Yesterday Chuck Morse of IRN USA News interviewed me on the radio. (You can listen to that conversation here.) Actually the segment was really more of a conversation with Chuck and his producer-partner Andre Traversa about mega church pastor Rick Warren’s Daniel Plan diet initiative.

The Daniel Plan has been going strong: supposedly more than 15,000 people have lost more than 250,000 pounds in just over a year of the diet’s life; and, since the release of Warren’s latest book The Daniel Plan: 40 Days To A Healthier Life in December of last year, this “biblically inspired” dieting plan seems to have captured the American church’s imagination in much the same way that Warren’s devotional The Purpose-Driven Life did back in 2002.

The radio show, “Chuck Morse Speaks,” invited me on after reading an article in The Washington Times by reporter Mark Kellner taking me and Rob Goodman (of Religion Dispatches) to task for the suggestion that Warren bases his diet plan on a somewhat disingenuous (or, in Goodman’s terms “unethical”) reading of Scripture. If you missed my original blog post inspired by Goodman’s insightful article, “The Bible Is Not a Diet Plan,” you can catch it here.

Talk radio host Morse is known for “his free-wheeling and insightful intellectual style” and “was named to the list of Heavy 100 Radio Talk Show Hosts by Talkers Magazine;” he has “developed a reputation for inviting guests to express opinions on all sides of issues.” His guests have included over the years Pat Buchanan, Jack Kemp, Pete Peterson, Caspar Weinburger, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Gloria Steinum, Alan Dershowitz and Geraldo Riviera.