Conversing with Mark Labberton

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Technocracy and Encounter, with Brian Patrick Green Jul 21, 2026

Show notes

Can technology be leveraged for the human good? Or will AI technology and its explosive expansion bring about the opposite—a culture that reduces our magnificent humanity to means for technocratic ends?

"We can either create the Tower of Babel or we can rebuild the walls of the New Jerusalem."

Brian Patrick Green has spent his career asking these difficult questions and seeking to apply ethical theory to real world technological developments. He is director of technology ethics at Santa Clara University's Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, and he is co-author of "Encountering Artificial Intelligence" as well as the newly released "Reclaiming Human Agency in the Age of Artificial Intelligence."

In this episode, Green explains the technocratic paradigm—the worldview that reduces people and the created world to raw material, data, and units of production, and sets against it what Pope Francis called a culture of encounter. He and Mark Labberton discuss the argument and impact of Pope Leo XIV's May 2026 encyclical on artificial intelligence, "Magnifica Humanitas", an uplifting moral appeal to troubled people in troubled times.

They discuss the Eucharist and the ongoing incarnation as the anchor of Catholic social teaching; how technocratic thinking distorts immigration and war from the Marshall Islands to autonomous drones in Ukraine; just war theory in an age of ever more powerful weapons; the encyclical's principles from human dignity to solidarity; and where AI genuinely serves the vulnerable in medicine, in surfacing hidden bias, and in caring for the Earth.

Episode Highlights

"It's one thing to have new technology. It's an even bigger question of how we actually use it and how it actually affects people."
"If we look at every other human being and we say, "This is an image of God in front of me. This is a person who is loved by God just as much as I am," that really transforms our way of viewing each other.
"We can either create the Tower of Babel or we can rebuild the walls of the New Jerusalem.
"If one grain of sand says to the other grain of sand, 'I'm better than you are,' that's a weird thing for sand to be saying to each other."
"It's an encyclical about AI ostensibly, but really it's an encyclical about humanity … and what our role is here in the universe."

About Brian Patrick Green

Brian Patrick Green directs technology ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, where he teaches engineers to weigh the human stakes of their work. A former genetics major, he turned toward technology's social impact after a year with the Jesuit Volunteers International in the Marshall Islands, a landscape marked by nuclear testing. He earned his doctorate at the Graduate Theological Union and has focused on AI since 2016. He co-authored "Encountering Artificial Intelligence: Ethical and Anthropological Investigations" and the new "Reclaiming Human Agency in the Age of Artificial Intelligence," and advises Catholic and multi-faith AI efforts, including at the Vatican.

Helpful Links and Resources

"Encountering Artificial Intelligence: Ethical and Anthropological Investigations," a 2023 volume Green contributed to, free online at the Journal of Moral Theology: https://jmt.scholasticahq.com/article/91230-encountering-artificial-intelligence-ethical-and-anthropological-investigations
"Reclaiming Human Agency in the Age of Artificial Intelligence," 2025 co-edited by Green, free online: https://jmt.scholasticahq.com/article/154545-reclaiming-human-agency-in-the-age-of-artificial-intelligence
"Magnifica Humanitas," Pope Leo XIV's 2026 encyclical on artificial intelligence, on the Vatican site: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html
AI and Faith, led by executive director Greg Cootsona: https://aiandfaith.org/
Notre Dame Institute for Ethics and the Common Good: https://ethics.nd.edu/

"The technocratic paradigm thus involves a double distortion: first, of the human person as reducible to an agent of interventions by which to manipulate life's material conditions; and, second, of the world—including the persons within it—as reducible to a field of raw material to be mastered and manipulated by means of technology. Against such reductions, the Pope urges that we cultivate a "culture of encounter"—a culture that seeks the contact of mind with mind and heart with heart, in a relational sharing of life that embraces the most vulnerable." (from "Encountering Artificial Intelligence: Ethical and Anthropological Investigations", 2023)

Show Notes

Defining applied ethics and technological ethics
Comparing how we use technology versus the technology itself
Marshall Islands, Jesuit Volunteers, and a genetics major's turn toward social impact
From biotechnology to teaching ethics to engineers, and into AI around 2016
Catholic teaching on Eucharist, communion, and an incarnation that is ongoing and physical
Pope Francis and the "culture of encounter"
Why the material world and every person carry a sacredness ethics must honor
Explaining the technocratic paradigm as a cultural phenomenon and social program
Seeing a forest as quantifiable value of lumber; or construing people as cogs, data, units of exploitation
Wendell Berry: "There are no unsacred places; / there are only sacred places / and desecrated places."
Reducing the sacredness of human life to mere numbers
Colonialism, nuclear testing, and islands treated as raw material
Immigration read through a technocratic lens on both political sides
The opposite of encounter: people as functions to move in or out
Just war theory
How drones and autonomous weapons turn killing into a problem of mere efficiency
Squeezing just war criteria until war becomes nearly impossible
Why this moral vision feels preposterous to a de-Christianized culture
Culture of encounter, and seeing each other as images of God
Romans 12 and the renewing of the mind—in order to transform how we see others
Tower of Babel versus rebuilding the New Jerusalem
Nehemiah, "synodality," and figuring things out together
Dignity, common good, universal destination of goods, subsidiarity, solidarity, social justice
Culture of power versus a civilization of love, and Augustine's "City of God"
The reach and impact of "Magnifica Humanitas", from tech workers and CEOs to UN ambassadors
Embracing the most vulnerable as the measure of encounter
AI that serves: medical data, de-biasing loan decisions, watching the Earth from orbit
AI that threatens: autonomous warfare, mass surveillance, people reduced to data
Human agency, freedom, and the choice ahead

#AIEthics #FaithAndTechnology #CatholicSocialTeaching #ArtificialIntelligence #TechnocraticParadigm #PopeLeoXIV #HumanDignity #MagnificaHumanitas #ConversingPodcast

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

Morality and the Supreme Court, with Yuval Levin Jul 14, 2026

Show notes

American history is riddled with collisions between legally defensible rulings and morally costly outcomes. Still, "the purpose of law in any society is to embody a moral framework in practice," says Yuval Levin, who joins Mark Labberton to explore the moral architecture in the foundation of the American legal system, as they review the most recent rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court has just closed one of the most consequential terms in recent memory, articulating the tension between faithfulness to the Constitution and enacting justice and morality.

Together they reflect on why and how a system founded on equality must be both majoritarian and counter-majoritarian at once; why a judge's job is to articulate their legal (rather than their moral) opinion; the rise of Constitutional originalism; why pre-Trump conservative arguments win at this Court while "Trumpy" ones lose; the contemporary relevance of the Federalist Papers; what recourse citizens have when they believe the Court has done wrong; and why the American legal system's worst failures still cluster around race.

They explore several of the 2025-26 rulings of the Supreme Court, including imposition of tariffs, immigration enforcement, and birthright citizenship, and the Voting Rights Act.

Episode Highlights

"The purpose of law in any society is to embody a moral framework in practice."
"This is a very good time to get to know The Federalist Papers."
"The role of the judge in the American system is to apply the law, not to find the moral answer per se. We hope the law does that, though it doesn't always and we know it."
"The American system of government, very much for moral reasons, is expected to be both majoritarian and counter-majoritarian."
[Regarding Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh] "They grew up in the same place. They literally went to the same high school and had the same history teacher. Their mothers knew each other … They agreed with each other 52% of the time in this last term of the Supreme Court."
[Courts to Trump] "You are in charge of the executive branch, but the executive branch is not in charge of the American government."
"If you come to this court with a pre-Trump conservative legal argument, you're going to win. If you come to this court with a Trumpy legal argument, you're going to lose."
"We experienced the high water mark of executive power about a year ago, and it is now receding."
"The areas where it has failed most are concentrated around questions of race. That has been true from the beginning. It is thankfully less true than it used to be, but it is still true, and I think we have to be uniquely sensitive to those questions for that reason."

About Yuval Levin

Yuval Levin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he holds the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy and directs Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies. He founded and edits National Affairs, and he is a senior editor at The New Atlantis and a contributing editor at National Review. His books include "The Great Debate," "The Fractured Republic," "A Time to Build," and most recently, "American Covenant."

He served on the White House domestic policy staff under George W. Bush and earned his PhD at the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought.

Helpful Links and Resources

Yuval Levin at the American Enterprise Institute: https://www.aei.org/profile/yuval-levin/
National Affairs, the publication Levin founded and edits: https://nationalaffairs.com/authors/detail/yuval-levin
American Covenant, by Yuval Levin: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/yuval-levin/american-covenant/9780465040742/?lens=basic-books
A Time to Build, by Yuval Levin: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/yuval-levin/a-time-to-build/9781541699281/?lens=basic-books
The Federalist Papers, full text at the Library of Congress: https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers
Trump v. Slaughter, the decision overturning Humphrey's Executor (June 29, 2026): https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-332_qn12.pdf
Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, the IEEPA tariffs decision (February 20, 2026): https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-1287_4gcj.pdf
Louisiana v. Callais, the Voting Rights Act decision (April 29, 2026): https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-109_21o3.pdf
Coverage of the birthright citizenship ruling in Trump v. Barbara, SCOTUSblog: https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/supreme-court-strikes-down-trumps-order-ending-birthright-citizenship/

Show Notes

Yuval Levin's legal/constitutional frame: The law exists to put a society's moral convictions into workable practice.
On "All men are created equal": If no one has natural authority over anyone else, we decide by majority vote—but equality also means the minority keeps its rights no matter who wins
The Constitution assigns those two jobs to different institutions and lets them fight: Congress and the president answer to majorities, the courts deliberately do not
Life tenure and fixed salaries exist so justices can protect minority rights without fear of majority reprisal
A judge's job is to say what the law is, not to reach the most just result; therefore good judges regularly land where they might wish they didn't.
What citizens can do when the Court rules wrongly: If it misread a statute, Congress can rewrite it.
Constitutional rulings are harder to undo, but examples include the 16th Amendment (re: income tax) and the 14th Amendment (re: black citizenship, answering the Court directly)
The pro-life movement's 50-year strategy to overturn Roe v. Wade
Levin on the difficulty of simply being in the political minority, and why the system tries to make everyone a winner sometimes
Originalism began as a limit on judicial power and judges' preferences
Legal originalism looks for original public meaning, not the drafters' intent
Parallel to biblical interpretation, where faithful readers reach wildly different conclusions
The challenge of interpreting and applying the Constitution to matters of freedom and democracy today
With Congress mostly absent, the Court is now deciding questions of executive power the Federalist Papers were written about
Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch: Same age, same hometown, same high school history teacher, agreed only 52% of the time this term
Trump v. Slaughter ends the independent agency: the Court overturned Humphrey's Executor, and the president can now fire FTC-style commissioners at will
2026 Court rulings also told the president no: on tariffs, on the National Guard in Illinois without the governor's consent, and on birthright citizenship
Levin's rule of thumb: Pre-Trump conservative arguments win at this Court, Trumpy arguments lose
Yuval Levin: Executive power peaked about a year ago and is now receding.
Louisiana v. Callais guts Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by requiring proof of racial intent
A legal bind: Black voters vote Democratic by 90% in the South, so a racist map and a purely partisan map look identical
Levin defends the ruling as law and grieves it as outcome—several Black-held Southern seats will likely be redistricted away
Why he opposes reauthorizing the VRA with race-based set-aside districts, and where he thinks change should come from instead
Software now lets parties gerrymander voter by voter—in New England, Trump won 35% and Republicans hold zero House seats
The deceptions of the human heart
Does constitutional structure just launder self-interest?
The system's deepest failures have always clustered around race
Gratitude for the Constitution in America's 250th year

#SupremeCourt #Constitution #VotingRights #Originalism #ExecutivePower #FaithAndPolitics #YuvalLevin #Conversing

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

What It Is Like to Be Dying, with Jeff Schloss Jul 07, 2026

Show notes

Against persistent fear of death, mortality avoidance, and the vices that emerge from terror management, this episode offers a personal testimony of a Christian experience of dying.

With scientific precision, disarming honesty, and immense gratitude for life, biologist Jeff Schloss offers an intimate, firsthand account of his recent diagnosis of an extremely rare terminal neurological disease: multiple system atrophy (MSA).

His doctors put the prognosis plainly: "It is terminal, it is incurable, and it's rapidly progressive."

A longtime and beloved Westmont College biology professor and senior scholar at BioLogos, Schloss offers speaks directly to the experience of dying—as he encounters each new week of this rapidly progressive disease.

He reconsiders the meaning of a "good death": increased gratitude and awareness of gift, the reality of pain, the loss of surfing and guitar-playing, the sacredness of family, and the surprising nearness of Christ as everything else falls away.

A profound witness to Christian attitudes about life and death, Schloss seeks not a hero's death, but a daily, humble life-giving commerce with Christ.

Schloss revisits a life that began in a nonreligious Jewish refugee family and pivoted through a dramatic conversion as a college-dropout surf bum in Hawaii. He traces what has changed, and what hasn't, now that death is no longer an abstraction but a daily fact in his body.

With pastoral care and hope, Mark Labberton explores with Schloss what it means to experience dying rather than simply anticipate it, the grief of losing fifty years of surfing and guitar-playing to pain and paralysis, the gift of Simone Weil's writing on suffering, the Heidelberg Catechism's opening words on "our only comfort in life and in death," and the difference between the thrill of surfing and the sacredness of family and commerce with Christ.

Episode Highlights

I knew from the second grade that I wanted to be a scientist. I was out collecting butterflies and dragonflies and looking through microscopes at all sorts of things that I couldn't believe were there.
As we were talking, it just occurred to me ... he either had what I wanted, or he was clinically crazy.
It is terminal, it is incurable, and it's rapidly progressive ... the process of dying I find it fascinating ... It's not fun, but it is fascinating.
She wasn't sad just for herself, I'm gonna lose you. And she wasn't sad empathetically just for me, so sorry for you. It was a joint sadness that the life we had hoped to share together, we are not gonna have.
The things that are most life giving are out of reach ... I've come to see it's actually not true. The things that have been delightful are out of reach ... the thing that is most life giving, and that is commerce with Christ.
I think it was the single most thrilling day of my entire life ... I said, no, those weren't thrilling, those were sacred.
I don't want to market this season. I'm not looking for a hero's death, or any kind of publicly attended death.
I would have never guessed that in this home stretch, my son and wife could carry me up the slopes of Yosemite Valley.

About Jeff Schloss

Jeff Schloss has spent four decades at the intersection of evolutionary biology and Christian theology. Now retired as Distinguished Professor of Biology at Westmont College, he continues as senior scholar at BioLogos, working alongside Francis Collins for more than fifteen years. He co-edited "The Believing Primate: Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Reflections on the Origin of Religion" and "Evolution and Ethics: Human Morality in Biological and Religious Perspective," a Templeton Science-Religion Book of Distinction winner. He has lectured at Cambridge, Oxford, and Harvard.

Helpful Links and Resources

Jeff Schloss's page at BioLogos, where he serves as senior scholar: https://biologos.org/people/jeffrey-schloss
Finding Faith: An Evolutionary Biologist Shares His Story, Schloss's own video testimony for BioLogos: https://biologos.org/resources/finding-faith-an-evolutionary-biologist-shares-his-story
Tackling the Divide Between Science and Faith, Westmont Magazine's profile of Schloss's career: https://www.westmont.edu/magazine/spring-2025/tackling-divide-between-science-and-faith
The Believing Primate: Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Reflections on the Origin of Religion, Schloss's co-edited volume: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-believing-primate-9780199597086
Evolution and Ethics: Human Morality in Biological and Religious Perspective, Schloss's Templeton Award-winning co-edited volume: https://www.eerdmans.com/9780802826954/evolution-and-ethics/
Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism, source of the Augustinian science concept Schloss references: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/where-the-conflict-really-lies-9780199812097
Heidelberg Catechism, Lord's Day 1, the confession Labberton reads to close the episode: https://www.heidelberg-catechism.com/en/lords-days/1.html
Multiple System Atrophy overview, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke: https://www.ninds.nih.gov/health-information/disorders/multiple-system-atrophy

Show Notes

Childhood in a nonreligious German Jewish refugee family
Grandfather taken by the Gestapo, relatives lost in the Holocaust
Early love of butterflies, dragonflies, and microscopes
A sixth-grade encounter with Confucius sparks a love of philosophy
College philosophy major searching for purpose and for God
Dropping out, becoming a surf bum in Hawaii
A stranger's dinner invitation becomes a turning point
A late-night prayer of surrender met by an unmistakable presence
Grad school pairing biology, philosophy, and the study of altruism
Alvin Plantinga's Augustinian science and reading creation with a map
Decades as senior scholar at BioLogos alongside Francis Collins
Why church and science drifted apart over vaccines and politics
Science as a reliable path to facts, not truth itself
A new diagnosis: rare, terminal, rapidly progressive neurological disease—multiple systems atrophy (MSA)
Doctors estimate an average of three years, with wide variation
The difference between studying death as a biologist versus the real-time experience of dying
A spouse's grief for a shared future that will not happen
Losing surfing and guitar-playing as an unplanned kind of fasting
Pain described as systemic, exhausting, disorienting
Cognitive decline and dark humor about it
Distinguishing what is thrilling from what is truly sacred
The ache of no longer being able to research and create
A flicker of despair met by a choice not to despair
Wanting a real death, not a hero's death
A wish to thank former students and colleagues before the end
Not wanting to become a burden to family
Giving God all of one's heart, without earning salvation by it
Bonhoeffer's costly grace versus cheap grace
Gratitude over entitlement as the ground of faith
Simone Weil on suffering as a place grace can work
A closing blessing and the Heidelberg Catechism's opening words
Carried up the slopes of Yosemite by a son and a wife

#ConversingPodcast #MarkLabberton #JeffSchloss #FaithAndScience #BioLogos #MultipleSystemAtrophy #Mortality #ChristianFaith #Westmont #Gratitude

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

What's Happening in America?, with David Brooks Jun 30, 2026

Show notes

As we come to the 250th celebration of America's founding, what is happening in our country? Pundits, writers, historians, political scientists, and average citizens are all trying to take stock of where we are as a nation. In this episode, we seek perspective by returning to the conversation between Mark Labberton and David Brooks immediately following the 2024 election, before the beginning of Trump's second term and all the events that have unfolded since.

Whether you come to the 250th celebrating our national life, or questioning our national life; whether you're in support of what's happening currently in America, or whether you're overwhelmed by so much that you wish was different, may we give thanks.

Thanks be to God for the place that we get to live, even as it's a place that is struggling to reach its ideals, and may we continue to pray and seek its welfare, its justice, its purpose, its fairness, and its equity.

In this episode, Mark Labberton welcomes David Brooks (The Atlantic, formerly of The New York Times) for reflections about the 2024 General Election, the state of American politics, and how we got here.

Together they discuss the multi-generational class divide; sources of alienation and distrust; how loss of faith and meaning influences political life; intellectual virtues of courage, firmness, humility, and flexibility; what it means to be a Republican in exile; the capacity for self-awareness and self-critique; and much more.

Episode Highlights

"In my opinion, Donald Trump is the wrong answer to the right question." "The flow of status and respect in this country has gone to people with elite credentials." "If you tell 51% of the country 'Your voices don't matter,' people are going to get upset." "Jesus was more a badass revolutionary than an Oxford don." "The world just loves a human being that's trying to act like Jesus."

Helpful Links and Resources

"Confessions of a Republican Exile" (The Atlantic): https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/10/trumpism-republican-party-exile-david-brooks/680243/

How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, by David Brooks: https://www.amazon.com/How-Know-Person-Seeing-Others/dp/059323006X

My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer, by Christian Wiman: https://www.amazon.com/My-Bright-Abyss-Meditation-Believer/dp/0374534373

David Brooks's current writing at The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/author/david-brooks/

Brooks and Capehart, PBS NewsHour: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/tag/brooks-and-capehart

About David Brooks

David Brooks is staff writer for The Atlantic and is Presidential Senior Fellow at Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs. Prior to that he wrote for The New York Times for 22 years*.* He is author of How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen; The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life; Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There; The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement, and is founder of Weave: The Social Fabric Project.

Show Notes

A spiritual or emotional crisis we're working out in American politics
Should we blame inflation and economic factors? (Biden's Covid-19 overstimulation)
Class divide is a generational thing
High-school-educated voters are increasingly alienated from the Democratic Party
Alienation and distrust is a multi-decade process
Loss of Faith, Loss of Meaning, and the "Death of God"
An exiled Republican
"Confessions of a Republican Exile" (via The Atlantic): "A longtime conservative, alienated by Trumpism, tries to come to terms with life on the moderate edge of the Democratic Party."
"I'm a Whig." ("Abraham Lincoln was a Whig.")
Edmund Burke and epistemological modesty—"don't revolutionize something you don't understand."
You should operate on society in the way you operate on your father, with care.
Alexander Hamilton
Whig tradition is unrepresented in contemporary American politics
How David Brooks waffles between Democrat and Republican
Isaiah Berlin: "At the rightward edge of the leftward tendency."
"The capacity for self-critique"
Matt Yglesias
Humble, introspective, and "how did we get so out of touch?"
Racism and sexism are not what's driving Trump voters
"In my opinion, Donald Trump is the wrong answer to the right question."
Mark Noll and America's use of the Bible: un-self-aware and un-self-critical
Why is there more capacity for self-critique on the Democratic side?
Jonathan Rauch and "Epistemic Regime": includes media, universities, scientific research, review process, etc.
"There's still a core of people who believe 'if the evidence says x, you should say y.'"
"The greatest victory in the history of the world."
Intellectual Virtues: Courage, Firmness, Flexibility
"Reality is constantly going to surprise you."
1980s Republicanism was more intellectually sophisticated
Conservative book publishing
*Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change* by Jonah Goldberg
How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen by David Brooks
"The Stacking Stereotype"
"A redistribution of respect" (away from large swaths of America and to elites)
"The flow of status and respect in this country has gone to people with elite credentials."
"… almost no Trump supporters."
"If you tell 51% of the country 'Your voices don't matter,' people are going to get upset."
America changing beneath us
High level of spiritual and moral authority and low level of intellectual confidence
The moral teaching of the New Testament
"People are unitary wholes."
"I became a Christian around 2013."
"Jesus was more a badass revolutionary than an Oxford don."
C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien's Christianity
"What it's like to be in the claustrophobic mind of a narcissist."
Aggression: a joyless way to see the faith
What is needed?
"I was a 50-year-old atheist."
Christian Wiman (My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer): materialistic categories couldn't explain the world
"If they made me pope of the evangelicals, which is a job that makes me shudder…"
"Be not afraid."
"The world just loves a human being that's trying to act like Jesus."
David Brooks's teaching at Yale
The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist by Dorothy Day

#Conversing #DavidBrooks #MarkLabberton #FaithAndPolitics #AmericanPolitics #HowToKnowAPerson #ChristianHumanism #Election2024

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

Dignity, Difference, and Self-Giving Love, with Tim Shriver Jun 23, 2026

Show notes

Tim Shriver has spent a lifetime learning to see the people the rest of us are socialized to look past. The chairman of Special Olympics, co-creator of the Dignity Index, and son of Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargent Shriver, he argues that what's tearing America apart isn't how much we differ, but how we treat one another when we do.

"We're not being torn apart by difference. We're being torn apart by the way we treat each other when we differ."

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Shriver reflects on the teachers who shaped him—students and athletes who taught him a different way of seeing. They discuss the Dignity Index, contempt, toxic empathy that gives way to excusing harm, the role of "self-purification" in Martin Luther King Jr.'s non-violent campaigns, his Catholic faith, and embracing the Eucharist as self-giving love.

Episode Highlights

"We're not being torn apart by difference. We're being torn apart by the way we treat each other when we differ."

"Empathy is knowing and understanding. Dignity is valuing and seeing."

"You will have a superpower if you fight for your principles with all the passion you've got and add one principle: treat the other human being with dignity at the same time."

"They're not crying because they're sad for the athlete. They're crying because something is coming out of them."

"Concretely, you may hold, you may touch, you may drink of the face of God."

About Tim Shriver

Timothy Shriver has chaired Special Olympics International since 1996, growing the movement to over four million athletes worldwide. The third child of Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargent Shriver, he taught for years in New Haven public schools and helped launch the field of social and emotional learning, co-founding and chairing CASEL. In 2018 he founded UNITE to bridge America's political divides and co-created the Dignity Index, an eight-point scale from contempt to respect. He is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Fully Alive: Discovering What Matters Most, and holds degrees from Yale and Catholic University and a doctorate from the University of Connecticut.

Helpful links and Resources

Fully Alive: Discovering What Matters Most, by Tim Shriver https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374535827/fullyalive/

The Call to Unite: Voices of Hope and Awakening, edited by Tim Shriver https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/671260/the-call-to-unite-by-edited-by-tim-shriver-and-tom-rosshirt/

The Dignity Index: https://www.dignity.us

Special Olympics: https://www.specialolympics.org

"Letter from Birmingham Jail": https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/letter-birmingham-jail

Show Notes

Living and teaching in New Haven, Connecticut; learning to see dignity
Born 1959; family moves to D.C. after JFK's 1960 election
Sargent Shriver, the Peace Corps, and a faith that demanded more
Living "eye to eye" in the village
Aunt Rosemary and the camp that became Special Olympics
"An unapologetic conviction that if we worked together, we could change the world."
Choosing teaching over law; a hunger to go deep, not fast
The high school visit that changed everything
The student who dreamed of waking without braces
"They cussed me out... but somehow they also love me"
"There is some moment in our lives where being broken leads to freedom."
Learning how to see; the blind man and "what do you want?"
"They're crying because something is coming out of them."
A culture that applauds cutting people off
The Dignity Index: contempt to "I love you no matter what"; https://www.dignity.us
Gov. Spencer Cox and leading without demonizing
Toxic empathy
Empathy is not excusing
The superpower of human dignity
Fighting for your principles and add one: dignity
Thomas Merton's "pure glory of God in us"
Martin Luther King Jr.'s "self-purification" as a component of non-violent resistance (see "Letter from a Birmingham Jail")
The Eucharist: "You may hold, you may touch, you may drink of the face of God"

#TimShriver #ConversingPodcast #MarkLabberton #DignityIndex #SpecialOlympics #HumanDignity #Empathy #FaithAndPublicLife

Poetry, Paradox, and the Absence of God, with Christian Wiman Jun 16, 2026

Show notes

A poet who has lived two decades with incurable cancer on what faith sounds like when God feels more absent than present. Christian Wiman joins Mark Labberton to talk poetry, suffering, and friendship.

"The presence of God, less so. I experience the absence more than the presence."

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Wiman reflects on writing "Every Riven Thing" after a single church service, surviving a last-resort clinical trial, and the friendship behind his new book with Miroslav Volf. Together they discuss the paradox at the heart of poetry, grief that explodes into joy, and why joy asks something of us. They also weigh Heschel and Lewis's clarity, the friendless American male, and chance turned into destiny by constant choice.

Special thanks to Unconditional Media for making this video podcast recording possible during our 2026 Understory festival.

Episode Highlights

"The presence of God, less so. I experience the absence more than the presence."

"I would not let go of my despair, even though the poems were showing me something else."

"Joy asks something of us on the other side."

"The relief came from the communion between people."

"I think that that was quite a shock to me to realize that we were each envying what the other had."

About Christian Wiman

Christian Wiman is a poet, essayist, editor, and translator, and the Clement-Muehl Professor of Communication Arts at Yale Divinity School, where he teaches religion and literature with the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. From 2003 to 2013 he edited Poetry, the oldest magazine of verse in the English-speaking world, tripling its circulation and earning two National Magazine Awards. He is the author, editor, or translator of more than a dozen books, including Every Riven Thing, the memoirs My Bright Abyss and He Held Radical Light, and the genre-blending Zero at the Bone. A former Guggenheim Fellow with two honorary doctorates, he has written candidly about faith and a long struggle with incurable cancer.

Helpful Links and Resources

Glimmerings: Letters on Faith Between a Poet and a Theologian https://bookshop.org/p/books/glimmerings-letters-on-faith-between-a-poet-and-a-theologian-christian-wiman/1a13ad79a59080d1

My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer https://bookshop.org/p/books/my-bright-abyss-meditation-of-a-modern-believer-christian-wiman/dcebbe4f049250d8

Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair https://penguinbookshop.com/book/9780374603458

Show Notes

Author, editor, translator of a dozen-plus books

Twenty years living with an incurable cancer diagnosis

Editing Poetry magazine amid Ruth Lilly's $200 million gift

From editor to Yale Divinity School on one bold letter

A last-resort clinical trial: "I definitely thought it was over"

"Every Riven Thing" written in under an hour after a first church service

Inventing a new poetic form on the spot

Compression and paradox: "a great poem is irreducible"

"Bittersweet": "all my sour sweet days I will lament and love"

Simone Weil's Gravity and Grace and Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping

Absence and presence: "I experience the absence more than the presence"

My Bright Abyss and the chapter "God's Truth is Life"

"From a Window": grief that suddenly explodes into birds and joy

"I would not let go of my despair, even though the poems were showing me something else"

Zadie Smith and C.S. Lewis on joy too destabilizing to want

"joy asks something of us on the other side"

The rare clarity of Heschel and Lewis, marrying reason and imagination

Glimmerings: eighteen months of letters with Miroslav Volf

"After angels" and a transforming walk near the Div School

"the relief came from the communion between people"

Friendship and the friendless American male

"we were each envying what the other had"

West Texas: an expanse "wide open and annihilating, crushing"

Ricoeur: chance turned into a destiny by virtue of a constant choice

#ChristianWiman #MarkLabberton #Conversing #PoetryAndFaith #Glimmerings #MyBrightAbyss #FaithAndDoubt #MiroslavVolf

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

Rehumanizing Our Common Life, with Shadi Hamid, Elizabeth Oldfield, Ray Pennings, and Anne Snyder Jun 09, 2026

Show notes

What does it take to rehumanize our common life in a moment of cultural fragility, institutional collapse, and crisis of trust?

Recorded at the Washington National Cathedral for Comment magazine's inaugural Understory Festival, this roundtable asks how culture, beauty, and faith might rehumanize a fractured public life. Mark Labberton is joined by Comment editor-in-chief Anne Snyder, The Sacred host Elizabeth Oldfield, Washington Post columnist Shadi Hamid, and Cardus co-founder Ray Pennings.

"It is actually possible to have deep roots and wide open arms."

In this episode, the panel reflects on building a gathering rooted in hope and Christian humanism rather than argument alone. They discuss why and how politics is downstream from culture, the role of religion in the public square, the limits of purely cerebral ways of knowing, toxic positivity versus honest hope, pluralism with deep roots, the beauty of "groaning," and learning to die well.

Special thanks to Unconditional Media for making this video podcast recording possible during our 2026 Understory festival.

Episode Highlights

"It is actually possible to have deep roots and wide open arms."—Anne Snyder

"Naturally as a Muslim, I don't agree with Christianity's truth claims, but that doesn't mean that I can't appreciate the beauty of Christianity."—Shadi Hamid

"The word that's been coming to me this whole festival is and."—Elizabeth Oldfield

"Politics is downstream from culture."—Ray Pennings

"We're all made to worship, it's just a question of what we worship."—Shadi Hamid

About the Guests

Anne Snyder is editor-in-chief of Comment, a magazine published by Cardus, and convener of the Understory Festival. She hosts The Whole Person Revolution podcast and wrote The Fabric of Character. Elizabeth Oldfield hosts The Sacred podcast, is a former director of UK think tank Theos, and author of Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times. Shadi Hamid is a Washington Post columnist, senior fellow at Georgetown's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, co-host of Zealots at the Gate, and author of The Case for American Power. Ray Pennings co-founded Cardus in 2000 and serves as its executive vice president and Comment's publisher.

Helpful Links and Resources

The Understory Festival: https://comment.org/understory/ Comment magazine: https://comment.org Cardus: https://www.cardus.ca The Understory, by Lore Ferguson Wilbert (the book behind the name): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1587435705 Elizabeth Oldfield, Fully Alive: https://www.elizabetholdfield.com The Sacred podcast: https://linktr.ee/sacredpodcast Zealots at the Gate: https://comment.org/podcasts/zealots-at-the-gate/ Shadi Hamid, The Case for American Power: https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/shadi-hamid/

Show Notes

Understory Festival, National Cathedral
Local hope, national despair
Naming the festival: the Lore Ferguson Wilbert book
Festival, not conference—body, mind, heart, soul
Cardus, a faith-based think tank
"Politics is downstream from culture."—Ray Pennings
Ways of knowing as the "secret sauce"
A Muslim observer among his favorite Christians
"I don't agree with Christianity's truth claims, but that doesn't mean that I can't appreciate the beauty of Christianity."—Shadi Hamid
Culture as the path out of despair
Weeping beside someone rolling their eyes
Groaning beauty and Romans 8
Dying well—euthanasia, deathbeds, Ben Sasse
The secular paradigm at a dead end
"We're all made to worship, it's just a question of what we worship."—Shadi Hamid
Madeleine Albright's "theophany" on faith in diplomacy
Moral ambition and the power of "and"
"The word that's been coming to me this whole festival is and."—Elizabeth Oldfield
Christian humanism—rights endowed by a Creator
Luke Bretherton—start with the neighbor's need
Hospitality—a guest, not an enemy
"It is actually possible to have deep roots and wide open arms."—Anne Snyder
Surface versus depth—showing what's underneath

#UnderstoryFestival #Comment #ChristianHumanism #PublicTheology #ShadiHamid #ElizabethOldfield #AnneSnyder #Cardus #Pluralism #Hope

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

The Cost of Loving Your Neighbour, with Jim Wallis Jun 02, 2026

Show notes

When a faith built to bless the nation gets quietly diverted into power, the most dangerous act left to the church may be refusing to whitewash the story and choosing instead to become a communion of genuinely unlike people.

On the eve of a national prayer rally rededicating America to God, Mark Labberton joined The Jim Wallis Podcast to ask whether Christians who invoke the nation's name are following Jesus or drifting from him.

Together with Jim Wallis, Mark reflects on what it means to choose Christ alone, love the neighbour, and refuse a faith fused to national power. They discuss the evangel versus "evangelicalism," the church as a communion of unlike people, worship in a black church, American exceptionalism as theological crisis, and racial gerrymandering after recent court rulings.

Episode Highlights

"I want to be evangel-centric and not be caught up in the icalisms of a history, a pattern, a habit, a sociology that has often been diverted from the evangel into power—political, social, economic, racial power."

"Paul's giving us a vision of the church that's a communion of unlike people. We know a lot about a communion of like people. But a communion of unlike people is meant to be one of the hallmarks of the church."

"I can't be a Christian alone, but I also can't be a Christian that matures if I'm a Christian only with people who are like me."

"Worship of our country, or the exceptionalism of leaders of our country—these are completely foreign to the body of Christ and to the theology of the kingdom."

"It's really like subverting reality by renaming it in a way that's euphemistic, that's literally whitewashing."

Helpful Links and Resources

The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor, by Mark Labberton https://www.ivpress.com/the-dangerous-act-of-loving-your-neighbor
Called, by Mark Labberton https://www.ivpress.com/called
The False White Gospel, by Jim Wallis https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250291899/thefalsewhitegospel/
Jim Wallis, Center on Faith and Justice https://faithandjustice.georgetown.edu/about-jim-wallis/
God's Politics with Jim Wallis (Substack): https://jimwallis.substack.com/

Show Notes

Recorded on the eve of the Rededicate 250 prayer rally
Loving your neighbour as a dangerous, costly act
Gratitude for America alongside a "far more complicated story" of suffering
"Christ alone"—Jesus, not any nation, party, or president, is Lord
"The evangel is the good news of Jesus Christ"; nothing can rival it
"A communion of unlike people is meant to be one of the hallmarks of the church."
White allies, Black solidarity, and Supreme Court rulings on Louisiana and Alabama
A friend's anniversary in African garb—living fully "on good days, maybe two-thirds"
Detroit, Black churches, and faith as joyous rediscovery
Worshiping at Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland every Sunday
Saying yes to the evangel, no to the "icalism" of evangelicalism
John Stott as mentor; the Lausanne Covenant and Global South
Stott's wartime pacifism; a father who stopped speaking for four years
American exceptionalism as a theological crisis, not just left-versus-right
"America's original sin," erasing history, and "literally whitewashing"
First citizenship in the kingdom; the moral arc bends toward justice

#MarkLabberton #JimWallis #Conversing #ChristianNationalism #ChristAlone #LoveYourNeighbor #PublicTheology #FaithAndPolitics

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Jim Wallis and Paul Woodhull.

Kinship and Gang Life, with Gregory Boyle May 26, 2026

Show notes

Father Greg Boyle has spent nearly four decades alongside gang members in Los Angeles, founding Homeboy Industries from the poorest parish in the city.

"An employed gang member may or may not go back to prison, but a healed one won't ever go back to prison."

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Boyle reflects on what heals a life inside the world's largest gang-intervention program. Together they discuss tenderness as the highest form of spiritual maturity, kinship as the true goal (with peace and justice as byproducts), why "the poor evangelize you," why demonizing collapses on both political sides, and the mental-health roots of homelessness and gang life.

Episode Highlights

"The whole incarnation was necessary, not because of sin or salvation even. It's just, for me, it's God's love needed to become tender."

"I think that's the singular agenda item for our God is just to look at you and say, 'Ah, you're here.'"

"No kinship, no peace. No kinship, no justice. No kinship, no equality. It's how it works."

"An employed gang member may or may not go back to prison, but a healed one won't ever go back to prison."

"There aren't good guys and bad guys, you know? And God doesn't see it that way, as hard as that is for us to conceive."

About Greg Boyle

Father Gregory Boyle, SJ, is an American Jesuit priest and the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world. A native Angeleno, he served as pastor of Dolores Mission in Boyle Heights from 1986 to 1992. In 2024 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, along with the California Peace Prize and Notre Dame's 2017 Laetare Medal. He is the bestselling author of Tattoos on the Heart, Barking to the Choir, The Whole Language, and Cherished Belonging. Learn more and follow at homeboyindustries.org and @homeboyindustries on Instagram.

Helpful Links and Resources

Cherished Belonging (2024): https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Cherished-Belonging/Gregory-Boyle/9781668061855
Tattoos on the Heart: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Tattoos-on-the-Heart/Gregory-Boyle/9781439153154
Homeboy Industries: https://homeboyindustries.org
Father Greg's bio: https://homeboyindustries.org/our-story/father-greg/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/homeboyindustries
L'Arche International: https://www.larche.org

Show Notes

Native Angeleno; Catholic, family-of-eight upbringing in Mid-Wilshire
Why the Jesuits: hilarity, prophetic witness, anti-Vietnam protest
"There is no difference actually between what God wants for you and what you most deeply want"
Bolivia, 1984: liberation theology and the indigenous Jesuits
"The poor evangelize you"
Assigned to Dolores Mission—poorest parish in LA, highest concentration of gang activity
"A vocation within a vocation within a vocation"
The decade of death, 1988–98, and burying kids
Birth of Homeboy: school, "felony-friendly" jobs, nine businesses
"Nobody thinks anything up. You evolve."
Tattoos on the Heart and the discipline of paying attention
"I had been drowning in the shallow end of my own thoughts… Homeboy taught me to stand up"
Tenderness as the highest form of spiritual maturity—L'Arche
"God's love needed to become tender"—a different theology of incarnation
"Ah, you're here"—the singular agenda item of God
Kinship as God's dream; peace, justice, equality as byproducts
"No kinship, no peace. No kinship, no justice. No kinship, no equality."
"There aren't good guys and bad guys… God doesn't see it that way"
Homelessness rooted in despair, trauma, mental illness
"An employed gang member may or may not go back to prison, but a healed one won't ever go back"
LA County Jail as the largest mental institution in the world
Friendship as the secret diagnosis—and the primacy of relationship

#HomeboyIndustries #GregBoyle #ConversingPodcast #RadicalKinship #Tenderness #Compassion #FaithAndJustice #GangIntervention #Jesuit

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

Resilience for the Spiritually Weary, with Tish Harrison Warren May 19, 2026

Show notes

We tell conversion stories. We tell deconversion stories. But where are the stories of the long, complicated, and faithful middle? Author and Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren joins Mark Labberton on her new book What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience—a vision for faith that endures the long, often dry middle of life. Drawing on the Desert Mothers and Fathers, she names a quiet crisis many believers know but rarely speak: spiritual weariness, prayer that goes silent, and the cultural pull to blow up your life rather than stay in it.

"Grit is an essential ingredient of grace, and resilience is indispensable if we are to become who we are made to be."

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Warren reflects on her own burnout as a writer, mother, and priest, and what the ancient monks taught her about how to keep going. Together they discuss revivalism's distortions, stability of the heart, the church in exile, patience as resistance to consumerism, communal hope, and what it means to stay in your cell.

Episode Highlights

"What our culture and what the church tends to lack are stories of a long, steady continuation in faith."

"Grit is an essential ingredient of grace, and resilience is indispensable if we are to become who we are made to be."

"We meet God in the midst of that, not on the other side of that."

"If the moral majority was kind of dressing Jesus up and putting him in a red tie, it didn't seem like a solution to just, for then, to me, put Jesus in a blue tie."

"Our primary exile isn't a political state, it's that we're in sin."

About Tish Harrison Warren

Tish Harrison Warren is a writer and Anglican priest in Austin, Texas, and the author of Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life (Christianity Today's 2018 Book of the Year), Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work, or Watch, or Weep (Christianity Today's 2022 Book of the Year and the 2022 ECPA Christian Book of the Year), and her newest, What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience. She formerly wrote a weekly newsletter for the New York Times and was a columnist for Christianity Today. She serves as the C.S. Lewis Theological Writer-in-Residence for the Anglican Episcopal House of Studies at Baylor's George W. Truett Theological Seminary, a senior fellow with The Trinity Forum, and an assisting priest at Immanuel Anglican Church.

Helpful Links and Resources

What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience by Tish Harrison Warren https://tishharrisonwarren.com/whatgrowsinwearylands

Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life by Tish Harrison Warren https://tishharrisonwarren.com/liturgy-of-the-ordinary

Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work, or Watch, or Weep by Tish Harrison Warren https://www.ivpress.com/prayer-in-the-night

The Deepest Place: Suffering and the Formation of Hope by Curt Thompson https://curtthompsonmd.com/books/

Immanuel Anglican Church, Austin https://www.immanuelatx.org

Tish Harrison Warren online

https://tishharrisonwarren.com

https://www.instagram.com/tishharrisonwarren/

Show Notes

Award-winning Anglican priest, author, and former New York Times newsletter writer
Origins of What Grows in Weary Lands—a season of mid-career weariness
Sandwich generation: young kids and a mother with Alzheimer's
"It felt like I told my husband, like the line went dead."
Reading from chapter one—revivalism, deconversion, and the missing middle
"What our culture and what the church tends to lack are stories of a long, steady continuation in faith."
Perseverance—the "eat your vegetables" of the spiritual life
"Grit is an essential ingredient of grace, and resilience is indispensable if we are to become who we are made to be."
Reconversion, not deconstruction
Stabilitas cordis—stability of the heart
The eat-pray-love trap and mid-life self-reinvention
Striving, and treating God like an app or an Uber driver
Desert Mothers and Fathers, third through fifth century
"Stay in your cell"—a holistic call far beyond quiet-time advice
Benedict's vow of stability, drawn from desert wisdom
The American church as a church in exile, not a promised land
"If the moral majority was dressing Jesus up in a red tie, it didn't seem like a solution to put Jesus in a blue tie."
"Our primary exile isn't a political state, it's that we're in sin."
Charlie—incandescent joy after a long, hard middle
Hilda—fifty-eight years of daily prayer for her father's conversion
"Impatience is what keeps you buying things. Patience doesn't make anybody any money."
Resilience is communal—Curt Thompson on brains that cannot hope alone
The long view: small repair, slow institutional change, hope carried together

#ChristianResilience #TishHarrisonWarren #WhatGrowsInWearyLands #DesertFathers #StabilityOfTheHeart #SpiritualFormation #AnglicanFaith #FaithAndCulture #ConversingPodcast #MarkLabberton

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.