode of Peace Talks, Director of Content and Community Katie Haseltine interviews hosts Vanessa Sadler and Bishop Todd Hunter! Vanessa is a trauma-informed, certified spiritual director and Todd is an author, speaker and teacher who founded the Center and The Diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others [C4SO]. They discuss their favorite Peace Talks guests, why formatio...

End Slavery Tennessee's (ESTN) joins PEACE TALKS to share their mission of promoting healing of survivors and strategically combating human trafficking in Tennessee. ESTN began as a grassroots nonprofit but is now the regional point of contact agency for human trafficking referrals in the 41 counties of Middle Tennessee. ESTN is currently creating a Survivor Restoration Campus that will offer a 2-year Residential Program that begins and ends with safe and stable housing, an oasis where surviv...

Curtis Zackery ["CZ"] joins PEACE TALKS to discuss what it means to truly rest, how Jesus embodied rest, and how the need for rest is deeply embedded in our human DNA. CZ is a pastor at Church of the City in Franklin, Tennessee, and author of Soul Rest: Reclaim Your Life. Return to Sabbath. CZ also helms an organization called Find Rest that seeks to help spiritually depleted Christian leaders find rest. In this interview, he reveals how our misaligned view of rest has its roots in an identit...

Dr. Soong-Chan Rah joins PEACE TALKS to talk about lament as a practice of disruption, the persistent narrative of white superiority, and the dangers of Western cultural captivity. A well-known pastor, author and speaker, Dr. Rah is the Robert Boyd Munger Professor of Evangelism at Fuller Seminary and has written many books, most recently Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times. In this interview, Dr. Rah explores how we as Christians are called to give up our historical domina...

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Anthony Hendricks joins PEACE TALKS to share his work in the world of racial reconciliation. Anthony is a pastor and speaker who teaches on urgent issues of biblical unity, race, justice and anti-racism at universities, churches, schools, and businesses around the country. In this interview, he dives into his vision for holistic peace making and peace building and why American Christians are so often compelled by the culture rather than the cross. » Subscribe to PEACE TALKS: https://www....

Gabrielle Beam joins PEACE TALKS to talk about the lifelong connection between literacy and justice. Gabrielle is a seasoned inner-city pastor and the founder of Rise to Read, an organization focused on eliminating early childhood illiteracy in her home of Bridgeport, Connecticut. Gabrielle shares about the well-trodden path from illiteracy to incarceration, ways she helps kids begin reading on level, and what happened when Rise to Read began to distribute the Jesus Storybook Bible. » Su...

Bishop Todd Hunter and Vanessa Sadler welcome the great Justin Giboney on this episode of Peace Talks. Tune in for a rich conversation full of biblical truths and responsible activism.Justin Giboney is an attorney, political strategist and ordained minister in Atlanta, GA. He is also the Co-Founder and President of the AND Campaign, which is a coalition of urban Christians who are determined to address the sociopolitical arena with the compassion and conviction of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. ...

Vanessa Sadler and Bishop Todd Hunter jumped at the chance to talk to Dennae Pierre. She is co-director for the Crete Collective and leads the Surge Network in Arizona. She also serves as one of the Co-Directors for City to City North America. She has an MA from Covenant Theological Seminary and D.Min from Western Theological Seminary (Holland, Michigan). Dennae is also the author of Healing Prayers to Resist a Violent World. She is married to Vermon, the lead pastor at Roosevelt Commun...

Peace Talks was thrilled to welcome Kristin Kobes Du Mez to the show. She is a New York Times bestselling author and Professor of History and Gender Studies at Calvin University. She holds a PhD from the University of Notre Dame and her research focuses on the intersection of gender, religion, and politics. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Religion News Service, and Christianity Today, and has been interviewed on NPR, CBS, and the BBC, among other outlets...

Co-hosts Vanessa Sadler and Bishop Todd kick off Season 2 of Peace talks with Sheila Wise Rowe. Sheila is a truth-teller who writes passionately about matters of faith and emotional healing. She advocates for the dignity, rights, and healing of abuse survivors, those carrying racial trauma, and racial conciliation. For over twenty-five years Sheila has been a counselor, educator, writer, spiritual director, and speaker. She is a member of the Community Ethics Committee of Harvard Medical...

Vanessa & Bishop Todd could have talked to hours to this month's guest (and good friend) Greg Thompson. He is a scholar, writer, and artist of diverse creative background whose work focuses on race, religion, hospitality, and democracy in the United States. He serves as Executive Director of Voices Underground, an initiative to build a national memorial to the Underground Railroad outside of Philadelphia; Research Fellow in African American Heritage at Lincoln University (HBCU); and as Cr...