Rev. Jin Cho

Peace Talks Podcast

Rev. Jin Cho

Jin Cho Headshot

about

The Rev. Dr. Jin H. Cho is an Anglican priest committed to helping local congregations have courageous conversations about race and justice. He received his doctorate of ministry from Fuller Seminary for his project to encourage such dialogue among pastors in his city entitled “Race, Evangelicalism, and the Local Church.”

He leads a diocesan task force for diversity and inclusion, and works with the Brehm Center (Fuller Seminary) to help pastors integrate worship, preaching, and justice. He has over twenty years of experience leading churches, and is currently working on a missional church plant in Orange County, California. He and his far more interesting wife Esther have two extremely extroverted teenagers.

Quotable

“I’m trying to do two things.
One is to create a safe space in which people’s defensiveness and the temperature of the room can go down so that there’s a space for us to ask questions and learn from each other.  And then the other thing that I want to remind people is that this space should also be a brave space. To say that it’s a brave space is also to say that we want to be a space in which we can be honest about our pains.”

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Resources

Lisa Rodriguez-Watson

Peace Talks Podcast

Lisa rodriguez-watson

about

Lisa Rodriguez-Watson, for nearly two decades, has served as an urban church planter, collegiate minister, seminary professor, international missionary and community development practitioner. Her heart to see people reconciled to God and to one another has led her to invest her life, family and ministry in places and people that have often been looked over by the world.

Lisa served as co-founder of a grassroots organization in Memphis, TN that was committed to mobilizing Christians to love their undocumented neighbors, and consider an appropriate Christian response to our nation’s immigration crisis. In addition to her role as National Director of Missio Alliance, she serves as Associate Pastor of Discipleship and Equipping at Christ City Church. 

Quotable

“I have an incredible community that makes all the difference. I feel like if I had to do this by myself, I’d be a wreck. I would be a wreck because I know my proclivity to just work, work, work. I want to solve the problems. I want to mark things off my task list. And so I have my community that are constantly asking, ‘How are you resting? How are you? How are you keeping your body?'”

David Swanson

Peace Talks Podcast

David Swanson

about

David is an author and the founding pastor of New Community Covenant Church who lives with his family on the South Side of Chicago. He is the founder and CEO of New Community Outreach, a non-profit organization dedicated to healing community trauma through restorative practices. 

David’s first book, Rediscipling the White Church: From Cheap Diversity to True Solidarity was published with InterVarsity Press in 2020. His latest book with IVP, Plundered: The Tangled Roots of Racial and Environmental Injustice, released in early October, 2024.

Quotable

“One of my concerns is that the [polictical] language of  ‘existential threat’ pulls our attention away from our local communities to something a bit more abstract and distant from ourselves. When as Christian people, the call is always to our neighbor and our literal next door neighbor.”

Dr. Natasha Sistrunk Robinson

Peace Talks Podcast

Dr. Natasha Sistrunk Robinson

Natasha Sistrunk Robinson Headshot

about

Dr. Natasha Sistrunk Robinson is President & CEO of T3 Leadership Solutions, Inc.Natasha Sistrunk Robinson Ministries, and the Visionary Founder and Chairperson of the nonprofit, Leadership LINKS, Inc. She is a graduate of the Naval Academy, a former United States Marine Corps Captain, and former federal government employee of the Department of Homeland Security. Dr. Robinson is a Leadership Consultant and Associate Certified Coach (ACC) with the International Coaching Federation (ICF). A graduate of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and North Park Theological Seminary, she is a sought-after international speaker and facilitator with more than 20 years of leadership and mentoring experience in the military, federal government, academic, and nonprofit sectors. Dr. Robinson intentionally serves as a credible witness of Jesus Christ’s leadership to engage, equip, and empower people to live and lead on purpose.

She is the author of several books including Voices of Lament (editor), Journey to FreedomA Sojourner’s TruthHope for Us Bible study, and Mentor for Life. She hosts A Sojourner’s Truth podcast and is passionate about using her influence to create access and opportunities and equitable workspaces for Black Indigenous Women of Color, and especially Black women, while mentoring the next generations of Black girls who lead. 

Quotable

“I don’t have allegiance to a political party. I’m an independent voter. And so I try to vote the best I can with the information that’s made available to me for how best I can serve what is true. What’s going to cause the least amount of harm. Or the greatest amount of good for the most amount of people. I’m also thinking about what the Bible would refer to as our most vulnerable.”

Gregory Thompson

Peace Talks Podcast

Gregory Thompson

about

Gregory Thompson’s Peace Talks episode is both hard-hitting and thoughtful. He tackles why the dinner table is the BEST place for political conversations and why the church is the best place for cultivating the moral skill of discernment needed for such topics. Don’t miss this one!
 

Gregory Thompson is a writer, artist, cook, and creative leader who works at the intersection of contemplative, the critical, and the convivial. He currently serves as Co-Founder and Creative Director of Voices Underground, a team of scholars, artists, and activists devoted to racial healing through storytelling. He is author of The Welcome Table, a column on Hospitality and Culture at Comment Magazine, of Blood From the Ground: Racial Healing and Public Memory (forthcoming), and co-author of the award-winning Reparations: A Christian Call to Repentance and Repair. He holds an MA and a PhD from the University of Virginia, and can most likely be found in the kitchen.

Quotable

“The dinner table is the primary place we need to be having [difficult] conversations. We’re made for life together and all things happen in the context of mutual nourishment. I hope that Christians will learn the practice of embedding the critical, which is about struggling for justice inside the convivial, which is about the commitment.”

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Sandra Marie Van Opstal

Peace Talks Podcast

Sandra Maria van opstal

about

Sandra Maria Van Opstal is a second-generation Latina pastor, activist, author, and a powerful leading voice on the intersection of faith and justice. She is executive director of Chasing Justice, a BIPOC-led movement that mobilizes the next generation of Christians to live justly. Sandra’s distinctiveness comes from working in both local and global contexts as a practitioner and academic, which has solidified her calling to disrupt oppressive systems within the church and center marginalized voices. 

She served as executive pastor at Grace and Peace Church on Chicago’s west side and as an activist in her community. She holds a Masters of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and is currently pursuing doctoral work in Urban Leadership and Transformation. Sandra is the author of The Next WorshipForty Days on Being An Eight as well as contributor to the New York Times bestselling book A Rhythm of Prayer.

Quotable

“Your community and who you surround yourself matter.

Rev. Bill Haley

Peace Talks Podcast

Rev. bill haley

Rev. Bill Haley Headshot

about

The Rev. Bill Haley is the founder and Executive Director of Coracle, as well as an Anglican priest and spiritual director. He has devoted many years to ministering in urban contexts, especially in inner-city Washington DC.  With his wife Tara and four kids, Bill lives in Falls Church, Virginia.

Bill currently serves on the board for the Center for Formation, Justice and Peace, and has served as chairman of the board for the Anglican Relief and Development Fund, and on the Advisory Council for The Telos Group.  From 1996-2019 he ministered with The Falls Church in Falls Church, VA in a number of different capacities, including Director of Outreach and Associate Rector, and was the founding Rector of St. Brendan’s in the City in Washington DC.  He served as the Director of Formation for The Washington Institute and previously served as president of The Regeneration Forum and publisher of re:generation quarterly, a magazine devoted to “community transforming culture”. 

Bill’s publications includes his book, Essential Christianity and articles in The Washington Post, re:generation quarterly, Prism and Sojourners magazines, Inward/Outward of The Servant Leadership School, The Cry of Word Made Flesh, and with The Washington Institute.  

Quotable

“Jesus reserved his most intense anger for religious leaders.

Rachel Kang

Peace Talks Podcast

Rachel marie Kang

Rachel Marie King Peace Talks Podcasat Headshot

about

RACHEL MARIE KANG is a New York native, born and raised just outside New York City. A mixed woman of African American, Native American (Ramapough Lenape Nation), Irish, and Dutch descent, she holds a degree in English with Creative Writing.

She is founder of The Fallow House and her writing has been featured in Christianity Today, Ekstasis Magazine, Proverbs 31 Ministries, She Reads Truth, and (in)courage. Rachel is the author of Let There Be Art and The Matter of Little Losses.

Quotable

“Beauty is a universal language, not exclusive or scary.

Makoto Fujimura

Peace Talks Podcast

Makoto Fujimara

about

Makoto Fujimura is a leading contemporary artist whose work has been featured in galleries and museums around the world, including The Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, The Huntington Library in California, the Tikotin Museum in Israel, Belvedere Museum in Vienna, C3M North Bund Art Museum in Shanghai, and Pola Museum in Japan. His process-driven, refractive “slow art” has been described by David Brooks of the New York Times as “a small rebellion against the quickening of time.”

Fujimura is the author of four books: Art+Faith: A Theology of Making, Silence and Beauty, Refractions, and Culture Care. He is also the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2023 Kuyper Prize for Excellence in Reformed Theology and Public Life and the American Academy of Religion’s 2014 “Religion and the Arts” award. From 2003 to 2009, he served as a Presidential appointee to the National Council on the Arts. He has received notable recognition as a speaker, with one address selected by NPR as among the 200 “Best Commencement Addresses Ever” and by CNN as one of the top 16 “Greatest Commencement Speeches of All Time.” He is a recipient of four Doctor of Arts Honorary Degrees from Belhaven University, Biola University, Cairn University, and Roanoke College.

Quotable

“We really have to find not only a nonviolent way of fighting against oppression, but a beautiful way. I feel like that is part of what we need to use our imagination toward. And if faith means anything these days, it would be to have courage to stand in your convictions. And to create something that didn’t exist before. So we need artists and musicians and politicians and everyone to participate in that path.”

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W. David O. and Phaedra Taylor

Peace Talks Podcast

W. David O. and Phaedra Taylor

Quotable

“Whatever it is that I am doing in the name of peace, I’m doing it in the name of the Prince of Peace. But then we experience some distortion of our faith if we’re only in  sequestered prayer or only in the autonomous kind of action mode.  It takes a village to become the kind of person where prayer and peacemaking work well together. I don’t think I can do that on my own. I don’t think I’m designed to do it on my own. Ideally, God wants the community to bear that burden.”