Episodes

  • Liza J. Rankow, One On One Interview | Orbis Books

    Liza J. Rankow, One On One Interview | Orbis Books
    Feb 5 2026

    Join Robert Ellsberg, publisher of Orbis Books, in this One On One interview with
    Liza J. Rankow , as they discuss Soul Medicine for a Fractured World: Healing, Justice, and the Path of Wholeness

    https://maryknoll.link/29b

    Each day brings news of worsening ecological, political, and social upheaval. None of us individually can solve the intersecting crises we face; we are not meant to. Yet each of us carries a vital gift for these times. As we navigate the collapse of a world built on domination and division, we can engage in the birthing of new possibilities, finding strength in our belonging to a wholeness that is ancient, infinite, and eternal.

    Combining the insightful analysis of a longtime grassroots activist with the compassion of a seasoned spiritual guide, Liza J. Rankow shows readers how to live with purpose and meaning, not just in spite of the rising tide of calamities around us, but as our response to them.
    With an approach to liberation inspired by “mystic activists” from various faith and cultural traditions, Soul Medicine for a Fractured World offers an integrative path toward healing and social transformation, rooted in our kinship with one another, the Earth, and all of life. Rich with practical application, the book includes questions for reflection as well as an array of spiritual and healing practices to help readers put the ideas shared into embodied action.

    Liza J. Rankow, PhD, MHS, is an interfaith minister, educator, activist, and writer. Her lifework centers the deep healing that is essential to personal and social transformation. Liza is the founder and former executive director of OneLife Institute, which for almost 20 years supported the well-being of frontline activists, caregivers, and community. She has been a spiritual counselor and teacher for more than three decades, and is co-editor of The Living Wisdom of Howard Thurman audio collection.

    Get your copy today: https://maryknoll.link/29b

    #OrbisBooks #LizaJRankow #RobertEllsberg #activism #Theology #ecology #politics
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    33 mins
  • Kelley Nikondeha, One On One Interview | Orbis Books

    Kelley Nikondeha, One On One Interview | Orbis Books
    Jan 22 2026
    Join Robert Ellsberg, publisher of Orbis Books, in this One On One interview with
    Kelley Nikondeha, as they discuss Jubilee Economics: The Purpose, Practices and Possibilities for a Better Future.

    https://maryknoll.link/3uc


    Most consider jubilee to be an aspirational, ancient practice, dismissing it as impractical for modern economic practices. Among theologians and economists many doubt it was ever practiced. And they would be wrong. Kelley Nikondeha uncovers recent scholarship that tells a different story, one of Jubilee’s robust capabilities for resetting just economic systems.

    Kelley Nikondeha is a writer, speaker, liberation theologian, and community development practitioner. Together with her husband, Claude Nikondeha, they founded Communities of Hope (an NGO in Burundi), Kazoza Bank, and have an ongoing partnership with the United Nations Capital Development Fund around economic development.

    Get your copy today: https://maryknoll.link/3uc

    #OrbisBooks #KelleyNikondeha #RobertEllsberg #economics #Theology

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    34 mins
  • Mac Loftin, One On One Interview | Orbis Books

    Mac Loftin, One On One Interview | Orbis Books
    Jan 8 2026
    Join Robert Ellsberg, publisher of Orbis Books, in this One On One interview with
    Mac Loftin, as they discuss In the Twilight of the Christian West: A Theology of Mourning and Resistance.

    https://maryknoll.link/opg

    Countering this malignant theology, Loftin draws on the vision of antifascist thinkers, mystics, and theologians including Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Simone Weil, and Michel de Certeau. He reveals how these revolutionaries forged potent theological resistance in their own fraught political moments by recovering a radically different Christian tradition: one that embraces impermanence, reconciliation, difference, and the liberative work of mourning.

    Mac Loftin is lecturer on theology at Harvard University. His writing has appeared in Political Theology, The Christian Century, and Earth & Altar.

    Get your copy today: https://maryknoll.link/opg

    #OrbisBooks #MacLoftin #RobertEllsberg #ChristianBooks #Theology #ChristianResistance
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    35 mins
  • Rebecca Bratten Weiss, One On One Interview | Orbis Books

    Rebecca Bratten Weiss, One On One Interview | Orbis Books
    Dec 18 2025
    Join Robert Ellsberg, publisher of Orbis Books, in this One On One interview with
    Rebecca Bratten Weiss, as they discuss The Books That Made Us: Deconstructing the Modern Christian Classics.

    https://maryknoll.link/80c4d8

    What do you do when you realize that the books you were taught to revere imbued you with false perspectives on humanity, society, and morals?

    This is the question editor and journalist Rebecca Bratten Weiss poses, as she revisits beloved but problematic Christian writers like G.K. Chesterton, T.S. Eliot, J.R.R. Tolkien, Evelyn Waugh, and C.S. Lewis. While documenting her journey out of conservative Christian culture, Bratten Weiss sorts through the rubble of old beliefs, discerning which to discard and which to keep.

    The Books That Made Us reminds readers how powerfully literature can shape us—and how devastatingly it can harm us.

    Rebecca Bratten Weiss is digital editor at U.S. Catholic magazine, co-host of the Glad You Asked podcast, and a regular contributor to the National Catholic Reporter. She has published extensively on religion, culture, and politics, and is co-editor (with Jessica Mesman) of Sick Pilgrims: An Anthology of Catholic Spiritual Autobiography.

    Get your copy today: https://maryknoll.link/80c4d8

    #OrbisBooks #RebeccaBrattenWeiss #RobertEllsberg #ChristianBooks
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    35 mins
  • Mary C. Boys, One On One Interview | Orbis Books

    Mary C. Boys, One On One Interview | Orbis Books
    Dec 4 2025
    Join Robert Ellsberg, publisher of Orbis Books, in this One On One interview with
    Mary C. Boys, as they discuss Blessing of a New Dawn: Reorienting Christianity's Relation to Judaism

    https://maryknoll.link/b4n

    An expert in Jewish-Christian relations and a serious student of Scripture engages the latest scholarship to offer a succinct, informative exploration of the history that informed Christian attitudes toward Judaism, and how a new reading can lead to a richer understanding between peoples.

    Mary C. Boys is Skinner and McAlpin Professor of Practical Theology, Union Theological Seminary, NYC, and its former Academic Vice-President and Dean. Long experienced in Jewish-Christian dialogue, she is a member of the Committee on Religion, Ethics, and the Holocaust at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. A member of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, she is also author of Has God Only One Blessing? Judaism as a Source of Christian Self-Understanding.

    Get your copy today: https://maryknoll.link/b4n

    #OrbisBooks #JewishChristianDialogue #InterfaithUnderstanding #MaryCBoys #RobertEllsberg
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    37 mins
  • John S. Munayer and Samuel S. Munayer, One On One Interview | Orbis Books

    John S. Munayer and Samuel S. Munayer, One On One Interview | Orbis Books
    Nov 13 2025
    Join Robert Ellsberg, publisher of Orbis Books, in this One On One interview with
    John S. Munayer and Samuel S. Munayer, as they discuss The Cross and the Olive Tree: Cultivating Palestinian Theology amid Gaza

    https://maryknoll.link/v3h

    From the lived theology of grandmothers to traditions of scholarship, from ancient liturgies to contemporary resistance, eight Palestinian Christian theologians offer a crucial and vibrant perspective on liberation, reconciliation, and divine imagination. Written within the heart of suffering, the cross and the olive tree interpret each other in an unwavering hope, symbols of faith and homeland.


    John Munayer is a Palestinian theologian from Jerusalem and holds degrees from King’s College London, the University of Edinburgh, and VU University Amsterdam. John is currently involved in interreligious activism and is the founder and editor of the Journal of Palestinian Christianity at the Bethlehem Bible College. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh, researching the political theology of the Palestinian laity in relation to the Holy Fire ceremony.


    Samuel Munayer is a Palestinian theologian from Jerusalem and holds degrees from Durham University and Exeter University. Samuel works as an advocacy and access officer for a humanitarian organization that works in Gaza and the West Bank. He recently co-authored with John the article entitled, “Decolonising Palestinian Liberation Theology: New Methods, Sources, and Voices.”

    Get your copy today: https://maryknoll.link/v3h

    #PalestinianTheology #LiberationTheology #OrbisBooks #FaithAndJustice
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    32 mins
  • James Douglass, One On One Interview | Orbis Books

    James Douglass, One On One Interview | Orbis Books
    Oct 30 2025
    Join Robert Ellsberg, publisher of Orbis Books, in this One On One interview with author James W. Douglass, as they discuss Martyrs to the Unspeakable: The Assassinations of JFK, Martin, Malcolm, and RFK

    https://maryknoll.link/bxy

    Here at last is the long-awaited sequel to James Douglass's bestselling work, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. That book, unlike most books that posit a conspiracy in JFK's assassination, focuses less on "who dunnit" as on "why they dunnit." Douglas's answer was to trace the steps by which JFK moved from being a traditional Cold Warrior to a prophetic commitment to peace, willing to risk his own life in order to avoid nuclear war. In particular JFK's partnership in pursuit of peace with ostensible adversary, Nikita Khrushchev, caused him to be regarded as a traitor by elements of the military-industrial-intelligence complex who deployed the mechanisms of the National Security State--which had previously targeted foreign "threats"--to neutralize the President of the United States.


    This new volume necessarily returns to the story of JFK, and demonstrates how the same story was enacted again and again in the deaths of his brother, Bobby Kennedy, as well as the killings of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. In each case, American figures who made a prophetic commitment to peace and social transformation were regarded as enemies of the state who had to be eliminated. Douglass believes that this hidden history holds a key to recovering and advancing their mission, and setting our country and the world on a path to peace.


    James W. Douglass is a longtime peace activist and writer. He and his wife Shelley are co-founders of the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action in Poulsbo, WA, and Mary’s House, a Catholic Worker house of hospitality in Birmingham, AL, where they now live. His other books include The Nonviolent Coming of God, Resistance and Contemplation, Gandhi and the Unspeakable, and JFK and the Unspeakable.

    Get your copy today: https://maryknoll.link/bxy

    #MartyrsToTheUnspeakable #JamesWDouglass #PeaceAndJustice #JFKMLKMalcolmXRFK #NonviolentResistance
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    31 mins
  • Cyprian Consiglio, One On One Interview | Orbis Books

    Cyprian Consiglio, One On One Interview | Orbis Books
    Oct 16 2025
    Join Robert Ellsberg, publisher of Orbis Books, in this One On One interview with author Cyprian Consiglio, as they discuss Epiphanies of Nature and Grace: Twelve Meditations from a Life in Dialogue

    https://maryknoll.link/oc9

    These moving and eloquent meditations on a range of spiritual themes draw on the author’s study of scripture and his deep monastic experience, as well as on his many pilgrimages to India and his immersion in the spiritual wisdom both of Asia and the Christian West.


    Cyprian Consiglio, OSB Cam., is a Camaldolese Benedictine monk, musician, composer, author, and teacher. He has shared his time between a hermitage in Big Sur, CA, and traveling in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, studying, teaching, and performing. After retiring from his office as prior of his community, he currently lives in Rome, serving as Secretary General for Monastic Interreligious Dialogue (DIMMID). His books include Rediscovering the Divine: New Ways to Understand, Experience, and Express God.

    Get your copy today: https://maryknoll.link/oc9

    #RobertEllsberg #OrbisBooks #DustinFeddon #spiritualwisdom #Christian #meditations
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    31 mins