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Jul 5, 2022Liked by Diana Butler Bass

Thanks so much for your work. The video with Bill McKibben was inspiring at a time when, I admit, my spirits have been sagging. Looking forward to your new book!

Nancy Bradley

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Thank you so much for this. I was mesmerized. It filled in a lot of gaps for my understanding of the swings in religion and culture, esp since growing up Catholic, I missed a lot of this but was effected by it all. Going to buy the book and recommend it to everyone I know. Joined UCC 10 years ago, so glad to hear all these connections to the progressive movements over the century.

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This was fascinating, thank you. Bruce Cockburn has a song that expresses this, kind of: the called "The Trouble With Normal is It Always Gets Worse"

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Jun 30, 2022Liked by Diana Butler Bass

Sorry I missed this live, I'm so thankful to see the recording!! Blessings on the day's efforts.

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Jun 30, 2022Liked by Diana Butler Bass

What a wonderful conversation! And not nearly so elegiac and depressive as it might have been. I have been reading Bill McKibben for many years, in Grist and The New Yorker (and thanks to his recommendation I've come to know of Diana Butler Bass, for which I owe him my gratitude), and all along he has maintained an admirable sense of hope -- until very recently, as President Biden's Build Back Better program first got reduced, then was pretty much buried altogether. Now at last one sees shades of frantic despair start to creep between the lines of his writing. So it's good to see that is even now not his prevailing mood.

The church talk was over my head somewhat, but I very much enjoyed the discussion of Peter Gomes, a hero to me, who am also gay. I remembered I did once hear him speak, or preach, somewhere here in the Columbia neighborhood; and I feel sure he was invited to preach at Corpus Christi Church by the then pastor, the cordially anglophilic Msgr. Myles M. Bourke. (This church, where Simone Weil attended daily Mass and Thomas Merton was baptized, looks more like a white-wood New England Protestant structure than anything Catholic. The story goes that as its original pastor Father Ford was building it, at the same time as Harry Emerson Fosdick was building the nearby Riverside Church, Fosdick said to Ford, "Here you are building a Congregational meetinghouse, while I'm building a Gothic cathedral." To which Ford replied, "Well, somebody around here has got to keep the Reformation alive!") It seems clear to me as it did to Gomes that the homophobia of bigoted Christians preceded any biblical instruction or inspiration on their part, since there is so very little relevant material in the Bible, of extremely little consequence. He sets out his observations on this in his great guide to interpreting Scripture, "The Good Book."

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Jun 29, 2022Liked by Diana Butler Bass

Wow ! How powerful! At 85, I may be beyond the third act, but am eager to do what I can. So glad to know that there are others who share my concerns / alarm. Keep up the good work, Bill and Diana.

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