Episode #14: "Somebody Needed to Take It On'"
On this episode, we're excited to bring you the Rev. Dr. David Gushee and the Rev. Dr. Gary Dorrien
Rev. Dr. David P. Gushee is the elected past-president of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Christian Ethics. As of 2026, he is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of over 30 books, including the bestsellers KINGDOM ETHICS, and CHANGING OUR MIND (where he narrates his journey from a traditionalist to a passionate advocate for LGBTQ+ Christians in the church and society). His other most notable works are DEFENDING DEMOCRACY FROM ITS CHRISTIAN ENEMIES, AFTER EVANGELICALISM, THE MORAL TEACHINGS OF JESUS, and most recently, JOB IN EXILE: A GUIDE FOR SPIRITUAL REFUGEES. He is an internationally recognized Holocaust scholar and ethicist, based on his earlier book RIGHTEOUS GENTILES OF THE HOLOCAUST, and was appointed in 2008 by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to serve as a member of the Church Relations and the Holocaust Committee. He lectures and consults globally, regularly speaking to the press and on podcasts, as well as in academic and ecumenical church settings. He is widely regarded as one of his generation’s most significant Christian moral thinkers.
Rev. Dr. Gary Dorrien teaches social ethics, theology, and philosophy of religion as the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Religion at Columbia University. He was also a visiting professor at Harvard Divinity School. He is the multi-award-winning author of 25 books and more than 300 articles that span the fields of social ethics, philosophy, theology, political economics, social and political theory, religious history, cultural criticism, and intellectual history. A few of his books include BREAKING WHITE SUPREMACY, AMERICAN DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM, THE SPIRIT OF AMERICAN LIBERAL THEOLOGY: A HISTORY, A DARKLY RADIANT VISION: THE BLACK SOCIAL GOSPEL IN THE SHADOW OF MLK, and his most recent, OVER FROM UNION ROAD: MY CHRISTIAN-LEFT-INTELLECTUAL LIFE. Social critic Michael Eric Dyson wrote in 2021: "Gary Dorrien is the greatest theological ethicist of the twenty-first century, our most compelling political theologian, and one of the most gifted historians of ideas in the world." And philosopher Cornel West describes Dorrien as “the preeminent social ethicist in North America today.”
Read Along!
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American democracy is in danger. How do we protect it from authoritarian reactionary Christianity?
On January 6, 2021, hundreds of Americans stormed the Capitol to prevent the certification of their political opponent’s election. At the forefront were Christians claiming to act in the name of Jesus Christ and his supposed representative on earth, Donald Trump. How can this have happened?
David P. Gushee tackles the question in this timely work of Christian political ethics. Gushee calls us to preserve democratic norms, including constitutional government, the rule of law, and equal rights for all, even as many Christians take a reactionary and antidemocratic stance. Surveying global politics and modern history, he analyzes how Christians have discarded their commitment to democracy and bought into authoritarianism. He urges us to fight back by reviving our hard-won traditions of congregational democracy, dissident Black Christian politics, and covenantal theology.
Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies makes a robust case for a renewed commitment to democracy on the part of Christians—not by succumbing to secular liberalism, but by drawing on our own best traditions. Any concerned Christian will leave its pages with eyes wide open to the dangers of our current form of political engagement. Readers will gain insight into what democracy is truly meant to be and why Christians once supported it wholeheartedly—and should do so again.
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The third and final volume in the first comprehensive history of Black social Christianity, by the “greatest theological ethicist of the twenty-first century” (Michael Eric Dyson)
The Black social gospel is a tradition of unsurpassed importance in American life, and it remains ongoing. So Gary Dorrien argues in his groundbreaking trilogy of books on the history of Black social Christianity. Following his Grawemeyer Award–winning book The New Abolition: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel (2015) and his Breaking White Supremacy: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Social Gospel (2018), this third, concluding volume offers an interpretation of Black social Christianity since the early 1970s.
Beginning in the shadow of Martin Luther King Jr., it examines the past fifty years of this intellectual and activist tradition, interpreting its politics, theology, ethics, social criticism, and social justice organizing. Considering the intersection of Black social Christianity with liberation theology, womanist theology, the LGBTQ+ movement, critical theory, antiracism efforts, progressive religion, broad-based interfaith organizing, global solidarity politics, and more, Dorrien shows how those who carried on the struggle in King’s name were often lifted by King’s moral example.
A Darkly Radiant Vision features in-depth discussions of Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson, Samuel DeWitt Proctor, Gayraud Wilmore, James Cone, Cornel West, Katie Geneva Cannon, Stacey Floyd-Thomas, Traci Blackmon, William J. Barber II, Raphael G. Warnock, and many others.
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