Sunday To Society

Riley Reno
  • 4.8 (5)
  • Society & Culture
  • Updated Weekly

"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.

  1. 2d ago

    He Prayed at the Checkpoint — And They Waved Him Through | Brother Andrew

    He was a Dutch factory worker with a beat-up Volkswagen Beetle, a car full of Bibles, and a prayer. Andrew van der Bijl grew up in wartime Netherlands, survived the Nazi occupation as a boy, served in the Dutch army in Indonesia, and came home wounded and reckless. He found a Bible on his hospital bedside table, read it out of boredom, and was converted. Nobody would have picked him for what came next. Slipping past border guards with Bibles hidden in his blue Volkswagen Beetle, Brother Andrew became one of the most audacious missionary couriers of the 20th century. At every checkpoint he prayed the same prayer — Lord, You made blind eyes see. Now make seeing eyes blind. He crossed into Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria. At the start it was him, a few friends, a small car, and faith. Christianity TodayActon Institute In 1967 he published his autobiography God's Smuggler, selling 10 million copies in 35 languages. The book transformed Open Doors, the organization he founded to serve the persecuted church, which eventually grew to operate in over 70 countries. Acton Institute In this episode we follow two threads of Andrew's story — the conversion that made him, and the operations that defined him — and sit with a question his life refuses to let go: where are you waiting for a guarantee before you step? Scripture: Psalm 91:11, Hebrews 13:3, Isaiah 6:8 (KJV) Primary sources referenced in this episode: God's Smuggler on Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/godssmuggler00andr_0Open Doors — Brother Andrew's history: https://www.opendoorsuk.org/about/our-history/gods-smuggler/Christianity Today obituary and biography: https://www.christianitytoday.com/2022/09/died-brother-andrew-open-door-smuggled-bibles-into-communis/Acton Institute profile: https://www.acton.org/religion-liberty/volume-33-number-3/brother-andrew-gods-smugglerSunday 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. Aug 10

    Fearless Before Queens, Trembling Before God | John Knox

    He spent nineteen months chained to an oar in the belly of a French galley ship. When he was released he went straight back to preaching. John Knox came to the Reformed faith late, bodyguarding a Scottish preacher named George Wishart — who was arrested and burned alive while Knox watched. Within months Knox himself was a prisoner, rowing in chains across the Mediterranean. He later wrote that even then, broken and enslaved, he never doubted he would preach in Scotland again. He was right. Knox eventually sat under Calvin in Geneva, returned to Scotland in 1559, and preached a single sermon in Perth that sparked a wave of reform across an entire nation. He then spent years in a series of face-to-face confrontations with Mary Queen of Scots — meetings that left Mary alternately furious and in tears, and Knox utterly unmoved. Mary reportedly said she feared the prayers of John Knox more than all the assembled armies of Europe. Knox himself said something that cuts the other direction entirely: "I have never once feared the devil, but I tremble every time I enter the pulpit." That contrast is the center of this episode. Fearless before a queen. Trembling before God. In this episode we follow all three threads of Knox's story — the calling forged in chains, the confrontations with royal power, and the reformation of an entire nation — and ask what it actually looks like to fear the right thing. Scripture: Romans 8:28, Acts 5:29, 2 Timothy 4:2 (KJV) Primary sources referenced in this episode: Knox, History of the Reformation in Scotland (full text): https://archive.org/details/HistoryOfTheReformationOfReligionWithinTheRealmOfScotlandJohnKnox The Works of John Knox, ed. David Laing (full text): https://archive.org/details/worksofjohnknox06knox M'Crie, The Life of John Knox (source of the pulpit quote): https://archive.org/details/lifeofknox00mcriuoft 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. Aug 3

    You Burn a Goose Today: The Martyr Who Predicted the Reformation

    In 1415 the most powerful church council in the world summoned a Czech priest to answer for his beliefs, promised him safe passage, then arrested him the moment he arrived. Jan Huss had spent years preaching against a church visibly rotting from the inside — bishops buying and selling offices, indulgences traded for cash, multiple men simultaneously claiming to be pope. He had written one of the most important theological treatises of the medieval era arguing that the church's authority must answer to Scripture, not the other way around. He had preached in Czech rather than Latin so that ordinary people could hear and understand. For all of this he was handed a paper crown painted with demons, condemned on thirty charges, and burned at the stake on July 6, 1415 — singing. His ashes were thrown into the Rhine to prevent any relics being kept. It didn't work. The Hussite Wars broke out across Bohemia within years. And exactly 102 years later, a German monk named Martin Luther read the proceedings of Huss's trial and wrote: "We are all Hussites without knowing it." In this episode we follow all three threads of Huss's story — the theology that got him killed, the trial that proved his point for him, and the prophetic arc that runs directly from his death to the Reformation. And we sit with a question his life won't let go: what does it look like to hold the line when the institution itself is the obstacle? Scripture: Acts 5:29, Matthew 10:28, John 12:24 (KJV) Primary sources referenced in this episode: Huss, De Ecclesia (1413, full text): https://archive.org/details/deecclesiachurch00hussDe Ecclesia on Wikisource: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/De_Ecclesia._The_ChurchLuther on Huss — "We Are All Hussites": https://reformedreader.wordpress.com/2018/11/01/we-are-all-hussites-luther/Luther's Table Talk (full text): https://archive.org/stream/tabletalkmartin00hazlgoog/tabletalkmartin00hazlgoog_djvu.txtSunday 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.

  4. Jul 27

    The Shoemaker Who Changed the World (And Never Came Home) | William Carey

    He had no seminary degree. No mission organization. No sending church. Just a cobbler's bench, a borrowed map of the world, and a conviction that the Great Commission was still in effect. In 1792 William Carey published an 87-page argument — backed by global population data he compiled himself — that ordinary Christians were obligated to go to the nations. The same year he helped found the Baptist Missionary Society. The year after that he sailed for India with his wife and four children and almost no financial backing. He never came home. What followed was forty years of compounding obedience across three fronts: a Bible translation project that eventually produced Scripture in over thirty Indian languages and dialects, a decades-long fight against sati — the burning of widows alive on their husbands' funeral pyres — and a personal life defined by fever, poverty, the loss of a son, and a wife whose mental health collapsed under the strain of the mission field. In 1812 a fire destroyed years of manuscript work and irreplaceable printing type in a single night. Carey started over. By 1829 the colonial government finally banned sati. Carey stopped a translation session mid-sentence to render the regulation into Bengali so it could spread immediately. This episode follows all three threads — the calling, the translation work, and the justice fight — and asks what total surrender to a calling actually looks like when the cost is real. Scripture: Matthew 28:19-20, 1 Corinthians 1:27, Proverbs 31:8-9 (KJV) Primary sources referenced in this episode: Carey's Enquiry (1792, full text): https://archive.org/details/enquiryobligat00careuoftCarey's Enquiry (alternate archive copy): https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_an-enquiry-into-the-obli_carey-william_1792Bengal Sati Regulation (1829, full text): https://indiankanoon.org/doc/87172614/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.

  5. Jul 20

    Our Top 10 Bible Stories Ft. Seth White

    In this episode of Sunday to Society, Riley Reno sits down with Seth White for a spirited, encouraging conversation about their top Bible stories. From Moses at the burning bush and David and Goliath to Daniel in the lion’s den, Jonah, Ruth, and the birth of Christ, they share the passages that have shaped their faith and ministry—and explain why these stories still matter today. Along the way, they point back to the cross, resurrection, and return of Christ as the real center of Scripture, reminding listeners that every story ultimately points to Jesus.

  6. Jul 13

    The Man Who Built American Christianity (And Nobody Remembers Him)

    He never owned a home. He never married. He kept everything he owned in a saddlebag. By the time Francis Asbury died in 1816, he had traveled approximately 300,000 miles on horseback, preached over 16,000 sermons, and watched American Methodism grow from fewer than 600 members to over 200,000. He didn't do it from a desk. He did it on the road — through fever, rheumatism, mountain winters, and frontier settlements that hadn't seen a minister in months. In this episode we follow Asbury from his arrival in America in 1771 as a 26-year-old missionary, through the Revolutionary War years when nearly every other English Methodist preacher went home and he stayed, to the Christmas Conference of December 1784 in Baltimore where American Methodism formally organized and Asbury was ordained as one of its first bishops — and then immediately went back to riding circuits. His story raises a question that doesn't get easier with time: what does total surrender to a calling actually look like? Not the version that gets a platform. The version that shows up, unglamorously, in the same places, to the same people, for decades. Scripture references: Luke 9:62, 2 Corinthians 11:27, Romans 15:20 (KJV) Primary sources referenced in this episode: Asbury's Journal (1821): https://archive.org/details/journalofrevfran01asbuThe Journal and Letters of Francis Asbury (Clark edition): https://archive.org/details/journallettersof0002elmeThe Christmas Conference (1784) — historical overview: https://www.religioninamerica.org/rahp_objects/the-methodist-church-in-america-asserts-its-independence-the-christmas-conference-of-1784/UMC overview of the Christmas Conference: https://www.umc.org/en/content/glossary-christmas-conferenceSunday 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.

  7. Jul 6

    What They Never Taught You About Patrick Henry's Most Famous Speech

    Everyone knows the last eleven words. But almost nobody knows what came before them. On March 23, 1775, Patrick Henry stood up inside St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia — not a statehouse, not a town square, a church — and delivered one of the most consequential speeches in American history. The Second Virginia Convention had gathered there because no building in Williamsburg was large enough to hold the debate that was about to happen. And what a debate it was. The colonies were fractured. Some delegates still believed reconciliation with Britain was possible. Others believed every peaceful option had already been exhausted. Henry rose to propose something radical: arm the Virginia militia and prepare for war. In the room were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and future signers of the Declaration of Independence. What Henry said next would change the direction of the revolution. But here is what gets lost in the history textbooks — the speech is not a political argument. It is a theological one. Henry invokes "the God of Hosts." He frames passivity not as safety but as moral failure. He calls the colonists' cause one watched over by "a just God who presides over the destinies of nations." He does not appeal to rights alone. He appeals to providence. He does not argue that victory is certain. He argues that standing firm is required regardless. In this episode we walk through the four movements of the speech, look at what Henry actually believed about faith and public courage, and sit with a question that is just as sharp 250 years later: what does it look like to take a costly stand when you do not know how it ends? Scripture references: Jeremiah 6:14, Galatians 5:1, 2 Chronicles 20:15 (KJV) Primary sources referenced: text of the Coercive Acts (1774), Journal of the Second Virginia Convention (March 1775), William Wirt's reconstruction of the speech (1817) 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.

  8. Jun 29

    Did God Really Found America? The Stories the Founders Couldn't Explain

    In August of 1776, George Washington's entire army was trapped against the East River with the British closing in. By every military calculation, that night should have ended the American Revolution. Then a fog rolled in so thick that nine thousand soldiers escaped without losing a single man. Washington didn't call it luck. He called it Providence. This Fourth of July, as America turns 250, Sunday to Society goes back to the founding of this country — not through politics, but through the stories the founders themselves told about what they believed was happening behind the scenes. Not every signer of the Declaration was a Christian. Some were Deists. Some were skeptics. But almost every one of them, in their own words, described the same thing: a hand bigger than their own, guiding a cause they couldn't fully control. SOURCES & FURTHER READING Here's What's Happening George Washington and the providence of the Revolutionary War — Providence Forum — https://providenceforum.org/story/george-washington/ The fog at Brooklyn and the storm at Yorktown — 917 Society — https://www.917society.org/post/providence-in-the-founding-miracles-of-the-revolutionary-war-and-the-prayers-of-george-washington Washington's letter to Thomas Nelson and his First Inaugural Address — The Tribune and Washington Stand — https://www.tribune.org/the-faith-of-george-washington/ and https://washingtonstand.com/commentary/faith-of-the-founders-washington-adams-and-jefferson-saw-gods-providence-in-americas-founding Here's the Story Most People Don't Know Jefferson's Second Inaugural Address and John Adams on the Continental Congress — Washington Stand — https://washingtonstand.com/commentary/faith-of-the-founders-washington-adams-and-jefferson-saw-gods-providence-in-americas-founding Washington on the discovery of Benedict Arnold's treason and John Hancock's words to the Continental Congress — Renew a Nation — https://www.renewanation.org/post/god-s-providence-in-american-history What God Says Benjamin Franklin's quotes on Providence and his appeal for prayer at the Constitutional Convention — WallBuilders — https://wallbuilders.com/resource/christian-faith-quotes-by-signers-of-the-declaration/ How Revolutionary era preachers used Scripture to describe God's sovereignty over nations — George P. Wood — https://georgepwood.com/2013/07/12/how-patriot-clergy-used-the-bible-to-support-the-revolution/ Sunday to Society with Riley Reno From the pew to the public square — every week. Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube Have thoughts on this episode? Drop them in the comments.

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"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.

Information

  • Creator
    Riley Reno
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    69
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2025 Riley Reno
  • Show Website
    Sunday To Society