This month, God Forbid launches a powerful new six-part series, Religious Rebels: Faith, Heretics, and Reformers.
They prayed. They preached. They rebelled. Across centuries and continents, these are the stories of believers who defied empires, up-ended orthodoxy, and sometimes paid with their lives.
Each episode examines a figure who re-imagined faith and forced their world to reckon with the cost of conviction.
From Joan of Arc, the teenage mystic who led armies and died at the stake, to Giordano Bruno, the monk who dreamed of infinite worlds and was burned for heresy. From Táhirih, the Persian poet-theologian who tore off her veil to declare a new religious era, to John Calvin, who reformed the Church only to build his own theocracy.
The series also turns to the modern era: Malcolm X, whose spiritual transformation in Mecca reshaped his vision of race and faith, and Dorothy Day, the radical Catholic whose activism fused anarchism, pacifism, and sanctity.
Listen to episode one now, and keep an eye on the God Forbid feed in the ABC listen app to hear the rest of the series.
And if you've missed ABC Religion and Ethics in your inbox, fear not. This newsletter is returning monthly to feature a selection of the most thoughtful and profound conversations from our programs.
