
A Master Class on Being Human
A Black Christian and a Black Secular Humanist on Religion, Race, and Justice
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $18.72
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Darian Dauchan
About this listen
A conversation between 2 eminent Black thinkers on how to work together to make the world a better place despite deep religious differences
Brad Braxton and Anthony Pinn represent two traditions—Christianity and Secular Humanism respectively—that have for centuries existed in bitter opposition. For too long, people with different worldviews have disparaged and harmed one another. Instead of fighting each other, Braxton and Pinn talk with, listen to, and learn from one another. Their wide-ranging conversation demonstrates the possibility of fruitful exchange that accounts for—rather than masks—their differences.
Written amid the Covid-19 pandemic, threats to our democracy, and national protests for racial justice, A Master Class on Being Human shows us that constructive dialogue can help us pursue the common good without sacrificing our distinctive identities. In conversations that are frank, personal, and deeply informed by scholarship, Braxton and Pinn discuss topics that are urgent and immediate, such as the ongoing violence against Black communities, the rise of religiously unaffiliated communities, the Black Lives Matter movement. They also ponder those broader philosophical and theological questions that inform our politics and sense of what it means to be human: the meaning of religion, the stubborn dilemma of moral evil, the power and problems of hope.
Braxton and Pinn invite us to join them in a master class as they strive to create a world where differences are not tolerated but instead celebrated. In that kind of courageous classroom, all can learn how to be better people who in turn transform the world into a better place.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
All the Black Girls Are Activists
- A Fourth Wave Womanist Pursuit of Dreams as Radical Resistance
- By: EbonyJanice Moore
- Narrated by: EbonyJanice Moore
- Length: 4 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hip Hop Womanist writer and theologian EbonyJanice’s book of essays center a fourth wave of Womanism, dreaming, the pursuit of softness, ancestral reverence, and radical wholeness as tools of liberation. All The Black Girls Are Activists is a love letter to Black girls and Black women, asking and attempting to offer some answers to “Who would black women get to be if we did not have to create from a place of resistance?” by naming Black women’s wellness, wholeness, and survival as the radical revolution we have been waiting for.
-
-
An Affirming and Enlightening Read
- By readfan504 on 03-13-25
-
Black AF History
- The Un-Whitewashed Story of America
- By: Michael Harriot
- Narrated by: Michael Harriot
- Length: 15 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America’s backstory is a whitewashed mythology implanted in our collective memory. It should come as no surprise that the dominant narrative of American history is blighted with errors and oversights—after all, history books were written by white men with their perspectives at the forefront. It could even be said that the devaluation and erasure of the Black experience is as American as apple pie. In Black AF History, Michael Harriot presents a more accurate version of American history.
-
-
LOVE It!
- By KMB on 09-29-23
By: Michael Harriot
-
Black on Black
- On Our Resilience and Brilliance in America
- By: Daniel Black
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 6 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Acclaimed novelist and scholar Daniel Black has spent a career writing into the unspoken, fleshing out, through storytelling, pain that can’t be described. Now, in his debut essay collection, Black gives voice to the experiences of those who often find themselves on the margins. Tackling topics ranging from police brutality to the AIDS crisis to the role of HBCUs to queer representation in the black church, Black on Black celebrates the resilience, fortitude, and survival of black people in a land where their body is always on display.
-
-
The author is amazing
- By Taurus on 08-26-24
By: Daniel Black
-
Living Resistance
- An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Every Day
- By: Kaitlin B. Curtice
- Narrated by: Kaitlin B. Curtice
- Length: 5 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In an era in which "resistance" has become tokenized, popular Indigenous author Kaitlin Curtice reclaims it as a basic human calling. Resistance is for every human who longs to see their neighbors' holistic flourishing. We each have a role to play in the world right where we are, and our everyday acts of resistance hold us all together.
-
-
How is she always this good?!
- By MJ on 03-08-23
-
This Here Flesh
- Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
- By: Cole Arthur Riley
- Narrated by: Cole Arthur Riley
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
So writes Cole Arthur Riley in her unforgettable book of stories and reflections on discovering the sacred in her skin. In these deeply transporting pages, Arthur Riley reflects on the stories of her grandmother and father, and how they revealed to her an embodied, dignity-affirming spirituality, not only in what they believed but in the act of living itself.
-
-
A must read... but physically buy the book!
- By Erintopia on 09-26-22
-
Rest Is Resistance
- A Manifesto
- By: Tricia Hersey
- Narrated by: Tricia Hersey
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What would it be like to live in a well-rested world? Far too many of us have claimed productivity as the cornerstone of success. Brainwashed by capitalism, we subject our bodies and minds to work at an unrealistic, damaging, and machine‑level pace—feeding into the same engine that enslaved millions into brutal labor for its own relentless benefit. In Rest Is Resistance, Tricia Hersey, aka the Nap Bishop, casts an illuminating light on our troubled relationship with rest and how to imagine and dream our way to a future where rest is exalted.
-
-
What an experience
- By makeba jones on 10-26-22
By: Tricia Hersey
-
All the Black Girls Are Activists
- A Fourth Wave Womanist Pursuit of Dreams as Radical Resistance
- By: EbonyJanice Moore
- Narrated by: EbonyJanice Moore
- Length: 4 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hip Hop Womanist writer and theologian EbonyJanice’s book of essays center a fourth wave of Womanism, dreaming, the pursuit of softness, ancestral reverence, and radical wholeness as tools of liberation. All The Black Girls Are Activists is a love letter to Black girls and Black women, asking and attempting to offer some answers to “Who would black women get to be if we did not have to create from a place of resistance?” by naming Black women’s wellness, wholeness, and survival as the radical revolution we have been waiting for.
-
-
An Affirming and Enlightening Read
- By readfan504 on 03-13-25
-
Black AF History
- The Un-Whitewashed Story of America
- By: Michael Harriot
- Narrated by: Michael Harriot
- Length: 15 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America’s backstory is a whitewashed mythology implanted in our collective memory. It should come as no surprise that the dominant narrative of American history is blighted with errors and oversights—after all, history books were written by white men with their perspectives at the forefront. It could even be said that the devaluation and erasure of the Black experience is as American as apple pie. In Black AF History, Michael Harriot presents a more accurate version of American history.
-
-
LOVE It!
- By KMB on 09-29-23
By: Michael Harriot
-
Black on Black
- On Our Resilience and Brilliance in America
- By: Daniel Black
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 6 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Acclaimed novelist and scholar Daniel Black has spent a career writing into the unspoken, fleshing out, through storytelling, pain that can’t be described. Now, in his debut essay collection, Black gives voice to the experiences of those who often find themselves on the margins. Tackling topics ranging from police brutality to the AIDS crisis to the role of HBCUs to queer representation in the black church, Black on Black celebrates the resilience, fortitude, and survival of black people in a land where their body is always on display.
-
-
The author is amazing
- By Taurus on 08-26-24
By: Daniel Black
-
Living Resistance
- An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Every Day
- By: Kaitlin B. Curtice
- Narrated by: Kaitlin B. Curtice
- Length: 5 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In an era in which "resistance" has become tokenized, popular Indigenous author Kaitlin Curtice reclaims it as a basic human calling. Resistance is for every human who longs to see their neighbors' holistic flourishing. We each have a role to play in the world right where we are, and our everyday acts of resistance hold us all together.
-
-
How is she always this good?!
- By MJ on 03-08-23
-
This Here Flesh
- Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
- By: Cole Arthur Riley
- Narrated by: Cole Arthur Riley
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
So writes Cole Arthur Riley in her unforgettable book of stories and reflections on discovering the sacred in her skin. In these deeply transporting pages, Arthur Riley reflects on the stories of her grandmother and father, and how they revealed to her an embodied, dignity-affirming spirituality, not only in what they believed but in the act of living itself.
-
-
A must read... but physically buy the book!
- By Erintopia on 09-26-22
-
Rest Is Resistance
- A Manifesto
- By: Tricia Hersey
- Narrated by: Tricia Hersey
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What would it be like to live in a well-rested world? Far too many of us have claimed productivity as the cornerstone of success. Brainwashed by capitalism, we subject our bodies and minds to work at an unrealistic, damaging, and machine‑level pace—feeding into the same engine that enslaved millions into brutal labor for its own relentless benefit. In Rest Is Resistance, Tricia Hersey, aka the Nap Bishop, casts an illuminating light on our troubled relationship with rest and how to imagine and dream our way to a future where rest is exalted.
-
-
What an experience
- By makeba jones on 10-26-22
By: Tricia Hersey
-
King: A Life
- By: Jonathan Eig
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 20 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.—and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself.
-
-
My Time
- By Susan on 06-18-23
By: Jonathan Eig
-
The Gospel of Inclusion
- By: Bishop Carlton Pearson
- Narrated by: Bishop Carlton Pearson
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fourth-generation fundamentalist Carlton Pearson, a Christian megastar and host, takes a courageous and controversial stand on religion: he proposes a hell-less Christianity and a gospel of inclusion that calls for an end to local and worldwide conflicts and divisions along religious lines.
-
-
Wow!
- By Joseph on 08-14-08
-
Dancing in the Darkness
- Spiritual Lessons for Thriving in Turbulent Times
- By: Rev. Otis Moss III, Greg Lichtenberg
- Narrated by: Michael Eric Dyson, Rev. Otis Moss III
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Once again, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. first observed in the 1960s, it is midnight in America—a dark time of division and anxiety, with threats of violence looming in the shadows. In 2008, the Trinity United Church in Chicago received threats when one of its parishioners, Senator Barack Obama, ran for president. “We’re going to kill you” rang in Reverend Otis Moss’s ears when he suddenly heard a noise in the middle of the night. He grabbed a baseball bat to confront the intruder in his home.
-
-
Timely and timeless
- By Craig W Douglass on 03-17-25
By: Rev. Otis Moss III, and others
-
Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care in the Twenty-First Century
- An Introduction
- By: Wendy Cadge - editor, Shelly Rambo - editor
- Narrated by: Tanya Eby
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wendy Cadge and Shelly Rambo demonstrate the urgent need, highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, to position the long history and practice of chaplaincy within the rapidly changing landscape of American religion and spirituality. This book provides a much-needed road map for training and renewing chaplains across a professional continuum that spans major sectors of American society, including hospitals, prisons, universities, the military, and nursing homes.
-
-
Good but Woke
- By Ree Samuel Medeiros on 01-07-23
By: Wendy Cadge - editor, and others
-
Cynical Theories
- How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity - and Why This Harms Everybody
- By: Helen Pluckrose, James Lindsay
- Narrated by: Helen Pluckrose
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Have you heard that language is violence and that science is sexist? Have you read that certain people shouldn't practice yoga? Or been told that being obese is healthy, that there is no such thing as biological sex, or that only White people can be racist? Are you confused by these ideas, and do you wonder how they have managed to challenge the logic of Western society? In this probing volume, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay document the evolution of the dogma that informs these ideas, from its coarse origins in French postmodernism to its refinement within activist academic fields.
-
-
Vast Amount of Jargon Lost Me
- By P. Jackson on 10-23-20
By: Helen Pluckrose, and others
-
Black Skin, White Masks
- By: Frantz Fanon, Richard Philcox - translator
- Narrated by: Terrence Kidd
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Few modern voices have had as profound an impact on the black identity and critical race theory as Frantz Fanon, and Black Skin, White Masks represents some of his most important work. Fanon's masterwork is now available in a new translation that updates its language for a new generation of listeners. A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, Black Skin, White Masks is the unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world.
-
-
thinking for a better world
- By Anonymous User on 02-17-25
By: Frantz Fanon, and others
-
Red Lip Theology
- For Church Girls Who've Considered Tithing to the Beauty Supply Store When Sunday Morning Isn't Enough
- By: Candice Marie Benbow, Melissa Harris-Perry
- Narrated by: Candice Marie Benbow, Karen Chilton
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Blurring the boundaries of righteous and irreverent, Red Lip Theology invites us to discover freedom in a progressive Christian faith that incorporates activism, feminism, and radical authenticity. Essayist and theologian Candice Marie Benbow’s essays explore universal themes like heartache, loss, forgiveness, and sexuality, and she unflinchingly empowers women who struggle with feeling loved and nurtured by church culture.
-
-
You will know your truth and...
- By K on 08-30-22
By: Candice Marie Benbow, and others
-
God Is a Black Woman
- By: Christena Cleveland
- Narrated by: Robin Eller
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For years, Christena Cleveland spoke about racial reconciliation to congregations, justice organizations, and colleges. But she increasingly felt she could no longer trust in the God she’d been implicitly taught to worship—a white male God who preferentially empowered white men despite his claim to love all people. A God who clearly did not relate to, advocate for, or affirm a Black woman like Christena.
-
-
If you’ve grown up brown and evangelical but never quite fit in the whitemalegod club this book is for you.
- By Jason Como on 12-05-22
-
Breathe
- A Letter to My Sons
- By: Imani Perry
- Narrated by: Imani Perry
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Breathe explores the terror, grace, and beauty of coming of age as a Black person in contemporary America and what it means to parent our children in a persistently unjust world. Emotionally raw and deeply reflective, Imani Perry issues an unflinching challenge to society to see Black children as deserving of humanity. She admits fear and frustration for her African-American sons in a society that is increasingly racist and at times seems irredeemable. However, as a mother, feminist, writer, and intellectual, Perry offers an unfettered expression of love.
-
-
Delightful peek into the heart & soul of a mother
- By Treesey on 10-08-19
By: Imani Perry
-
Strange New World
- How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution
- By: Carl R. Trueman, Ryan T. Anderson - foreword
- Narrated by: Carl R. Trueman
- Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How did the world arrive at its current, disorienting state of identity politics, and how should the church respond? Historian Carl R. Trueman discusses how influences ranging from traditional institutions to technology and pornography moved modern culture toward an era of "expressive individualism." Investigating philosophies from the Romantics, Nietzsche, Marx, Wilde, Freud, and the New Left, he outlines the history of Western thought to the distinctly sexual direction of present-day identity politics and explains the modern implications of these ideas.
-
-
Read and reread
- By Daniel on 04-04-22
By: Carl R. Trueman, and others
-
White Lies
- Nine Ways to Expose and Resist the Racial Systems That Divide Us
- By: Daniel Hill
- Narrated by: Mark Smeby
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Many White Christians are eager to fight against racism and for racial justice. But what steps can they take to make good, lasting change? How can they get involved without unintentionally doing more harm than good? In this practical and illuminating guide drawn from more than 20 years of cross-cultural work and learning from some of the greatest leaders of color, pastor and racial justice advocate Daniel Hill provides nine practices rooted in Scripture that will position you to be an active supporter of inclusion, equality, and racial justice.
-
-
The church needs to confront white supremacy
- By Adam Shields on 12-14-20
By: Daniel Hill
-
I Bring the Voices of My People
- A Womanist Vision for Racial Reconciliation (Prophetic Christianity)
- By: Chanequa Walker-Barnes
- Narrated by: Robin Eller
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Chanequa Walker-Barnes offers a compelling argument that the Christian racial reconciliation movement is incapable of responding to modern-day racism. She demonstrates how reconciliation’s roots in the evangelical, male-centered Promise Keepers’ movement has resulted in a patriarchal and largely symbolic effort focused upon improving relationships between men from various racial-ethnic groups.
-
-
One of the...
- By CJ Stewart on 03-19-21
Critic reviews
“This illuminating conversation between a Black Christian theologian and a Black atheist is a seminal text in the emerging field of Black interfaith studies. It is a beautiful model of how to constructively engage on matters of fundamental disagreement even while strengthening collaboration on issues of mutual concern.” —Eboo Patel, founder and president of Interfaith America and author of We Need to Build: Field Notes for Diverse Democracy
“Reading A Master Class on Being Human was like an invitation to eavesdrop on two friends in probing and intimate conversation. It is a salve for anyone exhausted by polarization and domination, and a reminder that difference can be a source of connection rather than something to be extinguished.” —Brie Loskota, executive director, Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion, University of Chicago
“We know that avoiding discomfort won’t make us whole and that shutting down disagreement prevents us from growing. But what we don’t know is how to take on these difficult challenges. A Master Class on Being Human helps us answer this critical question, both by sharing profound insights on how we can live in this world together and by modeling how we have meaningful conversations with people who don’t always agree with us.” —Simran Jeet Singh, author of The Light We Give: How Sikh Wisdom Can Transform Your Life