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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.
America’s Civil Religion
For the past 50 years or so, there’s been a fascinating idea floating around: that in the absence of a state religion, we need a kind of secular religion to bind us together. We may not have a Notre Dame Cathedral, but we have a set of beliefs, holidays and sacred spaces that help define who we are as a nation, while tapping into the deep human longing for myths and traditions. Featuring the voices of Richard Gamble, history professor at Hillsdale College and author of In Search of the City on a Hill: The Making and Unmaking of an American Myth and Kirk Savage, author of Monument Wars: Washington, DC, The National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape.
Reading List on Civil Religion:
“Civil Religion In America” by Robert Bellah
God’s New Israel: Religious Interpretations of American Destiny edited by Conrad Cherry
Bonds of Affection: Americans Define Their Patriotism edited by John Bodnar
Sacred Harp, Plus the Faiths of Our Fathers
First, we hear a sonic tribute to sacred harp. It’s a form of music that is distinctively American, which got its start right around the time our country was becoming a new nation.
Then, we examine the faiths of our founders. Sometime around the 1980s, we in America started to imagine the Founding Fathers as older, wiser versions of ourselves. For many conservatives, the founders became good church-goers, intent on creating a Christian nation. And for many liberals, they became secular deists, with little need for God or organized religion. The truth is somewhere in between as we hear from Nancy Groce, folklife specialist at The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and
Frank Lambert, author of The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America.
Customizing the New Testament with a Razor Blade
It turns out that Thomas Jefferson, our third president and the lead author of the Declaration of Independence, spent his off hours in the White House creating his own personal Bible. Using a razor blade and a glue brush, he carefully removed miracles, resurrections, and all parts of the Gospels he considered supernatural. What was left was a work of private reflection, written in secret. Featuring Mitch Horowitz, executive editor of TarcherPerigee, an imprint of Penguin Random House Publishing.
