What do pilgrimage, tiny bridges, and time machines have to do with Christian unity?
Today we'll be looking at the ministry of the Anglican Centre in Rome, a hub of ecumenical meeting, dialogue, and fellowship in the Eternal City.
The Anglican Centre was founded in 1966, during the watershed of ecumenical engagement that followed the Second Vatican Council. It hosts lectures, exhibitions, special courses, and other public events that foster deeper understanding between Anglicans and Roman Catholics. It also works closely with the Catholic lay community St. Egidio, in projects that serve the poor and disadvantaged in Rome.
We'll be hearing from its new Director, the Rt. Rev. Anthony Ball. Our conversation will cover his own journey into ecumenical ministry, the Anglican Centre's mission today, and what his own calling might bring to the Centre. We also talk about the importance of pilgrimage and imagine Christianity 100 years from now.
Bishop Anthony is also Archbishop of Canterbury’s Representative to the Holy See. He's served in many capacities, including as a diplomat, as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s representative to the Heads of the Orthodox Churches in Syria and Lebanon, as Rowan Williams's chaplain, as Bishop of North Africa, as canon steward of Westminster Abbey and as Archdeacon of Westminster.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsWhat do bluegrass, bourbon, and Bible have in common? How about a group of Hillbilly Thomists? Today, we share an episode from the Signal Award-winning podcast, No Small Endeavor. Produced by PRX and Great Feeling Studios, No Small Endeavor explores what it means to live a good life.
In this episode, you’ll hear from the Hillbilly Thomists, the Billboard-charting bluegrass band made up entirely of Catholic Dominican Friars. They talk about their theology and vocation, as well as how they manage life on the road as priests who have taken a vow of poverty. Plus, they give live performances of some of their finest songs.
When they are not contemplating, studying, and preaching, the Hillbilly Thomists are writing songs. They've released four albums including
Hillbilly Thomists, Living for the Other Side, Holy Ghost Power, and
Marigold. Marigold spent 3 weeks on the Billboard bluegrass charts, debuting at #2. The friars also have a Christmas album in the works.
Proceeds from album sales, donations, and merchandise sales allow the friars to continue to produce and perform music, while providing ongoing support to the formation of friars at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C.
Thanks to No Small Endeavor for sharing this episode with us.
For other episodes like this one, follow No Small Endeavor on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcast app.
Learn more about the Hillbilly Thomists
Learn more about No Small Endeavor
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsWhat can Christians on the right and left continue to learn about the experience and discipleship of trans people and those with gender incongruence?Today we'll be looking into some of the tough questions of transgender anthropology and pastoral care. But instead of debating directly over the questions (Should we use preferred pronouns? What is just legislation? How do we talk to kids? To affirm, or not to affirm?), we concentrate on how to care for people.
Our two guests today, while not in substantial theological disagreement about trans topics, bring to their different experiences, approaches, and relationships lots of much-needed nuance, and some timely new questions, to a conversation grounded in traditional Christian theology.
Can we question aspects of trans-anthropology as needed, or question current rhetoric or practices, but in the cause of charity, honesty, and human flourishing rather than against it? How do the right and left get caught in echo chambers here? How do we affirm the flawed gifts of the human body, while engaging its most painful experiences? How can we learn better to love and trust people?
Our guests today are Dr. Abigail Favale and Pieter Valk.
Abby is a writer and professor in the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame. She has an academic background in gender studies and feminist literary criticism, and now writes and teaches on topics related to women and gender from a Catholic perspective. Her latest book is The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory.
Pieter is a sought-after author and speaker on discernment, vocational singleness, and LGBT+ topics. Pieter is also the Founder and Director ofEquip, the leading coaching and training solution for theologically-traditional churches aspiring to be places where LGBT+ people thrive according to God's wisdom. He is also a teacher and diaconate explorer in the Anglican Church in North America.
Pieter's Christianity Today article with stats from the Us Versus Us report
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsToday is a conversation between a pastor and a farmer. What might working the land, protecting local economies, and nurturing Christian communities have in common?
We'll be speaking with Mary Berry, executive director of the Berry Center, and daughter of poet, farmer, and essayist Wendell Berry. My fellow interviewer today is the Rev. Clint Wilson, rector of St. Francis in the Fields, Harrods Creek, KY, not far from the Berry Center.
We talk about joy of hard work, and hard work that is good work. Growing up with Wendell Berry as a dad. Faith and farming. Decisions to live with or against a given landscape. What is home? How do you make a home and dedicate yourself to it? The thick fabric of a place, and how work might be interwoven with neighbors, family, and seasons.
What does it mean to actually "Love your neighbor as yourself"? We'll also touch on special challenges the suburbs pose to meaningful life together.
Mary Berry, Executive Director of The Berry Center, grew up at Lanes Landing Farm in Henry County, KY. She has farmed for a living in Henry County, and started The Berry Center in 2011 to continue the agricultural work of John Berry, Sr. and his sons, author Wendell Berry and former Kentucky state senator, the late John M. Berry, Jr. The Berry Center focuses on issues confronting small farming families in Kentucky and around the country.
Hear Mary speak at the Living Church conference
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsWith the death of Pope Francis, today's bonus episode is a reflection on his ministry, particularly as it relates to Christian unity.
Fr. Matthew Olver and Amber Noel chat with Fr. Martin Browne, who serves at the Vatican's Dicastery for Promoting Christian unity. Martin shares his first impressions of the pope and what it was like working for him. We discuss the pope's choices and charisms, his passion for shared leadership with other Christians, his inability and refusal to fit into a political box, and the fruit this has borne in personal relationships and the global scene, as well as some of the hype, frustration, and bewilderment in the wake of Francis' leadership style and its very public preference for the poor.
We'll also chat a bit about the movie, Conclave, and what it might get right and wrong about how the new pope will be selected.
The Rev. Martin Browne, OSB, is a Benedictine monk of Glenstal Abbey in Ireland. He currently lives at the Primatial Abbey of Sant' Anselmo in Rome, and serves as an official in the Western Section of the Vatican's Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity. In the Dicastery he is the desk officer for relations with the Anglican Communion and the World Methodist Council. He is also responsible, in collaboration with the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches, for the preparation of the prayers and reflections for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. He serves as the Catholic Co-Secretary of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) and the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commision for Unity and Mission (IARCCUM).
A brief note on when we recorded this: it was just after the pope's death and before his funeral. So take any details or speculations about the funeral proceedings with a grain of salt.
TLC Podcast: Dispatch from Rome
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsHow can Christian leaders face the "overwhelm" of our times, in politics and national life, in personal life and relationships, and in ministry?
We live in an age of what our guest today calls "polycrisis." Issues interconnect, pile on, and come hard and fast, faster than we can fix or, often, respond to in a thoughtful or Christian way.
How do we avoid either inaction or anxiousness?
We'll seek what our guest today calls "apocalyptic clarity." And we'll ask, "How do we recognize what's true, despite appearances, resist what's false, and participate joyfully in what God is doing?" This turns out to be a helpful window to perspective and practical decision making in a 21st-century Christian life.
Our guest today is the Rev. Dr. Jesse Zink, principal of Montreal Diocesan Theological College and canon theologian in the Diocese of Montreal. And we'll be discussing his latest book, Faithful, Hopeful, Creative: 15 Theses for Christian Witness in a Crisis-Shaped World. He's also the author of four books about Christian history and global Christianity, as well as an introduction to theology and mission in the Episcopal Church called A Faith for the Future.
Study guide for Faithful, Creative, Hopeful
Book Jesse mentioned: What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsHow did a Swedish Pentecostal find himself called to the beauties, benefits, and dangers of an institutional church? Today we join the Rev. Magnus Persson of the Church of Sweden, which is a Full Communion Partner with the Episcopal Church.
We discuss the "Three streams" of Swedish Lutheranism and it's intersections with Anglicanism, how God led Magnus away from charismatic success to priestly divesment, the painful transformations of grace, and saunas and the Holy Spirit.
Finally, we talk about the place of the Swedish Evangelical Mission (EFS), the organization Magnus is a part of, within the larger Church of Sweden, and what it's like to work patiently and cheerfully for change from within an ancient institution.
Magnus is an ordained minister in the Church of Sweden and works as a pastor for the Swedish Evangelical Mission. He is also the network co-ordinator of Re:formera, a network and think tank for reformational whole-churchism, and he's the host for its weekly podcast (which Amber appeared on as a guest).
Whether you're struggling to serve in an older institution, wondering whether God might be calling you to a vocational leap of faith, or if you just enjoy a good story, we hope you enjoy the conversation.
More about the Swedish Evangelical Mission (EFS)
Magnus's book, Reclaiming the Reformation
Amber on the Re:formera podcast
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsExecutive Director of TLC, the Rev. Dr. Matthew S.C. Olver, interviews the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Most Rev. Sean Rowe.
Presiding Bishop Sean has been in office now for a few months. We talk about his priorities for his term, and what slimming down some of the structures and programs of the Episcopal church might look like. We also ask what he'd say to Episcopalians who disagree about same-sex marriage, what Christian unity means, and what he most wants the Anglican Communion and the Anglican Church in North America to know about him.
From TREC to the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals, this conversation should perk the ears of Episcopalians, but will be of interest to anyone in the Anglican family, or any Christian curious about institutional work and hope in a divided Church.
More about Presiding Bishop Sean
Nairobi-Cairo Proposals and IASCUFO
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsFor a topic that's truly "on pointe," our guest today reminds us of the joys and rewards of freedom and discipline, just in time for Lent: ballet dancer and choreographer Silas Farley.
We discuss his early journey in discipleship and liturgical dance, holy coincidences that connected him with his Russian ballet hero, how discipline can lead to freedom in the Spirit both in dance and liturgical life, and understanding the meaning of "grace."
We hope you've done your work at the barre, because Silas will stretch our imaginations for worship and discipleship, and even what's possible when it comes to dance in church. Hold on to your leotards.
Silas is Armstrong Artist in Residence in Ballet in the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He's been a teacher and choreographer at places like the New York City Ballet, the Guggenheim, the Washington Ballet, the Met, and all over the world.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPoet Christian Wiman said of today's guest: “She has a rare ear, a keen mind, and a vivid spirit. Like the faith that is her chief subject, her poems cut and console in equal measure.” What Wiman says about her poetry is true about her conversation, too.
Today's episode features a chat with writer Kate Kilcup Marsh. Kate is a poet, priest's wife, and mother, and is working on a memoir. Her story is one of continual surprises with God, incuding a head over heels Eastern Orthodox conversion, followed by a call to enter the Anglican world. We talk about how Jesus finds us, how to be with kids in church, sobriety and asceticism, and what Eastern and Western Christians learn from each other. This is one woman's journey into the church, into a clergy marriage, into an Episcopal community and now motherhood — a dialogue delightful and instructive.
Kate is a poet and essayist. She's also served as a Russian linguist for the U.S. Army, a janitor, a firefighter, an editor, a farm hand, and a factory worker, among other things. Kate’s writing addresses matters of faith, addiction, motherhood, mental illness, work, gender, and prayer. Her yet-untitled memoir will be published by Eerdman's in 2026. You can keep up with her work and news on her websitekathleenkilcup.com.
Now brush off your Chrysostom and your Augustine. We're going East and West on a journey of healing. We hope you enjoy the conversation.
More about Kate and her writing
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