Interfaith Voices is an independent public radio show providing engaging and informative discussion on the key public issues of our day through the lenses of many different faith perspectives. We foster religious tolerance and educate our listeners on the broad diversity of religious traditions and viewpoints in the United States, Canada, and around the world. Our purpose is to promote interfaith understanding through dialogue.

On This Week's Show

"Four Gods" at the Voting Booth

  • play show:

Date: 9 October 2008

Credit:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Creation_of_the_Sun_and_Moon_face_detail.jpg

How God Predicts Our Politics

This election season, pollsters have been trying to get a grip on the Catholic vote, the Jewish vote, and the Evangelical vote – but maybe they’ve been asking the wrong questions. A study by Baylor University suggests that it’s not your religion that determines how you vote, so much as the way you imagine God’s “personality.” Is your God warm and fuzzy or down right angry?

Dr. Christopher Bader, assistant professor of sociology at Baylor University

Credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Einstein_1921_by_F_Schmutzer.jpg

Einstein's God

Begins At: 22:42

Most people have assumed that Albert Einstein, the enigmatic genius of modern science, was an atheist. But according to Einstein biographer Walter Isaacson, Einstein was something of a man of faith—a faith stemming from his awe at the great order of the cosmos. For Einstein, the face of God was revealed in the smallest details of the universe, like the curve of a cosine and the absoluteness of a prime number. As he wrote in the summer of 1930,

"The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious… To sense that, behind anything that can be experienced, there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity teaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness."

Walter Isaacson, author of "Einstein: His Life and Universe"

42 - Carrie Newcomer

Quaker Singer-Songwriter Carrie Newcomer

Begins At: 33:31

With her deep, earthy voice and gift for lyrical songwriting, it's no wonder Carrie Newcomer has been called folk music's "Prairie Mystic." Newcomer is also a practicing Quaker, and her new album finds her exploring the spirituality and grace of everyday life. This week, she joins us for a live, in-studio performance.

Carrie Newcomer, featuring new music from "The Geography of Light"

Credit: Cecily Hilleary

Commentary: Message From a Heretic

Begins At: 47:06

Cecily Hilleary admits she isn’t the strictest Muslim. She’ll eat the occasional pork chop, fill up her wine glass, and pray...when she remembers to. Then again, before she converted to Islam, back in the late 1980s, she wasn’t the strictest Catholic, either.

Cecily Hilleary, freelance television and radio producer based in Potomac, Md.

This Week's Interfaith Calendar

October 14 – Sukkot (Jewish)

This joyful, seven day festival commemorates the 40 years that Jews spent wandering the desert after their exodus from Egypt. Jews relive that time by building temporary structures, called sukkahs, in which they eat, pray and entertain guests.

Read the rest of this entry...