The Ethan C. Lewin Podcast

Chris Barber is an ordained New Church priest, religion teacher at the Academy of the New Church, and President of the Swedenborg Foundation. He has dedicated much of his life to studying Emanuel Swedenborg—not just his theology, but the man behind it.Chris helps bring consciousness to the remarkably human story of the man whose writings inspired the New Church—from an ambitious scientist wrestling with ego to a life increasingly oriented toward humility and the spiritual. In many ways, Swedenborg’s story is our story: the lifelong movement from the natural toward the spiritual.Those same ideas run through Chris’s own story. Once an atheist who thought religious people were deluded, he now wonders what his younger self would make of the priest he became: “Would you hate to see the man you’ve become?” We explore his deliberate effort to fairly represent and hold progressive thought and doctrinal faith in conversation with one another—and wrestle honestly with both, the importance of meeting people where they are, as they are, and a faith that leaves room for uncertainty.Because ultimately, Chris can’t prove Swedenborg saw what he said he saw. His answer is much simpler: “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” Try it. Live it. See what it produces.Chris's Show Notes:We covered a lot of ground in this conversation! I wanted to provide a few clarifications to a few things I said from memory, along with some titles for listeners who would like to explore the media we referenced.A Few ClarificationsRe: Swedenborg's flying machine. I described his design as unpublished. Although the original drawing remained in manuscript during his lifetime, Swedenborg did publish a written proposal in his scientific journal, Daedalus Hyperboreus, in 1716.Re: Jesper Svedberg and the Swedish Bible. I conflated some of Jesper's résumé. He was an important contributor to a Bible project in the 1690s and advocated a new translation from the original languages. The Bible I briefly referenced that was published in 1703, however, was a revision of the earlier Swedish Bible.To Learn More about Swedenborg and the New Church:Swedenborg Foundation’s Guide to the Theological Works of Emanuel Swedenborg (https://swedenborg.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/OD_NCEGuide.pdf)Scribe of Heaven, Swedenborg’s Life, Work, and Impact (edited by Rose, Shotwell, and Bertucci, 2005) (https://swedenborg.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/NCE_ScribeofHeaven.pdf)Selections of Media Referenced in this Episode:The Houseleek on the Roof: The 1874–1876 Diary of Anna Keyser Baker, a Philadelphia Swedenborgian. (transcribed, edited, annotated, and appended by me, 2026) (https://www.brooklinebooks.com/9781955041683/the-houseleek-on-the-roof/)Marguerite Beck Block’s The New Church in the New World: A Study of Swedenborgianism in America. (1932; new edition for which I contributed new introduction and epilogue, 2024) (https://bookshop.swedenborg.com/products/the-new-church-in-the-new-world-swedenborgianism/)Coleman Glenn’s A Little Light: Poems (2024) (https://www.amazon.com/Little-Light-Poems-Coleman-Glenn-ebook/dp/B0DJ1K9N42)General Church Outreach’s YouTube (@NewChurchVideo) series Big Spiritual Questions (2020, 2021, 2023)What Dreams May Come. (Film, 1998). I also recommend the book of the same name, on which the film is based, by Richard Matheson (1978)Raymond A. Moody Jr.’s Life After Life. (1975)Martha S. Rosenthal’s Human Sexuality: From Cells to Society. (2012)Grant Schnarr’s You Can Believe! An Introduction to The New Christianity. (2006)Emanuel Swedenborg’s 1743-1744 Journal of Dreams. I like the one with commentary by Wilson Van Dusen. (1986)DisclaimerChristopher Augustus Barber appears in this interview solely in his personal capacity, not as an official representative of any institution or organization with which he is affiliated. The views expressed are his own and should not be attributed to those institutions or organizations.

Barbara d’Amato has spent nearly 50 years welcoming babies into the world—many of them from my hometown of Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania. She had already delivered roughly 6,000 babies by the time she closed her private practice in 2018, and one colleague estimates her lifetime total may now be closer to 10,000.Barbara’s path to midwifery began with a traumatic first birth—one that included a doctor telling her, “Don’t get your hopes up, we’re gonna lose him,” followed by eight hours not knowing whether her son would survive. Following that experience, Barbara left determined to make birth better for other women.Years later, after witnessing a completely undisturbed home birth, Barbara saw what birth could be and has spent nearly half a century since trying to preserve its humanity, dignity, and power while keeping mothers and babies safe. Only later in her career would she realize that, in helping other women, she had also been trying to heal from her own experience.At 75, Barbara reflects on that journey and opens a conversation about informed consent, childbirth education, and making women aware of the choices available to them in birth. Her story and experience are far too rich to summarize here—from raising five children and blending a family of eleven, to 24 grandchildren, to nearly five decades of continuing to work with women—the meaning at the heart of midwifery.This is the first of what I hope will be many conversations with Barbara. Welcome to episode 65.Elevate the ExperienceHelp bring better audio, video, and filmed episodes to life: Venmo. I tithe 10% of all contributions—half to the All Secure Foundation (supporting soldiers’ transition home) and half to the Academy of the New Church High School.Stay ConnectedContact: https://ethanclewin.com/

Many know Lori Odhner as the voice behind the songs that shaped their childhood, filling generations of church services and bedtime routines. Underneath that is a discipline she's practiced even longer: paying attention to the person in front of her.In this conversation, Lori traces that listening thread from her father's example, through raising nine children, her marriage to John, a daily marriage column written for over a decade, and a lifetime of quilting, songwriting, and quiet caregiving.She talks candidly about growing up with a mother who struggled with bipolar disorder, and how watching that struggle, echoed years later in raising her autistic son, Ben, taught her that suffering isn't a mistake. It's often the very thing that grows compassion in us.That same conviction reshaped her marriage counseling work. She once believed it meant teaching people the formula for a good relationship: learn this, and you'll know how to do it. Instead, she found it was something else entirely: vulnerability, not judging your partner, and not trying to change them.Ultimately, Lori makes a case for a different kind of giving: we don't always need to fix someone's problem. What's always important is simply being present. It's about seeking out the sweetness hiding in almost everyone you pass, if you're willing to peel back the foil.Check Out:Marriage Moats: 101 Thoughts to Inspire and Protect Your Marriage by Lori Odhnerhttps://caringformarriage.org/blog/Elevate the ExperienceHelp bring better audio, video, and filmed episodes to life: Venmo. I tithe 10% of all contributions—half to the All Secure Foundation (supporting soldiers’ transition home) and half to the Academy of the New Church High School.

There is often a gap between the way we are taught life is supposed to look and the way life actually looks. In celebration of her 60th birthday, I sit down with Miss Erica Cantley, a longtime ANC teacher and Maître D, to explore that space between the ideal and the real—and what happens when life doesn't quite match the picture we were given.Raised in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, Erica describes her experience as “exposure without suffocation,” and opens the conversation by reflecting on how people raised in the same community can walk away with entirely different relationships to faith. From there, she takes us through her own experience of navigating that space: when relationships don't look the way you thought they would, when things you were taught as ideals meet reality, and when things we once considered mistakes become some of our most formative experiences—sometimes even the places from which something unexpectedly good grows.Erica talks candidly about intimacy as a “gift from the Lord” meant to bring couples back together, why “if you can't talk about sex, you shouldn't be having it,” and the importance of “paying attention” to yourself, your body, your relationships, and what is actually happening rather than forcing life to fit the ideal. Along the way, she reminds us that “the quality of your life is dictated by the quality of your relationships.”Ultimately, this is a conversation about meeting people where they are—not because the ideal doesn't matter, but because none of us live there perfectly. Erica's 60 years offer a refreshing reminder that the gift is not the perfect life; the gift is the ability to keep going.Welcome to episode 63.CheckoutTeaching HAMLET as my Father DiedMaitre d’ Diaries Podcast Elevate the ExperienceHelp bring better audio, video, and filmed episodes to life: Venmo. I tithe 10% of all contributions—half to the All Secure Foundation (supporting soldiers’ transition home) and half to the Academy of the New Church High School.Stay ConnectedContact: https://ethanclewin.com/A Note from MeI’m inspired by the stories people carry, the power of honest feedback, and the magic that happens when creative minds connect. If you’re a brand interested in partnering, let’s talk: LinkedIn.Thanks for being part of this journey—PEACE!

When I found out that Anne Grace Glenn had recently given birth in front of 24 people, I said, "I need to interview her!"Anne grew up bilingual in Ottawa, spent a year in Japan as a kid, and was raised watching her parents actively live out their faith, one she'd spend years wrestling with herself, including a serious season discerning a call to become a Catholic nun.Anne grew up with nearly all her grandparents and great-grandparents present in her life, and watched her family care for them, all the way to the end. It was "so normal," she says, that she never learned to fear death.Birth found her early too, at 16, while babysitting, a mother's labor moved faster than anyone expected, and the baby was born on the bathroom floor with the father catching her. Anne was entranced.She met her husband, Coleman, a minister, through a fun love story of their own. Together, they've faced, what many might consider, to be more than their fair share of brushes with illness and mortality, and neither has let it shake their faith.A few years into their marriage, Anne was diagnosed with metastatic neuroendocrine cancer at 28. She wasn't expected to make it to 30. Facing her own mortality and still here, she went on to bring five more children into the world after that diagnosis, seven in total, through hospital births, midwife births, unplanned unattended home births, and most recently the home birth deliberately witnessed by 24 people, a true birthday.We talk about what changes when a woman feels safe during labor, the difference between pain and injury, the history baked into modern obstetrics, and why she's since pursued doula and death doula training, not as a career, but as a way of showing up for her community at both ends of life.Anne also recently finished her Master of Arts in Religious Studies at Bryn Athyn College, walking across the graduation stage holding her children's hands. Her thesis, Render Them Blessed, is on the theology of children, and it threads through everything we talk about here.Welcome to episode 62.Check Out:To read Anne’s thesis, Render Them Blessed, email mailto:[email protected] and she will send you copyOur Love Story - https://colemanandanne.wordpress.com/our-love-story/Coleman’s poetry - https://alittlelightverse.substack.com/Midwife Krystina, Baraka Birth - https://www.barakabirth.com/Maria Montessori - https://themontessorinotebook.com/the-montessori-childGodly Play - https://www.godlyplayfoundation.org/The Heart of the Homestead by Ruthann Zimmerman - https://ruthannzimm.com/the-heart-of-the-homestead/For contacting Anne/learning more:@annegraceglenn on instagram @reddoorbirth for doula related things@reddoormontessori for homeschool [email protected] for homestead/gardening/chickensElevate the ExperienceHelp bring better audio, video, and filmed episodes to life: Venmo. I tithe 10% of all contributions—half to the All Secure Foundation (supporting soldiers’ transition home) and half to the Academy of the New Church High School.