A Conversation with Rev. Dr. Mark Miller

Regular listeners know that this episode is late! I apologize for that but blame a nasty norovirus that has run amok through our extended family. And directly through me. It seems right, then, that the fifteenth episode of the second season focuses on health and public health with Fr. Myles Sheehan, SJ.     

Fr. Sheehan is a Jesuit priest, physician, and, since December 2020, the Director of the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University, where he also serves as Professor of Medicine and the David Lauler Chair of Catholic Health Care Ethics. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Dartmouth Medical School, he trained in Internal Medicine and Geriatrics, practiced in these fields, and served until 2009 as the Senior Associate Dean at Loyola University Chicago’s Stritch School of Medicine, Professor of Medicine, and the Ralph P. Leischner Professor and Chair of the Leischner Institute for Medical Education.

On this episode we discussed Myles Sheehan’s life as a medical doctor and a Jesuit priest. We discuss green bioethics, how to make healthcare sustainable, and how to ensure everyone has access to healthcare, something we in the West both have in abundance and take for granted, while accepting that others have little access to, especially in the US. On the other hand, there are countries and regions that simply have little access to basic healthcare that would preserve numerous lives. Myles Sheehan places all of this in his role as a priest and in the Gospel of Jesus. 

Myles was in Vancouver for a lecture on January 25, 2024 and you can find that by clicking on the St. Mark’s YouTube channel here. The lecture features a PowerPoint presentation that makes it a bit easier to follow up on the names of scholars and theories.  

But one scholar Myles’ mentioned in the podcast, and the lecture, is Cristina Richie, not the actress, but an academic engaged with green bioethics and a graduate of Boston College. Her book is titled Principles of Green Bioethics: Sustainability in Health Care. 

What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation.

Thanks to Martin Strong, Kevin Eng, and Fang Fang Chandra for all of their help and support in crafting this and all the other episodes. I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. In addition, the Cullen Family, Mark and Barbara, continue to support the work and outreach of the CCE, particularly in our lecture series. 

Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @stmarkscce. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think.

I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in!

Upcoming Episodes:

And now some news on upcoming podcast episodes:

Dr. Alexandre Martins of Marquette University on healthcare justice and his life that began in poverty in Brazil; 

Dr. Emilce Cuda, of the Vatican, secretary of the Pontifical Commission on Latin America; 

Dr. Hans Abdiel Harmakaputra, of the department of religion, philosophy & classics at Augustana University;

Mr. Inderjeet Singh, Sikh chaplain at UBC.

Finally, a recent lecture is now available on YouTube:

On February 29, Dr. Niigaan Sinclair joined us from Winnipeg to speak about the Pope’s apology and what are the necessary next steps in truth and reconciliation.  This lecture was dynamite and challenging. Watch it!

John W. Martens

Director, Centre for Christian Engagement, St. Mark's College at UBC

This episode is the fourteenth episode of the second season of What Matters Most and features Reverend Grant Ikuta.  Since 2008, Grant has been the minister at Steveston Buddhist Temple outside of Vancouver. From April 2011 to April 2013, he served as Bishop of Jodo Shinshu Buddhist Temples of Canada. He was educated at the University of Alberta, holding a Bachelor of Science degree with a major in biology. In 1987, he attended a year of Ryukoku University Bekka (Foreign Student) program and received Tokudo (Basic) Ordination in the fall of 1988. He enrolled at Central Buddhist Academy (Chuo Bukkyo Gakuin) in April 1989 and graduated from Central Buddhist Academy Honka level (Primary level) in 1990. He entered Ryukoku University Post Graduate studies in April 1990 and received Kyoshi (Higher) Ordination in May 1990. In February 1992, he completed the Master’s Program in Shinshu (Pure Land Buddhism) Studies at Ryukoku University.

On this episode we discussed Reverend Ikuta’s life as pastor and a pastor’s son and grandson, just like Reverend Mark Kleiner in the Lutheran tradition, something which we discussed on a previous episode. And like Mark, Grant was not sure he wanted to follow in his Father’s and Grandfather’s footsteps. We also discussed celibacy in Buddhism, just as we discussed with Fr. Nick Meisl in the context of the Roman Catholic tradition. Celibacy is not common in Japanese Buddhism, but it is throughout much of the Buddhist tradition.

We discussed a number of figures and places in the history of Japanese Buddhism and Japan in general. I link to a number of these topics below. Key figures in the development of Pure Land Buddhism include Honen and Shinran. They were instrumental in the formation and history of the Jodo Shinshu school of Buddhism. A significant place for all of Japanese Buddhism is  Mt. Hiei in Kyoto. If you have never been to the temple in Nara and seen the massive Buddha statue there, please do check out this link. It is an incredible site and sight. If you have a chance to go to Nikko,  a shinkansen ride north of Tokyo, and see the many temples and shrines, I highly recommend it!

A significant place for the development and growth of Pure Land Buddhism in the west is the Hongpa Hongwangi Temple in Honolulu. On the Christian converts to Pure Land Buddhism in Hawaii, Zorn and Hunt, please see the book Immigrants to the Pure Land.  Locally, of course, for those in the Vancouver area, is Reverend Ikuta's Steveston Buddhist Temple.

For some of the history of Christianity in Japan, especially in Nagasaki, and the story of the Jesuits in Japan, please click on this link. This history was sometimes painful and involved persecution. Shusaku Endo's novel Silence offers a powerful literary representation of this early period of Christian history in Japan and the novel was also made into a motion picture by Martin Scorcese. Both the novel and movie are excellent. For the story of the internment of Japanese Canadians in Canada during World War II, please do read the moving novel by Joy Kogawa, Obasan. 

What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation.

Thanks to Martin Strong, Kevin Eng, and Fang Fang Chandra for all of their help and support in crafting this and all the other episodes. I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. In addition, the Cullen Family, Mark and Barbara, continue to support the work and outreach of the CCE, particularly in our lecture series. 

Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @stmarkscce. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think.

I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in!

John W. Martens

Director, Centre for Christian Engagement, St. Mark's College at UBC

This episode is the thirteenth episode of the second season of What Matters Most and features Father Nick Meisl.  Fr. Nick Meisl is an Assistant Professor at Corpus Christi and St. Mark’s Colleges where he teaches the Bible. In addition, he is Pastor of St. Peter’s Parish in New Westminster, BC. He completed his License from the Pontifical Biblical Institute and is currently a PhD candidate at Durham University working with Dr. John Barclay on 1 Corinthians and celibacy.  

I asked Nick onto the podcast to talk about celibacy, both in the Church as a whole, his own life, and how it emerged in Jewish and Christian antiquity, because celibacy has a long history in the Christian tradition. Our conversation was spurred, however, by a recent interview given by Archbishop of Malta Charles Sclicuna about ending mandatory celibacy for RC priests. It’s a fascinating and complex topic. And Scicluna is an important voice on this matter as  an archbishop, someone involved in the Church’s fight against clerical abuse, and adjunct secretary to the the Vatican's Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Some of the important texts dealing with celibacy in the early Christian appear in the New Testament. Fr. Nick and I discussed Matthew 19 , Mark 12:18:-27, 1 Corinthians 7. See also 1 Corinthians 9 for other discussions on marriage and celibacy.  This chapter is also a passage that some scholars believe points to the possibility that Paul might have been married previously. Fr. Nick also discussed how Genesis 2 might play into Paul's own thought. We also discussed the deutero-Pauline passages in 1 Timothy 3 and 5 and the development of marriage and celibacy in the early Church. For further reading on the background of celibacy in 1 Corinthians, please see Will Deming, Paul on Marriage and Celibacy: The Hellenistic Background of 1 Corinthians 7 (Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series, Series Number 83) 

If anyone is interested in the Jewish context regarding celibacy and Jesus' own singleness, please see my article, "(Why) Was Jesus Single?" in The Single Life in the Roman and Later Roman World. I would be happy to send people a PDF of the article if they are interested. 

We also discussed the current Church teaching on celibacy and you can find a short summary of its theological justification on the Vatican website. 

What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation.

Thanks to Martin Strong, Kevin Eng, and Fang Fang Chandra for all of their help and support in crafting this and all the other episodes. I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. In addition, the Cullen Family, Mark and Barbara, continue to support the work and outreach of the CCE, particularly in our lecture series. 

Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @stmarkscce. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think.

I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in!

John W. Martens

Director, Centre for Christian Engagement, St. Mark's College at UBC

This is the twelfth episode of the second season of What Matters Most and features Reverend Mark Kleiner from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Mark is open, vulnerable, and honest, about the role of the Gospel in his life, his past struggles with alcoholism, his rock n’ roll life, and his passion for men’s health.

As Mark said in the podcast, and as you can find on the Christ Church website, he is the son of the son of a preacher man, with both his grandfather and father serving as Lutheran pastors and as professors at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon. That same website says that “Pastor Mark Kleiner spent much of his youth trying to chart a path far removed from the ‘family business’ of ordained ministry. Following a spectacularly disastrous attempt at rock n roll stardom on the West Coast in the 1990s, Mark returned to his prairie roots in Saskatoon and eventually attended theological school. “To my surprise, and initially to my horror, I realized I actually wanted to be a pastor,” he now says. In 2011 Mark received a call to St Paul’s Anglican Parish and Redeemer Lutheran Church in Biggar, SK, where he lived and served until receiving and accepting the call from Christ Church in 2016.”

I’m not sure Mark’s attempt at rock n roll stardom was “spectacularly disastrous,” because the songs are great and the feedback I get from people who saw his bands and heard him play was that it was terrific music. The songs today say the same thing. A 2019 story from Vancouver is Awesome remembers him as an indie pop hero about town. But stardom itself was not to be and alcoholism accompanied the rock n’ roll, something that Mark is open and gracious about discussing. The 2019 story remembers Mark as “one of the all time great characters from the 1990s Vancouver music scene, who often served as the hilarious and wasted ringmaster of the house parties.” He has battled alcoholism through twelve step programs. Those of you who remember the Dawn Eden Goldstein episode on this podcast where we discuss her book Fr. Ed will remember that one of the first twelve step programs, AA, has deep spiritual roots, much of which came through Fr. Ed, the spiritual mentor and guide for Bill. Kleiner took his last drink of alcohol on April 6, 2002. About his show in 2019, the story says, “for Kleinz’s musical disciples, his rare upcoming Vancouver show this weekend is nothing short of biblical. For the first time ever, it involves incarnations of all of Kleinz’s former bands on one bill. Fittingly, it’s at Kleinz’s former hall of worship, where he first started to see the light at the end of the ’90s: Spirit of Life Lutheran Church at 375 West 10th Avenue.” 

By the way, the band name Jungle came from a Dwight Twilley Album, and Sister Lovers came from a Big Star album. If you have not listened to these bands and singers, you should! Track them down. Some Dwight Twilley tunes you should listen to right now: Looking for the Magic; I'm On Fire; Why You Wanna Break My Heart; Darlin'. Big Star, and its leading force Alex Chilton, recorded some great albums. Take a listen to these songs: In Love with A Girl; and When My Baby's Beside Me. The Cowsills had a few big hits, apart from inspiring the Partridge Family TV show, but the biggest was The Rain, The Park, and Other Things (Love the Flower Girl). Mark also is a Monkees expert and you can find his podcast on the Monkees at this link. 

Here are links to a few songs by Mark Kleiner himself. One is Beautiful Slide, another is Fell in Love With the Girl, and Good to See You, all of which deserve to be hits, though I have no idea how Fell in Love with the Girl did not become a hit. And if you listen to the Mark Kleiner Power Trio’s version of Baby It’s You, a Phil Seymour song – Phil was a part of the Dwight Twilley Band before striking out on its own and one of my favorite rock n’ roll vocalists of all time – I am certain Mark’s vocals transcend the great Phil Seymour’s. Amazing.

What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation.

Thanks to Martin Strong, Kevin Eng, and Fang Fang Chandra for all of their help and support in crafting this and all the other episodes. I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. In addition, the Cullen Family, Mark and Barbara, continue to support the work and outreach of the CCE, particularly in our lecture series. 

Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @stmarkscce. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think.

I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in!

John W. Martens

Director, Centre for Christian Engagement, St. Mark's College at UBC

This episode is the eleventh episode of the second season of What Matters Most and features Reverend Dr. Mark Miller. Fr. Mark is currently the visiting scholar in health care ethics for St. Mark’s College and Providence Health Care in Vancouver for the academic year of 2023-2024. Fr. Mark Miller, C.Ss.R., was ordained in 1975 as a Redemptorist priest after studies in Winnipeg, Toronto and West Germany. Fr. Mark worked with young people for six years followed by the preaching of parish missions for seven years.

After receiving a doctorate in moral theology from the University of Notre Dame (1992), he spent 16 years as a clinical bioethicist at St. Paul’s Hospital in Saskatoon and for the Catholic Health Association of Saskatchewan. In 2008 he moved to Toronto as part of the leadership team of the Redemptorists but continued his work in Catholic healthcare ethics at the Centre for Clinical Ethics (St. Joseph’s Health, St. Michael’s Hospital, Providence Health). He has taught and provided workshops at Catholic Colleges, in adult formation programs, for Catholic teachers, and many health care practitioners. He also gave an excellent lecture for the CCE in December 2023; please listen to it here. 

Fr. Miller mentioned a number of thinkers, Margaret Farley and her book Just Love, James Keenan, Richard A. McCormick, Charles Curran, and Catherine Mowry LaCugna. Many of these scholars have died, but their work is still available for consultation. Mark also noted the Catholic World Forum on Ethics, which is actually called Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church, but he told us he had a hard time remembering the name!  The recent document from the Vatican on blessing people in same-sex or other non-marital relationships is Fiducia Supplicans.  My recent piece in America Magazine on mercy and Pope Francis is available at the link. 

As to "moral distress" and "moral residue," I was not familiar with these terms prior to our discussion, so I am linking to an article I found online, but I am not certain that I am linking to the best discussions of these terms. Please let me know if you know of better articles on this matter. On MAID in Canada, please go to this Government of Canada link. On the Catholic response to MAID, please see the documents at the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. The Catholic Church remains opposed to the intentional taking of human life. 

What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation.

Thanks to Martin Strong, Kevin Eng, and Fang Fang Chandra for all of their help and support in crafting this and all the other episodes. I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. In addition, the Cullen Family, Mark and Barbara, continue to support the work and outreach of the CCE, particularly in our lecture series. 

Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @stmarkscce. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think.

I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in!

John W. Martens

Director, Centre for Christian Engagement, St. Mark's College at UBC

This episode, the tenth of the second season of What Matters Most, features Dr. Cristina Vanin, an associate professor of theology and Director of the Master of Catholic Thought program at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario.  I invited Cristina on the podcast to discuss Laudato Deum, Pope Francis’s newest apostolic exhortation, released in October 2023. Laudato Deum was released just prior to COP 28 in Dubai, which Francis was unable to make due to illness. Those close to him said he was genuinely upset that he could not travel as it is a significant aspect of his pontificate and close to his heart. In addition, we discuss Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’s encyclical letter of 2015.  Both of these documents are concerned with the natural world, the environment, and with all of creation, including the place of human beings in creation. If you do not know these documents, you might not be aware of how important climate change and our need to care for the environment are to Pope Francis. Listen to this podcast to get some insight into these documents and then click on the links above to read them. The official versions in a number of languages are freely available online. 

What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. 

Thanks to Martin Strong and Kevin Eng for all of their help and support in crafting this and all the other episodes. I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. 

Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @stmarkscce. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think.

I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in!

John W. Martens

Director, Centre for Christian Engagement, St. Mark's College at UBC

Our guest on today's episode of What Matters Most, the ninth episode of our second season, is Dr. Matthew Anderson.  

What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation.

Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @stmarkscce. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think.

I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in! 

John W. Martens

Today's episode Our guest on this episode of What Matters Most, the eighth episode of our second season is Dr. Jill Hicks-Keeton.  Jill Hicks-Keeton (PhD, Duke) is currently Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Oklahoma, where she teaches courses on biblical literature. In 2024, she will begin a new position, as Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Southern California.

Hicks-Keeton’s book Arguing with Aseneth: Gentile Access to Israel’s Living God in Jewish Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2019) was awarded the 2020 Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise. She is also the author, with Cavan Concannon, of Does Scripture Speak for Itself? The Museum of the Bible and the Politics of Interpretation (Cambridge University Press, 2022). Her most recent book is Good Book: How White Evangelicals Save the Bible to Save Themselves (Fortress, 2023). 

Hicks-Keeton has been awarded the Society of Biblical Literature Regional Scholar Award and has served as a Humanities Forum Fellow, a Risser Innovative Teaching Fellow, and Honors College Presidential Teaching Fellow at the University of Oklahoma. 

What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation.

Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @stmarkscce. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think.

I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in! 

John W. Martens

Our guest on this episode of What Matters Most, the seventh episode of our second season, is Dr. Hans Gustafson, Director of the Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, where he also teaches courses in the study of religion and theology for the Theology Department.  Today we are going to discuss his book published by Fortress Press in 2023 Everyday Wisdom: Interreligious Studies in a Pluralistic World, but also we discuss more generally the field of interreligious studies and interfaith studies, including interreligious dialogue and interfaith dialogue.

Hans is current President of the Association for Interreligious / Interfaith Studies (AIIS), serves on the steering committee for the Interreligious and Interfaith Studies Unit at the American Academy of Religion, and has published numerous articles and a few books in the field. His current project is a short book on the theory and practice of humanizing dialogue across difference.

Interreligious and Interfaith Studies is a field that in our increasingly diverse and pluralistic world is essential for all of us. One of the surprising pieces of data that I learned in Hans’ book is that the world is getting increasingly religious not less religious as we might think. The number of people in the world who identify as religious has now reached 86%. This might seem off to those of us who live in the North America or Western Europe, especially those of us who live in Vancouver or Cascadia more generally, where more people identify as spiritual than religious, but religion matters to more people than not. And, frankly, I wouldn’t want to suggest that those who do not identify as religious do not have rich spiritual lives or are not in their own way religious, even if not associated with a formal or traditional religious tradition.

This means that Hans’ call for interreligious phronesis – that is “practical wisdom” – is more important than ever. As Hans says in the podcast, “we all orient around religion in some way and everyone exists in some state between and among religious spaces, and so it seems to me that the more predominant view is that interreligious and interfaith encounter includes everyone, because we all have a religious identity..."  Another great piece of data: American "Nones" are more religious than European Christians. This is precisely why I invite you all to participate in this podcast and to engage with these issues. We are open and welcoming to all people and to all religious and spiritual questions.

Hans mentioned a number of other authors and thinkers and I want to link to some of those writers here. Apart from Hans' book, he mentioned Rabbi Rachel Mikva and her new book Interreligious Studies: An Introduction,  Krister Stendahl, Eboo Patel, Stephen Prothero, God is Not One, and Raimon Pannikar.

What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation.

Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @stmarkscce. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think.

I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in! 

John W. Martens

This episode with Charles Gallagher, S.J. takes us into some dark history concerning Nazis and the Christian Front, a Catholic lay organization, in Boston and New York in the 1930s and 1940s just prior to and during the early stages of World War II.  The story of Frances Moran, head of the Boston National Front and his Nazi handler, the German consul in Boston, Herbert Wilhelm Scholz is a depressing story. That neither of them ever paid a real price for their espionage and treason makes it more depressing.   The only person who really comes out of this with any sense of goodness is Francis Sweeney, the unknowing British agent, who led the American-Irish Defence Association. Her organization fought anti-semitism and fascism and was funded, Gallagher says, by British intelligence. She was recruited by an American handler, someone Charlie Gallagher believes in later years was an advisor in the oval office.

Charlie's research speaks to the rise of Christian nationalism today and how to respond to it. He spoke of Steve Bannon and the audience he commands and how it is important not to simply write off that audience by thinking of them as "nutcases." How should we respond? We certainly need to engage with the concerns of those who are attracted to autocratic and anti-democratic movements, which does not mean we need to grant their solutions or encourage them in their fears. Charlie points us to the law of love as the antidote. Combined with that essential response, in times of rising hatred and terrorism, we need to name Islamophobia or anti-semitism, or any other hatred, call it out, and find ways to enact love in the midst of human complexity and suffering.

If you want to know more about Charlie’s work, please check out his webpage at Boston College, linked above. There you can read about his education and his many publications. I want to mention a bit about his own history here though before we wrap up.  Charlie formerly worked at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations in 2010, where he was a visiting fellow, teaching undergraduate and doctoral courses on religion and international relations. From 2004 to 2006, he taught in the History Department at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 2008, he published Vatican Secret Diplomacy: Joseph P. Hurley and Pope Pius XII (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), which won the John Gilmary Shea Prize from the American Catholic historical Association. In 2017, he was the William J. Lowenberg Memorial Fellow at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocuast Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.

What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. 

Thanks to Martin Strong and Kevin Eng for all of their help and support in crafting this and all the other episodes. I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. 

Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @stmarkscce. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think.

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John W. Martens

Director, Centre for Christian Engagement, St. Mark's College at UBC