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by Riley Reno
"From the Pew to the Public Square"Sunday to Society is a weekly podcast exploring today’s world through the lens of a Christian worldview. Hosted solo with occasional guests, each episode challenges listeners to move beyond passive faith and engage culture with clarity, conviction, and Christ at the center. Whether unpacking current events, cultural trends, or theological questions, this podcast invites you to think biblically and live boldly—every day of the week.
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- 4 days ago28 min
What the Pilgrims Actually Meant by Thanksgiving | Thanksgiving Series Part 1
On March 24, 1621, Elizabeth Winslow died at Plymouth. She was about 27, and she was the last person to die that first winter. A few weeks earlier, Susanna White had buried her husband William, leaving her with a five-year-old son and a baby born aboard the Mayflower. In May, Susanna married Elizabeth’s widower, Edward Winslow, in the first wedding in the colony.That autumn Susanna was one of only four adult women still alive at the harvest gathering we now call the “first Thanksgiving.” Her new husband wrote the only eyewitness account of it.But here’s the surprise: the Pilgrims didn’t think of that harvest meal as their thanksgiving. When they used the word, they meant a day set apart for worship, and it usually came after a day of humiliation and prayer.This is Part 1 of a three-part Thanksgiving series on Sunday to Society. In this episode we cover:Who Elizabeth Winslow and Susanna White were, and what the first winter cost PlymouthWhat we actually know about the 1621 harvest gathering, which rests on only two primary sourcesThe drought of 1623, the day of humiliation and prayer, and the rain that followedWhy the Pilgrims put humiliation before thanksgiving, and what that order still teachesWe also acknowledge that many Native people observe Thanksgiving Day as a National Day of Mourning, and we encourage listeners to seek out Wampanoag voices on this history.Parts 2 and 3 air the next two Mondays before Thanksgiving: the Revolution and the first presidential proclamation, then Lincoln and the long campaign that made Thanksgiving a national holiday.Scripture: Psalm 100:4, Philippians 4:6, 1 Thessalonians 5:18 (KJV)Sources referenced in this episode:The “First Thanksgiving” (Pilgrim Hall Museum): https://www.pilgrimhall.org/thanksgiving-national-day-of-mourning/the-first-thanksgiving/Primary sources for the 1621 gathering (Pilgrim Hall Museum, PDF): https://mail.pilgrimhall.org/pdf/Primary_Sources_Thanksgiving.pdfEyewitness account of the 1621 harvest celebration (Plimoth Patuxet Museums): https://plimoth.org/yath/unit-4/eye-witness-account-of-the-1621-harvest-celebrationFast and Thanksgiving Days of Plymouth Colony: https://www.gospelherald.com/news/fast-and-thanksgiving-days-of-plymouth-colonySusanna White Winslow (Pilgrim Hall Museum): https://www.pilgrimhall.org/?p=1859Susanna White Winslow, 17th-century documents (Pilgrim Hall, PDF): https://mail.pilgrimhall.org/pdf/Susanna_White_Winslow_17th_Century_Documents.pdfWomen of the Mayflower (The Mayflower Society): https://themayflowersociety.org/?p=4004The deaths of the first winter (American Ancestors): https://vitabrevis.americanancestors.org/2020/05/the-grim-reaperFurther reading: William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation; Edward Winslow, Good Newes from New England (1624)Sunday to Society is a Christian podcast exploring how men and women of faith lived out their convictions in the public square, and what their stories mean for ours. New episodes weekly.Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.
- 1 weeks ago29 min
The Real Eric Liddell: What Chariots of Fire Left Out
On Sunday, July 6, 1924, the 100-metre heats were run at the Paris Olympics without Britain’s fastest sprinter. Eric Liddell was at church. He had known the schedule for months, and he had already decided.Most people know the next part from Chariots of Fire: the folded note before the 400-metre final, the gold medal, the world-record time. But the film ends with the stadium. Liddell’s real story keeps going for another twenty years.In 1925, at the height of his fame, he left Britain for North China, the country where he was born to missionary parents. He taught at a school in Tientsin, was ordained in 1932, and later served in a rural mission station in a war zone. In 1941 his wife and daughters were evacuated to Canada while Eric stayed behind. In 1943 he was interned at Weihsien camp, where about 2,000 prisoners lived under Japanese guard.Inside the barbed wire, the most famous athlete in the world became “Uncle Eric.” He taught the children, led Bible studies, and organized games. He died on February 21, 1945, of a brain tumor, at 43, five months before the camp was freed. A fellow prisoner said he came as close to a saint as anyone he had known.This is the story the film left out. In this episode we trace three threads through Liddell’s life: the stand he took in Paris, the quiet years in China, and the camp where his convictions were tested hardest. And we ask what it means to settle your convictions before the pressure arrives.Scripture: 1 Samuel 2:30, Romans 12:1, Philippians 2:4 (KJV)Sources referenced in this episode:Eric Liddell Papers (SOAS University of London): https://digital.soas.ac.uk/elp/aboutEric Liddell timeline (ericliddell.org): https://ericliddell.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Timeline.pdfEric Liddell (University of Edinburgh alumni history): https://alumni.ed.ac.uk/services/notable-alumni/alumni-in-history/eric-liddellEric Liddell (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_LiddellEric Liddell’s death at Weihsien (History Scotland): https://www.historyscotland.com/history/olympic-athlete-eric-liddell-died-in-a-japanese-internment-camp-on/Further reading: Duncan Hamilton, For the Glory (2016); Norman Cliff, Prisoners of the Samurai (1998); Langdon Gilkey, Shantung Compound (1966)Sunday to Society is a Christian history podcast exploring how men and women of faith lived out their convictions in the public square, and what their stories mean for ours. New episodes weekly.Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.
- 2 weeks ago28 min
What Really Happened on October 31, 1517 | Martin Luther and the 95 Theses
On October 31, 1517, a 33-year-old monk and university professor sat down in Wittenberg and wrote to his archbishop. Attached to the letter were 95 propositions about indulgences, written in Latin and meant for academic debate.Martin Luther wasn’t trying to start a revolution. He was asking a question.The famous picture of Luther swinging a hammer at the church door comes to us from later accounts. What the evidence documents is a letter. It was addressed to Archbishop Albert of Mainz, the very man who profited from the indulgence sales Luther was questioning. Within weeks, printers across Germany had copied the Theses and spread them far beyond the university.In this episode we trace how a scholar’s question escalated into the most consequential confrontation in church history:The indulgence system and why a pastor like Luther couldn’t stay silentWhat the Theses actually say, including Thesis 1, a call to a whole life of repentanceThe escalation: Augsburg in 1518, the Leipzig Debate in 1519, the papal bull of 1520 that Luther burned, and his excommunication in 1521A short look ahead to Worms, where Luther refused to recant unless convinced by ScriptureIt’s also a Reformation Day callback. Exactly 102 years after Jan Huss was burned at Constance, the question he died for was back on the table.Scripture: Matthew 4:17, Romans 1:17, Ephesians 2:8-9 (KJV)Primary sources referenced in this episode:Luther, Ninety-Five Theses, 1517 Nuremberg printing (Library of Congress): https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_07497/The 95 Theses in English (World History Encyclopedia): https://worldhistory.org/article/1891Luther’s cover letter to Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, October 31, 1517 (Project Wittenberg): https://www.projectwittenberg.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/nine5-albrecht.txtLuther’s letter to the Archbishop of Mainz (Internet Medieval Sourcebook): https://webhome.auburn.edu/~zuwiyzd/civluther.htmFurther reading: Roland Bainton, Here I Stand (1950); Martin Brecht, Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation (1985)Sunday to Society is a Christian podcast exploring how men and women of faith lived out their convictions in the public square, and what their stories mean for ours. New episodes weekly.Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.
- 3 weeks ago28 min
He Is No Fool — The Story of Jim Elliot and Operation Auca
On January 3, 1956, five young American missionaries landed on a sandbar along the Curaray River in Ecuador. They had spent months making friendly contact with the Waodani — a tribe known for extreme violence toward outsiders — dropping gifts from a small yellow plane into their settlements. The first face-to-face encounter had gone well. Hope was high.On January 8 all five were speared to death.They were armed. They had agreed beforehand not to shoot back — unwilling to send their killers into eternity without the gospel while they themselves were ready to die. The oldest was 32. The news traveled around the globe, appearing in a photo essay in the January 30, 1956 issue of Life magazine. gotquestionsJim Elliot had written in his journal at age 22 — not as a public declaration but as a quiet private note — "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." He died at 28 living exactly that conviction.But the story does not end on that sandbar. Jim's wife Elisabeth, their young daughter Valerie, and Nate Saint's sister Rachel, along with three other wives of the murdered missionaries, eventually moved to the Waorani village to live among the people who had killed their husbands. Within years several of the men who carried out the killings — including the man who speared Jim Elliot — came to faith in Christ. One of them, Mincaye, later traveled to the United States with Nate Saint's son Steve to share his testimony. gotquestionsIn this episode we follow all three threads — Jim Elliot's journals and calling, the Operation Auca mission, and the aftermath that nobody saw coming — and ask what it means to count the cost before the moment arrives.Scripture: Matthew 16:25, John 12:24, Romans 5:8 (KJV)Primary sources and references used in this episode:Elisabeth Elliot, Through Gates of Splendor (1957, Internet Archive): https://archive.org/details/throughgatessplo00elliThe Journals of Jim Elliot, ed. Elisabeth Elliot (Internet Archive): https://archive.org/details/journalsofjimell0000elliOperation Auca — full account (dahlfred.com): https://www.dahlfred.com/index.php/blogs/gleanings-from-the-field/814-operation-auca-january-8-1956-sixty-years-laterJim Elliot biography — Mission Aviation Fellowship: https://maf.org/about/history/jim-elliot/Steve Saint, End of the Spear (Christian Book Summaries): https://www.christianbooksummaries.com/end-of-the-spear/Sunday to Society is a Christian podcast exploring how men and women of faith lived out their convictions in the public square — and what their stories mean for ours. New episodes weekly.Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.
- Oct 12, 202628 min
The Black Death Killed a Third of Europe — Here’s What the Church Did
In January 1349 Bishop Ralph of Shrewsbury wrote a letter to every priest in his diocese. The plague had swept through Bath and Wells so quickly, killing so many of his clergy, that he had run out of ordained men to administer last rites to the dying. His solution was unprecedented — he authorized the sick to confess their sins to laypeople. If no man was present, even to a woman.He had instituted 228 replacement clergy in under a year. All their predecessors had died in their parishes.In Kilkenny, Ireland, a Franciscan friar named John Clyn kept writing. One by one his brothers fell to the plague around him. He kept a detailed chronicle because he refused to let their deaths go unrecorded. Near the end he wrote: “I, waiting among the dead for death to come, leave parchment for continuing the work, in case anyone should still be alive in the future.” The manuscript ends there. A later hand added a single line: “Here it seems the author died.”Between 1347 and 1351 somewhere between 75 and 200 million people died across Eurasia. In some cities the mortality rate reached 60-70%. The medieval church — the primary institution of social care, last rites, and burial — lost an estimated 45-50% of its clergy in England alone. They died not despite their faith but because of it.In this episode we follow two specific figures through the catastrophe — Bishop Ralph and Friar John Clyn — and sit with the theological crisis the Black Death forced on a church that had no framework for death at this scale: if God is good and sovereign, why is He killing the most faithful first?Scripture: Psalm 23:4, Job 1:21, Romans 8:38-39 (KJV)Primary sources referenced in this episode:Ralph of Shrewsbury’s letter, January 1349 (Spartacus Educational, full excerpt): https://spartacus-educational.com/EXnormans10.htmRalph of Shrewsbury — Dictionary of National Biography (Wikisource): https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ralph_of_Shrewsbury_(DNB00)Ralph of Shrewsbury’s Register, 1329-1363 (Internet Archive): https://archive.org/details/registerralphsh01holmgoogGasquet, The Great Pestilence (1908, full text, Project Gutenberg): https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45815/45815-h/45815-h.htmJohn Clyn, Annals of Ireland (1849, Internet Archive): https://archive.org/details/annalsofireland00clynJohn Clyn — last entry account (Kilkenny Archaeological Society): https://kilkennyarchaeologicalsociety.ie/friar-john-klynn/Sunday to Society is a Christian podcast exploring how men and women of faith lived out their convictions in the public square — and what their stories mean for ours. New episodes weekly.Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.
- Oct 5, 202629 min
The Revival That Closed Every Pub in Wales — What Actually Happened in 1904
In the autumn of 1904 a 26 year old former coal miner stood up in a small chapel in Loughor, South Wales and began to pray. Within months an estimated 100,000 people across Wales had converted to Christianity. Taverns closed for lack of customers. Convictions for drunkenness fell dramatically — in Glamorgan alone they dropped by 50% between 1904 and 1907. Magistrates arrived at court to find no cases to try. The pit ponies hauling coal in the mines became confused and stopped, unable to understand instructions without the profanity they had always been trained to respond to.Nobody had organized this. Nobody had advertised it. There was no budget, no speaking schedule, no fixed order of service.Evan Roberts had spent eleven years underground in the coal mines, attending chapel faithfully, praying persistently for revival. In 1904 he heard a prayer that broke him open — "Bend us, O Lord" — and returned to his home village to ask if he could speak to the young people after the evening service. Seventeen people stayed. The meetings ran until 2am. Within weeks they were spreading to neighboring villages without any human coordination.The revival was real, documented, and measurable. It was also complicated. Roberts himself broke down under the weight of it by 1906, withdrawing from public ministry and never leading another revival. He lived until 1951 — another 45 years — mostly in seclusion and prayer.In this episode we follow all three threads: the young man nobody would have predicted, the revival that defied every human explanation, and the aftermath that is as instructive as the awakening itself.Scripture: Psalm 85:6, 2 Chronicles 7:14, John 3:8 (KJV)Primary sources and references used in this episode:Welsh Revival social impact — documented statistics: https://revival-library.org/histories/1905-welsh-revival-results/Welsh Revival comprehensive history (Revival Library): https://revival-library.org/histories/1904-1905-welsh-revival/Evan Roberts biography and revival account: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Roberts_(minister)Academic study on Welsh Revival and crime reduction (Lowe, 2020): https://wpcdn.web.wsu.edu/cahnrs/uploads/sites/5/2020/11/Lowe_WelshRevival_v2_compressed.pdfSunday to Society is a Christian podcast exploring how men and women of faith lived out their convictions in the public square — and what their stories mean for ours. New episodes weekly.Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.
- Sep 28, 202630 min
Jesus Said "When You Fast" Not "If You Fast" — So Why Don't We?
Open your Bible to Matthew 6. Jesus gives instructions on giving, prayer, and fasting — three disciplines treated as parallel practices, each introduced the same way. He says "when you give." He says "when you pray." He says "when you fast."Not if. When.Most Protestant Christians pray. Most give. Almost none fast. Somewhere between the first century and today, one of the three disciplines Jesus assumed his followers would practice quietly disappeared from mainstream Protestant life — and almost nobody noticed.This episode is not a history of fasting. It is a theological examination of what fasting is, what Scripture says it does, and how and why Protestant Christianity largely walked away from it. The early church fasted twice a week as standard practice — the Didache, one of the earliest Christian documents outside the New Testament, instructs believers to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays. John Wesley fasted every Wednesday and Friday throughout his ministry and expressed concern that Christians who didn't fast were spiritually shallow. The Reformers did not reject fasting — they rejected its misuse as a way of earning grace — but in practice that distinction collapsed, and a discipline practiced by Moses, David, Esther, and Jesus himself gradually became optional, then unusual, then invisible. Early Christian WritingsWe also sit with the most important Old Testament passage on fasting — Isaiah 58 — where God rejects religious fasting disconnected from genuine repentance and justice, and ask what a fast that God actually chooses looks like.Scripture: Matthew 6:16-17, Isaiah 58:6, Acts 13:2-3 (KJV)Primary sources referenced in this episode:The Didache, Chapter 8 — fasting instructions (Early Christian Writings, full text): http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/didache-roberts.htmlThe Didache, Chapter 8 (CCEL full text): https://www.ccel.org/ccel/richardson/fathers.viii.i.iii.htmlJohn Wesley, Sermon 27, "Upon Our Lord's Sermon on the Mount" (CCEL full text): https://www.ccel.org/ccel/wesley/sermons.vi.xxvii.htmlCalvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book III (CCEL full text): https://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes.v.iv.htmlSunday to Society is a Christian podcast exploring how men and women of faith lived out their convictions in the public square — and what their stories mean for ours. New episodes weekly.Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.
- Sep 21, 202629 min
He Sat 300 Hungry Children Down With No Food — And Gave Thanks Anyway | George Müller
One morning in Bristol, England, George Müller sat 300 orphaned children down at an empty breakfast table. There was no food in the house. There was no money to buy any. He bowed his head and gave thanks to God for what they were about to receive.A few minutes later a baker knocked at the door. He told Müller he hadn't been able to sleep the night before and had felt compelled to bake bread for the orphanage. Minutes after that a milkman whose cart had broken down outside asked if the orphanage could use several large cans of fresh milk.This was not a one-time miracle. This was a Tuesday.George Müller was born in 1805 in Prussia. As a child he stole money from his father and indulged in sinful activities. His father wanted him to become a clergyman to have a comfortable life, not to serve God. At 20 he wandered into a small prayer meeting almost by accident and was converted that night. He eventually settled in Bristol, opened his first orphan house with 30 children in 1836, and made a deliberate decision he never broke: he would never make a public financial appeal, never go into debt, and never tell anyone but God when there was a need. ScribdBy 1870 he was housing over 2,000 children in five purpose-built orphan houses on Ashley Down — the largest orphanage complex in the world. Every penny came unsolicited. He recorded over 50,000 specific answered prayers in his journals. He died in 1898 at age 92 still working. His estate was valued at £160.In this episode we follow all three threads of Müller's story — the unlikely conversion, the audacious faith experiment, and the prayer theology simple enough for anyone to apply — and ask what it would look like to give thanks before the provision rather than after.Scripture: Matthew 7:7, Philippians 4:19, Hebrews 11:6 (KJV)Primary sources referenced in this episode:Müller, Autobiography (1905 Centenary Edition, Internet Archive): https://archive.org/details/autobiography-of-george-mullerMüller, Autobiography (condensed, georgemuller.org): https://www.georgemuller.org/uploads/4/8/6/5/48652749/the-autobiography-of-george-muller.pdfMüller, Autobiography (Monergism full eBook): https://www.monergism.com/autobiography-george-m%C3%BCller-ebookSunday to Society is a Christian podcast exploring how men and women of faith lived out their convictions in the public square — and what their stories mean for ours. New episodes weekly.Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.
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About Sunday To Society
"From the Pew to the Public Square"Sunday to Society is a weekly podcast exploring today’s world through the lens of a Christian worldview. Hosted solo with occasional guests, each episode challenges listeners to move beyond passive faith and engage culture with clarity, conviction, and Christ at the center. Whether unpacking current events, cultural trends, or theological questions, this podcast invites you to think biblically and live boldly—every day of the week.
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