For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & Culture

Latest Episodes:

Fernando Segovia / Global Crisis and the Hope for Global Flourishing Mar 05, 2022

Show notes

As Christians around the world heard these words spoken on Ash Wednesday this past week, as an ashen oil was smudged to their brows, the world watched on in horror and grief over the brutality and aggression against Ukraine. In a swift movement of solidarity, we're all still are left with difficult and enduring questions. Why this war? What is at stake? How did we get here and what can we do? How can we stop this in a way that might hang on to a hope for peace?

But as finite, limited beings brought forth from dust, we quickly run to the end of our ability to explain. And like so many problems in our world, we're just left with further questions: What does it mean to be a Christian in a world where so many of our systems are dehumanizing? What duties are incumbent upon us as Christians, as humans? How can we learn and share a global flourishing that respects and honors all?

In this week's episode, Matt Croasmun interviews Fernando Segovia, the Oberlin Graduate Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Vanderbilt Divinity School. He is the author of Decolonizing Biblical Studies: A View from the Margins. And as a Cuban American theologian and biblical scholar, he is devoted in elevating voices outside of the dominant Western culture, and advocating for a a truly global Christianity one that is relevant to lived realities across the world. In this conversation, he reflects on the importance of learning about Christianity as a set of global and multidimensional traditions. He discusses the duties of Christians to critique human culture and society, including their own; he suggests that utopian visions can and do inform the moral and spiritual imagination in our imperfect world, but must avoid naïveté and invite constant critique and correction.

Show notes

Theology at the global level
Theology and seriousness in institutions of learning
Christian studies and standing in tradition
“There’s tremendous ignorance of what one is a part of”
‘outsiders’ and Christian tradition
The need for fresh critical analysis of Christianity
‘We cannot do the same analysis that was done in 1970 in the 2010s’
What is the good life in terms of our particular crises?
How do we uphold human dignity, human freedom, and social justice?
Paul, the Roman Empire, and solutions to our modern issues
What really is a utopian vision for our world today?
Visions of the good versus resisting what is wrong, is there tension there?
Fernando Segovia’s past in Cuba
“Even the utopian visions must be critiqued’
Paradise, liberation, and naivety
Challenging the good
Biblical interpretations: even the Evil Being came from the Kingdom of God
Contradictions and utopia

About Fernando Segovia

Fernando F. Segovia is Oberlin Graduate Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity. His teaching and research encompass Early Christian Origins, Theological Studies, and Cultural Studies. He is author of Decolonizing Biblical Studies: A View from the Margins. As a biblical critic, his interests include: Johannine Studies; method and theory; ideological criticism; the history of the discipline and its construction of early Christian antiquity. As a theologian, his interests include: non-Western Christian theologies, especially from Latin American and the Caribbean; and minority Christian theologies in the West, especially from U.S. Hispanic Americans. As a cultural critic, his interests include: postcolonial studies; minority studies; Diaspora studies. Professor Segovia has served on the editorial boards of a variety of academic journals, has worked as consultant for foundations and publishing houses, and has lectured widely both nationally and internationally. He is also a past president of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians in the United States.

Production Notes

This podcast featured biblical scholars Fernando Segovia and Matthew Croasmun
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Martin Chan
A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Julian Reid / How Black History Made Jazz: Suffering, Joy, and Longing for Our True Home Feb 26, 2022

Show notes

Jazz pianist Julian Reid on music, theology, and improvisation. The keys element of The JuJu Exchange uses the history of blues, gospel, and jazz to discuss how we communicate emotionally and spiritually through music, teaching an important lesson in how to live and long for home while we remain exiles. Features score from The JuJu Exchange's latest release, The Eternal Boombox. Interview by Ryan McAnnally-Linz and Evan Rosa.

Julian Reid is a Chicago-based jazz pianist and producer, writer, and performer (not to mention B.A. Yale University, and M.Div. Emory University). The JuJu Exchange is a musical partnership also featuring Nico Segal (trumpet, Chance the Rapper; The Social Experiment) and Everett Reid—exploring creativity, justice, and the human experience through their hip-hop infused jazz. Their new 5-song project is called The Eternal Boombox.

Show Notes

Music is invisible and tactile
Music as a matter of faith
How do we decide what is music and what is just sound?
Pain and hope in Blues music
“The Blues emerged as a way to communicate within the black community the pain and frustration and disappointment of failed black life post emancipation.”
How the Blues emerged as a way to talk about the sorrows of life.
The beauty of the mundane
The birth of Gospel Blues and Georgia Tom
Gospel sings about God, but carries on the pain of the blues
Jazz and the middle class
Amiri Bakara, Blues People
“Jazz was communicating freedom of expression of aspiration, of ambition, of joy, maybe even some frivolity in American life.”
The music theory behind emotion
The theological implications of Blues chord progressions
Exilic chords: how Blues denies the ear the chord resolution it wants to hear
“Frustrating the notion of going home”
Music theory and the meaning of home in Christianity
“Music is a means by which I can signal the dysfunction of society, the lack of home in society”
Jacob Blake and frustrated chords
Blues is the music that is ‘beautifying but not justifying,’ that ‘points forward to something that’s not yet’
The chord progressions of European imperialism
How American music and Christian music centers us back ‘home’ in the chords, “as opposed to contending with the fact that we are still pilgrims and in a foreign land"
Sugary chords avoid "the reality of us being in some real deep trouble”
Julian’s band The JuJu exchange, and their latest EP The Eternal Boombox
His album is on the stages of grief involved in processing the Pandemic
- The first stage: shock, “I can’t see my eyes”
- The second stage: anger, “Avalanche”
- The third stage: bargaining, “Eternal boombox”
- The fourth stage: depression, “And so on”
- The fifth stage, acceptance/hope, “Glimmer”
Music, Alzheimers, and how distorting the melody conveys issues with memory
Jazz and agency
Improvised music and expression in the moment
Tension and comfort in Jazz phrasing
How God can meet us in the midst of space, how God can meet us in the midst of creating wordless music”
Do we need to articulate who God is?
Improvisation and humility
“Does the music breed honest dialogue with the Creator?”
How music plays with social boundaries
“Musicians that are just out for themselves sound like it”

More from The JuJu Exchange:

Listen to The Eternal Boombox EP: https://ditto.fm/theeternalboombox
If you like what you hear and want to further the exchange, join us over at Patreon. This subscription service helps The JuJu Exchange stay independent: patreon.com/thejujuexchange
Learn more about The JuJu Exchange on their website: https://www.thejuju.life/

From the episode:

Cornel West, from Race Matters: “To be a jazz freedom fighter is to attempt to galvanize and energize world-weary people into forms of organization with accountable leadership that promote critical exchange and broad reflection. The interplay of individuality and unity is not one of uniformity and unanimity imposed from above but rather of conflict among diverse groupings that reach a dynamic consensus subject to questioning and criticism. As with a soloist in a jazz quartet, quintet or band, individuality is promoted in order to sustain and increase the creative tension with the group--a tension that yields higher levels of performance to achieve the aim of the collective project. This kind of critical and democratic sensibility flies in the face of any policing of borders and boundaries of 'blackness', 'maleness', 'femaleness', or 'whiteness'.”

Lisa Sharon Harper & Miroslav Volf / The Case for Reparations, Historical Restorative Justice, Ancestry, and Christian Power Feb 19, 2022

Show notes

"I am because they were." Lisa Sharon Harper joins Miroslav Volf to discuss the significance of narrative history for understanding ourselves and our current cultural moment; the sequence of repeated injustices that have haunted America's past and directly impacted Black Americans for hundreds of years; the Christian nationalist temptation to hoard power; the necessary conditions for true repair, the role of reparations in the pursuit of racial justice, and the goodness of belonging.

This month, Lisa Sharon Harper released a new book that traces her family's history. Even with the aid of new mail-order genetic testing and ancestry services, I think it's fair to say that most Americans live their lives disconnected from their ancestors. Call it ancestor worship, call it autonomy, call it selective memory—whatever is going on there, we tend to be disconnected from our past, mostly unaware of those from whom we came beyond our parents and grandparents.

Who were those people who we depend on for our very existence? Lisa Sharon Harper's new book is called Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World--and How to Repair It All. And when new episodes of For the Life of the world come back on May 7 this spring, we'll be talking with Lisa at length about how race broke her world and how she traced her family line back beyond the founding of America. For more information about the book, check the show notes and visit lisasharonharper.com/BlackFortuneMonth for more resources on reconnecting to our history and seeking restorative racial justice.

But for now, we're replaying Miroslav Volf's 2021 conversation with Lisa Sharon Harper; the two friends discuss the significance of narrative history for understanding ourselves and our current cultural moment; the sequence of repeated injustices that have haunted America's past and directly impacted Black Americans for hundreds of years; the Christian nationalist temptation to hoard power; the necessary conditions for true repair, the role of reparations in the pursuit of racial justice, and the goodness of belonging. Thanks for listening. And here's the episode in its entirety. Enjoy.

Show Notes

The importance of family story - ‘I am because they were’
“the hereditary sin of the philosopher is a lack of historical sense” - Frederick Nietzsche
Lisa Sharon Harper traces her family lineage through the Carribean where they suffered ‘grueling oppression’
“They found ways to, to cope and they found their pool of spirit to help them in the project of resilience.” Lisa Sharon Harper
“I'm just very aware of who I have been and also aware that their DNA literally lives in me.”
1619 law
The origin story of police today and the ‘black tax’
The idea that people always had a choice - the first settlers chose to enslave
George Floyd’s impact
We have a choice as a society right now
How faith is involved with choice
Christian nationalism today
Jesus in a suburban Starbucks versus the historical Jesus
“The white Christian nationalist project is to do one thing, is to preserve and protect the power, the assumed rule of white Christian men on this land.”
Miroslav's idea that Jesus has become a moral stranger to us: “Things that were really important to him don't matter to us and things that are really important to us didn't seem to be important to him.” Miroslav Volf
The logic of empire embedded in Christianity
The ‘big lie’ – that everyone in the Bible was white
“You cannot understand this book if you are reading it from the halls of empire” – Lisa Sharon Harper
Restoration and redemption are possible
The Very Good Gospel, How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right
“If you are human you have the ability to be transformed”
Revelation and the Tree of Life
Segregation in South Africa
“Oppression is costly, so of course the remedy will be costly”
Reparations
Humanity as the center of repentance
What is power for?
Inequity and the possibility of death
Genesis 14
Sin as separation
What would repentance look like?
Calling on brown Jesus to create a circle of belonging
Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World--and How to Repair It All
#BlackFortuneMonth
About Lisa Sharon Harper

About Lisa Sharon Harper

From Ferguson to New York, and from Germany to South Africa to Australia, Lisa Sharon Harper leads trainings that increase clergy and community leaders’ capacity to organize people of faith toward a just world. A prolific speaker, writer and activist, Ms. Harper is the founder and president of FreedomRoad.us, a consulting group dedicated to shrinking the narrative gap in our nation by designing forums and experiences that bring common understanding, common commitment and common action.

Ms. Harper is the author of several books, including Evangelical Does Not Equal Republican…or Democrat (The New Press, 2008); Left Right and Christ: Evangelical Faith in Politics (Elevate, 2011); Forgive Us: Confessions of a Compromised Faith (Zondervan, 2014); and the critically acclaimed, The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong can be Made Right (Waterbrook, a division of Penguin Random House, 2016). The Very Good Gospel, recognized as the “2016 Book of the Year” by Englewood Review of Books, explores God’s intent for the wholeness of all relationships in light of today’s headlines.

A columnist at Sojourners Magazine and an Auburn Theological Seminary Senior Fellow, Ms. Harper has appeared on TVOne, FoxNews Online, NPR, and Al Jazeera America. Her writing has been featured in CNN Belief Blog, The National Civic Review, Sojourners, The Huffington Post, Relevant Magazine, and Essence Magazine. She writes extensively on shalom and governance, immigration reform, health care reform, poverty, racial and gender justice, climate change, and transformational civic engagement.

Ms. Harper earned her Masters degree in Human Rights from Columbia University in New York City, and served as Sojourners Chief Church Engagement Officer. In this capacity, she fasted for 22 days as a core faster in 2013 with the immigration reform Fast for Families. She trained and catalyzed evangelicals in St. Louis and Baltimore to engage the 2014 push for justice in Ferguson and the 2015 healing process in Baltimore, and she educated faith leaders in South Africa to pull the levers of their new democracy toward racial equity and economic inclusion.

In 2015, The Huffington Post named Ms. Harper one of 50 powerful women religious leaders to celebrate on International Women’s Day. In 2019, The Religion Communicators Council named a two-part series within Ms. Harper’s monthly Freedom Road Podcast “Best Radio or Podcast Series of The Year”. The series focused on The Roots and Fruits of Immigrant Labor Exploitation in the US. And in 2020 Ms. Harper received The Bridge Award from The Selma Center for Nonviolence, Truth and Reconciliation in recognition of her dedication to bridging divides and building the beloved community.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Lisa Sharon Harper and Miroslav Volf
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Special thanks to Lisa Sharon Harper and Katie Zimmerman at FreedomRoad.us
Production Assistance by Martin Chan & Nathan Jowers
A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Jemar Tisby / Holistic and Historical Racial Justice: Awareness, Relationships, Commitment Feb 12, 2022

Show notes

Jemar Tisby, author of the NYT bestseller The Color of Compromise, explains the complicity and compromise of American Christians; the narrative war that confederate monuments wage (and how they were erected much later than you might think); the ugly theological justifications of racism and the shameful history of Christian white supremacy; the fraught project of selectively naming heroes and villains and then memorializing them; and the practical problem of how to go forward rightly from this moment of increased attention to racial injustice.

Get Jemar Tisby's book! The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism

Show Notes

"the North won the Civil War, but the south won the narrative war." - Bryan Stevenson
The birth of Jim Crow in the Redemption Era – white people taking back the South
Monuments as reassertion of white supremacy
The theological significance of the 'Redemption Era'
Separation of Church and State as a disguise for racism
The Bible as justification text
Matthew 6:24 and“You can't serve God and money”
Problematic historical heroes and the desire for heroes today
Should we be putting slave holders on pedestals?
Can we instead honor those who held America to its noble ideals?
What kind of future can we hope for?
What confession can look like in communities
Theologically unpacking repair
Creative repair
2020 and what happened with voting rights
Christians and reluctance to vote
What do we do now? Awareness, Relationships, Commitment
Jesus Christ and relationality
Relationships as necessary but not sufficient
Commitment to stand up to racial inequalities

Production Notes

This podcast featured author and historian Jemar Tisby
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Editorial and Production Assistance by Annie Trowbridge
A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Black Joy / Howard Thurman's Civil Rights Theology, Stacey Floyd-Thomas on Vicious Humility and Black Joy, and David Walker's Christian Abolitionism Feb 05, 2022

Show notes

Sameer Yadav comments on Howard Thurman's Civil Rights Theology, Ryan McAnnally-Linz reflects on the spiritual and moral significance of David Walker's "Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World," and Stacey Floyd-Thomas talks about racial oppression via vicious humility and the life-giving dignity of Black joy. #BlackHistoryMonth

Show Notes

Three themes that impacted Thurman’s early religious life:
- Divine common ground
- Social injustice
- Humanity of Jesus and black joy
“ Human life is one, and all humans are members of one another, and this insight is spiritual and it is the hard core of religious experience. My roots are deep in the throbbing reality of Negro idiom. And from it, I draw a full measure of inspiration and vitality. "An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World" – pamphlet by David Walker
Freedom as a natural right
“What in our day do we claim as ours when in fact it belongs to God?” Ryan McAnnally-Linz
“Where do I find myself clinging to racial privilege as though it were rightfully mine?”
And where do I find myself looking for gratitude from black Americans for doing only what obedience to God requires?”
Stacy Floyd Thomas on not finding what she needs at CVS - inequality of representation
Humility as a sin
Humility as something that Christian theology projects onto the Church as a ‘vice grip’
Black joy represented by the song, "this joy that I have, this joy that I have, the world didn't give it. And the world can't take it away." – Stacy Floyd Thomas
“I'm black, but beautiful, oh ye daughters of Jerusalem, do not resent me or gaze upon me because the sun has chosen to favor, favorably shine upon me." Song of Solomon 1:5-6 KJV
“To know joy is to be certain in one's thinking, doing, and being.”
Salvation without destruction
“we can save souls without losing our minds or losing or lynching the lives of others in the process. Our work has to be not only salvific, but sane and life saving.”- – Stacy Floyd Thomas
What joy really feels like
“To know joy is to be certain in one's thinking, doing, and being.”
“your joy does not exact oppression from another”

Production Notes

This podcast featured Sameer Yadav with an appreciation of Howard Thurman, Ryan McAnnally-Linz with an appreciation of David Walker, and social ethicist Stacey Floyd-Thomas
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Editorial and Production Assistance by Logan Ledman
A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

About Sameer Yadav

Sameer Yadav (Th.D. Duke Divinity School) is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, CA. His research areas are in the philosophy and theology of religious experience, race and religion, and the theological interpretation of Scripture. He is the author of The Problem of Perception and the Experience of God: Toward a Theological Empiricism (Fortress Press, 2015), a number of articles published in various journals such as The Journal of Analytic Theology, Faith and Philosophy, and The Journal of Religion among others, as well as a number of chapters in edited volumes.

About Stacey Floyd Thomas

Stacey Floyd-Thomas is the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Chair and Associate Professor of Ethics and Society at Vanderbilt University, and is a nationally recognized scholar and leading voice in social ethics who provides leadership to several national and international organizations that educate, advocate, support and shape the strategic work of individuals, initiatives, and institutions in their organizing efforts of championing and cultivating equity, diversity, and inclusion via organizations such as Black Religious Scholars Group (BRSG), Society for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Religion (SRER), Strategic Effective Ethical Solutions (SEES), Society of Christian Ethics (SCE) and the American Academy of Religion (AAR). She holds a PhD in Ethics, a MBA in organizational behavior and two Masters in Comparative religion and Theological Studies with certification in women’s studies, cultural studies, and counseling. Not only has she published seven books and numerous articles, she is also as an expert in leadership development, an executive coach and ordained clergy equipped with business management. As a result, Floyd-Thomas has been a lead architect in helping corporations, colleges, universities, religious congregations, and community organizations with their audit, assessment, and action plans in accordance with evolving both the mission and strategic plans. Without question, she is one of the nation’s leading voices in ethical leadership in the United States and is globally recognized for her scholarly specializations in liberation theology and ethics, critical race theory, critical pedagogy, and postcolonial studies. Additionally, leaving podium and pulpit, she hosts her own podcast to popularize and make her profession and vocation intergenerationally and intracommunally accessible through The Womanist Salon Podcast.

N.T. Wright & Miroslav Volf / The Politics of Joy & Suffering in the Now and Not Yet Jan 22, 2022

Show notes

Can we find joy in our world? It's hard enough to find genuine, death-defying joy in the wake of the failure of the modern utopian project, the expectation that human reason and technology and political revolution might save us all. Overlay the malaise of modernity with this dumb pandemic, and the prospects for joy seem bleak. But for N.T. Wright, joy doesn't depend on the whims of circumstance or the proper function of the world. He speaks of the hardy resilience of joy, even in the midst of tragic, terrible, and untimely death. He speaks of the groanings of the Spirit, laboring and working in us even and especially when we can't find the words to explain the circumstances away. Today we're sharing Miroslav Volf's 2014 interview with the New Testament scholar, theologian, and Anglican bishop N.T. Wright. He's the former Bishop of Durham, he's Emeritus Professor University of St Andrews, and is Senior Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.

NOTE: For the Life of the World is running highlights, readings, lectures, and other best-of features until May 1, 2022, when we'll be back with new conversations.

About

N.T. Wright is a New Testament scholar, theologian, and Anglican bishop. He's the former Bishop of Durham, he's Emeritus Professor University of St Andrews, and is Senior Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. He's the author of many books, including Surprised by Hope, Paul: A Biography, God and the Pandemic, Simply Christian, The World the New Testament, and many more.

Show Notes

The connection between joy and God's deliverance and rescue
Joy at what God has done
Resurrection joy
Navigating "the now and the not yet"
What happens to joy in "the now and the not yet"
Waiting, suffering, and joy
Acts 12: James is killed by Herod's men, and Peter gets out of jail free
Differentiating types of suffering
Romans 8: The whole creation groaning as a woman in childbirth
2 Corinthians 2:1-7 (NRSV) / So I made up my mind not to make you another painful visit. 2For if I cause you pain, who is there to make me glad but the one whom I have pained? 3And I wrote as I did, so that when I came, I might not suffer pain from those who should have made me rejoice; for I am confident about all of you, that my joy would be the joy of all of you. 4For I wrote to you out of much distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain, but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you. 5 But if anyone has caused pain, he has caused it not to me, but to some extent—not to exaggerate it—to all of you. 6This punishment by the majority is enough for such a person; 7so now instead you should forgive and console him, so that he may not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.
"Yet behold: Here I am"
I have no idea what's going on, but I believe.
N.T. Wright on the presiding over his father's funeral
The death of a child: there is no
Early church love is "agape"—holistic love
The emotive dimensions of joy
What kind of seeing is involved in rejoicing?
"All authority on heaven and earth has been given to me."
"It's a matter of thinking into the world in which divine authority is constituted by self-giving love."
Jesus on a donkey vs. Pontius Pilate on a war horse—the redefinition of power and authority
"Religion is what you do to keep the fabric of society together."
Treating Christianity as a private matter
Is there any joy in the world today?
The confused world that comes from believing the utopian lie of modernity

Production Notes

This podcast featured New Testament Scholar N.T. Wright and theologian Miroslav Volf
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Martin Chan
A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

MLK, Willie Jennings, Keri Day / Dangerous Theology Jan 15, 2022

Show notes

"Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness... " (Martin Luther King, Jr., April 3, 1968)

The day before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King, Jr. preached these words in Memphis, Tennessee. In a powerful and urgent message for sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee that's come to be known "I've Been to the Mountaintop," he considers the parable of the Good Samaritan, going on to speak prophetically and presciently of the dangers he himself faced, not knowing how very true his words were.

"We've got some difficult days ahead, but it really doesn't matter with me now because I've been to the mountain top. like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place, but I'm not concerned about that. I just want to do God's will, and he's allowed me to go up to the mountain and I've looked over and I've seen the promised land. I may not get that. But I want you to know the night that we will get to the promised land tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not feeling as have seen the glory of."

And on Monday as the collective consciousness of the world and the media turns its eyes to the legacy of of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, it's important to remember that he was not only a civil right activist and a pastor. He was also a theologian whose spiritual logic has profoundly impacted the church, the United States, and the world. That's why today as we commemerate the legacy of Dr. King, we ask the question: How should we do theology? What is the future of theology? And how should theology impact real human life? An impact that might even cultivate the dangerous unselfishness Jesus lived, the Good Samaritan lived, and Dr King lived.

In today's episode, theologians, Keri Day and Willie Jennings reflect on these questions. Keri is Associate Professor of Constructive Theology and African-American Religion at Princeton Theological Seminary, and Willie is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies at Yale Divinity School. As they talk about the prospects and perils of how theology is being done today, they both share the vision that theology should touch the lives and hearts of people, a public endeavor motivated by a love for the world. They stress that theology should be inherently practical, transformative, and life-giving.

And as a celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. and his distinctive, influential theological perspective, we're honored to have been given permission by the King Estate to feature a very moving passage from "I Have Been to the Mountaintop," in which he displays a deep and courageous and prophetic understanding of what should be at stake for the theology he preached. it's a theology of life and justice, a theology of profound and emanating love, a theology that envisions the promised land of flourishing that all God's children should be able to enjoy.

Show Notes

“How should theology impact real human life?” – Evan Rosa
“What is going right in theology?” - Matt Croasman
Revival of political and public theology
The ‘subaltern voice’
The difference between theology and practical theologies
“Intrinsic to a theology is the normative moment” Keri Day
“Christian theology wants to make the claim that the telos is toward something much larger, about the love of God and creation.” – Keri Day
How Christianity can address the pluralistic moment of the present.
The plurality of Christian traditions
Internal resources within Christian traditions for dealing with complexity and difference
Theology in diverse fields: literary studies, philosophy, political theory, postcolonial theory, feminist, womanist.
“I always think that you find people asking questions about God in really interesting places.” – Willie Jennings
3 crises in theology
- communication,
- thinking together about a challenging topic
- the loss of the imaginative capacity to form theological interests
What is a sufficient theological pedagogy?
What do our texts accomplish?
Does theology invite?
How to invite people into a vision of the good life
Plurality and Christianity
Violence and theology
Martin Luther King Jr. on the road from Jerusalem to Jerico
“The question is not, ‘If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?’ The question is, ‘If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?’ That's the question.” – MLK Jr.
“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.” – MLK Jr.

Note: For the Life of the World is running highlights, readings, lectures, and other best-of features until May 1, 2022, when we'll be back with new conversations.

Contributors

"I Have Been to the Mountaintop," Martin Luther King, Jr., April 3, 1968, Memphis, Tennessee was used with permission from the Estate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Special thanks to Eric Tidwell.
Keri Day is Associate Professor of Constructive Theology and African-American Religion at Princeton Theological Seminary
Willie Jennings is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies at Yale Divinity School

Production Notes

This podcast featured Martin Luther King, Jr., Keri Day, Willie Jennings, and Matt Croasmun
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Editorial and Production Assistance by Martin Chan
A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Marilynne Robinson, Charles Taylor, et al / Making or Breaking Democracy Jan 08, 2022

Show notes

Democracy in America and abroad is under threat. Authoritarian regimes, nationalisms of many stripes, a loss sense of the value of democratic participation among younger generations, and a growing cynicism and suspicion of our neighbors all threaten freedom and flourishing. In this episode, Miroslav Volf, Marilynne Robinson, Charles Taylor, Kevin Lau, and Andrew Kwok comment on what makes or breaks democracy around the world. NOTE: For the Life of the World is running highlights, readings, lectures, and other best-of features until May 1, 2022, when we'll be back with new conversations.

Show Notes

The concern is with healing our divided country and Church
How former president Trump’s false allegations of electoral fraud led to violence at the Capitol
Naming wrongdoing for what it is
“At the heart of the current effort to deny and overturn the results of the presidential election is the wounded pride of a man”
“Many Americans have taken his lie to be their truth. Sadly, but unsurprisingly, among them are many who call themselves Christians.”
‘Jesus 2020’
The theological dimension of these events
“The salvation (Jesus) offers is not the success of your political candidate or the realization of your national dream”
Each of us must ask, what will we do with our fear and anger?
“We must commit firmly to truth even, and especially when it hurts our pride when we lose”
“Commitment to the truth is never at odds with love of neighbor.”
How suspicion has disconnected us from reality, and each other
There is something ‘spiritually dead’ about our political climate
Do young people care about democracy?
“Some people might say, well, if we need to choose between prosperity and democracy, we are going to choose prosperity”
A democracy based on ‘the wealthiest culture that ever lived on earth’
Democracy’s capacity for great integrity
“There is no other way of trying to tap this potential that exists in human beings other than democracy.” – Marilynne Robinson
What are the cultural conditions of democracy?
Human beings demand our respect
The relationship between human sacrality and democracy
Kevin Lau and Andrew Kwok on their hopes for tomorrow from the perspective of Hong Kong Christians
“For non-western Christians, we always think that democracy is an outcome of Christian spirituality.”
The need for internal peace within Christianity
Healing memory
“You have to hold on tight to your identity as a beloved child of God”
Not letting affliction sway you from your true identity
Only then can you face your memory, and reality

Production Notes

This podcast featured Miroslav Volf, Marilyn Robinson, Charles Taylor, Kevin Lau, and Andrew Kwok
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Editorial and Production Assistance by Logan Ledman
A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Miroslav Volf / Where the Light Gets In: Primordial Goodness, Excluding the Middle, and Searching for Hope in 2022 Jan 01, 2022

Show notes

Miroslav Volf and Evan Rosa consider audience questions and feedback about hopes and fears going into 2022. A reflective conversation about politics and theology, the aims of theological writing, suffering and the problem of evil, the loss of the middle ground in our polarized era (and Miroslav questions whether "middle" is even a Christian category), the primordial goodness of the world and seeing suffering with one eye squinted; and whether theology is for the religious only, or indeed, for the life of the world. NOTE: For the Life of the World will run highlights, readings, lectures, and other best-of features until May 1, 2022, when we'll be back with new conversations.

Finding light in darkness: “how do we find and recognize the moments of of light?” - Miroslav Volf
Primordial goodness, positivity more powerful than negativity
“Where the light gets in” Leonard Cohen
WWII and joy in times of darkness
"The beauty before God of the singer who doesn’t know how to sing" - Chrysostom
Josef Pieper, Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation
“A writer is his life.” – Hannah Arendt
The writing process as a spiritual exercise: “What are our true aspirations?”
“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means, what I want and what I fear.” - Joan Didion
Writing in relation to reading
“There are those who write books and there are those who read them.” – Paul Tillich
Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society
Our cultural problem of “struggling to achieve in competitive environments”
Drew Collins, The Unique and Universal Christ, Refiguring the Theology of Religions
Oliver Dyer, Homo Novus
Paul Bloom, The Sweet Spot, The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning
The idea of the pleasure of pain and suffering
Martin Luther, Carl Barth, and Jurgen Moltmann as sources of inspiration
Keith DeRose, Horrendous Evils
The course “The Problem of Evil” cotaught by Miroslav Volf and Keith DeRose
The forms of resilience that are embedded in the Christian faith in the face of suffering
The relationship between Christianity and suffering
“faith can both emerge and be extremely alive in situations that when you step back, you might think would disprove faith.” Miroslav Volf
Miroslav’s father finds faith as a Prisoner of War
"I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing." Flannery O’Connor
Not being ‘too impressed’ by the negative
The relationship between the Church and polarized America
“tend to the beauty of the world within do not let the circumstances encroach upon the integrity of the self.” Miroslav Volf
The loss of the political middle ground
“Christians are unreliable allies” Ron Williams
The political middle ground versus the political common ground
Nationalism and the Church in 2022
Resisting the notion of a political Christianity
Resisting the return to Christendom
"is theology for the religious only, or is such a way of thinking obsolete?"
The lack of a designated sacred space
An orientation towards God as a secular reality, a worldly reality
This is the 100th episode, Miroslav looks back. Some favorites:
- “Charles Taylor
- Marilynne Robinson
- Chris Wiman
- Willie Jennings
- Carrie Day
" Ignore these walls.” Yvonne Mamarede of Zimbabwe

Production Notes

This podcast featured theologian Miroslav Volf
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Martin Chan, Nathan Jowers, and Logan Ledman
A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Matthew Milliner / A Womb More Spacious Than Stars: How Mary's Beauty and Presence Upends the Patriarchy and Stabilizes Christian Spirituality Dec 25, 2021

Show notes

"Don't dare think that somehow your conversation with Mary and your interest in her is in competition with your relationship with Christ. ... You are flirting with heresy if you do not have a doctrine of Mary as mother of God." —Matthew Milliner

What is the role of the Virgin Mary in Christian spiritual formation? Art historian Matthew Milliner (Wheaton College) joins Evan Rosa for a conversation about beauty of Mary in Christian spirituality—particularly for Protestants, for whom the abuses of the past have alienated them from a core component of creedal Christianity, Mary as "Theotokos," the Mother of God. They discuss the history of iconoclasm against Mary, the struggle of contemporary Christianity with art and aesthetics, unpacking the "Woman Clothed with the Sun" from Revelation 12, the feminist objection to Mary, and how the Virgin Mary upends an ancient pagan goddess culture invented to maintain patriarchy. They close with an appreciation of Mother Maria Skobtsova, who's life and witness in the Ravensbruck death camp during the Holocaust exemplifies how the example and presence of Mary Theotokos today might inform the pursuit of a life worth living.

Show Notes

"La Corona" by John Donne
"Don't dare think that somehow your conversation with Mary and your interest in her is in competition with your relationship with Christ." —Matthew Milliner, from the interview
Matthew Milliner's forthcoming book, Mother of the Lamb
How sacred "art" must support presence
"A large family album"
Iconoclasm against the Virgin Mary
"The institutionalized art world has done such a wonderful job of alienating so many people."
"Where has this been all my life?"
Madonna Della Misericordia: "The train of her robe is very wide."
Contemporary Christianity's struggle with aesthetics
"The idea that the Christianity is somehow aesthetically impoverished itself seems to me a fictitious assertion. One that can be fueled with select examples, but I just think there's so much out there that that has been undiscovered. And Mary is often at the heart of it all, like in some senses, whether or not Mary—her presence—[is] in a church in one way or another might be an indicator of whether or not it's going to be beautiful."
Revelation 12: "A Woman Clothed with the Sun"
"She's the new arc of the covenant, in which the presence of God resides."
Four-fold reading of scripture: "the literal and the allegorical and the anagogical and the tropical logical are all functioning at the same time."
Reading Revelation 12 adventurously: The Woman and the Dragon
"Don't dare think that somehow your conversation with Mary and your interest in her is in competition with your relationship with Christ."
"It only will enhance your relationship with Christ to develop these other resonances."
"Do you realize we're actually in a deep deficit of Catholic Mariology right now?"
Vatican II decimated Catholic Mariology
"You are flirting with heresy if you do not have a doctrine of Mary as mother of God."
What is the role of Mary in Christian spiritual formation?
Intersession and prayer
John Henry Newman on the correlation of Marian piety with cultures that hang on to Christianity.
The essential nature of art in Marian Christian piety.
Icon: "Virgin of the Sign"—"A womb more spacious than the stars"
Sonogram/Ultrasound Mary—conveying all powerful Deity humbled into human form
John Donne's "La Corona": "Thy Maker's maker, thy Father's mother."
Feminist objection to Mariology: "Any time Mary is uplifted, other women are left out."
"Alone of all her sex"
Rosemary Radford Ruther, Goddesses and the Divine Feminine
Goddess culture
The virgin Mary upends a goddess culture invented to maintain patriarchy
Sarah Jane Boss, Mary: New Century Theology
Charlene Spretnak, Missing Mary: The ReEmergence of the Queen of Heaven in the Modern Church
Mariology and Gender
Threatened masculinity
Pagan phallocentric religion
Courtney Hall Lee, Black Madonna: A Womanist Look at Mary of Nazareth
"Christ has a female body too, and a black body too, and a white body, two and not just the Jewish body that he has. An Indian body too, and in Chinese body too, because of his dimension as the ecclesia, which also has a Marian resonance. So welcome to Christianity. You stay long enough, your mind's going to be blown again. ... Nicene orthodoxy is where you get all this stuff."
On the Apostle Paul and Marian Piety: "I am grieving until Christ is formed in you. The birth pangs that Paul goes through. And we're all intended to nurse Christ, to give birth to Christ in a metaphorical manner in our lives. And that goes for men as well. So men also can be Marian. In fact, we must be marrying if we're going to be Orthodox Christians."
Barth, Von Balthasar, Bulgakov
"Theology is better communicated through images because the missteps are harder to make."
The equivalent of the hymn is the icon: a tested image that's been around for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, and that has been refined. And that people over time said, 'You know, there's something right about this one in particular.'"
Find icons and prints online at Skete.com
Analysis of the classic Nativity icon
"The Nativity icon is what God wants to do in your soul."
"Icons are the brake tapping on the entire hyper visual world that we're in. We do not need to be dazzled the way Leonardo dazzled the people of his day. We need to be restrained. And that's what these icons are providing."
The beam of light that crashes through the immanent frame.
Navigating the depths of interior prayer through art history.
Rowan Williams's Looking East in Winter: research on Mother Maria Skobtsova, the Russian Orthodox female parallel to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who died in the Ravensbrück concentration camp.
"Mary functioned for her [Mother Maria] as the epiphany, as the illustration, of selfless love."
Rowan Williams (from Looking East in Winter): "The Marian sense of being overwhelmed from outside by the presence of the others. Is one of the things that displaces the ego and self oriented projects, including the self-oriented project of doing good or serving the neighbor."
"She kept saying, 'My monastery has no walls. My monastery is wherever the poor are.'"
"There's the great line that the Christians of the 20th century will be either mystics or they won't be Christians at all."

About Matthew Milliner

Matthew Milliner is Associate Professor of Art History at Wheaton College. He holds an M.A. & Ph.D. in art history from Princeton University, and an M.Div from Princeton Theological Seminary. His scholarly specialization is Byzantine and medieval art, with a focus on how such images inform contemporary visual culture. He teaches across the range of art history with an eye for the prospects and pitfalls of visual theology. He is a five-time appointee to the Curatorial Advisory Board of the United States Senate, and a winner of Redeemer University’s Emerging Public Intellectual Award. He has written for publications ranging from The New York Times to First Things. He recently delivered the Wade Center’s Hansen lecture series on Native American Art, and was awarded a Commonwealth fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia to complete his forthcoming book, Mother of the Lamb (Fortress Press). Follow @Millinerd on Twitter

Production Notes

This podcast featured art historian Matthew Milliner
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Martin Chan, Nathan Jowers, and Logan Ledman
A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

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