Love Your Neighbor

Ordinary life in most of the United States today involves an automobile, whether to drive to work or get basic needs like groceries. In an economy so based around the automobile, though, what happens if you can’t afford to repair your car? I’m joined today by two people who saw neighbors struggling when their cars broke down and felt compelled to do something, based on Jesus’s commandment to love our neighbors. Oran Warder and Ben Nielsen talk about the ministry Go In Peace based out of the St. Paul’s Lazarus Ministry and offered through Nielsen Auto Care.

Why did Jesus tell us that loving neighbors is so central to Christian life and witness? We often think Jesus wants us to help neighbors mostly to alleviate suffering. But what if Jesus wanted us to encounter neighbors—to know them in their beauty and complexity, and to be known by them just as Jesus knows us? Sam Wells shares his theology of Being With in connection to Jesus’s commandment to love neighbors and discusses his new book Constructing an Incarnational Theology. Check out the books discussed – A Nazareth Manifesto and Constructing an Incarnational Theology.

What keeps congregations looking inward rather than also focusing on loving neighbors? There are all sorts of reasons—keeping the congregation going as an organization, keeping community fellowship strong, maintaining the building, the list goes on. Sometimes, though, fear keeps us from engaging our wider community. Not necessarily in the sense that we fear neighbors, but the fear that emerges from changing old habits, facing uncertainty, or entering transitions. How can we overcome fear and begin genuine discernment in how we love neighbors? Bishop Susan Goff shares inspiring stories and perspectives about how congregations can face the future with creativity rather than fear. This episode is full of grounded, practical advice for congregations in transition. Check out the episode about Church of the Resurrection’s affordable housing project, which Bishop Goff mentions!

Neighborhoods are not only part of a wider town or city, but also part of an environmental ecosystem. How can we build neighborhoods that care for these ecosystems? How can we build towns and cities where humans care for their environment, nurturing God’s gift of creation, rather than acting destructively toward it? Ellen Davis of Duke Divinity School joins the podcast to discuss how scriptures approach such questions. Check out her books including Wondrous Depth: Preaching the Old Testament and Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture. More information on the sustainable burial practice of aquamation is available here.

As we walk or drive around our neighborhoods, it can be easy to ignore their past, especially when the build environment of the past isn’t there anymore. But the ways neighborhoods have changed over the years profoundly shapes the present – they often haunt the present. How neighborhoods and cities in the United States took shape in the mid-20th century shaped the world we live in today, and churches played a major role in that shift. Greg Jarrell shows the central role White churches played in shaping neighborhoods during this period, and explores how Christians today can seek healing and repair for our cities and towns. Check out Greg’s book Our Trespasses and his album How Bright the Path on Apple Music or Spotify. The podcast episode on reparations that Greg mentioned is here.

Churches love to tell their stories, whether their founding, their accomplishments, or their connections with wider history. How can churches tell their full stories—not just the ones that make us feel good—and how can they be part of wider neighborhood efforts to tell their full histories? Public history has resources to help this process, and in this episode historian Denise Meringolo talks about how to tell such full stories. The way we tell our church’s stories has moral implications, and public history aids this process of morally reflective storytelling. Check out Dr. Meringolo’s books Museums, Monuments, and National Parks and Radical Roots. Looking for a public historian? Start by consulting a nearby college or university, or check out the National Council on Public History’s list of consultants.

Access to banking proves vital to participating in our economy, but many people have little or no access to mainstream banking. They sometimes have little choice but to take out predatory loans at extremely high interest rates—sometimes up to 400%. Exodus Lending in Minneapolis gives people an alternative banking tool to get out of predatory cycles. Ross talks with their co-founder Meghan Olsen Biebighauser about how the organization started, how it listened to neighbors, and how this ministry opened up other vibrant avenues for loving neighbors in their city. Hear a powerful example of congregational discernment about loving neighbors. Check out the work of Exodus Lending!

Love God and love neighbor are the two great commandments of Christianity given by Jesus. But what happens when Christians don’t love neighbors? What happens when loving neighbors becomes secondary for Christian public life rather than primary? David French explains the Christian right’s support for the MAGA movement, then offers an alternative vision for Christian engagement in public life based in faithful generosity toward neighbors. Check out his book Divided We Fall and see his columns in the New York Times. The David Hollinger book Ross mentioned is Christianity’s American Fate.

It’s easy to imagine loving neighbors as something focused locally, with denominations as broader bodies that span towns, cities, states, and even international borders. But might denominations have responsibilities not only to care for church institutions but also responsibilities for empowering works of love for local congregations? Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe discusses how denominations can empower local congregations for works of love and justice. Check out Bishop Rowe’s website. Check out Ross’s book which Bishop Rowe mentions, The Good News of Church Politics.

In this episode we delve into how churches can engage in public-private partnerships without undermining their mission. The discussion with Peter John Hobbs, who directs community ministries for the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa, covers the possibilities and challenges of such collaborations, the evolution of faith-based social services, and the importance of maintaining a humble, collaborative approach to address community needs. PJ mentioned the underappreciated theologian Douglas John Hall. Check out his book The Cross in Our Context.

 Loving neighbors involves facing sins that shaped our neighborhoods. Many church communities are asking how they can be agents of repair amid the racial fragmentation across United States history. Reparations are a vital part of such healing. Ebonee Davis-Hayes discusses the reparations program at Virginia Theological Seminary, the first of its kind in higher education. Check out this video on reparations at Virginia Theological Seminary.

 When we think of church meetings, we often associate them with decision making and getting work done. But meetings are also places to build community, connection, and belonging.  Good church meetings also help congregations better love their neighbors because congregations that meet with love and care are practicing the very things we’re supposed to share with our neighbors. The Rev. Dr. L. Roger Owens offers fresh ways to think about church meetings. See his Faith and Leadership article on meetings here. Check out L. Roger Owens’ books Everyday Contemplative and What We Need Is Here.

We often associate prayer with peacefulness and calm, and politics with conflict and strife. Yet our prayer and our engagement in public life can together shape communities of wholeness that resist the fragmentation of modern life. Spiritual director and civil rights activist Benjamin Campbell talks about how praying for the place we live can shape our spiritual life. Find Benjamin Campbell’s book Richmond’s Unhealed History here.

On the cusp of a major national election in the United States, we reflect on the interplay between national-level elections and local political engagement for congregations. Local reporter Michael Pope talks about the ways that town, city, and state politics shape our ordinary lives and also offers fresh perspectives on the media landscape today. Find Michael Pope’s books here.

Christians often associate the commandment “love your neighbor” with Jesus’s New Testament teachings, but Jesus was drawing from a long tradition of Jewish teaching about neighbor love.  What did neighbor love entail in the Old Testament? The Rev. Dr. Judy Fentress-Williams joins the podcast to talk about what contemporary Christians can draw from these teachings when our loving neighbors today. Find Dr. Fentress-Williams’ book Holy Imagination here.

What difference can everyday economic decisions in our neighborhood make in a vast, global economy? Neil Balkcom of Swing’s Coffee Roasters shows how an act like buying a cup of coffee in our local coffeeshop connects us to a wide network of neighborhoods around the world. Join this conversation about ethical consumption and how local economic choices can promote love and justice on a global scale.

How can churches use their buildings to foster love and connection with neighbors? Bishop Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows of the Episcopal Diocese of Indianapolis shares the diocese’s experience assessing all of their physical assets, asking how they can best serve God’s mission.  Bishop Jennifer brings expertise in architecture, theology, historic preservation, and urban planning. Check out the Diocese of Indianapolis’ building initiative. See Partners for Sacred Spaces’ website. See if your church building may be eligible for listing on the National Register for Historic Places.

What can we learn from Saint Augustine about 21st-century local politics? Dr. Charles Mathewes brings wisdom, humor, historical insights, and apt pop culture references to a wide-ranging discussion on Augustine’s portrayal of the earthly city and the heavenly city. Check out Charles Mathewes’ books A Theology of Public Life and The Republic of Grace, as well as his Great Courses series on Augustine’s The City of God.

Feeding ministries are some of the most common ways that congregations get involved in their neighborhoods. David Beckmann and Ross Kane discuss how those ministries can lead to advocating an end to hunger. Along the way they have a healthy discussion and disagreement about the role of partisanship in church advocacy. Check out David’s website here. Get involved with Bread for the World here.

On this episode we hear the story of a church that saw people struggling to pay rents and mortgages and decided to do something about it. Kat Turner, a leader of Church of the Resurrection in Alexandria, Virginia, joins the podcast to talk about how congregations can respond when they see a need in their community. Check out the book Gone for Good: Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition

Vibrant local politics not only transforms our neighborhoods and cities, it can enable wider political change. Dr. Lerone Martin discusses how the Civil Rights Movement, the most impressive movement of church politics in 20th century America, was built on local congregations organizing for love and justice. He offers advice for today drawn from the wisdom of the movement. Check out Lerone Martin’s book The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover

In this first episode, pastor and professor Ross Kane gives an overview of the podcast. He talks about why loving neighbors is central to healthy Christian political life. By making politics a spiritual practice, congregations can play a vital role in renewing their neighborhoods. The Good News of Church Politics by Ross Kane Subscribe to Ross' newsletter Ministry, Ethics, and Culture Produced by Eric Bailey Music by Eric Schnobrick and Ross Kane