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Building Interfaith Bridges with Chris Highland

In this episode, we talk to Chris Highland a former Protestant minister for 14 years and an Interfaith chaplain for 25 years. We discuss his journey to Humanism, his efforts trying to build bridges between people of faith and freethinkers, and his writing about the topic including a weekly column in his local newspaper. We’ll also touch on his recent controversial remarks about “Angry, Anti-religious Atheists”.

Episode 28: Building Interfaith Bridges with Chris Highland

In this episode, we talk to Chris Highland a former Protestant minister for 14 years and an Interfaith chaplain for 25 years. We discuss his journey to Humanism, his efforts trying to build bridges between people of faith and freethinkers, and his writing about the topic including a weekly column in his local newspaper. We’ll also touch on his recent controversial remarks about “Angry, Anti-religious Atheists”.

01:09 Journey to Humanism: My Faith Evaporated
24:45 Angry Anti-religious Atheists
42:17 End Note: We Got A Grant

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Our Guest: Chris Highland

Chris Highland was a Protestant minister and interfaith chaplain in the San Francisco Bay Area for many years. He “gave back” his ordination in 2001 when his first book, “Meditations of John Muir” was published.

Since that time he has worked as a “pathfinder” creating trails on an island in the Pacific NW, as a shelter director and senior housing manager before moving to Western North Carolina.

Now, as a freethinking secular humanist (and Humanist Celebrant) he continues to publish books (most recently “Friendly Freethinker,” “Simply Secular” and “Was Jesus a Humanist?”). He teaches courses on Freethought in the Reuter Center on the campus of the University of North Carolina Asheville.

He may be the only secular columnist in the country who writes a weekly column for the religion pages of a local newspaper (the Asheville Citizen-Times, an affiliate of USA Today).

Chris is married to Carol Hovis, a liberal, progressive Presbyterian minister who was active in interfaith work for many years. His website is “Friendly Freethinker”

Extras:

Friendly Freethinker

Was Jesus a Humanist?: and other questionable essays

Author page on Amazon

A-faith, not Anti-faith

Do We Have to Choose between Aggressive Religion or Aggravated Atheism?

Transcript:

Voice Over  00:02

This is Glass City Humanist, a show about humanism, humanist values by a humanist. Here is your host, Douglas Berger.

Doug Berger  00:12

In this episode we talked to Chris Highland, a former Protestant Minister for 14 years, and an interfaith chaplain for 25 years. We discuss his journey to humanism. His efforts trying to build bridges between people of faith and free thinkers and his various writings on the topic, including a weekly column in his local newspaper. We’ll also touch on his recent controversial remarks about angry anti-religious atheists.

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[Transcript also available for offline reading HERE]

Credits

Written, produced, and edited by Douglas Berger and he is entirely responsible for the content. Incidental voice overs by Shawn Meagley

The show is sponsored in part by a grant from the American Humanist Association

The GCH theme is “Glass City Jam” composed using Ampify Studio

This episode by Glass City Humanist is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

By Douglas

Host of the Glass City Humanist