Author: Bart
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Humanize Me 105: How to disagree without being a jerk, with Hemant Mehta
Hemant Mehta is also known as the Friendly Atheist, a blogger, speaker, activist and fellow podcaster who believes in civil discourse and advocates atheism in a positive way. In this, Bart finds a kindred spirit of sorts, and a shared mission. Here’s what you’ll hear in this episode: Our relationship to technology and whether we…
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How this ‘humanism’ thing works in practice
Rural Haiti isn’t the usual landing pad for recent USC graduates. But then again, Adrian Saiz isn’t your usual USC graduate. He started out like so many others here, joining a fraternity, majoring in accounting, and quickly learning to balance hard partying and academic achievement while diligently networking valuable contacts, acing his internships and plotting…
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Humanize Me! 104: Riffing on life after God with Ryan Bell
Two secular community leaders chat about what they do during an average day in this fourth episode of the Humanize Me podcast. Ryan Bell and Bart Campolo exchange stories about conversations with people who have found that they don’t believe in God but still want to connect with the world and others in a meaningful way. It’s…
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We keep ourselves from broken places
Last Sunday morning Marty and I drove over to Pasadena to hear Bryan Stevenson speak at All Saints Church. I’ve known Bryan since I was a little boy growing up on the campus of Eastern Baptist College and he was one of my father’s all-time favorite sociology students. Bryan went on to Harvard Law School…
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Humanize Me! 103: How do you tell your parents you don’t believe in God?
So you can no longer believe in God, no matter how hard you try, and you’re attempting to figure out how to – or even if you should – tell your parents. What do you do when some of your basic beliefs have shifted? How do you assure your loved ones that you continue to…
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A poem that reminds me…
As a young man, I ran a ministry called Kingdomworks, which recruited Christian college students to spend their summers in inner-city churches, organizing day-camps for children. Since becoming a humanist, I’ve heard from many of my former volunteers. Some are confused or disappointed by my transition, but others are thrilled that I’ve not only joined…
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Humanize Me! 102: Guilt, Selfishness and Reason With Scott Wiltermuth
Scott Wiltermuth used to work in the airline industry as a strategy consultant, which led him to start researching cool stuff like how socio-environmental factors affect people’s reactions to unethical behavior and their likelihood of behaving unethically themselves, and how interpersonal dynamics like synchrony and dominance affect our ability to cooperate and build community. We…
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A conversation with a student called Ray
A few days ago I met one of my favorite USC seniors for breakfast. Ray is not usually awake before 10 am, so I considered it a compliment that he rolled out of bed for me. I’d have been more flattered if he’d combed his hair as well, but that’s really just bald man jealousy…
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Humanize Me! 101
So I’d envisioned this big buildup to dropping the first episode of my new podcast, Humanize Me!, when I heard a Hillary Clinton soundbite about underpromising and overdelivering, and thought to myself, ‘Self, that’s the way to go here.’ Anyway, here’s my intro podcast with some more info about the direction I want to go…
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On being ‘ministers’
Ever since I became a humanist, I’ve been trying to work the word ‘ministry’ into the secular lexicon. After all, almost every government but ours calls its various departments ‘ministries’ (and their heads ‘ministers’) because they tend to the various needs of its citizens. Plain and simple, ministry is a great descriptor of effective, intentional…