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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.
Denying Your Children Medical Care: The Ultimate Test of Faith
Jehovah’s Witnesses avoid blood transfusions because of the Biblical mandate to “abstain from blood.” Christian Scientists understand sickness as an illusion that can be corrected through prayer. It’s one thing for an adult to choose spiritual approaches to healing, but what if a child’s life is at stake? We talk to two guests about mixing faith healing and modern medicine: a medical doctor who studies vaccinology, and a former Christian Scientist who says she was persuaded by her church not to take her dying son to the hospital in the late 1970s. Hear guests Rita Swan, founder of Children’s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty (CHILD) and Dr. Paul Offit, author Bad Faith: When Religious Belief Undermines Modern Medicine.
“It’s a Religious Choice,” A Christian Scientist’s Perspective
Christian Scientists believe that illness is a spiritual problem, not a physical one, and that it can be eliminated through careful thoughts and prayers. When we spoke to the former spokesperson for the church back in 2009, he told us that Christian Scientists would never insist that parents forgo medical treatment for a sick child, and that their religion does not require believers to avoid all modern medicine. Featuring national spokesperson for the Church of Christ, Scientist from 2004-2010, Phil David.
Mixing God with Metaphysics at a Virginia Church
Our former associate producer was expecting hippies “dancing in trances and worshipping unknown gods” at the Arlington Metaphysical Chapel in Northern Virginia. But when she visited one Sunday this April, she was struck by how similar it was to most church services. With a couple of exceptions: God is understood as a non-personal “energy,” and every Wednesday night, they hold a special service that invites believers to communicate with the spirit world.
