Religious Socialism Podcast · DSA Religion and Socialism Commission

Setting A Larger Table | Live Panel

·58 min·3 clips

Gary says King’s circle treated democratic socialism as something that “can’t get out.”

The show opens with a live panel from earlier this year. Dorothy Benz introduces Andrew Wilkes and Gary Dorian, and the discussion quickly settles on the Black social gospel as a lens for liberation, economic equality, and social justice in the United States and across the world. Setting a Larger Table as a topic could not be more urgent in this world. The panel stays close to Black social Christianity. It treats that tradition as a point of convergence for theology, organizing, and the material places where struggle shows up in everyday life. Plenty Good Room is not just a phrase. Dorothy Benz draws the title from a Black church proverb that admits of various phrasings, and the conversation uses that flexibility to think about an economy of enough for all. The discussion then moves into history. Gary Dorian traces how W. E. B. Du Bois sat inside long arguments about democratic socialism, including the suspicion that the word socialism has carried in liberal settings. The Cold War sits in the background. So does the way Du Bois and other radical voices became harder to keep in public view. The panel also widens the frame to the March on Washington. It points out that the people who created that moment were democratic socialists, even if that was not always said openly. That tension is central. The conversation keeps asking how faith language, political memory, and public fear of the S word have shaped what can be said about justice. The ending turns pastoral. The closing reflection names stones of hope as prayer, poetry, breath work, and the simple act of holding community space together. It does not promise easy resolution. It leaves the listener with a sober, steady sense that enough courage may still be found to make it one more time.

As heard by us

A serious panel on Black social gospel, justice, and enough for all.

Dorothy Benz, Gary Dorian, and Andrew Wilkes anchor a serious conversation about Black social gospel, liberation, and social and economic equality in the United States and around the world.

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Why you'd press play

You want faith talk grounded in Black social gospel, economic justice, and the material struggles of community life.

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