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

Seeking and living a life worthy of our humanity. Theological insight, cultural analysis, and practical guidance for personal and communal flourishing. Brought to you by the Yale Center for Faith & Culture.

Latest Episodes:

Kendrick Lamar's Political Theology / Femi Olutade Feb 21, 2025

Super Bowl LIX was amazing, but not because of the football, or the commercials. It was the 13-minute half-time tour de force of political theology and protest art, brought to you by Kendrick Lamar. Acting like a parable to offer more to those who already get it, and to take away from those who don’t get it at all, the performance was so much more than a petty way to settle a rap beef.

But what exactly was going on? Today’s episode is an introduction to the political theology of Kendrick Lamar. Evan Rosa welcomes Femi Olutade, arguably the living expert on the theology of Kendrick Lamar. A lifelong fan of hip hop and student of theology, he’s deeply familiar not just with music Kendrick made, but the influences that made Kendrick, as well as Christian scripture and moral theology. Femi has written incredibly nuanced theological musicological reflections about Kendrick Lamar’s 2017 album DAMN., which won the Pulitzer Prize for Music.

Femi joined Dissect Podcast host Cole Cushna as lead writer for a 20-episode analysis of DAMN., offering incredible insight into the theological, moral, and political richness of Kendrick Lamar.

About Femi Olutade

Femi Olutade is the lead writer for Season 5 of Dissect, an analysis of Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning album DAMN. He’s arguably the living expert on the theology of Kendrick Lamar. A lifelong fan of hip hop and student of theology, he’s deeply familiar not just with music Kendrick made, but the influences that made Kendrick, as well as Christian scripture and moral theology. Femi has written incredibly nuanced theological musicological reflections about Kendrick Lamar’s 2017 album DAMN., which won the Pulitzer Prize for Music.

Femi joined host Cole Cushna as lead writer for a 20-episode analysis of DAMN., offering incredible insight into the theological, moral, and political richness of Kendrick Lamar.

Show Notes

Femi Olutade’s Theology of Kendrick Lamar
Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl LIX Half-Time Show (Video)
Kendrick Lamar’s Half-time Show Lyrics (Full)
Season 5 of Dissect: Kendrick Lamar's DAMN.

Kendrick Lamar’s Political Theology as a Diss Track to America

Super Bowl LIX was amazing, but not because of the football, or the commercials. It was the 13 minute half-time tour de force that Kendrick Lamar offered the world.

Uncle Sam introduces the show, the quote “Great American Game.” A playstation controller appears. Is the game football? Video game? Or some other game? Kendrick appears crouched on a car—dozens of red, white, and blue dancers emerge, evoking both the American flag which they eventually form, as well as the gang wars between bloods and crips—or as Kendrick says in Hood Politics, “Demo-crips” and “Re-blood-icans”

And what ensues is an intricately choreographed set of layered meanings, allusions, hidden references and Easter eggs—not all of which have been noticed, not to mention explained or understood.

You can find links to the performance and the lyrics in the show notes.

Femi Olutade on the Theology of Kendrick Lamar

Today’s episode is an introduction to the political theology of Kendrick Lamar. And joining me is Femi Olutade, arguably the living expert on the theology of Kendrick Lamar. As a lifelong fan of hip hop, he’s deeply familiar not just with music Kendrick made, but the influences that made Kendrick. Femi has written incredibly nuanced theological musicological reflections about Kendrick Lamar’s 2017 album DAMN., which won the Pulitzer Prize for Music.

And I became familiar with Femi’s work in 2021, while listening to a podcast called Dissect—which analyzes albums line by line, note by note. They cover mostly hip hop, but the season on Radiohead’s In Rainbows is also incredible. Femi joined host Cole Cushna to co-write a 20-episode analysis of DAMN., offering incredible insight into the theological, moral, and political richness of Kendrick Lamar, which repays so many replays. Forward, AND backward. Yes, you can play the album backwards and forwards like a mirror and they tell two different stories, one about wickedness and pride, and the other about weakness, love, and humility.

If you want to jump to my conversation with Femi about Kendrick Lamar’s Political Theology, please do, just jump ahead a few minutes.

Not Just a Diss Track to Drake, but a Diss Track to America

But I wanted to offer a few preliminaries of my own to help with this most recent context of the Super Bowl halftime performance.

Because almost immediately, it was interpreted as nothing more than one of the pettiest, egotistical, and overkill ways to settle a rap beef between Kendrick and another hip hop artist, Drake. Some fans celebrated this. Others found it at best irrelevant and confusing, and at worst an offensive waste of an opportunity to make a larger statement before an audience of 133 million viewers.

In my humble opinion, both get it wrong. Kendrick Lamar simply does not work this way.

If it was the biggest diss track of all time, it wasn’t aimed merely at Drake, but America. And if it was offensive, it was because of its moral clarity and force, striking a prophetic chord operating similar to a parable.

Jesus and Kendrick on Prophecy and Parables

Parables, according to Jesus, are meant to give more to those who already have, and take away from those who already have nothing (Matthew 13:13). Because, as the prophet Isaiah says, “seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand” (Isaiah 6:9).

At this point, it’s possible that you’re entirely confused, and if so, I’d invite you to hang with me and lean in. Watch it again, listen more closely. Because rap, according to Jay Z, is a lean-in genre. You can’t understand it without close examination, without contextual, bottom-up, historical appreciation, or without a willingness to be educated about what it’s like to be Black in America.

But I guarantee you that in Kendrick Lamar’s outstanding choreographed prophetic theatre, there’s much more going on—”there’s levels to it”—to quote Lamar.

You Picked the Right Time, but the Wrong Guy

And if you want it clearly spelled out for you—a cleaner, smoother, tighter, more palatable, less subtle social commentary that can be abstracted from history, circumstance, and the genre of rap itself so that it can be rationally evaluated—well, you’re occupying the exact position Kendrick is critiquing, which he prophetically predicts in the very performance itself. As he warns us:

The revolution 'bout to be televised You picked the right time, but the wrong guy

Still, what was that?? First, it’s public performance art, so just let it land. Watch it again. Notice something new. Submit yourself to it. Let it change you.

The Black American Experience in Hip Hop and Kendrick Lamar

And if you really want to understand it, you need to be open to the possibility that some social commentary can only be understood in light of certain lived experiences. In this case, at least the Black American experience. And then, rather than demanding that Kendrick explain it to you in your own vernacular, listen to what he’s already said. Lean in an listen to his whole body of work, learn his story, expertly rendered in jaw-dropping lyrical performance. Drive with him through his childhood streets of Compton on Good Kid M.A.A.D. City. Journey with him from caterpillar to butterfly on To Pimp a Butterfly, look in the mirror presented before you in the Pulitzer-prize winning DAMN., hear out his messy psyche laid bare in Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers, take a ride with him in GNX…

In the days following Kendrick’s super bowl performance, J Kameron Carter, Professor of African American Studies, Comparative Literature, and Religion at the University of California at Irvine, called for a more in-depth study of the 13-minute performance, noting that:

“[B]lack performance carries within it an interrogation of the question of country as the problem and question of US political theology and the legacy of Christian empire.”

This episode isn’t meant to close any books or offer a full explanation of Kendrick’s performance, let alone his music, but just to lean in, and to quote Kendrick, “salute truth and the prophecy.”

Production Notes

This podcast featured Femi Olutade
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, Zoë Halaban, Kacie Barrett & Emily Brookfield
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

The Psychology of Disaster: The Impact of Calamity on Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Health / Jamie Aten and Pam King Feb 12, 2025

Disaster preparedness is sort of an oxymoron. Disaster is the kind of indiscriminate calamity that only ever finds us ill-equipped to manage. And if you are truly prepared, you’ve probably averted disaster.

There’s a big difference between the impact of disaster on physical, material life—and its outsized impact on mental, emotional, and spiritual life.

Personal disasters like a terminal illness, natural disasters like the recent fires that razed southern Californian communities, the impact of endless, senseless wars … these all cause a pain and physical damage that can be mitigated or rebuilt. But the worst of these cases threaten to destroy the very meaning of our lives.

No wonder disaster takes such a psychological and spiritual toll. There’s an urgent need to find or even make meaning from it. To somehow explain it, justify why God would allow it, and tell a grand story that makes sense from the senseless.

These are difficult questions, and my guests today both have personal experience with disaster. Dr. Pam King is the Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology, and the Executive Director the Thrive Center. She’s an ordained Presbyterian minister, and she hosts a podcast on psychology and spirituality called With & For. Dr. Jamie Aten is a disaster psychologist and disaster ministry expert, helping others navigate mass, humanitarian, and personal disasters with scientific and spiritual insights. He is the Founder and Executive Director of the Humanitarian Disaster Institute Wheaton College, where he holds the Blanchard Chair of Humanitarian & Disaster Leadership. He is author of *A Walking Disaster: What Surviving Katrina and Cancer Taught Me about Faith and Resilience.*

In this conversation, Pam King and Jamie Aten join Evan Rosa to discuss:

Each of their personal encounters with disasters—both fire and cancer
The psychological study of disaster
The personal impact of disaster on mental, emotional, and spiritual health
The difference between resilience and fortitude
And the theological and practical considerations for how to live through disastrous events.

About Pam King

Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. She hosts the With & For podcast, and you can follow her @drpamking.

About Jamie Aten

Jamie D. Aten is a disaster psychologist and disaster ministry expert. He helps others navigate mass, humanitarian, and personal disasters with scientific and spiritual insights. He is the Founder and Executive Director of the Humanitarian Disaster Institute and Disaster Ministry Conference and holds the Blanchard Chair of Humanitarian & Disaster Leadership at Wheaton College. And he’s the author of *A Walking Disaster: What Surviving Katrina and Cancer Taught Me about Faith and Resilience.*

Show Notes

Humanitarian Disaster Institute
Spiritual First Aid
Jamie Aten’s A Walking Disaster: What Surviving Katrina and Cancer Taught Me about Faith and Resilience
The Thrive Center at Fuller Seminary
Pam King’s personal experience fighting fires in the Eaton Fire in January 2025
5,000 homes destroyed
55 schools and houses of worship are gone
“Neighborhoods are annihilated …”
Jamie Aten offers an overview of the impact of disasters on humanity, and the human response
1985: 400% increase in natural disasters globally
Japan 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami
Haiti 2010 earthquake
Physical, emotional, spiritual
Infrastructural impacts that set up disasters
USAID support
Jamie Aten’s experience during Hurricane Katrina
Personal disasters
Jamie Aten’s experience with colon cancer
“Evacuation Impossible”
Impact of disaster on personal sense of thriving
Thriving vs surviving
Understanding trauma
Collective traumatic events
The historically Black multigenerational community in Altadena
What constitutes thriving?
Thriving as adaptive growth: with and for others
Self-care is not just me-care, but we-care.
Trauma brain and the cognitive impacts of disaster
The psychological study of disaster: grapefruit vs beachball
Humanitarian Disaster Institute
Spiritual First Aid
A rupture of meaning making
Place and spirituality and the impact of disaster on sense of place
Bethlehem pastor Munther Isaac’s “Christ in the Rubble”
Finding meaning in both the restructuring or rebuilding, but also in the rubble itself
Hope embodied in service
Everything is a cognitive load
Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz’s The Home of God: A Brief Story of Everything
Psychological and trauma-informed care
”One of the things that we found was that when people received positive spiritual support, that they reported lower levels of trauma, lower levels of depression and lower levels of anxiety.”
Bless CPR
BLESS: Biological, Livelihood, Emotional, Social, Spiritual
“What’s the most pressing need?”
Spiritual health
Spirituality and our ultimate sources of meaning
Transcendence
Lament as a practice for dealing with disaster
Prayer or sacred readings
Meaning making and suffering: Elizabeth Hall (Biola University) and Crystal Park (University of Connecticut)
Baton Rouge Flood 2016
Navigating suffering
Religion in disaster mental health
Faith as a predictor for resilience
Meaning making outside of religion
Mr. Rogers: “Look for the helpers”
Best disaster preparedness: “Get to know your neighbor.”
“Proximity alone is not what it takes to become a neighbor.”
Neighbors helping neighbors
Managing burnout in helpers
“Spiritual self-aid” instead of “self-care”
Self-care is like surfing
“God holding the fragmented pieces of me”
“God’s love is with me.”
Spiritual fortitude in personal and natural disasters

Production Notes

This podcast featured Jamie Aten and Pam King
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, Zoë Halaban, Kacie Barrett & Emily Brookfield
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

Our One and Only Earth: Environmental Ethics, Climate Change, Biodiversity, and Consumption / Ryan Darr & Ryan McAnnally-Linz Feb 07, 2025

How should we treat our one and only home, Earth? What obligations do we have to other living or non-living things? How should we think about climate change and its denial? How does biodiversity and species extinction impact human beings? And how should we think about environmental justice, the rights of animals, and the ways we consume the natural world?

In this episode, Ryan McAnnally-Linz welcomes Ryan Darr (Assistant Professor, Yale Divinity School) to reflect on some of the most pressing issues in environmental ethics and consider them through philosophical, ecological, and theological frameworks.

Together they discuss:

What and who matters in environmental ethics: Only humans? Only sentient animals? Every life form? The inorganic natural world?
The significance and difference between global and individual scale of climate issues
The ethics of climate change denial
Environmental justice and moral obligations to the environment—the question of what we owe to animals and the rest of the natural world
The importance of biodiversity and the impact of species loss and extinction
The ethics of eating animals
The problems with human consumption of the natural world
And the impact of cultivating a wider moral imagination of our ecological future

About Ryan Darr

Ryan Darr Ryan Darr is Assistant Professor of Religion, Ethics, and Environment at Yale Divinity School. His research interests include environmental ethics, multispecies justice, structural injustice, ethical theory, and the history of religious and philosophical ethics. He is currently writing a book that defends an account of environmental and multispecies justice as a framework for thinking ethically about the crisis of biodiversity loss and mass extinction. He is also developing an ongoing research project exploring the relationship between individual agency and responsibility and structural justice and injustice with a particular focus on environmental and climate issues.

His first book, The Best Effect: Theology and the Origins of Consequentialism, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2023. The book offers a new, robustly theological story of the origin of consequentialism, one of the most influential views in modern moral theory. It uses the new historical account to intervene in contemporary ethical debates about consequentialism and about how ethicists conceive of goods, ends, agency, and causality.

Prior to joining the YDS faculty, Ryan held postdoctoral fellowships at the Princeton University Center for Human Values (2019-22) and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music (2022-24).

Show Notes

Get your copy of Ryan Darr’s The Best Effect: Theology and the Origins of Consequentialism
Complex ethical questions about climate change
Enmeshed in environmental systems
A crash course in environmental ethics
Which entities should we be thinking about ethically?
Are human beings the most important morally and ethically speaking?
What about animals, plants, or other kinds of life?
What about other species of animals
Anthropocentrism: Only humans matter.
Sentientism: Only sentient animals matter
Biocentrism: Every life form matters
Can we apply justice and rights to animals?
The polar bear on melting ice was the poster child for climate change; but this was a mistake because the effects on human beings is massive.
“All of us are affected.”
“We’re all vulnerable to climate change. …. kidding themselves and need to think more about this.”
Global south
Climate negotiations: Who needs to lower emissions and how? And how do we adapt?
Massive overwhelm at the scope of environmental problems: “Only massive changes can make a difference.” But “I have to change my life.”
How should we navigate the scale issue?
Don’t let large scale or small scale issues or changes eclipse the other.
Political action is crucial
“We need people willing to respond in the ways they can, where they are.”
Climate change denial
“There’s a lot of money flowing here.” Fossil fuel interests and others muddy the waters and create conflicts
“If it’s the case that millions of lives are at stake … I don’t see how some doubt
Reasons why people might deny climate change
“It’d be nice if climate change wasn’t real, but …”
Environmental justice and injustice
Toxicities released into the natural environment
Conservation and biodiversity loss
Approximately 8 million species on earth
It’s standard to lose a handful per million per year
Generally, you’re supposed to get more species on earth, short of a mass extinction event
But extinction rate is something like 100x to 1000x faster
Defaunation—reduction of fauna on earth
Measuring the biomass of various species (Humans make up 30% of the world’s biomass.)
Changes linked to colonialism and global capitalism
Why would God have created such a diverse species
Thomas Aquinas on why God created a world full of biodiversity: to reflect God’s extensive perfection
“On this view, the world is show less
What are the ethics of
Example: Wolves were intentionally eradicated in America, because “who wants a wolf in their neighborhood.”
Justice-oriented “Rights” and what we owe to each other, versus non-justice
Do we have obligations to animals?
Example: Kicking a Cat
“The Incredulous Stare”
Jainism and “ahiṃsā” (non-injury, no-harm, or non-violence toward all life forms, down to microbes)
“I’m inclined to think that I have obligations to almost all animals.”
At least “animals who are sentient”—desires, frustration of desires, pain, etc.
Is it permissible to eat meat?
Factory-farmed meat (effectively tormented)
Animal life has become commodity—valuable solely because of its use and with no regard for their well-being.
Consumers, Producers, and Wendell Berry: How should social roles relate to each other?
“Any question about justice have to begin from concrete social positions.”
Maintaining action and creativity
Practical recommendation for action to align our lives with our values
“I read fiction and short stories that tell stories of human beings in futures drastically affected by climate change as a way to open up my imagination to what’s possible.”
Dystopian narratives: leading to a sense of futility and hopelessness.
“I don’t think we know where anything is headed.”
“Humans have lived through upheaval so many times, and have found ways. … ‘People kept on baking bread as the Roman Empire fell.’”
Yale Divinity School class: “Eco-Futures”—imagining lives lived well in painful situations
If not hope, a sense of determination to do what can be done with the time that we have.
Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future: a technocratic novel about politics and policy solutions
Short fiction on Grist—Imagine 2200: Write the Future
Margaret Atwood, Everything Change

Production Notes

This podcast featured Ryan Darr and Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, Zoë Halaban, Kacie Barrett, and Emily Brookfield
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

Divine Hiddenness / Deborah Casewell Jan 23, 2025

Are you there God? It’s me…

Why is God hidden? Why is God silent? And why does that matter in light of faith, hope, and love?

In this episode, philosopher Deborah Casewell joins Evan Rosa for a discussion of divine hiddenness. Together, they reflect on:

Simone Weil’s distinction between abdication and abandonment

Martin Luther’s theology of the cross

The differences between the epistemic, moral, and existential problems with the hiddenness of God

The terror, horror, and fear that emerges from the human experience of divine hiddenness

The realities of seeing through a glass darkly and pursuing faith, hope, and love

And finally, what it means to live bravely in the tension or contracdition between the hiddenness of God and the faith in God’s presence.

About Deborah Casewell

Deborah Casewell is Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Chester. She works in the areas of philosophy and culture, philosophy of religion, and theology & religion, in particular on existentialism and religion, questions of ethics and self-formation in relation to asceticism and the German cultural ideal of Bildung. She has given a number of public talks and published on these topics in a range of settings.

Her first book. Eberhard Jüngel and Existence, Being Before the Cross, was published in 2021: it explores the theologian Eberhard Jüngel’s philosophical inheritance and how his thought provides a useful paradigm for the relation between philosophy and theology. Her second book, Monotheism and Existentialism, was published in 2022 by Cambridge University Press as a Cambridge Element.

She is Co-Director of the AHRC-funded Simone Weil Research Network UK, and previously held a Humboldt Research Fellowship at the University of Bonn. Prior to her appointment in Bonn, she was Lecturer in Philosophy at Liverpool Hope University and a Teaching Fellow at King’s College, London. She received her PhD from the University of Edinburgh, my MSt from the University of Oxford, and spent time researching and studying at the University of Tübingen and the Institut Catholique de Paris.

Show Notes

Mother Teresa on God’s hiddenness
Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, edited by the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk
What does it mean for God to be hidden?
Perceived absence
Simone Weil on God’s abdication of the world for the sake of the world
The presence of God. This should be understood in two ways. As Creator, God is present in everything which exists as soon as it exists. The presence for which God needs the co-operation of the creature is the presence of God, not as Creator but as Spirit. The first presence is the presence of creation. The second is the presence of decreation. (He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent. Saint Augustine.) God could create only by hiding himself. Otherwise there would be nothing but himself. — Simone Weil, in Gravity and Grace, “Decreation”
Abdication vs. Abandonment
A longing for God, who is hidden, unknown, unperceived, and mysterious
Martin Luther’s theology of the cross
“Hidden in the suffering and ignominy of the cross.”
“God is powerful but chooses not to be in relation to us.”
Human experiences of divine hiddenness
Three ways to talk about hiddenness of God
1. epistemic hiddenness: ”if we were to grasp God with our minds, then we'd be denying the power of God.”
Making ourselves an idol
The Cloud of Unknowing and “apophatic” or “negative” theology (only saying what God is not)
1. Moral hiddenness of God: “this is what people find very troubling. … a moral terror to it.”
1. Existential hiddenness of God: “where the hiddenness of God makes you feel terrified”
Revelation and the story of human encounter or engagement with God
“Luther is the authority on the hiddenness of God in the existential and moral sense.”
The power of God revealed in terror.
“God never becomes comfortable or accommodated into our measure.”
”We never make God into an object of our reason and comfort.”
Terror, horror, and fear: reverence of God
Marilyn McCord Adams, *Christ & Horrors—*meaning-destroying events
“That which is hidden terrifies us.”
Martin Luther: “God is terrifying, because God does save some of us, and God does damn some of us.”
The “alien work of God”
“Is Luther right in saying that God has to remain hidden, and the way in which God has to remain hidden has to be terrifying? So there has to be this kind of background of the terrifying God in all of our relations with the God of love that is the God of grace that, that saves us.”
Preserving the mystery of God
We’re unable to commodify or trivialize God.
Francis Schaeffer’s He Is There and He Is Not Silent
“Luther construes it as a good thing.”
Suffering, anxiety, despair, meaninglessness
Humanity’s encounter with nothingness—the void
“Interest in the demonic, or terror, as a preliminary step into a full religious or a proper religious experience of God.”
Longing for God in the Bible
Noah, Moses, David
“The other side of divine hiddenness is human loneliness.”
Loneliness and despair as “what your life is going to be like without God.” (Barton Newell)
Tension in the experience of faith
1 Corinthians 13:12: ”Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I also am known.”
Faith, hope, and love abides in the face of epistemic, moral, and existential hiddenness of God.
The meaning of struggling with the hiddenness of God for the human pursuit of faith, hope, and love
“Let tensions be.”
”But you've always got to keep the reality of faith, hope, and love, keep hold of the fact that that is a reality, and that can and will be a reality. It's, it's, not to try and justify it, not to try and harmonize it, but just to hold it, I suppose. And hold it even in its contradiction.”

Production Notes

This podcast featured Deborah Casewell
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Emily Brookfield, Alexa Rollow, & Zoë Halaban
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

We the (Chosen) People: Christian Nationalism Now / Eliyahu Stern & Philip Gorski Jan 08, 2025

Is America a nation Chosen by God? A New Jerusalem and Shining City on a Hill? What is the shape of Christian Nationalism today?

Now 4 years past Jan 6, 2021 and anticipating the next term of presidential office, Yale professors Eliyahu Stern and Philip Gorski join Evan Rosa for a conversation about religion, politics, and the shape of Christian nationalism now.

Together they discuss what religion really means in sociological and historical terms; the difference between religions of power and religions of law or morality; the American syncretism of pagan Christianity (perhaps captured in the Qnon Shaman with the horns and facepaint); the connection between nationalism and the desire to be a Chosen People; the supersessionism at the root of seeing the Christian conquest of America as a New Jerusalem; and how ordinary citizens come to adopt the tenets of Christian Nationalism.

Eliyahu Stern is Professor of Modern Jewish Intellectual and Cultural History in the Departments of Religious Studies and History and his current project is entitled No Where Left to Go: Jews and the Global Right from 1977 to October 7.

Philip Gorski is Frederick and Laura Goff Professor of Sociology at Yale University and is author of The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy (with Samuel Perry) as well as American Covenant: A History of Civil Religion from the Puritans to the Present.

Special thanks to our production assistant Zoë Halaban for pitching this conversation.

About Eliyahu Stern

Eliyahu Stern is Professor of Modern Jewish Intellectual and Cultural History in the Departments of Religious Studies and History. Previously, he was Junior William Golding Fellow in the Humanities at Brasenose College and the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford. He is the author of the award-winning, The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism (Yale University Press in 2012). His second monograph Jewish Materialism: The Intellectual Revolution of the 1870s (Yale University Press, 2018) details the ideological background to Jews’ involvement in Zionism, Capitalism, and Communism. His courses include The Global Right: From the French Revolution to the American Insurrection, Secularism: From the Enlightenment to the Present, Modern Jewish Intellectual History, The Holocaust in Culture and Politics. He has served as a term member on the Council on Foreign Relations and a consultant to the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, Poland. Currently, he is a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Center of Jewish History.

His latest project is entitled No Where Left to Go: Jews and the Global Right from 1977 to October 7.

About Philip Gorski

Philip S. Gorski is a comparative-historical sociologist with strong interests in theory and methods and in modern and early modern Europe. He is Frederick and Laura Goff Professor of Sociology at Yale University. His empirical work focuses on topics such as state-formation, nationalism, revolution, economic development and secularization with particular attention to the interaction of religion and politics. Other current interests include the philosophy and methodology of the social sciences and the nature and role of rationality in social life. He’s author with Samuel L. Perry of The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy, as well as American Covenant: A History of Civil Religion from the Puritans to the Present.

Show Notes

Trump: “I’m a nationalist.”
Increased ownership and proud identification as Christian Nationalism
Eliyahu Stern, No Where Left to Go: Jews and the Global Right from 1977 to October 7
The human practice of religion
“ The way one person will invoke Christianity will be something very different than say the way a church or the way another person or another religious figure is going to invoke that term.”
Humility and a leap
“ The History of the Sacred from Babylon to Beyoncé”
Religion vs “The Sacred”
”Western nationalism itself is, the offspring of a Christian supersessionist appropriation of Judaism.”
“A new chosen people”
The Deep Story Philip Gorski tells in The Flag and the Cross
Pagan understandings of nationalism
“The Deep Story runs something like this. America was founded as a Christian nation. The founders were Orthodox Christians. The founding documents were based on quote, biblical principles or perhaps even divinely inspired. The United States has a special role to play. In history as an exceptional or chosen nation in order to carry out that mission, it's been blessed with unique power and prosperity. But the project, the mission, and also the prosperity and the power are all increasingly endangered by the presence of non-whites, non-native born people, non-Christians on American soil.”
Covenantal logic
The tendency to see oneself as “Chosen”
England, Netherlands claiming the mantle of Chosenness for political purposes
“Jews are sitting around the world and they're trying to figure out how to unchosen themselves.”
Supersessionism and the interpretation of the Old Testament
The Promised Land Story: American Conquest
The Exemplary Story: A Shining City on a Hill
How do we gather and absorb political narratives like Christian Nationalism?
How is Christian Nationalism passed on?
Larger network of international Christian Nationalisms
The Arms Race or Game of Thrones that Nationalisms assume
Russian Christian Nationalism and recovering a “Christian Civilization”
Christian Nationalism is a political strategy
“ I don't think anybody … believes for a second that Donald Trump, or Vladimir Putin, or for that matter, Viktor Orban are serious Christians by any reasonable definition of that term.”
“White-supremicism in more acceptable garb.”
Losers of free market economics
Free Market Capitalism and erosion of social bonds and relationships
Strong borders, blood and soil
Fear of immigrants
Trust
What is the deeply felt need of someone who comes to identify as a Christian Nationalist?
Human needs threatened by social instability and inequality
Lip service for the sake of power
What “Christian” does next to “Nationalism”
Trump embraces Nationalism for himself
Globalism vs Nationalism
Second Iraq War as a mistake
“Proponents are not religious in the conventional sense”
“ When we're talking about Christian nationalism, we have to first and foremost recognize that we're talking about a different understanding of Christianity than what Americans are accustomed to seeing as the dominant understanding of what that term signifies.”
The crucial distinction between Religions of Power and Religions of Morality
Powerful protector
“Modern-day Cyrus”—The comparison between Trump and the biblical figure of Cyrus
What is religion? What kind of religion is operative in Christian Nationalism?
”It is not just centered in evangelicalism anymore.”
First Things and Catholic Integralism
New Apostolic Reformation
Dominion Theology
“This is about occupying institutions, seizing power, and using the state to impose a particular vision and a particular hierarchy.”
Jan 6, 2021
Rising paganism in America
“How could Christians embrace Trump?”
Merging of Shamanism and Christianity on Jan 6
Trancendental versus immanent versions of Christianity
Neo-paganism and magical understandings of the world
Concerns and hope as Trump takes office in January 2025
Further toward the politics of grievance and victimization
“Trump as a backstop”
Israel’s reliance
Can Trump negotiate international peace?
“The cynical side of me says my greatest hope lies in Trump's failures.”
Hope for more careful, nuanced conversations about Christian Nationalism

Production Notes

This podcast featured Eliyahu Stern and Philip Gorski
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Zoë Halaban, Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, and Emily Brookfield
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

How to Read Simone Weil, Part 3: The Existentialist / Deborah Casewell Dec 26, 2024

“All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception.” … “It is necessary to uproot oneself. To cut down the tree and make of it a cross, and then to carry it every day.” … “I have to imitate God who infinitely loves finite things in that they are finite things.” … “To know that what is most precious is not rooted in existence—that is beautiful. Why? It projects the soul beyond time.”

(Simone Weil, Gravity & Grace)

“That's how the figure of Christ comes into this idea of the madness of love. It's that kind of mad, self emptying act completely. And it's the one thing, she says, it's the only thing that means that you are able to love properly. Because to love properly, and therefore to be just properly, you have to love like Christ does. Which is love to the extent that you, that you empty yourself and, you know, die on a cross.” (Deborah Casewell, from this episode)

This is the third installment of a short series on How to Read Simone Weil—as the Mystic, the Activist, and the Existentialist.

This week, Evan Rosa invites Deborah Casewell, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chester, author of Monotheism & Existentialism, and Co-Director of the Simone Weil Research Network in the U.K.—to explore how to read Simone Weil the Existentialist.

Together they discuss how her life of extreme self-sacrifice importantly comes before her philosophy; how to understand her central, but often confusing concept of decreation; her approach to beauty as the essential human response for finding meaning in a world of force and necessity; the madness of Jesus Christ as the only way to engage in struggle for justice and how she connects that to the Greek tragedy of Antigone, which is the continuation of the Oedipus story; and, the connection between love, justice, and living a life of madness.

About Simone Weil

Simone Weil (1909–1943) was a French philosopher, mystic, and political activist. She’s the author of Gravity and Grace, The Need for Roots, and Waiting for God—among many other essays, letters, and notes.

About Deborah Casewell

Deborah Casewell is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chester, author of Monotheism & Existentialism, and is Co-Director of the Simone Weil Research Network in the U.K.

Show Notes

Simone Weil’s Gravity & Grace (1947) (Available Online)
Deborah Casewell’s Monotheism & Existentialism
Simone de Beauvoir’s anecdote in Memories of a Beautiful Daughter: “Shouldn’t we also get people’s minds, not just their bodies? Weil: “You’ve never been hungry have you?”
Leon Trotsky yells violently at Weil
The odd idolizing of Weil without paying attention to her writing
”You get a kind of, as you say, a kind of odd idolization of her, or a sense in which you can't then interact so critically or systematically with her philosophy, because her figure stands in the way so much, and the kind of the respect that people have.”
Anti-Semitism despite Jewishness
Simone Weil’s relationship to food: an unhealthy role model
“She’d reject anything that wasn’t perfect.”
Extreme germophobe
Expression of solidarity with the unfortunate
Her life comes before her philosophy. Being, you might say, comes before thinking.
Weil’s life of extreme self-sacrifice as “mad”—alienating, insane, strange to the outside world.
“ I think an essential part of, to an essential part of understanding her is to understand that world is kind of structured and set up in such a way that it runs without God, without the supernatural, God's kind of abdicated through the act of creation. And as a result, the universe operates through necessity and through force. So left to its own devices, the universe, I think, tends towards crushing people.”
Abandonment vs abdication
People possess power and ability and action—a tension between activity and passivity
Weil’s Marxism and theory of labor and work
Activity becomes sustained passivity
Consent, power, and the social dynamics of force and necessity
I think she sees the best human existence is to be in a state of obedience instead. And so what you have to do is relinquish power over people.
The complexity of human relationships
“She was a very individual person … a singular, individual life.”
The Need for Roots
“And this is what I do like about Simone Weil—is that she's always happy to let contradictions exist. And so when she describes human nature and the needs of the soul, they're contradictory. They all contradict each other. It's freedom and obedience.”
Creating dualisms
She is a dualist
Simone Weil on Beauty and Decreation
”Decreation is essentially your way to exist in the world ruled by force and necessity without succumbing to force and necessity, because in a way there's less of you to succumb to force and necessity.”
Platonic idea of Metaxu
Weil on the human experience of beauty—” people need beautiful things and they need experiences of beauty in order to exist in the world, fundamentally… if this world is ruled by force and necessity.”
The unity of the transcendentals of beauty and truth and goodness—anchored in God
Weil’s Platonism
Weil as religious existentialist, as opposed to French atheistic existentialist
“ For her, God is the ultimate reality, but also God is love. And so the goal of human existence, I think, is to return to God and consent to God. That's the goal of human life.”
“What are you paying attention to?”
The madness of Christ
The struggle for justice
“Only a few people have this desire for justice, this madness to love.”
Existentialism and Humanism: “Sartre says that man is nothing but what he makes of himself.”
Making oneself an example
“The real supernatural law, which is mad and unreasonable, and it doesn't try to make accommodations and get on with the world and deal with tricky situations. It's just mad.”
Simone Weil on Antigone and the continuation of the Oedipus story
Summary of the Greek tragedy, Antigone
“And so Antigone says, the justice that I owe is not to the city. It's not so that the city can, you know, continue its life and move on. The justice that I owe is to the supernatural law, to these more important primordial laws that actually govern the life and death situations and the situation of your soul as well. And that's why she does what she does. She's obedient to the unwritten law rather than the written law.”
“The love of God and the justice of God is always going to be mad in the eyes of the world.”
”The spirit of justice is nothing other than the supreme and perfect flower of the madness of love.”
The mad, self-emptying love of Christ
“That's how the figure of Christ comes into this idea of the madness of love. It's that kind of mad, self emptying act completely. And it's the one thing, she says, it's the only thing that means that you are able to love properly. Because to love properly, and therefore to be just properly, you have to love like Christ does. Which is love to the extent that you, that you empty yourself and, you know, die on a cross.”
Does Weil suggest an unhealthy desire to suffer?
“ It hurls one into risks one cannot run. If one has given one's heart to anything at all that belongs to this world. Um, and the outcome to which the madness of love led Christ is, after all, no recommendation for it.”
“But if the order of the universe is a wise order, there must sometimes be moments when, from the point of view of earthly reason, only the madness of love is reasonable. Such moments can only be those when, as today, mankind has become mad from want of love. Is it certain today that the madness of love may not be capable of providing the unhappy masses, hungry in body and soul, with a food far easier for them to digest than our inspirations to a less lofty source? So then, being what we are, is it certain that we are at our post in the camp of justice?”
“ From a loftier view, only the madness of love is reasonable.”
“Only the madness of love can be the kind of love that actually helps people in the world. Fundamentally, that people, even though they know it's mad, and they find it mad, and they would sometimes rather not see it, they need that kind of love, and they need people who love in that kind of way. Even if it's not the majority, people still need that. And so in some way, the way in which she is, and the way in which she sees Christ being, is indispensable. Even though the path that you have to go down has nothing to recommend, as she says, in the eyes of the reasonable world, nothing to recommend it. It's the only just thing to do. It's the only just and loving thing to do in the end.”

Production Notes

This podcast featured Deborah Casewell
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, Emily Brookfield, and Zoë Halaban
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

How to Read Simone Weil, Part 2: The Activist / Cynthia Wallace Dec 18, 2024

“What are you going through?”

This was one of the central animating questions in Simone Weil’s thought that pushed her beyond philosophy into action. Weil believed that genuinely asking this question of the other, particularly the afflicted other, then truly listening and prayerfully attending, would move us toward an enactment of justice and love.

Simone Weil believed that any suffering that can be ameliorated, should be.

In this episode, Part 2 of our short series on How to Read Simone Weil, Cynthia Wallace (Associate Professor of English at St. Thomas More College at the University of Saskatchewan), and author of The Literary Afterlives of Simone Weil: Feminism, Justice, and the Challenge of Religion and Evan Rosa discuss the risky self-giving way of Simone Weil; her incredible literary influence, particularly on late 20th century feminist writers; the possibility of redemptive suffering; the morally complicated territory of self-sacrificial care and the way that has traditionally fallen to women and minorities; what it means to make room and practicing hospitality for the afflicted other; hunger; the beauty of vulnerability; and that grounding question for Simone Weil political ethics, “What are you going through?”

We’re in our second episode of a short series exploring How to Read Simone Weil. She’s the author of Gravity and Grace, The Need for Roots, and Waiting for God—among many other essays, letters, and notes—and a deep and lasting influence that continues today.

In this series, we’re exploring Simone Weil the Mystic, Simone Weil the Activist, Simone Weil the Existentialist. And what we’ll see is that so much of her spiritual, political, and philosophical life, are deeply unified in her way of being and living and dying.

And on that note, before we go any further, I need to issue a correction from our previous episode in which I erroneously stated that Weil died in France. And I want to thank subscriber and listener Michael for writing and correcting me.

Actually she died in England in 1943, having ambivalently fled France in 1942 when it was already under Nazi occupation—first to New York, then to London to work with the Free French movement and be closer to her home.

And as I went back to fix my research, I began to realize just how important her place of death was. She died in a nursing home outside London. In Kent, Ashford to be precise. She had become very sick, and in August 1943 was moved to the Grosvenor Sanitorium.

The manner and location of her death matter because it’s arguable that her death by heart failure was not a self-starving suicide (as the coroner reported), but rather, her inability to eat was a complication rising from tuberculosis, combined with her practice of eating no more than the meager rations her fellow Frenchmen lived on under Nazi occupation.

Her biographer Richard Rees wrote: "As for her death, whatever explanation one may give of it will amount in the end to saying that she died of love.

In going back over the details of her death, I found a 1977 New York Times article by Elizabeth Hardwick, and I’ll quote at length, as it offers a very fitting entry into this week’s episode on her life of action, solidarity, and identification with and attention to the affliction of others.

“Simone Weil, one of the most brilliant, and original minds of 20th century France, died at the age of 34 in a nursing home near London. The coroner issued a verdict of suicide, due to voluntary starvation—an action undertaken at least in part out of wish not to eat more than the rations given her compatriots in France under the German occupation. The year of her death was 1943.

“The willed deprivation of her last period was not new; indeed refusal seems to have been a part of her character since infancy. What sets her apart from our current ascetics with their practice of transcendental meditation, diet, vegetarianism, ashram simplicities, yoga is that with them the deprivations and rigors‐are undergone for the pay‐off—for tranquility, for thinness, for the hope of a long life—or frequently, it seems, to fill the hole of emptiness so painful to the narcissist. With Simone Well it was entirely the opposite.

“It was her wish, or her need, to undergo misery, affliction and deprivation because such had been the lot of mankind throughout history. Her wish was not to feel better, but to honor the sufferings of the lowest. Thus around 1935, when she was 25 years old, this woman of transcendent intellectual gifts and the widest learning, already very frail and suffering from severe headaches, was determined to undertake a year of work in a factory. The factories, the assembly lines, were then the modem equivalent of “slavery,” and she survived in her own words as “forever a slave.” What she went through at the factory “marked me in so lasting a manner that still today when any human being, whoever he may be and in whatever circumstances, speaks to me without brutality, I cannot help having the impression teat there must be a mistake....”

[Her contemporary] “Simone de Beauvoir tells of meeting her when they were preparing for examinations to enter a prestigious private school. ‘She intrigued me because of her great reputation for intelligence and her bizarre outfits. ... A great famine had broken out in China, and I was told that when she heard the news she had wept. . . . I envied her for having a heart that could beat round the world.’

“In London her health vanished, even though the great amount of writing she did right up to the time she went to the hospital must have come from those energies of the dying we do not understand—the energies of certain chosen dying ones, that is. Her behavior in the hospital, her refusal and by now her Inability to eat, vexed and bewildered the staff. Her sense of personal accountability to the world's suffering had reached farther than sense could follow.”

Last week, we heard from Eric Springsted, one of the co-founders of the American Weil Society and author of Simone Weil for the Twenty-First Century.

Next week, we’ll explore Simone Weil the Existentialist—with philosopher Deborah Casewell, author of Monotheism & Existentialism and Co-Director of the Simone Weil Research Network in the UK.

But this week we’re looking at Simone Weil the Activist—her perspectives on redemptive suffering, her longing for justice, and her lasting influence on feminist writers. With me is Cynthia Wallace, associate professor of English at St. Thomas More College at the University of Saskatchewan, and author of The Literary Afterlives of Simone Weil: Feminism, Justice, and the Challenge of Religion.

This is unique because it’s learning how to read Simone Weil from some of her closest readers and those she influenced, including poets and writers such as Adrienne Rich, Denise Levertov, and Annie Dillard.

About Cynthia Wallace

Cynthia Wallace is Associate Professor of English at St. Thomas More College at the University of Saskatchewan, and author of The Literary Afterlives of Simone Weil: Feminism, Justice, and the Challenge of Religion, as well as **Of Women Borne: A Literary Ethics of Suffering.

About Simone Weil

Show Notes

Cynthia Wallace (Associate Professor of English at St. Thomas More College at the University of Saskatchewan), and author of The Literary Afterlives of Simone Weil: Feminism, Justice, and the Challenge of Religion
Elizabeth Hardwick, “A woman of transcendent intellect who assumed the sufferings of humanity” (New York Times, Jan 23, 1977)
Of Women Borne: A Literary Ethics of Suffering
The hard work of productive tension
Simone Weil on homework: “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God”
Open, patient, receptive waiting in school studies — same skill as prayer
“What are you going through?” Then you listen.
Union organizer
Waiting for God and Gravity & Grace
Vulnerability and tenderness
Justice and Feminism, and “making room for the other”
Denise Levertov’s ”Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymus”
“Levertov wrote herself into Catholic conversion”
“after pages and pages of struggle, she finally says: “So be it. Come rag of pungent quiverings, dim star, let's try if something human still can shield you, spark of remote light.”
“And so she argues that God isn't particularly active in the world that we have, except for when we open ourselves to these chances of divine encounter.”
“ Her imagination of God is different from how I think a lot of contemporary Western people think about an all powerful, all knowing God. Vae thinks about God as having done exactly what she's asking us to do, which is to make room for the other to exist in a way that requires us to give up power.”
Exploiting self-emptying, particularly of women
“Exposing the degree to which women have been disproportionately expected to sacrifice themselves.”
Disproportionate self-sacrifice of women and in particular women of color
Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Borne: ethics that care for the other
The distinction between suffering and affliction
Adrienne Rich’s poem, “Hunger”
Embodiment
“ You have to follow both sides to the kind of limit of their capacity for thought, and then see what you find in that untidy both-and-ness.”
Annie Dillard’s expansive attentiveness
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and attending to the world: “ to bear witness to the world in a way that tells the truth about what is brutal in the world, while also telling the truth about what is glorious in the world.”
“She's suspicious of our imaginations because she doesn't want us to distract ourselves from contemplating the void.”
Dillard, For the Time Being (1999) on natural evil and injustice
Going from attention to creation
“Reading writers writing about writing”
Joan Didion: “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.”
Writing as both creation and discovery
Friendship and “ we let the other person be who they are instead of trying to make them who we want them to be.”
The joy of creativity—pleasure and desire
“ Simone Weil argues that suffering that can be ameliorated should be.”
“ What is possible through shared practices of attention?”
The beauty of vulnerability and the blossoms of fruit trees
“What it takes for us to be fed”
Need for ourselves, each other, and the divine

Production Notes

This podcast featured Cynthia Wallace
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Emily Brookfield, Liz Vukovic, and Kacie Barrett
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

How to Read Simone Weil, Part 1: The Mystic / Eric O. Springsted Dec 12, 2024

This episode is the first of a short series exploring How to Read Simone Weil. The author of Gravity and Grace, The Need for Roots, and Waiting for God—among many other essays, letters, and notes, Weil has been an inspiration to philosophers, poets, priests, and politicians for the last century—almost all of it after her untimely death.

She understood, perhaps more than many other armchair philosophers from the same period, the risk of philosophy—the demands it made on a human life.

In this series, we’ll feature three guests who look at this magnificent and mysterious thinker in interesting and refreshing, and theologically and morally challenging ways.

We’ll look at Simone Weil the Mystic, Simone Weil the Activist, Simone Weil the Existentialist.

First we’ll be hearing from Eric Springsted, a co-founder of the American Weil Society and its long-time president—who wrote Simone Weil: Late Philosophical Writings and Simone Weil for the Twenty-First Century.

In this conversation, Eric O. Springsted and Evan Rosa discuss Simone Weil’s personal biography, intellectual life, and the nature of her spiritual and religious and moral ideas; pursuing philosophy as a way of life; her encounter with Christ, affliction, and mystery; her views on attention and prayer; her concept of the void, and the call to self-emptying; and much more.

About Simone Weil

About Eric O. Springsted

Eric O. Springsted is the co-founder of the American Weil Society and served as its president for thirty-three years. After a career as a teacher, scholar, and pastor, he is retired and lives in Santa Fe, NM. He is the author and editor of a dozen previous books, including Simone Weil: Late Philosophical Writings and Simone Weil for the Twenty-First Century.

Show Notes

Eric O. Springsted’s Simone Weil for the Twenty-First Century
How to get hooked on Simone Weil
“All poets are exiles.”
Andre Weil
Emile Chartier
Taking ideas seriously enough to impact your life
Weil’s critique of Marxism: “Reflections on the Cause of Liberty and Social Oppression”: ”an attempt to try and figure out how there can be freedom and dignity in human labor and action”
“Unfortunately she found affliction.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein: “Philosophy is a matter of working on yourself.”
Philosophy “isn’t simply objective. It’s a matter of personal morality as well.”
”Not only is the unexamined life not worth living, but virtue and intellect go hand in hand. Yeah. You don't have one without the other.”
An experiment in how work and labor is done
The demeaning and inherently degrading nature of factory work
Christianity as “the religion of slaves.”
Christianity can’t take away suffering; but it can take away the meaninglessness.
George Herbert: “Love bade me welcome / But my soul drew back guilty of dust and sin”
Weil’s vision/visit of Christ during Holy Week in Solemn, France: “It was like the smile on a beloved face.”
The role of mystery
Weil’s definition of mystery: ”What she felt mystery was, and she gets a definition of it, it's when two necessary lines of thought cross and are irreconcilable, yet if you suppress one of them, somehow light is lost.”
Her point is that whatever good comes out of this personal contact with Christ, does not erase the evil of the suffering.
What is “involvement in contradiction”
“She thought contradiction was an inescapable mark of truth.”
Contradictions that shed light on life.
Why mysticism is important for Weil: “The universe cannot be put into a box with techniques or tricks or our own scientific methods or philosophical methods. … Mystery instills humility and it takes the question of the knowing ego out of the picture. … And it challenges modern society to resist the idea that faith could be reduced to a dogmatic system.”
“Faith is not a matter of the intellect.”
“Intellect is not the highest faculty. Love is.”
“The Right Use of School Studies”
“Muscular effort of attention”
She wanted to convert her Dominican priest friend into the universality of grace—that Plato was a pre-Chrisitan.” (e.g., her essay, “ Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks”)
“Grace is universal.”
How school studies contribute to the love of God
Prayer as attention
Weil on Attention: “Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object. It means holding in our minds within the reach of this thought, but on the lower level and not in contact with it. The diverse knowledge we have acquired. Which we are forced to make use of. Above all our thought should be empty waiting, not seeking anything but ready to receive in its naked truth. The object that is to penetrate it.”
Not “detached,” but “available and ready for use”
Making space for the afflicted other by “attending” to them
Love that isn’t compensatory
“The void as a space where love can go”
What is prayer for Simone Weil?
Prayer as listening all night long
“Voiding oneself of secondary desires and letting oneself be spoken to.”
Is Simone Weil “ a self-abnegating, melancholy revolutionary” (Leon Trotsky)
Humility in Simone Weil
“The Terrible Prayer”
Was Simone Weil anorexic?
Refusing comfort on the grounds of solidarity
Self-emptying and grace
Accepting the entire creation as God’s will
Simone Weil on patience and waiting
“With time, attention blooms into waiting.”
“She’s resistant to the Church, but drawing from Christ’s self-emptying.”
God’s withdrawal from the world (which is not deism)
“A sacramental view of the world”
“ The very creation of the world is by this withdrawal and simultaneous crucifixion of the sun in time and space.”
(Obsessive) pursuit of purity in morals and thought
Iris Murdoch’s The Nice and the Good
“Nothing productive needs to come from this effort.”
“ She put her finger on what's really the heart of Christian spirituality. … We live by the Word … by our being open to listening to the Word and having that transformed into God’s word.”

Production Notes

This podcast featured Eric O. Springsted
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Emily Brookfield, Alexa Rollow, Zoë Halaban, & Kacie Barrett
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

Open the Gates: Immigration & the Book of Revelation / Yii-Jan Lin Dec 04, 2024

Why do we have countries? Why do we mark this land and these people as distinct from that land and those people? What are countries for? Yii-Jan Lin (Associate Professor of New Testament, Yale Divinity School) joins Matt Croasmun to discuss her new book, Immigration and Apocalypse, which traces the development of distinctly American ideas about the meaning of a country, its borders, and crossing those borders through immigration—exploring how the biblical book of Revelation has influenced our modern geopolitical map.

Together they discuss the eschatological vision of Christopher Columbus; the Puritanical founding of New Haven, Connecticut to be the New Jerusalem; Ronald Reagan’s America as “City on a Hill”; the politics of COVID; the experience of Asian American immigrants in the 19th century; and how scripture shapes the American imagination in surprising and sometimes troubling ways.

About Yii-Jan Lin

Yii-Jan Lin is Associate Professor of New Testament at Yale Divinity School. She specializes in immigration, textual criticism, the Revelation of John, critical race theory, and gender and sexuality. Her book *Immigration and Apocalypse: How the Book of Revelation Shaped American Immigration* (Yale University Press 2024), focuses on the use of Revelation in political discourse surrounding American immigration—in conceptions of America as the New Jerusalem and of unwanted immigrants as the filthy, idolatrous horde outside the city walls.

Her book The Erotic Life of Manuscripts (Oxford 2016), examines how metaphors of race, family, evolution, and genetic inheritance have shaped the goals and assumptions of New Testament textual criticism from the eighteenth century to the present.

Professor Lin has been published in journals such as the Journal of Biblical Literature, Early Christianity, and TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism. She is co-chair of the Minoritized Criticism and Biblical Interpretation section of the Society of Biblical Literature, on the steering committee for the Ethnic Chinese Biblical Colloquium, and on the steering committees for the New Testament Textual Criticism and the Bible in America sections of SBL. She also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Biblical Literature. Professor Lin is a member of the Society of Asian Biblical Studies, the European Association of Biblical Studies, and an elected member of Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas.

Show Notes

Get your copy of *Immigration and Apocalypse: How the Book of Revelation Shaped American Immigration, by* Yii-Jan Lin
Illustration: “John of Patmos watches the descent of New Jerusalem from God in a 14th-century tapestry”—modified and collaged by Evan Rosa
Christopher Columbus’s eschatological vision
The Book of Revelation and the heavenly city
The meaning of “apocalypse”
New Haven as New Jerusalem
John Davenport (April 9, 1597 – May 30, 1670) was an English Puritan clergyman and co-founder of the American colony of New Haven.
Ronald Reagan and America as a “shining city on a hill”
America as God’s city
Revelation 21, The New Jerusalem
“A door that’s always open”
1983 as the “Year of the Bible”
Exclusion, open gates, and America’s immigration policy
Hospitality
Outside the gates
“For some reason, the seer doesn't see just an open landscape. He sees these definite walls and definite gates, even though they're open.”
The book of deeds and the book of life
Bureaucracy, and entry and exclusion into heaven
The Good Place
What was immigration like in the Greco-Roman world?
Citizenship lists, registrations, and ways of keeping people out
“If Heaven Has a Gate, a Wall, and Extreme Vetting, Why Can't America?“
Steve King's tweet in 2019, “Heaven Has a Wall, a Gate, and Strict Immigration Policy, Hell Has Open Borders.”
Disease and exclusion (COVID-19)
Disease came from colonizers
“Disease as a divine act to clear the land”
Chinese exclusion from America
Mexican exclusion from America
ICE was created to enforce laws explicitly excluding Chinese immigrants
Film: An American Tail
“The British Invasion”
China, Enemy of the West, and the Dragon of Revelation 12
Buddha and the dragon vs the whore of Babylon riding a beast
“Do American political ideas about immigration start to frame American theological imaginations about the world to come?”
God’s kingdom and “Empire”
Fears that feed from theological to political registers
“What should a Christian posture towards contemporary questions of immigration be?”
Xenophobia and fear of the stranger
Finality and satisfaction
The theological error of identifying America with the New Jerusalem

Production Notes

This podcast featured Yii-Jan Lin
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Emily Brookfield, Zoë Halaban, and Kacie Barrett
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

Letters to a Future Saint / Brad East & Drew Collins Nov 21, 2024

“For those of us who are drawn into church history and church tradition and to reading theology, there is very little as transformative as realizing that history is populated by women and men like us who tried to follow Christ in their own time and place and culture and circumstances, some of whom succeeded. … Looking at the saints, they make me want to be a better Christian. They make me want to be a saint.” (Brad East, from the episode)

In his recent book, Letters to a Future Saint: Foundations of Faith for the Spiritually Hungry, theologian Brad East addresses future generations of the Church, offering a transmission of Christian faith from society today to society tomorrow. Written as a fellow pilgrim and looking into the lives of saints in the past, he’s writing to that post-literate, post-Christian society, where the highest recommendation of faith is in the transformed life.

Today, Drew Collins welcomes Brad East to the show, and together they discuss: the importance of being passed and passing on Christian faith—its transmission; the post-literacy of digital natives (Gen Z and Gen Alpha) and the role of literacy in the acquisition and development of faith; the significance of community in a vibrant Christian faith; the question of apologetics and its effectiveness as a mode of Christian discourse; the need for beauty and love, not just truth, in Christian witness; how to talk about holiness in a world that believes less and less in the reality of sin; the difference between Judas and Peter; and what it means to study the saints and to be a saint.

About Brad East

Brad East (PhD, Yale University) is an associate professor of theology in the College of Biblical Studies at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas. In addition to editing Robert Jenson’s The Triune Story: Collected Essays on Scripture (Oxford University Press, 2019), he is the author of four books: The Doctrine of Scripture (Cascade, 2021), The Church’s Book: Theology of Scripture in Ecclesial Context (Eerdmans, 2022), The Church: A Guide to the People of God (Lexham, 2024), and Letters to a Future Saint: Foundations of Faith for the Spiritually Hungry (Eerdmans, 2024).His articles have been published in Modern Theology, International Journal of Systematic Theology, Scottish Journal of Theology, Journal of Theological Interpretation, Anglican Theological Review, Pro Ecclesia, Political Theology, Religions, Restoration Quarterly, and The Other Journal; his essays and reviews have appeared in The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Comment, Commonweal, First Things, Front Porch Republic, The Hedgehog Review, Living Church, Los Angeles Review of Books, Marginalia Review of Books, Mere Orthodoxy, The New Atlantis, Plough, and The Point. You can found out more, including links to his writing, podcast appearances, and blog, on his personal website: https://www.bradeast.org/.

Show Notes

Letters to a Future Saint: Foundations of Faith for the Spiritually Hungry by Brad East
The importance of being passed and passing on Christian faith—its transmission
Spencer Bogle, the reason Brad East is a theologian
The post-literacy of Gen Z and Gen Alpha and the role of literacy in the acquisition and development of faith
The question of apologetics and its effectiveness as a mode of Christian discourse
The need for beauty and love, not just truth, in Christian witness
Christianity pre-exists you, and pre-existed literate society. So it can survive post-literacy
Tik-Tok and getting off it
“We have to have a much broader vision of the Christian life.”
The Doctrine of Scripture, by Brad East, Foreword by Katherine Sonderegger
Cartesian Christianity: me alone in a room, maybe with a flashlight and a bible
Spiritual but not religious (H/T Tara Isabella Burton)
We’re not saved individually
Alice in Wonderland and “believing 17 absurd things every day”
Is Christian apologetics sub-intellectual and effective?
Gavin Ortlund, taking seriously spiritual and moral questions with pastoral warmth and intellectual integrity—”a ministry of Q&A”
Bishop Robert Barron and William Lane Craig
“People are not going to be won to the faith through argument. They're going to be won by beauty.”
Beauty of lives well-lived, integrity, virtue, and martyrdom
“What lies beyond this world is available in part in this world and so good it's worth dying for.”
Is Christian apologetics actually for Christians, rather than evangelism?
“A person’s life can be an apologetic argument.”
James K.A. Smith: “We don’t want to be brains on sticks.”
“You’re just going to look bizarre.”
“Come and see. … If you see something unique or uniquely powerful here, then stick around.”
Saintliness and a cloud of witnesses
Why do the saints matter?
The protagonist of Augustine’s Confessions is actually St. Monica.
“I want to be like Monica…”
“For those of us who are drawn into church history and church tradition and to reading theology, there is very little as transformative as realizing that history is populated by women and men like us who tried to follow Christ in their own time and place and culture and circumstances, some of whom succeeded. … Looking at the saints, they make me want to be a better Christian. They make me want to be a saint.”
How to talk about holiness in a world that believes less and less in the reality of sin.
Is holiness just connected to purity culture?
Holiness is very difficult to describe.
Hauerwas: “Humans aren’t holy. Only God is holy.”
Holiness as being like God and being set apart and conformed to his likeness
Holiness is, by rights, God’s alone.
Appreciating the “everyday saints” among us
Sanctification as an utterly passive act
The final words of Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict), “Jesus, ich liebe dich!” (”Jesus, I love you.”)
Peter and Judas
Lucy Shaw poem, “Judas, Peter” (see below)
“There is a way to fail as a Christian. It’s to despair of the possibility of Christ forgiving you.”
What it means to journey as a pilgrim towards holiness is, is not to get everything right.
Shusaku Endo, Silence
“What I say is we're all Kichichiro. We're all Peter and Judas. We're all bad Christians. There are no good Christians.”
Kester Smith and returning to baptism
“Sometimes it might be difficult for me to believe that God loves me.”

“Judas, Peter”

by Lucy Shaw

because we are all
betrayers, taking
silver and eating
body and blood and asking
(guilty) is it I and hearing
him say yes
it would be simple for us all
to rush out and hang ourselves

but if we find grace
to cry and wait
after the voice of morning
has crowed in our ears
clearly enough
to break out hearts
he will be there
to ask us each again
do you love me?

Production Notes

This podcast featured Brad East & Drew Collins
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Zoë Halaban, Alexa Rollow, Emily Brookfield, and Kacie Barrett
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

How to Read Henry David Thoreau / Lawrence Buell Nov 13, 2024

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.” (Henry David Thoreau, Walden)

In 1845, when he was 27 years old, Henry David Thoreau walked a ways from his home in Concord, MA and built a small house on a small lake—Walden Pond. He lived there for two years, two months, and two days, and he wrote about it. Walden has since become a classic. A treasure to naturalists and philosophers, historians and hipsters, conservationists and non-violent resistors. Something about abstaining from society and its affordances, reconnecting with the land, searching for something beyond the ordinary, living independently, self-reliantly, intentionally, deliberately.

Since then, Thoreau has risen to a kind of secular sainthood. Perhaps the first of now many spiritual but not religious, how should we understand Thoreau’s thought, writing, actions, and way of life?

In this episode, Evan Rosa welcomes Lawrence Buell (Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature Emeritus, Harvard University) for a conversation about how to read Thoreau. He is the author of many books on transcendentalism, ecology, and American literature. And his latest book is Henry David Thoreau: Thinking Disobediently, a brief philosophical biography and introduction to the thought of Thoreau through his two most classic works: “Walden” and “Civil Disobedience.”

In today’s episode Larry Buell and I discuss Thoreau’s geographical, historical, social, and intellectual contexts; his friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson; why he went out to live on a pond for 2 years, 2 months, and 2 days and how it changed him; the difference between wildness and wilderness; why we’re drawn to the simplicity of wild natural landscapes and the ideals of moral perfection; the body, the senses, attunement and attention; the connection between solitude and contemplation; the importance of individual moral conscience and the concept of civil disobedience; Thoreau’s one night in jail and the legacy of his political witness; and ultimately, what it means to think disobediently.

About Lawrence Buell

Lawrence Buell is Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature Emeritus at Harvard University. Considered one of the founders of the ecocriticism movement, he has written and lectured worldwide on Transcendentalism, American studies, and the environmental humanities. He is the author of many books, including Literary Transcendentalism, The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Invention of American Culture, Writing for an Endangered World, and Emerson. His latest book is Henry David Thoreau: Thinking Disobediently, a brief introduction to the thought of Thoreau to his two most classic works: Walden and “Civil Disobedience.”

Show Notes

Henry David Thoreau: Thinking Disobediently (Oxford 2023) by Lawrence Buell
Read Walden and “Civil Disobedience” online (via Project Gutenberg)

Production Notes

This podcast featured Lawrence Buell
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Zoë Halaban, Alexa Rollow, Emily Brookfield, and Kacie Barrett
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

Cosmic Connections: Resonating with the World / Charles Taylor & Miroslav Volf Nov 06, 2024

Has modern humanity lost its connection to the world outside our heads? And can our experience of art and poetry help train us for a more elevated resonance with the cosmos?

In today’s episode, theologian Miroslav Volf interviews philosopher Charles Taylor about his latest book, Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment. In it he turns to poetry to help articulate the human experience of the cosmos we’re a part of.

Together they discuss the modern Enlightenment view of our relation to the world and its shortcomings; modern disenchantment and the prospects of reenchantment through art and poetry; Annie Dillard and the readiness to experience the world and what it’s always offering; how to hold the horrors of natural life with the transcendent joys; Charles recites some of William Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” and Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “The Windhover”; how to become fully arrested by beauty; and the value we find in human experience of the world.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Charles Taylor and Miroslav Volf
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Emily Brookfield, Alexa Rollow, Kacie Barrett, and Zoë Halaban
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

How to Read Teresa of Ávila / Carlos Eire Oct 30, 2024

St. Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582) was a sixteenth-century Spanish nun and one of the most influential mystics in all of Church history, writing two spiritual classics still read today: The Way of Perfection and The Interior Castle. Her autobiography (more accurately, a confession to Spanish Inquisitors) is The Life of St. Teresa of Avila, detailing her spiritual experiences of the love of God.

In this episode, Evan Rosa welcomes Carlos Eire (T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University) for a discussion of how to read St. Teresa of Ávila, exploring the historical, cultural, philosophical, and theological aspects of her life and writing, and offering insights and close readings of several selections from her classic confession-slash-autobiography, known as La Vida, or The Life.

About Carlos Eire

Carlos Eire is T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University. All of his books are banned in Cuba, where he has been proclaimed an enemy of the state. He was awarded the 2024 Harwood F. Byrnes/Richard B. Sewall Teaching Prize by Yale College, received his PhD from Yale in 1979. He specializes in the social, intellectual, religious, and cultural history of late medieval and early modern Europe, with a focus on both the Protestant and Catholic Reformations; the history of popular piety; the history of the supernatural, and the history of death. Before joining the Yale faculty in 1996, he taught at St. John’s University in Minnesota and the University of Virginia, and was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He is the author of War Against the Idols (1986); From Madrid to Purgatory (1995); A Very Brief History of Eternity (2010); Reformations: The Early Modern World (2016); The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila: A Biography (2019); and They Flew: A History of the Impossible (2023). He is also co-author of Jews, Christians, Muslims: An Introduction to Monotheistic Religions (1997); and ventured into the twentieth century and the Cuban Revolution in the memoir Waiting for Snow in Havana (2003), which won the National Book Award in Nonfiction in the United States and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. His second memoir, Learning to Die in Miami (2010), explores the exile experience. A past president of the Society for Reformation Research, he is currently researching various topics in the history of the supernatural. His book Reformations won the R.R. Hawkins Prize for Best Book of the Year from the American Publishers Association, as well as the award for Best Book in the Humanities in 2017. It was also awarded the Jaroslav Pelikan Prize by Yale University Press.

The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila by Carlos Eire (https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691164939/the-life-of-saint-teresa-of-avila )
The Book of My Life by Teresa of Ávila (https://www.icspublications.org/products/the-collected-works-of-st-teresa-of-avila-vol-1 or https://www.shambhala.com/teresa-of-avila-1518.html )
A long confession to the Inquisition which had placed her under investigation and read by those who were curious and believed her mysticism might be a fraud
The Spanish Inquisition in the 16th Century
Autobiography v. Auto-hagiography
The chief virtue of sainthood was humility
Medieval mysticism in the asceticism of monastic communities
The Reformation’s rejection of monastic communities and their practices
“You can fast as much as you want, and you can punish yourself as much as you want. That's not going to, uh, make God love you any more than he already does. And it's not going to wipe out your sins. Christ has wiped out your sins. So, all of this, uh, Oh, self obsession and posturing, uh, the very concept of holiness is redefined.”
Direct experience of the divine in mysticism: purgation (cleansing), feedback from God (illumination), and union with the divine.
On Loving God by Bernard of Clairvaux (https://litpress.org/Products/CF013B/On-Loving-God)
Surrendering of the self in order to find oneself, and in turn God
Interior Castle by Teresa of Ávila (https://www.icspublications.org/products/st-teresa-of-avila-the-interior-castle-study-edition)
Recogimiento - a prayer in which one lets go of their senses; a form a prayer in which you are just in a chat with a friend
The Cloud of Unknowing by Anonymous (https://paracletepress.com/products/the-cloud-of-unknowing )
Meaning that is found without words - recollection and recogimiento
Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, Archbishop of Toledo - translation of Rhineland mysticism into Spanish
Staged approach and a development of spirituality
“You're doing some transforming of your own, of course, by, you know, being engaged in this, but it's, it's really a gift from God progress and progress. Uh, progress and progress, or, uh, pretty much like an athlete whose skills become better and better and better. Or any artist whose skills improve and improve and improve and improve.Except in this case, there's someone else involved. You're not just working out or rehearsing. It's the other party involved in, in this, uh, phenomenon of prayer.”
The Four Waters as an image for the progression of prayer
The irony of Teresa’s writing and her nods to the inquisition found within her writings
The experience of mysticism and God cannot be understood - it is beyond language
Repetition in prayer and meditation
Edith Stein was inspired by Teresa of Ávila
Monastic life was very isolated and was filled with hard work
The doubt of her confessors that her visions of Jesus were real
Responding to the devil with crudeness
Mystical marriage with Christ
The Life of Catherine of Siena by Raymond of Capua ( https://tanbooks.com/products/books/the-life-of-saint-catherine-of-siena-the-classic-on-her-life-and-accomplishments-as-recorded-by-her-spiritual-director/ )
Physical visions and intellectual visions
Her visions were beyond her control
Transverberation - a vision of an angel with a spear that she is struck with; pain and bliss simultaneously in the wounding
God as a very clear diamond
Teresa of Ávila and the Rhetoric of Femininity by Alison Weber (https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691027449/teresa-of-avila-and-the-rhetoric-of-femininity) - Constant self-humbling of Teresa
Devotion to heart imagery in mysticism, Catholicism, and Teresa’s spirituality
They Flew: A History of the Impossible by Carlos Eire (https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300280074/they-flew/)
The bodily effects and physical nature of Teresa’s mysticism
mysticism for the masses and books for the laity
Mysticism is a double edged sword - this is also what makes Jesus threatening in the gospels
Steven Ozment (Mysticism and Dissent: Religious Ideology and Social Protest in the Sixteenth Century?) https://archive.org/details/mysticismdissent0000ozme/page/n295/mode/2up
Human nature and our potential
Great detail and charming in her writing

Production Notes

This podcast featured Carlos Eire
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Emily Brookfield, Kacie Barrett, & Zoë Halaban
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

History Speaks the Spirit of Justice / Jemar Tisby Oct 23, 2024

History reveals a lot of things about human nature: our innate drive towards progress, discovery, relationship, community. Often motivated by a drive to feel safe and flourish. But despite this instinct, history also shows that we’re prone to inflicting and being complicit to grave and violent injustices. We fail, regularly, at living well with our neighbors.

In his new book, The Spirit of Justice, Jemar Tisby opens the centuries long history of resistance to racism in the United States through the mode of story, and with the lens of the Spirit moving for justice. He asks, what manner of people are those who courageously confront racism? Presenting the lives and witness of over 50 individuals, Tisby examines the way faith threads the life work of these advocates together: not only inspiring their resistance in the first place, but continuing to move through the weariness that so often arises in this work.

In this episode, Jemar Tisby joins Macie Bridge on the podcast to discuss the manifestations of the Spirit of Justice in figures such as H. Ford Douglas, Sister Thea Bowman, David Walker, Myrlie Evers-Williams, and many more; the problem of historical appropriation with figures such as Martin Luther King Jr.; the women whose stories too often fall into the shadow of their husbands’ legacies, like Anna Murray Douglas or Coretta Scott King; and the ever-present question of why we might look to history as we determine our own ways forward.

Jemar Tisby is the New York Times bestselling author of The Color of Compromise and How to Fight Racism. He is a public historian, speaker, and advocate, and is Professor of History at Simmons College, an HBCU in Kentucky.

Photo Credits: Fannie Lou Hamer, Phyllis Wheatley, Charles Morgan Jr., Anna Murray Douglass, David Walker, Sister Thea Bowman, Myrlie & Darrell Evers.

Where to Find Jemar Tisby's Books

The Spirit of Justice *Available now

I Am the Spirit of Justice *Picture book releasing January 7, 2025

Stories of the Spirit of Justice *Middle-grade children’s book releasing January 7, 2025

Production Notes

This podcast featured Jemar Tisby
Hosted by Macie Bridge
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Emily Brookfield, Kacie Barrett, & Zoë Halaban
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

Unity in Diversity, Empathic Wisdom / Christy Vines Oct 16, 2024

In our American quest for a more perfect union, we often mistake unity for sameness. We mistake unity for conformity. But the functional unity of a system—seems to actually require diversity, distinction, and difference.

In this episode, Christy Vines (Founder/ CEO, Ideos Institute) reflects on the problem of division today; how we increasingly invest our identity in politics instead of faith or spirituality; humility and privilege; the definition of unity and the assumption of diversity in it; the centrality of empathy; and how to cultivate an empathic wisdom grounded in the life and witness of Christ.

The Ideos Institute is currently sponsoring 31 days of Unity leading up to the 2024 election. Visit thereunionproject.us or ideosinstitute.org/31-days-of-unity to learn how to participate.

About Christy Vines

Christy Vines is the founder, President and CEO of Ideos Institute where she leads the organization’s research on the burgeoning field of Empathic Intelligence and its application to the fields of conflict transformation, social cohesion, and social renewal.

Prior to founding Ideos Institute, she was the Senior Vice President for Global Initiatives and Strategy at the Institute for Global Engagement (IGE) where she served as the managing and coordinating lead for the development of strategic institutional partnerships and global initiatives in support of the IGE mission to encourage flourishing societies and stable states, and promote sustainable religious freedom, human rights and the rule of law globally. During her tenure at IGE she helped expand the organization’s Center for Women, Faith & Leadership which supports, equips and convenes religious women peacemakers around the globe.

Christy has held senior roles with the RAND Corporation, where she worked with the RAND Centers for Middle East Public Policy, Asia Pacific Public Policy, Global Risk and Security, and the Center for Justice, Infrastructure, and Environment, finally transitioning to interim project manager for the RAND African First Ladies Initiative (now located at the Bush Presidential Center). Christy also held the role of senior fellow at The American Security Project and served as an advisor to the Carter’s Center’s inaugural Forum on Women, Religion, Violence and Power.

Christy is a published writer, speaker, and the executive producer of the 2022 documentary film, "Dialogue Lab: America," a moving take on the current state of division and polarization in the U.S. She has appeared on podcasts like Comment Magazine’s “**Whole Person Revolution Podcast”, “**How Do We Fix It” and Bob Goff's “Dream Big Podcast”. She has published numerous articles and op-eds with news outlets and publications, including the **Washington Post, Christianity Today,** and Capital Commentary.

Christy received her Master's Degree in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School. She attended both Stanford University and the University of CA, Riverside where she received her B.A. in Sociology and Qualitative Analysis. She currently resides in Pasadena, CA.

Show Notes

Howard Thurman on Unity, Meditations of the Heart (Beacon Press: 1981), 120–121
“Plotinus [205–270 CE] wrote, “If we are in unity with the Spirit, we are in unity with each other, and so we are all one.” (Plotinus, Enneads, VI.5.7.)
Sign up for 31 Days of Unity https://www.ideosinstitute.org/31-days-of-unity
(Re)Union Project and Ideos Institute
Christy Vines’s experience with diversity and unity in her family: differences in faith, race, gender, sexuality, and religion
How Christy Vines came to faith
The problem of division
How neuroscience illuminates scripture and offers insight into empathic wisdom
“There are so many ways to love God.” (David Dark)
How we invest our identity in politics instead of religion
Moral absolutism vs moral relativism
Abdicating our faith identity for a political identity
Technology and relationships
“Loving God differently”
“In the cosmic Christ, you have all of the space you need for the kind of diversity in unity that you're talking about.”
“It's the expectation that in order to work together, we really do have to look exactly the same, that we have to think the same things. That's the only way to collaborate. So until we can get past those of disagreements, there's just no way to work across the aisle. And that is disastrous to the concept of a democracy and the concept of the church.“
“There’s so many ways to be an American. There’s so many ways to be human.”
Humility and privilege
“There is something about desperation and need that brings, that illuminates God's beauty, majesty, and importance in such a powerful way that I think so many of us that are born into plenty will never experience until the other side of heaven.”
The definition of unity: grounded in empathy
“Unity is about finding ways to be the body of Christ with all of our diversity and difference and saying that with humility, Here is my perspective. Here's how I understand God. Here's how I live out my faith. Here's what that might mean culturally or politically and all of the other ways we express our faith. And to be unified means maybe we can all be moving in the same direction on different paths, coming at it from different directions, but recognizing we're all trying to reach the same goal. And that maybe in that shared experience, And that rubbing against one another is, our pastor used to say, heavenly sandpaper, refining one another. We may never be on the exact same path, But over time, you find that we get closer and closer together as we share our lives with one another and we influence each other from a position of trust and care. And that can only be done when we actually show up recognizing with humility that we can learn and benefit from others.”
Empathy and how to build it
Empathic Intelligence Dr. Rosalind Arnold (University of Tasmania)
Empathic intelligence (empathic wisdom) is the lived experience of Jesus
Jesus’s empathy
“Most of the time we take our own understanding of Jesus and try to impose that on somebody without ever knowing their story.”
“What is it like to be you?”
“Why is this so hard to do?”
Jesus and the woman at the well
Asking questions and listening
Empathy is contagious
Vulnerability, openness, and a space of relational trust
(Re)Union Project for Churches—Building unity in the church across lines of difference
thereunionproject.us
ideosinstitute.org

Production Notes

This podcast featured Christy Vines
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Emily Brookfield, Kacie Barrett, and Zoë Halaban
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

Baseball as a Road to God / John Sexton Oct 11, 2024

To true fans, baseball is so much more than a sport. Some call it the perfect game. Some see it as a field of dreams. A portal to another dimension. Some see it as a road to God. Others—”heathen” we might call them—find the game unutterably boring. Too confusing, too long, too nit-picky about rules.

In this episode, Yankee fan John Sexton (President Emeritus of New York University and Benjamin F. Butler Professor of Law) joins Red Sox fan Evan Rosa to discuss the philosophical and spiritual aspects of baseball. John is the author of the 2013 bestselling book Baseball as a Road to God, which is based on a course he has taught at NYU for over twenty years.

Image Credit: “The American National Game of Base Ball: Grand Match for the Championship at the Elysian Fields, Hoboken, N. J.” Published by Currier & Ives, 1866

About John Sexton

John Sexton hasn’t always been a Yankee fan. He once was a proud acolyte of Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers. A legal scholar by training, he served as president of New York University from 2001 through 2015. He is now NYU’s Benjamin F. Butler Professor of Law and dean emeritus of the Law School, having served as dean from 1988 through 2002.

He is author of Standing for Reason: The University in a Dogmatic Age (Yale University Press, 2019) and Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game (Gotham Books, 2013) (with Thomas Oliphant and Peter J. Schwartz), among other books in legal studies.

A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a recipient of 24 honorary degrees, President Emeritus Sexton is past chair of the American Council on Education, the Independent Colleges of NY, the New York Academy of Science, and the Federal Reserve Board of NY.

In 2016, Commonweal Magazine honored Sexton as the Catholic in the Public Square. The previous year, the Arab-American League awarded him its Khalil Gibran Spirit of Humanity Award; and the Open University of Israel gave him it’s Alon Prize for “inspired leadership in the field of education.” In 2013, Citizens Union designated him as “an outstanding leader who enhances the value of New York City.”

He received a BA in history and a PhD in the history of American religion from Fordham University, and a JD magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. Before coming to NYU in 1981, he clerked for Judges Harold Leventhal and David Bazelon of the DC Circuit and Chief Justice Warren Burger.

He married Lisa Goldberg in 1976. Their two children are Jed and Katie Sexton. And their grandchildren are Julia, Ava, and Natalie.

Production Notes

This podcast featured John Sexton
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Emily Brookfield, Kacie Barrett, and Zoë Halaban
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

Love and Judaism / Rabbi Shai Held with Miroslav Volf Oct 02, 2024

There’s a common misconception that Judaism is a religion of law and Christianity is a religion of love. But the very love commandments at the heart of Jesus’s teaching are direct quotes from Deuteronomy 6. Jesus, after all, was Jewish.

Joining Miroslav Volf in this episode is one of the most important Jewish thinkers alive today: Rabbi Shai Held—theologian, educator, author—is President, Dean, and Chair in Jewish Thought at the Hadar Institute in New York City. He is the author of Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence and The Heart of Torah, a collection of essays on the Torah in two volumes. His latest book is Judaism is about Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life.

Image Credit: “Vienna Genesis”, 6th century, Manuscript (Codex Vindobonensis theol. graec. 31), 333 x 270 mm, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna

About Shai Held

Rabbi Shai Held—theologian, educator, author—is President, Dean, and Chair in Jewish Thought at the Hadar Institute in New York City. He is the author of Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence and The Heart of Torah, a collection of essays on the Torah in two volumes. His most recent book is Judaism Is About Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life.

Show Notes

Get your copy of Judaism Is About Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life
Two stories that set the course for Judaism Is About Love
Deuteronomy 6 and the Love Commands
Is Judaism really a “loveless religion”?
Christian students who don’t realize what wells Jesus drank from
“The very inclination to dichotomize between love and law leads almost, I think, ineluctably to a misunderstanding of traditional Jewish spirituality, for which law is never an alternative to love, but a manifestation of love.”
“The deed is an expression of a posture of love. The deed cannot replace the posture. It has to express it.”
“A majority culture telling a minority culture that it is inferior and loveless.”
Interpreting both Judaism and Christianity through a moral or ethical lens, rather than the mystical, affective, and spiritual dimensions of both
Unconditionality of God’s love
Obedience to law vs unconditionality of love
“My argument is that divine love, biblically speaking, comes without conditions, but with expectations. God does not say, do this or I will stop loving you. God says, I love you and I want you to do this.”
Analogy to parental love for children
“God believes in the centrality and urgency of human agency.”
Eliezer Berkovits: embrace of human agency in Judaism
Zero sum games and God’s will and human agency
Performance-oriented society, and “measuring up”
Competition and being better than others
Not earning, but striving to live up to
Grace
What objectives exist for us to
John Levinson
Choseness
Moshe Weinfeld: “you were not chosen because you were wonderful.”
Election isn’t earned, but don’t let grace become capricious.
Abraham’s blessing and God’s love for Israel
Rabbi Akiva: “Every human being on the face of the earth is loved simply by being created in the divine image.”
Centering theology around creation
Noah’s flood and a universal covenant with humanity as a whole
God and Moses’s chutzpah to ask for forgiveness because Israel is so stubborn
Grace is a Jewish idea, not invented by Christianity or the New Testament
“Culture stripped of grace”
Arbitrariness of election
Exodus 34
Psalm 145:9 God is good to all. God's mercies are upon all of God's creations.
Mercy on everything that God has made, including animals and all sentient beings
“Very good” and God’s assessment of creation
Love for stranger and love for the enemy
Judaism and expanding circles of concern
“The temptation to dehumanize is one that must always and everywhere be resisted. … every human being on the face of the earth is infinitely valuable without exception.”
John Levinson’s “universal horizon of biblical particularism”
Just War Theory
“At the end of the If the Middle East and the land of Israel are ever to become less blood soaked, what will be required is two peoples engaging in profoundly empathic listening to one another's stories. There is no other way.”
Moshe Una and the Religious Zionist Peace Movement
“Jews dreamed of this place for thousands of years, and that this is a unique place where God's commandments can be fulfilled, and this is a place of religious yearning, religious aspiration, historical connection. And the second is, we have to teach our children that there is another people who feels the same way.”
“So much of the protest of this war has, it seemed to me, really lacked empathy and actually perpetuated really destructive ways of thinking about this conflict.”
What is Rabbi Shai Held’s vision of a life worth living?
Medieval Mishnah on Genesis 1:27: “The human being is created in God's image, but whether we become God's likeness is a function of the choices we make.”

Production Notes

This podcast featured Shai Held
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Kacie Barrett, and Zoë Halaban
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

Love's Braided Dance / Norman Wirzba Sep 20, 2024

Problem-solving the crises of the modern world is often characterized by an economy and architecture of exploitation and instrumentalization, viewing relationships as transactional, efficient, and calculative. But this sort of thinking leaves a remainder of emptiness.

Finding hope in a time of crises requires a more human work of covenant and commitment. Based in agrarian principles of stability, place, connection, dependence, interwoven relatedness, and a rooted economy, we can find hope in “Love’s Braided Dance” of telling the truth, keeping our promises, showing mercy, and bearing with one another.

In this episode, Evan Rosa welcomes Norman Wirzba, the Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Christian Theology at Duke Divinity School, to discuss his recent book Love’s Braided Dance: Hope in a Time of Crisis.

Together they discuss love and hope through the agrarian principles that acknowledge our physiology and materiality; how the crises of the moment boil down to one factor: whether young people want to have kids of their own; God’s love as erotic and how that impacts our sense of self-worth; the “sympathetic attunement” that comes from being loved by a community, a place, and a land; transactional versus covenantal relationships; the meaning of giving and receiving forgiveness in an economy of mercy; and finally the difficult truth that transformation or moral perfection can never replace reconciliation.

About Norman Wirzba

Norman Wirzba is the Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Christian Theology at Duke Divinity School, as well as director of research at Duke University’s Office of Climate and Sustainability. His books include Love’s Braided Dance: Hope in a Time of Crisis, Agrarian Spirit: Cultivating Faith, Community, and the Land;This Sacred Life: Humanity’s Place in a Wounded World; and Food & Faith.

Listen to Norman Wirzba on Food & Faith in Episode 49: "God's Love Made Delicious"

Show Notes

Norman Wirzba, Love’s Braided Dance: Hope in a Time of Crisis
How the crises of the moment boil down to one expression: whether young people want to have kids of their own.
How Norman Wirzba became friends with Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America
“Love’s Braided Dance” from “In Rain”, a poem by Wendell Berry
“You shouldn’t forget the land, and you shouldn’t forget your grandfather.”
Return to agricultural practices
Sacred gifts
“An agricultural life can afford doesn't guarantee, I think, but it affords the opportunity for you to really handle the fundamentals of life, air, water, soil, plant, tactile connection that has to, at the same time, be a practical connection, which means you have to to bring into your handling of things the attempt to understand what you're handling.”
Anonymity
Norman Wirzba reads Wendell Berry’s “In Rain”
Hyperconnectivity and the meaning of being “braided together”
Love as Erotic Hope—”the first of God’s love is an erotic love, which is an outbound love that wants something other than God to be and to flourish. And that outbound movement is generated by God's desire for For others to be beautiful, to be good, and I think that's the basis of our lives, right?”
Audre Lorde and patriarchy
Affirming the goodness of ourselves and the world as created and loved by God
How the pornographic gaze distorts the meaning of erotic love
Dancing as a metaphor for God’s erotic love
Deep sympathy and anticipation, and the improvisational movement of dance
Woodworking: taking time and negotiation
“Sympathetic attunement” and improvisation
Managing the unpredictable nature of our world
Revelation of who you are and who the other is—it’s hard to reveal ourselves to each other
Honesty and depth that is missing from relationships
Learning the skill of self-revealing
Belonging and Robin Wall Kimmerer’s sense that a people could be “loved by the land”
Physiological, material reality of our dependence on each other, from womb to tomb
“The illusion that we could ever be alone or stand alone or survive alone is so dishonest about our living.”
Denying our needs, acknowledging our needs, and inhabiting trust to work through struggle together
“It’s not about solutions.”
“Some of the needs are profound and deep and they take time and they are never fully resolved. But it's this experience of knowing that you're not alone, that you're in a context where you are going to be cared for, you'll be nurtured, and you'll be forgiven when you make mistakes means that you can carry on together. And that's often enough.”
Transactional vs covenantal approach to relationships
Granting forgiveness and receiving forgiveness
Transformation is not a replacement for reconciliation
Rather than denying wrongdoing or seeking to eliminate it, focusing on a renewed effort to be merciful with each other.
Economy and architecture
“So how is the land supposed to love you back if it has in fact been turned into a toxic dumping zone?”
“Think about how much fear is in our architecture.”
Building was vernacular—people were involved in the development of physical structures
J. R. R. Tolkein, The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers: Ents vs Saruman, natural agrarianism vs technological domination
Joy Clarkson, You Are a Tree
Rooted economy
“Is anything worthy of our care?”
When a parent chooses a phone and loses a moment of presence with children
“Go to some one and tell them, ‘I want to try to be better at being in the presence of those around me.’”
Be deliberate

Production Notes

This podcast featured Norman Wirzba
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Kacie Barrett, Emily Brookfield, and Zoë Halaban
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

Music & Joy / Daniel Chua Sep 11, 2024

Can music teach us how to live? In this interview Evan Rosa invites Daniel Chua—a musicologist, composer at heart, and Professor of Music at the University of Hong Kong—to discuss his latest book, Music & Joy: Lessons on the Good Life.

Together they discuss the vastly different ancient and modern approaches to music; the problem with seeing music for consumption and entertainment; the ways different cultures conceive of music and wisdom: from Jewish to Greek to Christian; seeing the disciplined spontaneity of jazz improvisation fitting with both a Confucian perspective on virtue, and Christian newness of incarnation; and finally St. Augustine, the worshipful jubilance of singing in the midst of one’s work to find rhythm and joy that is beyond suffering; and a final benediction and blessing for every music lover.

Throughout the interview, we’ll offer a few segments of the music Daniel discusses, including Beethoven’s Opus 132 and the Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s 9th symphony, and John Cage’s controversial 4’33”—which Daniel recommends we listen to every single day, and which we’re going to play during this episode toward the end.

Show Notes

Music and Joy: Lessons on the Good Life by Daniel Chua (https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300264210/music-and-joy/)
Can music teach us how to live?
The emotional relationship we have with music
Everyone identifies with music
How did you come to love music and write on it?
Musicologist
The Sound of Music soundtrack (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeSQLYs2U8X0nTi15MHjMAWim3PxIyEqI)
Listening to music at a young age
Love of Beethoven as a child
What about Beethoven in particular spoke to you? Do you have memories of what feeling or challenges or thoughts or kind of ambitions were there?
Beethoven as harder to listen to and sit through as it is quite disruptive and intellectual in style
Beethoven and Freedom by Daniel Chua (https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/beethoven-freedom-daniel-k-l-chua/1126575597)
What pieces in particular, or what about Beethoven’s composition was particularly moving to you?
Beethoven’s final string quartets (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qaq881bwRI)
“It’s very strange. It’s like the most complex and the most simple music. And somehow they speak very deeply to my soul and my heart. And you just want to listen to them all the time.”
A Minor String Quartet, Opus 132 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUob2dcQTWA)
A piece of thanksgiving to God
Messages sent by music as a young person about how things come together
Music interacts with us
Playing to understand how it is that a piece works
How do we replicate what music communicates in our daily lives?
Beethoven’s Ode to Joy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0EjVVjJraA)
Stephen Pinker - music is auditory cheesecake
“If music is joy, then what is it? What kind of joy is it?”
Consuming music is not the same as joy; music is not simply entertainment
The fanfare of terror in Ode to Joy
“Humans are strange. We are very sinful creatures so we tend to weaponize whatever we have to weaponize and we weaponize music too.”
“Whatever we do with music as humans, there is something more in music that speaks beyond out puny human point of view of music.”
Our view of music and joy today are too human; music is cosmic
We tune ourselves, our virtues, our wisdom to the rhythm of the universe.
Joy as something we obey, we listen to.
“Music isn’t human. Music is actually creation.”
Music, the Logos, and Wisdom
Music as something that teaches us how to live.
Wisdom taking delight, joy, in the universe.
Music is deeply beautiful; there is profound goodness to it
A lesson in flourishing found in music, in the tuning of ourselves
Music is truthful; Christ as an instrument and salvation as being in tune
Sheet music v performance as an analogy for incarnation
Music as an event that is happening
Harmony and coming together - finding one’s place within the turn; Taoist and Confucian traditions
“Jazz offers this fantastic expression of a different kind of wisdom born through suffering and grief.”
Improvisation in jazz; an exuberance - the weird and the spontaneous alongside the ordered
Music as an opportunity for emotion and a way to communicate and understand; spirituals and slave hymns
“The order of the cosmos is basically tragic. It’s a bad, bad world. And music is a kind of consolation in that.”
“Music can’t help but be meaningful.”
4'33" by John Cage (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWVUp12XPpU)
Whatever we are, music is there.
Using music to make sense of things; really attend to the world and its music.
Augustine’s Book of Music “De Musica” (https://archive.org/details/augustine-on-music-de-musica/page/159/mode/2up)
The spontaneous music of the world
Defiant joy in the music of slave hymns; a joy that will not be crushed
A robust understanding of joy
Music tells us something about the world, the cosmos, of creation - Music reflects the heart of God.

About Daniel Chua

Daniel K. L. Chua is the Chair Professor of Music at the University of Hong Kong. Before joining Hong Kong University to head the School of Humanities, he was a Fellow and the Director of Studies at St John’s College, Cambridge, and later Professor of Music Theory and Analysis at King’s College London. He is the recipient of the 2004 Royal Musical Association’s Dent Medal, an Honorary Fellow of the American Musicological Society, and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. He served as the President of the International Musicological Society 2017-2022. He has written widely on music, from Monteverdi to Stravinsky, but is particularly known for his work on Beethoven, the history of absolute music, and the intersection between music, philosophy and theology. His publications include The ‘Galitzin’ Quartets of Beethoven (Princeton, 1994), Absolute Music and the Construction of Meaning (Cambridge, 1999), Beethoven and Freedom (Oxford, 2017), Alien Listening: Voyager’s Golden Record and Music From Earth (Zone Books, 2021), Music and Joy: Lessons on the Good Life (Yale 2024), ‘Rioting With Stravinsky: A Particular Analysis of the Rite of Spring’ (2007), and ‘Listening to the Self: The Shawshank Redemption and the Technology of Music’ (2011).

Image Credit: “Beethoven with the Manuscript of the Missa Solemnis”, Joseph Karl Stieler, 1820, oil on canvas, Beethoven-Haus, Bonn (Public Domain, Wikimedia Link)
Ludwig van Beethoven, String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132: iii. “Heilige Dankgesang eines Genesenden an die Gottheit” (”Holy song of thanks of a convalescent to the Divinity”), Amadeus Quartet, 1962 (via Internet Archive)
Ludwig van Beethoven, The Symphony No 9 in D minor, Op 125 "Choral" (1824), Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Otto Klemperer, Live Performance, 17 May 1956 (via Internet Archive)
Traditional Chinese Music, Instrument: Ehru, “Yearning for Love” Remembering of The Xiao on The Phoenix Platform (via Internet Archive)
John Coltrane, “The Inch Worm”, Live in Paris, 1962 (via Internet Archive)
4’33”, John Cage, 1960tr
The McIntosh County Shouters perform “Gullah-Geechee Ring Shout” (Library of Congress)

How to Read Genesis / Marilynne Robinson & Miroslav Volf Aug 28, 2024

“The whole of human existence is like some sweet parable told in the most improbable place and circumstances. … God values our humanity. … One of the things that's fascinating about the Hebrew Bible is that it declared and was loyal to the fact that God is good and creation is good.”

Novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson joins Miroslav Volf to discuss her latest book, Reading Genesis. Together they discuss why she took up this project of biblical commentary and what scripture and theological reflection means to her; how she thinks of Genesis as a theodicy (or a defense against the problem of evil and suffering); the grace of God; the question of humanity’s goodness; how to understand the flood; the relationship between divine providence and working for moral progress; and much more.

About Marilynne Robinson

Marilynne Robinson is an award-winning American novelist and essayist. Her fictional and non-fictional work includes recurring themes of Christian spirituality and American political life. In a 2008 interview with the Paris Review, Robinson said, "Religion is a framing mechanism. It is a language of orientation that presents itself as a series of questions. It talks about the arc of life and the quality of experience in ways that I've found fruitful to think about."

Her novels include: Housekeeping (1980, Hemingway Foundation/Pen Award, Pulitzer Prize finalist), Gilead (2004, Pulitzer Prize), Home (2008, National Book Award Finalist), Lila (2014, National Book Award Finalist), and most recently, Jack (2020). Robinson's non-fiction works include Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State, and Nuclear Pollution (1989), The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (1998), Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self (2010), When I was a Child I Read Books: Essays (2012), The Givenness of Things: Essays (2015), and What Are We Doing Here?: Essays (2018). Her latest book is Reading Genesis (2024).

Marilynne Robinson received a B.A., magna cum laude, from Brown University in 1966 and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington in 1977. She has served as a writer-in-residence or visiting professor at a variety universities, included Yale Divinity School in Spring 2020. She currently teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. She has served as a deacon for the Congregational United Church of Christ. Robinson was born and raised in Sandpoint, Idaho and now lives in Iowa City.

Show Notes

Get your copy of Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Robinson’s New York Times article, “What Literature Owes the Bible” (2011)
Reading Genesis as the singular ancient literature that it is
The Bible (and Genesis) as theodicy
How Calvin and Luther influenced Robinson’s approach to Genesis
The benefit of reading Genesis as a whole
The story of Joseph
The fractal nature of the bible
Unsparing, honest descriptions of the characters
“I think that the fact that they are recognizably flawed creatures is, what that reflects is the grace of God. He is enthralled by these people that must have been a fairly continuous disappointment, you know? We have to understand humankind better, I think, in order to understand what overplus there is in a human being that God loves them despite their being so human.”
“An amazing little theater of domestic dysfunction.”
Abraham and Isaac: “Poor Isaac … or he could just be a plain old disappointing child.”
“The Bible is a theodicy.”
God’s goodness, and a defense of God
God’s value of humanity and the conservation of the human self
“God stands by creation.”
Humanism in Genesis
“Humanity sinks so deep into evil. that they become near incarnations of evil.”
Genesis 6: “Every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was Only evil and continually.”
Total depravity and the bleak view of humanity
Noah and the Flood
“… there's a kind of a strange lawlessness of Genesis.”
“When God remakes the world after Noah, after the flood, he does not change human beings. He gives them exactly the same blessings and instructions that he did originally, which is simply another statement of his very deeply tested loyalty to us as we are.”
“Finding a humane way to deal with the inhumanity of human beings.”
Genesis 8: “Because human beings are evil, I will never destroy them.”
Grace as a condition of possibility for all life
The similarities between Hebrew Bible as a philosophic text, drawing influences from cultures around them
“what is a greater question of theodicy than the fact that populations are wiped off the face of the earth every so often—it must have been so common in the ancient world with plagues and wars and all the rest of it.”
“Every human, every thought, all the time: evil.”
“Genesis is a preparation for Exodus because the solution to human wickedness, which nevertheless does not violate human nature, is law.”
What is the moral purpose of humanity?
The roaring cosmos and modern atheisms: Schopenhauer and Nietzsche on moral purpose is gone, humanity is just a little boat amidst a storm
“The whole of human existence is like some sweet parable told in the most improbable place and circumstances.”
Charles Taylor’s Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment
Providence and moral progress
“We’re still terribly violent. Terribly violent people.” “And terribly blind to our violence.”
Revelation and God’s control of an otherwise nasty world
The possibility of human encounter

Production Notes

This podcast featured Marilynne Robinson and Miroslav Volf
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Emily Brookfield
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

Poverty / Rev. William Barber & Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove Aug 21, 2024

Rev. William Barber and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove discuss the political, moral, and spiritual dimensions of poverty. Together, they co-authored White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy, and they’re collaborators at the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School.

About Rev. William Barber

Bishop William J. Barber II, DMin, is a Professor in the Practice of Public Theology and Public Policy and Founding Director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School. He serves as President and Senior Lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call For Moral Revival, Bishop with The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries, and has been Pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Goldsboro, NC, for the past 29 years.

He is the author of four books: We Are Called To Be A Movement; Revive Us Again: Vision and Action in Moral Organizing; The Third Reconstruction: Moral Mondays, Fusion Politics, and The Rise of a New Justice Movement; and Forward Together: A Moral Message For The Nation.

Bishop Barber served as president of the North Carolina NAACP from 2006-2017 and on the National NAACP Board of Directors from 2008-2020. He is the architect of the Forward Together Moral Movement that gained national acclaim in 2013 with its Moral Monday protests at the North Carolina General Assembly. In 2015, he established Repairers of the Breach to train communities in moral movement building through the Moral Political Organizing Leadership Institute and Summit Trainings (MPOLIS). In 2018, he co-anchored the relaunch of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival— reviving the SCLC’s Poor People’s Campaign, which was originally organized by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., welfare rights leaders, workers’ rights advocates, religious leaders, and people of all races to fight poverty in the U.S.

A highly sought-after speaker, Bishop Barber has given keynote addresses at hundreds of national and state conferences, including the 2016 Democratic National Convention, the 59th Inaugural Prayer Service for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, and the Vatican’s conference on Pope Francis’s encyclical “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home.

He is a 2018 MacArthur Foundation Genius Award recipient and a 2015 recipient of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Award and the Puffin Award.

Bishop Barber earned a Bachelor’s Degree from North Carolina Central University, a Master of Divinity from Duke University, and a Doctor of Ministry from Drew University with a concentration in Public Policy and Pastoral Care. He has had ten honorary doctorates conferred upon him.

About Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is an author, preacher, and community-builder who has worked with faith-rooted movements for social change for more than two decades. He is the founder of School for Conversion, a popular education center in Durham, North Carolina, and co-founder of the Rutba House, a house of hospitality in Durham’s Walltown neighborhood.

Mr. Wilson-Hartgrove is the author of more than a dozen books, including the daily prayer guide, Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, New Monasticism, The Wisdom of Stability, Reconstructing the Gospel, and Revolution of Values. He is a regular preacher and teacher in churches across the US and Canada and a member of the Red Letter Christian Communicators network.

Show Notes

Center for Public Theology and Public Policy’s ten-session online course: https://www.theologyandpolicy.yale.edu/inaugural-conference
Get your copy of White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy: https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324094876

Production Notes

This podcast featured Rev. William Barber and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, with Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Kacie Barrett
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

How to Read Julian of Norwich / Ryan McAnnally-Linz Aug 14, 2024

Julian of Norwich is known and loved for the lines revealed to her by God, “All shall be well and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” But beyond the comfort of this understandably uplifting phrase, what are theological and philosophical insights we might learn from this anonymous medieval Christian mystic and anchoress?

Ryan McAnnally-Linz joins Evan Rosa to discuss the historical context of Julian of Norwich, her life and vocation as an anchoress, and the story of near-death experience and subsequent mystical visions that led her to write such theologically rich and uplifting words—which comprise the earliest known writing by a woman in English. Together they have an extended discussion of a rather marvelous segment from the Long Text of the Revelation of Divine Love, sections 46-58, and in particular we look at the revelation Julian herself was most puzzled and mystified by during her own life, discovering understanding only decades after having received the vision: Section 51, the Parable of the Lord and the Servant.

Image Credit: adapted from The Lives of the Saints Gallus, Magnus, Otmar and Wiboradain German, 1451–60. St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 602, p. 303.

Show Notes

“All shall be well” as an introduction to Julian for many
Rowan Williams on Julian as one of the greatest English language theologians
Who was Julian? How she thinks and what we can draw from her for the purposes of theological insight and spiritual maturity?
Found Julian in a medieval survey course and she has remained with him
What caught you in Julian? Why did it stick with you?
She synthesizes a visionary experience with deep theological reflection: subtle and sophisticated theologian; simplicity, earnestness, and virtuosity
So give us a little bit of her biography. I know that we know precious little, but what do we know? And maybe give us some of the historical context of her?
Couple of manuscripts of her writing; the short and the long text
Margery Kempe visits Julian to make a request in The Book of Margery Kempe (https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/publication/staley-the-book-of-margery-kempe)
Anchoress and is attached to a church in Norwich; 1340s first and second waves of the Black Death; mass loss and trauma
The text is less focused on herself outside of the visions that happen on what she believes is her death bed.
What is the spiritual occupation of an anchoress or anchorite?
Anchorite as isolated spiritual calling different from monks and hermits; life is in this one cell
Do you know what motivations are there for that spiritual vocation in the church? Why would anyone do this?
Anchorite ceremonies are like funeral rites; a death to the world, living only for prayer
The showings - 16 visions; prays for mind of the passion, bodily sickness, and three wounds (contrition, compassion, and willful longing for God)
The suffering of Christ and his wounds and their popularity in medieval devotional practice
16 showings that are intertwined and vary in form (visual, auditory, bodily, mental)
The last showing, which she ponders for the rest of her life.
What are some of the core philosophical, theological, or other concepts that are most salient for understanding Julian?
Julian understands herself as beholden to the church, its teachings, and its tradition - wrestling with these and her visions.
A Vision Shown to a Devout Woman by Julian (https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/0-271-02547-6.html)
A Revelation of Love by Julian (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/261039/revelations-of-divine-love-by-julian-of-norwich-translated-by-elizabeth-spearing-introduction-and-notes-by-a-c-spearing/)
Augustinian tradition is appealed to—his teachings on evil and sin, Christian Platonism
Julian as a Trinitarian thinker
What would you say about her understanding of love?
Later visions in life and praying for many years for understanding —Love is THE thing for Julian, it’s the whole thing.
Love as joyful communion but also a passionate willingness to sacrifice for one’s beloved
A Short Play: The Lord and the Servant (from the long text)
Chapter 51 of the Long Text
Red herrings in Julian; the medieval trope of enumerating
The perplexing vision of the servant in the hole ?
Reconciling the goodness of the world with sin; dealing with what she is seeing from God and what the church teaches about sin—wresting with the details
The Fall, the “Felix Culpa” or the “Happy Fault,” and the servant in the hole
God looks without blame and that complicates church teaching on sin; layers in the narrative, God, humanity, Christ
Being drawn into the puzzling and the pondering experienced by Julian inspired by her writing; finding comfort in a loving God that we cannot see clearly
How God sees
“Our life and our being are in God.”
Chapter 49 of Julian’s Showings
“She’s saying, sorry sin, good creatures are good creatures and their goodness qua creatures of God is kept safe and whole in God, regardless of what their concrete existential messed-upness might be.”
Julian says: “Jesus is all who shall be saved. And all who shall be saved are Jesus and all through God's love along with the obedience, humility and patience and other virtues which pertain to us.”
Totus Christi: Jesus as both head and body of the church
Julian says: “All people who shall be saved while we are in this world have in us a marvelous mixture of both weal and woe. We have in us our risen Lord Jesus. We have in us the misery of the harm of Adam's falling and dying. We are steadfastly protected by Christ, and by the touch of His grace, we are raised into sure trust of salvation. And by Adam's fall, our perceptions are so shattered in various ways, by sins and by different sufferings, that we are so darkened and blinded that we can hardly find any comfort. But inwardly, we wait for God and trust faithfully that we shall receive mercy and grace, for this is God's own operation within us. And in His goodness, He opens the eye of our understanding, and by this we gain sight, sometimes more, sometimes less, according to the ability that God gives us to receive it.”
The servant out of the hole; the mixture of weal and woe within us
“She says at some point, ‘Peace and love are always at work in us, but we are not always in peace and love.’”
Even when we don’t feel God, Julian wants us to know the comfort that he is there.
Julian writes: “There neither can, nor shall be anything at all between God and man's soul. He wants us to know that the noblest thing he ever made is humankind and its supreme essence and highest virtue is the blessed soul of Christ. And furthermore, he wants us to know that his precious soul was beautifully bound to him in the making. With a knot which is so subtle and so strong that it is joined into God, and in this joining, it is made eternally holy. … Furthermore, he wants us to know that all the souls which will be eternally saved in heaven are bound and united in this union and made holy in this holiness.”
The Beauty of the Middle English it was originally written in: “one-ing”
“Christ's union with God is our union with God by virtue of Christ's union with us.”
The meaning of atonement for Julian of Norwich
The soul as an intricately woven knot; one knot that is interwoven with those of others by and through God—atonement, the one-ing of humans and God; being tied together and pulled in by the incarnation
“It’s Julian reminding me that my blindness doesn’t have the final say, doesn’t actually say anything about what’s real and true and how God sees.”

Production Notes

This podcast featured Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Kacie Barrett, and Macie Bridge
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

How to Read Dallas Willard / Steve Porter Aug 07, 2024

Dallas Willard (1935-2013) was an influential philosopher and beloved author and speaker on Christian spiritual formation. He had the unique gift of being able to speak eloquently to academic and popular audiences, and it’s fascinating to observe the ways his philosophical thought pervades and influences his spiritual writings—and vice versa.

In this episode, Steve Porter (Senior Research Fellow and Executive Director of the Martin Institute, Westmont College / Affiliate Professor of Spiritual Formation at Biola University) joins Evan Rosa to explore the key concepts and ideas that appear throughout Dallas Willard’s philosophical and spiritual writings, including: epistemological realism; a relational view of knowledge; how knowledge makes love possible; phenomenology and how the mind experiences, represents, and comes into contact with reality; how the human mind can approach the reality of God with a love for the truth; moral psychology; and Dallas’s concerns about the recent resistance, loss, and disappearance of moral knowledge.

About Dallas Willard

Dallas Willard (1935-2013) was a philosopher, minister and beloved author and speaker on Christian philosophy and spiritual formation. For a full biography, visit Dallas Willard Ministries online.

About Steve Porter

Dr. Steve Porter is Senior Research Fellow and Executive Director of the Martin Institute for Christianity & Culture at Westmont College, and an affiliate Professor of Theology and Spiritual Formation at the Institute for Spiritual Formation and Rosemead School of Psychology (Biola University). Steve received his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Southern California and M.Phil. in philosophical theology at the University of Oxford.

Steve teaches and writes in Christian spiritual formation, the doctrine of sanctification, the integration of psychology and theology, and philosophical theology. He co-edited Until Christ is Formed in You: Dallas Willard and Spiritual Formation, Psychology and Spiritual Formation in Dialogue, and Dallas’s final academic book: The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge. He is the author of Restoring the Foundations of Epistemic Justification: A Direct Realist and Conceptualist Theory of Foundationalism, and co-editor of Christian Scholarship in the 21st Century: Prospects and Perils. In addition to various book chapters, he has contributed articles to the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care, Philosophia Christi, Faith and Philosophy, Journal of Psychology and Theology, Themelios, Christian Scholar’s Review, etc. Steve and his wife Alicia live with their son Luke and daughter Siena in Long Beach, CA.

Show Notes

The Martin Institute for Christianity & Culture at Westmont College
Dallas Willard Ministries (Free Online Resources)
Dallas Willard, The Spirit of Disciplines
Willard as both spiritual formation teacher/pastor and intellectual/philosopher
Gary Moon, Becoming Dallas Willard
Dallas Willard Ministries
Conversatio Divina
Phenomenology—“One of the principles of phenomenology is you want to kind of help others come to see what you've seen.”
Willard “presenting himself to God” while teaching
“The kingdom of God was in the room.”
The importance of finding your own way into your spiritual practices
An ontology of knowing and epistemological realism: “We can come to know things the way they are.”
What does it mean to say that being precedes knowledge or that metaphysics precedes epistemology? What does that imply for spiritutal formation?
What is real?
Operating on accurate information about reality
Dallas Willard on Husserl: “What is most intriguing in Husserl's thought to me, the always hopeful realist, is the way he works out a theory of the substance and nature of consciousness and knowledge, which allows that knowledge to grasp a world that it does not make.”
The Cambridge Companion to Husserl
The philosophical tradition of “saving the appearances”
Mind-world relationship
The affinity between concepts and their objects
Dallas Willard on concepts and objects: “On my view, thoughts and their concepts do not modify the objects which make up reality. They merely match up or fail to match up with them in a certain way. Thus, there would be a way things are, and the realism there would be vindicated along with the possibility at least of a God's eye view.”
Lying as a disconnection from the truth and therefore from the world
Agency in our choice to know God and pursue knowing God
The role of sincerity and honesty in shared reality
Richard Rorty, “Solidarity or Objectivity”: “breaking free of the shackles of objectivity”
Dallas Willard in “Where Is Moral Knowledge?”: “One way of characterizing the condition of North American society at present is to say that moral knowledge, knowledge of good and evil, of what is morally admirable and despicable, right and wrong, is no longer available in our world to people generally. It has disappeared as a reliable resource for living.”
Knowledge used to justify violence versus knowledge used to counter injustice
Moral relativism vs moral absolutism—which is the problem today?
Moral absolutism is often not rooted in knowledge, but a feeling of certainty
Dallas Willard, *The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge* (also available here)
Social causes for moral knowledge having disappeared from public life
Moral knowledge provides the place to stand for justice
What is it to be a good person?
Emmanuel Levinas and the face of the other
Dallas Willard in The Divine Conspiracy, “The life and words that Jesus brought into the world came in the form of information and reality.”
Becoming a student of Jesus
Willard’s four fundamental questions: What is real? What is the good life? Who is the good person? How does one become good?
Dallas Willard on how to understand Jesus’s words: “It is the failure to understand Jesus and his words as reality and vital information about life. That explains why today we do not routinely teach those who profess allegiance to him, how to do what he said was best. We lead them to profess allegiance to him, or we expect them to, and we leave them there devoting our remaining efforts to attracting them to this or that.”
The contemporary issue of exchanging becoming more like Jesus for other ways of life.
The real cost of changing one’s life
Frederica Matthewes Green: “Everyone wants transformation, but no one likes to change.”
“The good news of Jesus is the availability of the Kingdom of God.”
Sociologist Max Picard, *The Flight From God* and philosopher Charles Taylor on “the buffered self.”
Dallas Willard on taking Jesus seriously as a reliable path to growth
“In many ways, I believe that we are at a turning point among the people of Christ today, one way of describing that turning point is that people are increasingly serious about living the life that Jesus gives to us. And not just having services, words, and rituals. But a life that is full of the goodness and power of Christ. There is a way of doing that. There is knowledge of spiritual growth and of spiritual life that can be taught and practiced. Spiritual growth is not like lightning that hits for no reason you can think of. Many of us come out of a tradition of religion that is revivalistic and experiential. But often the mixture of theological understanding and history that has come down to us has presented spiritual growth as if somehow it were not a thing that you could have understanding of. That you could know, that you could teach, that made sense. And so, we have often slipped into a kind of practical mysticism. The idea that if we just keep doing certain things, then maybe something will happen. We have not had an understanding of a reliable process of growth.”
Jesus on “The Cure for Anxiety”

Production Notes

This podcast featured Steve Porter
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Alexa Rollow & Kacie Barrett
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

Fully Alive: Modern Monasticism & the Topography of the Soul / Elizabeth Oldfield Jul 31, 2024

What does it mean to be fully alive and at peace with ourselves and our neighbors in the anxiety and fear of contemporary life?

Joining Evan Rosa in this episode is Elizabeth Oldfield—a journalist, communicator, and podcast host of The Sacred. She’s author of Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times.

Together they discuss life in her micro-monastery in south London; the meaning of liturgical and sacramental life embedded in a fast-paced, technological, capitalistic, obsessively popular society; the concept of personal encounter and Martin Buber’s idea that “all living is meeting”; the fundamentally disconnecting power of sin that works against the fully aliveness of truly meeting the other; including discussions of wrath or contempt that drives us toward violence; greed or avarice and the incessant insatiable accumulation of wealth; the attention-training benefits of gratitude and the identify forming power of our attention; throughout it all, working through the spiritual psychology of sin and topography of the soul—and the fact that we are, all of us, in Elizabeth’s words, “unutterably beloved.”

About Elizabeth Oldfield

Elizabeth Oldfield is a journalist, communicator, and author. She hosts a beautiful podcast called The Sacred. And she’s author of Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times. Follow her @esoldfield, and visit her website elizabetholdfield.com

Show Notes

Intentional living community; pulling on monastic lifestyle and framework; read more about Elizabeth Oldfield’s micro-monastery here.
People passing through the micro-monastery and the sharing of a meal and sitting in silence with others
Celtic prayer book - The Aidan Compline (https://www.northumbriacommunity.org/offices/monday-the-aidan-compline/)
Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times by Elizabeth Oldfield (http://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/fully-alive/421701)
How you see your liturgical life, the rhythms of your life however else you might describe you spirituality as providing the soil of this book?
A personal writing experience - communicating something of her tradition with the outside world
What it means to be fully alive to you?
Everything is about relationships and connection; to be fully alive is to be fully connected with the soul
Between Man and Man (https://www.routledge.com/Between-Man-and-Man/Buber/p/book/9780415278270) and I and Thou by Martin Buber - “all living is meeting” (https://www.maximusveritas.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/iandthou.pdf)
If all living is meeting, how are we failing in that regard?
Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense by Francis Spufford (https://www.harpercollins.com/products/unapologetic-francis-spufford?variant=32207439626274)
Sin is disconnection; a turning inward
“Elegy on the Lady Markham” by John Donne (https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/elegy-lady-markham-0)
“As I Walked Out One Evening” by W.H. Auden (https://poets.org/poem/i-walked-out-one-evening)
The Sacred podcast (https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2017/12/06/introducing-the-sacred-podcast)
Polarization, division, and the splitting of people - homophily and fight or flight response
Jesus going to the margins, ignoring tribal boundaries and turning the other cheek
Sin and Reconciliation
The Givenness of Things: Essays by Marilynne Robinson, “I find the soul a valuable concept, a statement of the dignity of human life” (https://www.brethrenpress.com/product_p/9781250097316.htm)
The soul is interesting and difficult to name but is so valuable
Room for uncertainty and poetry—we beat up our souls, keep ourselves distracted
Contemporary life is angry and greedy
Contempt is a poison for our souls and relationships and humanity
Stress and anxiety as a constant
Christian non-violence tradition
We must feel our emotions - process them through the shared rituals of our communities
Desire by Micheal O’Siadhail (https://www.baylorpress.com/9781481320061/desire/)
Would you like to introduce your take on greed?
Phyllis Tickle, dogged commitment of the scripture - the love of money is the root of all evil
The Parable of the Sower - Mark 4:19 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark 4%3A19&version=NIV)
Made gods of wealth, greed, comfort, and connivence
Gratitude is a medicine for greed
Of Gratitude by Thomas Traherne? (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/works-of-thomas-traherne-vii/of-gratitude/161CCCE8293EE4034F65AB436AB4D3F9)
“These are the Days We Prayed For” by Guvna B (https://genius.com/Guvna-b-these-are-the-days-lyrics)
Notice and give thanks; misplaced desire
Acadia, spiritual apathy, and heavy distraction
Attention and discipline are formation
The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt (https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/book)
Community as accountability and rituals and set rhythms of life
Divine Love, ultimate love
Baptism as a reminder of our death - love remains
Quiet space shared with others; honesty, vulnerability, emotional processing

Production Notes

This podcast featured Elizabeth Oldfield
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Kacie Barrett and Alexa Rollow
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

Political Rage & America's Threat from Within / Elizabeth Neumann Jul 11, 2024

Elizabeth Neumann served as the Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism and Threat Prevention at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security during the Bush Administration, and came back to the White House again in 2017 to serve in the Trump Administration.

Her job was to counter emerging right-wing extremism, fueled by long-standing anger, resentment, white supremacism, and Christian nationalism. By April 2020, she had resigned from the Trump Administration. Citing a failure of leadership and his imperiling of American security, she signed an August 2020 statement with 130 other Republican national security officials, boldly stating in no uncertain terms that Trump was unfit for office.

In this episode, Elizabeth opens up about this experience, told in her recent book Kingdom of Rage: The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace. As a person of Christian faith with over two decades of experience in public service and national security, she offers a fascinating inside take on the inattention to domestic terrorism; she elucidates the emergence of a new and Christian extremism, grounded in rage and willing to take violent action; she explains the Jan 6 attack through the perspective of homeland security; and she reflects on Christian resources for responding to the chaotic, politicized anger characterized in right-wing extremism and how we might act as instruments of peace.

About Elizabeth Neumann

Elizabeth Neumann served as the Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism and Threat Prevention at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security during the Bush administration, and came back to the White House again in 2017 to serve in the Trump Administration, publicly resigning in 2020. She is author of Kingdom of Rage: The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace, and is a frequent guest on national news outlets, and the Chief Strategy Officer at Moonshot. She is based in the Denver, CO area.

Show Notes

Kingdom of Rage: The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace by Elizabeth Neumann
Elizabeth Neumann’s faith journey and background in public service.
Christian, North Texas/Bible Belt, more theologically conservative—an “evangelical mutt”
Body of Christ is made up of different communities—personally gravitating towards more nerdy churches, an emphasis on Bible studies
Public service as a way to live out the faith
Working for George W. Bush campaigns for governor and president—federalism, conservative, to the states: faith-based community initiatives and Bush’s compassionate conservative agenda
9/11 as a moment of change
Working in Homeland Security, specifically in the Domestic Terrorism Unite
Instances of domestic violent extremism: Pittsburg Tree of Life (2018), Christ Church in New Zealand (2019), and El Paso Walmart (2019)
Do you think of them as domestic terrorism? Do you think of it as a kind of violence that’s brewing from within? How does the Department of Security try to understand threats to America from within?
Intelligence is used to inform responses to challenges, yet the means to collect don’t work domestically and domestic material support of terrorism is not understood as criminal
No way to designate domestic terrorism groups
The threat has been there all along; domestic extremists require a shift in the focus - many Americans (3%, roughly 8 million people) believe in the necessity of violence for political aims
We don’t talk about it so people don’t know about it, but the church is equipped to discuss and address the underlying drivers that mobilize people to violence
How did you experience perspective shifts?
COVID in 2020, protests against COVID procedures, and the protests surrounding the murder of George Floyd
Weaponizing of crisis by Trump administration for re-election campaign
The ANTIFA movement; authoritarian responses from Trump that were illegal and unconstitutional; no longer anyone in the room to tell him no
January 6 highlighted a security failure that was both day of as well as a result of 20 years of ignoring a threat from within
Would you be willing to share a bit about what motivated your decision to leave the Trump administration?
Presidential personnel interviews as a loyalty test; people being pushed out; how far were people willing to go for Donald Trump?
Hatch Act: prohibits federal employees, including political appointees, from engaging in political activity
Christian nationalist mindset—How does Christianity get radicalized?
Extremism: when an in-group perceives a threat to its success or survival by an out-group and hostile action is necessary—this is the nature of contemporary politics which are saturated in fear and anger.
The plausibility of violent action
Violence is not the option taught by Jesus and the Scriptures
Violence has a historic presence in the Christian tradition
Change in the presence of Christianity in society that is unsettling for some, but cannot be an excuse for extremists and violent action
What are the prospects of keeping it a peaceful community?
Building protective factors and systems for healing brokenness
Unmet needs cannot be allowed to be met by extremist ideology when the Church possesses the answers and the means to meet them; a call to properly investing in our communities
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt
Motivated by emotions and experience—critical thinking is a vital skill
We are in a perpetual state of anger; we are called to not stay angry
Processing anger properly; being better at lament and grieving in a biblical way
Tim Keller on idolatry and anger; an interfering with our idols; Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power and the Only Hope that Matters?
What is lying more deeply within us when anger is on the surface?
The space to lament and grieve in society in a healthy way
The Lord can meet us in our anger; he will take it when we bring it to him and ask for help
What does it mean to be a Christian peacemaker?
Intentionally caring for communities; the quiet spaces in which the face of God is seen in others by loving them.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Elizabeth Neumann
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Alexa Rollow & Kacie Barrett
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

Learning to Disagree / John Inazu Jul 03, 2024

Genuine disagreement is vanishingly rare. But to disagree with careful listening, empathy, respect, and independent thinking—it’s an essential part of life in a pluralistic democratic society.

In this episode, legal scholar and author John Inazu joins Evan Rosa to talk about his new book, Learning to Disagree: The Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect. He’s the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion at Washington University in St. Louis.

Together they discuss the challenge of disagreeing well in contemporary life, replete with the depersonalization of social media; the difference between certainty and confidence; what it means to think for oneself, freely and independently; the virtue of humility in civil discourse; the prospect for political dissent and civil disobedience; how to pursue the truth in a culture of principled pluralism; and practical steps toward empathic and respectful disagreement.

About John Inazu

John Inazu is the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion at Washington University in St. Louis. He teaches criminal law, law and religion, and various First Amendment courses. He writes and speaks frequently about pluralism, assembly, free speech, religious freedom, and other issues. John has written three books—including Learning to Disagree: The Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect (Zondervan, 2024) and *Liberty’s Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly* (Yale, 2012)—and has published opinion pieces in the Washington Post, Atlantic, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, USA Today, Newsweek, and CNN. He is also the founder of the Carver Project and the Legal Vocation Fellowship and is a senior fellow with Interfaith America.

Show Notes

"Yeah? Well, you know, that's just like uh, your opinion, man."
Get a copy of Learning to Disagree: The Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect (https://www.jinazu.com/learning-to-disagree)
Disagreement around civility and civil discourse particularly
Identifying and naming disagreement
Practical limits of human relationship as a reality of disagreement
Why you picked up learning to disagree, disagreement in particular? And why is it important to you? What drew you now to make a comment about disagreement?
Liberty’s Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly (https://www.jinazu.com/libertys-refuge)
Right of Assembly in the first amendment and what it means in groups - Madison and factions (Federalist 10?)
Confident Pluralism: Surviving and Thriving Through Deep Difference (https://www.jinazu.com/confident-pluralism)
Constitutional law
The First Amendment as what secures the ability to disagree - Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Speech
“One is, even if that was part of the, original focus, like any ongoing tradition, it can be lost or ignored. And so there's this sense in which each new generation needs to understand and appreciate it for intrinsic reasons and not just because they read it in a book.”
Individual thinking but the reality of not doing anything individually as we are involved in embodied human relationships
What starting points are there? You begin with empathy, what other starting points do you like to introduce to help people understand where you’re trying to take people with this?
Complexity and compromise and recognizing that compromise isn’t always possible
Humility in competing visions of truth and what is best for the world; no good or bad, just different persuasions
A desire for certainty which fear and laziness underline
I wonder if you could speak a little bit more to the legal background and why you think that is so helpful and so instructive for going through this framework of learning to disagree?
“Maybe only prudentially in order to try to defeat it, but the work of understanding the other side's argument in the best light possible is itself a work of empathy that allows you to step into the headspace of the opponent a little bit and allows you to see why someone who is not dumb or is not You know, completely outside of society might actually think differently.”
Supreme Court and difficult, political decisions
Applying the approaches that are taught in law schools in every day life
Three branches of government and checks and balances
Loss of human relationships with colleagues in Congress and the increase of them in the Supreme Court
Political dissent and political dissidents
When to disagree?
Protests, assemblies, and activism
The privilege of dissent in the United States
Social pressures, social stigma, and the confidence and responsibility to dissent
How to cultivate respect for the one who you disagree with?
Love your enemies and the Christian calling for interpersonal relationship with the person you disagree with; there is no guarantee of reciprocity
Question of belief, right belief and orthodoxy
Differences matter, especially in theological conversation, but that doesn’t mean we should rest in certainty
Learning and granting grace to ourselves and one another
Lesslie Newbigin - confidence not certainty
How do we cultivate that ability to stay in the middle of it? To hold the tension, being able to live in the complexity, stay invested that the conversation happens without getting disillusioned or apathetic?
The differences between Preaching and Persuasion
How you recommended, what they can do today in the disagreements they find themselves in? What they can do at the level of mindset and what they can try to implement?
Disagreement is something you have to practice and to know that mistakes will be made
Let conversations linger and take time and happen over multiple meetings - making the commitment to be together and be in conversation
Building trust in disagreeing well - acknowledging the relational
Don’t start with family; practice with others initially
“But regardless of sort of the relationship that you start with, go in with a full tank, right? don't don't go in when you yourself are like, impatient or exhausted or hungry, because you should go in kind of anticipating that there'll be some challenges to this. And if you can, on the front end say, you know what, in this conversation, I'm probably going to hear something that is going to offend me or annoy me.”
Friends who disagree and the importance of friendship
Mixing the serious with the playful and the mundane
Friendship as an important element of discourse and disagreement

Production Notes

This podcast featured John Inazu
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Alexa Rollow & Kacie Barrett
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

Disillusioned with Faith: Finding Hope in Our Scars / Aimee Byrd Jun 26, 2024

We live in a time of disillusionment. Trust is waning in the public sphere, religious affiliation is on decline, and some feel a deep tension or ambivalence about their community—whether that’s a region, family, political party, or spiritual tradition.

How should we think about the experience of disillusionment, particularly the threat of becoming disillusioned with faith?

Aimee Byrd, author of several books on contemporary issues facing Christianity. And after her own experience becoming disillusioned with the church, she wrote her most recent offering: The Hope in Our Scars: Finding the Bride of Christ in the Underground of Disillusionment.

In this conversation, Aimee Byrd joins Evan Rosa to discuss: how to diagnose and understand disillusionment—particularly disillusionment with church and the trappings of Christian faith & culture; as well as the problem of spiritual abuse and the broken forms of faith that allow it to persist. She explores the Old Testament’s Song of Songs—exploring how it honors the depth of human longing and desire. She considers how beauty validates our yearnings and invites us toward a lasting faith and gives us new sight and recognition, and ultimately takes a hard look at what it means to explore our wounds and scars in search of hope and faith.

About Aimee Byrd

Aimee Byrd is the author of many books, including her latest, The Hope in Our Scars: Finding the Bride of Christ in the Underground of Disillusionment (2024).

Show Notes

The Hope in Our Scars: Finding the Bride of Christ in the Underground of Disillusionment by Aimee Byrd (https://zondervanacademic.com/products/the-hope-in-our-scars)
Steven Heighton’s The Virtues of Disillusionment (free PDF download)
Unpacking disillusionment. You spend some time thinking about disillusionment. Where do you begin to think about that?
Experiencing disillusionment as we mature and try to figure out the meaningfulness of life
The hustle; pursuing what we think goodness is supposed to look like
A disrupting takes place
Spiritual maturity; writing into a neglect in women’s discipleship
The rejection and harassment experienced by women acting as theologians - spiritual abuse
Help set some parameters for how you conceptualize spiritual abuse and how you came to understand and integrate with your story?
“And yet these feelings of unsafety in the very place where you’re supposed to be shepherded.”
Carefully using the word abuse
Abuse: when people are okay with harming you for their own gain and power, where you are the cost
Limiting feelings of possibility; a shrinking of the person and questioning of their belonging
Diane Langberg on the elements of personhood (https://www.dianelangberg.com/shop-books/)
Agency, voice, and sense of self
Diagnosing disillusionment; a lot of dull signs leading up to it, somethings just not right
Desperation, loss, depression, fight, panic, pretending or rejecting/deconstructing to move on
Naming our wounds is an action of hope
“Jesus’ wounds are a testimony.”
Our scars are a remembering, a telling of our story.
John 12:24 - grain of wheat falling to the ground (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John 12%3A24&version=NIV)
Being a good witness to God, justing handing it over to him.
“Unless a grain of wheat falls to into the ground” by Malcom Guite (https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2015/05/09/unless-a-grain-of-wheat-falls-into-the-ground/)
Holding onto these resentments leaves us further alone; we must let go.
We don’t need reform, we need resurrection.
Maintaining a false sense of belonging through facades
Sanctified imagination and community
We need to recapture our imagination as a way to combat disillusionment
Walter Brueggemann - the riddle and insight of Biblical faith is that anguish leads to life, only grieving leads to joy (https://www.walterbrueggemann.com/resources/books/textonly/)
Lifting the Veil: Imagination and the Kingdom of God by Malcom Guite (https://www.squarehalobooks.com/lifting-the-veil)
“Scripture is a story. It’s all kind of story of people who screw up.”
“God is bigger than all the ways we screw up our lives.”
Open wounds, healing, scarring
Song of Songs and unlocking the imagination and intimate love of God
Scripture in which a women’s voice and experiences are given center stage
Song of Songs, chapters three (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Song of Songs 3&version=NIV) and five (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Song+of+Songs+5&version=NIV)
Love calls to us
Vulnerability in the position and in the naming of our experiences
Beholding the face of Christ, and Christ looking back at us - the beauty Christ sees in us, as Christ beautifies us.
“Beauty is an invitation into goodness.”
The natural world develops our taste for beauty.
A desire to feed our allusion of security, yet our hearts remain uncaptured.
Beauty engages will and involves all of our senses; a hyper-fixation on the brain that is not holistic
Awe and wonder; the role of the poets and the artists as the reveal what we try to hustle over the top of - they leave us feeling seen and maybe exposed.
Speaking from a place of knowing our own value, a confidence and strength.
Looking for the personhood that Christ is fostering in each of us.
Being a community that beholds; our longing to be seen, known, and loved should be met by our churches as we see Christ in one another.
We must go to Christ; yet disillusionment makes it difficult; all the disciples experienced disillusionment
Hope is disruptive and subversive, but gloriously so.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Aimee Byrd
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Kacie Barrett
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 Motherhood: Love & Resistance / Kelly Brown Douglas Jun 19, 2024

“Black motherhood has consistently been a contested space. Black women have just fought for their rights to be. And so when we say Black motherhood, to me, the reality of Black motherhood itself is the resistance. And we still stand and we claim what it means to be Black mothers. We've got to consistently stand firm trying to raise healthy children in spite of it all.”

Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas (Episcopal Divinity School) discusses the gift and grace of Black motherhood to the world and what we can learn from Black mothers about love and resistance. Appreciating the example they set for the meaning of justice that emerges from love, and the capacity for love that emerges from justice, Dr. Douglas offers beautiful examples and expressions of the joy and abundance that Black motherhood means.

She reflects on the impact of her maternal grandmother on her life; the Langston Hughes poem “Mother and Son”—which is a testimony of perseverance and robust agency; the glorious hush harbor sermon and ode to self-love and dignity, delivered by Baby Suggs Holy, known as “The Sermon in the Clearing" in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. It gave me chills to hear Dr. Douglas read the sermon. She looks back to the example set by Mamie Till, the mother of Emmitt Till, who as a 14 year old boy was lynched in 1955. And Dr. Douglas speaks in witness to the fear, pain, and grief of the Black mother during the Black Lives Matter era, drawing not only on her expertise in Womanist Theology, but her close relationship with her own son.

Show Notes

Black motherhood and womanist theology; listening to the experiences of black motherhood
Audre Lorde “to love and to resist at the same time” - Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches? (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/198292/sister-outsider-by-audre-lorde/)
What does it mean to love and resist at the same time?
Legacy passed on through motherhood; loving oneself while resisting that which says you are not a sacred child of God - helping black children to understand that they are somebody.
Where have you been inspired by womanist scholars and by other sources in the Christian tradition and beyond for really strengthening the kind of love you are describing there?
Inspired by the woman in her life - maternal grandmother especially
The Great Migrations from the South
Grandmother worked as an elevator operator, a job traditionally associated with with black women
Always made a way for her grandchildren to have fun and set aside money for them after high school - making sure they felt important
Accountable to one’s legacy, to the generations that came before.
“You struggle for the children that you can’t see.”
You’ve written about intergenerational dialogue, about communication and so tell me a little bit more about how you see love expressed through honest, truthful, wise communication?
Communication as a part of love and a part of resistance; telling the story with tough truth and means of survival
Beloved by Toni Morrison (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/117647/beloved-by-toni-morrison/)
Would you mind quoting it and kind of giving some context for listeners that are not familiar with that sermon?
Sermon of self love; love of the whole self as an act against those that do not love you
To parent Black, the love and the harsh truth
Resurrection Hope: A Future Where Black Lives Matter by Kelly Brown Douglas (https://orbisbooks.com/products/resurrection-hope)
Having these conversations with her own son
Philandro Castile killing
“These are the dialogues you cannot shy away from when you’re trying to raise a Black child, that you have to have, that you have to tell them the truth, you provide them the tools for surviving, those sort of practical tools. And at the same time, you have to provide them with the inside stuff that allows them to resist all of that stuff on the outside that tells them that they aren’t worth it.”
The tools to resist and then thrive; the world suddenly becoming knowledgable on the conversations being had with Black children
Not thinking it as THE conversation but one piece of intergenerational dialogue
Mother to Son by Langston Hughes (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47559/mother-to-son)
How you see the possibility of Black motherhood passing on this love, which is resistance, this dual side of what that is? It’s kind of paradoxical holding them both together, how that might speak not just to the son but to the world?
Black motherhood itself consistently attacked and contested
Moynihan in 1960s
“Black women have just fought for their rights to be. And so when we say Black motherhood itself is the resistance.”
Moral imaginary of justice
“Because if we don’t have that dialogue that speaks to the hard truths and pushes forward an agenda of justice, then we cannot expect the next generation to be any better than out generation or previous generations in enacting a world where all mothers, children, can be free from anything that does not affirm and respect their sacred humanity.”
Mamie Till and the open casket of Emmett Till; the parents of Trayvon Martin
We forget that these are people’s children, these are mothers who have lost their children.
“We see Black bodies, but not Black human beings.”
Rest in Power: The Enduring Life of Trayvon Martin by Sabrina Fulton and Tracy Martin (https://jacarandabooksartmusic.com/products/rest-in-power-1)
See the humanity of Black mothers and their children

“The Sermon in the Clearing”

Toni Morrison’s Beloved

“Here,” she said, “in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in the grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don’t love your eyes; they’d just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face ’cause they don’t love that either. You got to love it, you*! And no, they ain’t in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you leavins instead. No, they don’t love your* mouth. You got to love it. This is flesh I’m talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms I’m telling you. And O my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it, and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they’d just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver—love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize.” Saying no more, she stood up then and danced with her twisted hip the rest of what her heart had to say while the others opened their mouths and gave her the music. Long notes held until the four-part harmony was perfect enough for their deeply loved flesh.

Mother to Son
BY LANGSTON HUGHES

Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

About Kelly Brown Douglas

The Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, Ph.D., is Interim President of the Episcopal Divinity School. From 2017 to 2023, she was Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Theology. She was named the Bill and Judith Moyers Chair in Theology at Union in November 2019. She also serves as the Canon Theologian at the Washington National Cathedral and Theologian in Residence at Trinity Church Wall Street.

Prior to Union, Douglas served as Professor of Religion at Goucher College where she held the Susan D. Morgan Professorship of Religion and is now Professor Emeritus. Before Goucher, she was Associate Professor of Theology at Howard University School of Divinity (1987-2001) and Assistant Professor of Religion at Edward Waters College (1986-1987). Ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1983, Douglas holds a master’s degree in theology and a Ph.D. in systematic theology from Union.

Douglas is the author of many articles and six books, including Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God, and Resurrection Hope: A Future Where Black Lives Matter, which won the 2023 Grawemeyer Award in Religion. Her academic work has focused on womanist theology, sexuality and the Black church.

Theologian of Hope: Remembering Jürgen Moltmann (1926 – 2024) / Miroslav Volf Jun 06, 2024

On June 3,2024, Jürgen Moltmann died. He was one of the greatest theologians of our time. He was 98 years old. In this episode, Miroslav Volf eulogizes and remembers his mentor and friend. We then share a previously released conversation between Miroslav Volf and Jürgen Moltmann. This episode first aired in April 2021—and it includes Moltmann’s conviction that “without living theologically, there can be no theology”; it explores the meaning of joy and its connection to anxiety, fear, wrath, hope, and love; and Professor Moltmann shares about the circumstances in which he came to faith—as a 16-year-old drafted into World War II by the German Army, enduring the bombardment of his hometown of Hamburg, and being held for 3 years in a Scottish prison camp, where he read with new eyes the cry of dereliction from Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

This cry would lay a foundation that led to his most influential book, The Crucified God. Moltmann explains the centrality of Christ, the human face of God, for not just his theological vision, but his personal faith—which is a lived theology.

Ryan McAnnally-Linz introduces the episode by celebrating Jürgen Moltmann's 95th birthday and reflecting on his lasting theological influence.

Show Notes

Happy 95th Birthday, Jürgen Moltmann!
Find the places of deepest human concern, and shine the light of the Gospel there.
“Without living theologically, there can be no theology."
Jürgen Moltmann’s Theology of Joy (1972)—“How can I sing the Lord’s song in an alien land?"
Joy today: Singing the Lord’s song in the broad place of his presence
"Hope is anticipated joy, as anxiety is anticipated terror."
"How does one find the way to joy from within anxiety and terror?"
Seeing the face of God as an awakened hope
Jesus Christ as the human face of God: “Without Jesus Christ, I would not believe in God."
God is present in the midst of suffering
Discovering and being discovered by God
Moltmann’s story of being drafted to the Germany army at 16 years old (1943)
In a prison camp in Scotland, Moltmann read the Gospel of Mark and found hope when there was no expectation.
The Crucified God, the cry of dereliction, and the cry of jubilation
Contrasting joy with American optimism and the pursuit of happiness
Christianity as a unique religion of joy, in virtue of the resurrection of Christ
Joy versus fun—“You can experience joy only with your whole heart, your whole soul, and all your energies."
"You cannot make yourself joyful… something unexpected must happen."
Love and joy
"The intention of love is the happiness of the beloved."
"We are not loved because we are beautiful… we are beautiful because we are loved."
Joy and gratitude
Love comes as a gift and surprise, and therefore leads to joy.
Blessed, therefore grateful—receiving the gift as gift
“Anticipated joy is the best joy.”
The Passion of God as the foundation of joy
Passionate God of the Hebrew Bible or Absolute God of Greek Metaphysics?
An apathetic God makes apathetic people; the compassion of God makes compassionate people
A Feeling God or an Apathetic God? God’s participation in suffering and joy
“God participates in the joy of his creation."
Luke 15: “There is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 just…"
Lost coin, lost sheep, prodigal son...
The wrath of God is God’s wounded love
“My wrath is only for a moment, and my grace is everlasting."
"Joy, in the end, wins."

Watch a video of this interview here.

Production Notes

This podcast featured theologians Jürgen Moltmann and Miroslav Volf
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa & Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Production Assistance by Alexa Rollow & Kacie Barrett
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

Mobilizing Hope in Women’s Prison: Discovering Agency, Community, and Creative Resilience / Sarah Farmer May 09, 2024

How do you find hope when you can only see yourself and your future in light of your past mistakes? When you’re certain that everyone on the outside looking in is doing the same, punishing you, immobilizing you, invisibilizing you…?

Seems the only way out of that spiral is the “God Who Sees.”

Practical theologian Sarah Farmer joins Evan Rosa to discuss her recent book, Restorative Hope: Creating Pathways of Connection in Women’s Prisons. She describes the experience of prison—the ways it constrains movement, how it abridges and threatens agency, and how the constant surveillance leaves a person breathless. She illuminates the approach to theological education she and her colleagues put on offer for these women, these incarcerated theologians whose very lives were the texts to learn from. Sarah offers a contribution from Womanist Theology: Dolores Williams’ re-narration of Hagar—from the book of Genesis—the forgotten, quote, “invisibilized” Egyptian slave of Abraham and Sarah—Hagar, the woman who named God, “El Roi”… the God who sees. And she imagines a restorative hope built around self-respect and identity, connection, and resilience—a hope that shines even into the darkness of a women’s prison cell.

Show Notes

Get your copy of Restorative Hope: Creating Pathways of Connection in Women’s Prisons

Production Notes

This podcast featured Sarah Farmer
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Alexa Rollow
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

Peaceable Assembly: Protests, Collective Belonging, and Refuge in a Forgotten Right / John Inazu May 01, 2024

Protests dominate the news. And while we’re familiar with freedom of speech, free exercise of religion, and freedom of the press—what about the freedom of assembly? The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution—also contains “the right of the people peaceably to assemble.”

But what exactly does that secure? How does this foundational, but often forgotten, right impact the shape of democracy, undergirding and making possible a flourishing public life? And are we prepared to defend the full application of these rights to our political rivals? Those we disagree with?

Legal scholar John Inazu (Washington University, St. Louis) joins Evan Rosa for a discussion of the freedom of assembly—its history, meaning, interpretation, and application—as well as how it impacts the ability for citizens to gather to demonstrate and protest.

Show Notes

Read the Constitution of the United States of America (1787)
Learning to
Get your copy of Liberty’s Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly
Click here to download a free version of Liberty’s Refuge.
The First Amendment
Introducing peaceable assembly.
“I was working for a federal judge and working on a First Amendment case, looked down at the text of the First Amendment and saw the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and I thought to myself, I've had three years of law school and four years of legal practice, and I've never thought about the Assembly Clause.”
Ecclesia as a counter political entity
“I can’t assemble alone.”
“Know Your Rights” by The Clash
Three historical points about interpreting the assembly clause
The grammar of the assembly clause
Assembly and Petition are two distinct rights
The right of association
The right of privacy
Assembly is the right of association
Where are the limits of a protest? Under assembly? Or under the free speech clause.
“we ought to care about the values that drive different parts of the Constitution.”
The groupness—the idea of collective expression
Understanding the “peaceable” side of assembly
“The best law enforcement understand that there has to be some breathing space.”
Reform mode vs revolution mode
Policing assembly as more of an art than a science
Peaceable assembly and collective belonging
“Civil liberties are for losers.”
Practical steps to upholding peaceable assembly as a right and civil liberty
Exercise your rights
Defend the rights of everyone

About John Inazu

John Inazu is the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion at Washington University in St. Louis. He teaches criminal law, law and religion, and various First Amendment courses. He writes and speaks frequently about pluralism, assembly, free speech, religious freedom, and other issues. John has written three books—including Learning to Disagree: The Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect (Zondervan, 2024) and Liberty’s Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly (Yale, 2012)—and has published opinion pieces in the Washington Post, Atlantic, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, USA Today, Newsweek, and CNN. He is also the founder of the Carver Project and the Legal Vocation Fellowship and is a senior fellow with Interfaith America.

Image Citation

Original caption: “Demonstrators sit, with their feet in the Reflecting Pool, during the March on Washington, 1963] / WKL."

Original black and white negative by Warren K. Leffler. Taken August 28th, 1963, Washington D.C, United States (@libraryofcongress).

Colorized by Jordan J. Lloyd.

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA https://www.loc.gov/item/2011648314/

Production Notes

This podcast featured John Inazu
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, and Tim Bergeland
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

Desire: How Avarice and Acquisition Distort Our Longing for the Sacred / Micheal O'Siadhail Apr 17, 2024

"Having lost a sense of the sacred, the only thing we want is acquisitiveness—more of everything. How can we break this vicious cycle of avarice? It seems to me that the only way we can possibly reign this in on ourselves is some retrieval of the sense of the sacred, something beyond ourselves.

And I think that relearning humility—realizing that a parasitic pathogen can spread across the globe and wreak havoc as it did—brings us to the question again of the sacred.

Dare we speak of a God who is worthy of all our desire? That we as creatures might want with all of our heart, all of our mind, to contemplate. Should anything less deserve our desiring really? Clearly there's a hierarchy of desire, but what is our overarching desire? Can we gamble on reimagining the wonder of a capacious God of endless surprises?" (Micheal O'Siadhail, from the episode)

About Micheal O'Siadhail

Micheal O'Siadhail is an award-winning poet and author of many collections of poetry. His Collected Poems was published in 2013, One Crimson Thread in 2015 and The Five Quintets in 2018, which received Conference on Christianity and Literature Book of the Year 2018 and an Eric Hoffer Award in 2020. His latest works are Testament (2022) and Desire (2023). He holds honorary doctorates from the universities of Manitoba and Aberdeen. He lives in New York.

Show Notes

Micheal O’Siadhail, Desire
Recitation: Epigraph
Using poetry as a means to record the COVID-19 Pandemic
Using words to process emotion
Human desire for more; greed
The internet as a driving force for consumption
Consumerism feeding climate change
Breaking the cycle by retrieving the sacred
“Bless” is not a word used easily in our culture
Recitation: Pest 12
Gratitude within anxiety
Recitation: Pest 20
Stewarding the earth
Recitation: Habitat 13
What is worthy of our desire?
The “stabilitas” of being where you are
Wanting acquisitiveness more than the sacred
Truly being known versus being famous
Recitation: Behind the Screen 17
Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation
Recitation: Behind the Screen 20
The temptation towards certainty
Recitation: Behind the Screen 1
Trusting the God of surprises
“Dare we speak of a God who is worthy of all our desire?”
Recitation: Desire 24 & 25
“On Earth as it is in Heaven” as a dream
Reordering and re-educating our desire
Unity and Denise Levertov’s concept of “One-ing”

Production Notes

This podcast featured Micheal O’Siadhail
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, and Tim Bergeland
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

How to Read Flannery O'Connor / Jessica Hooten Wilson Apr 10, 2024

Flannery O’Connor is known for her short stories in which “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” But it’s often those ugly, mean, disgusting, scandalizing, violent, weird, or downright hateful characters in Flannery O’Connor stories that become the vessels of grace delivered.

So, how should we read Flannery O’Connor?

Jessica Hooten Wilson (Pepperdine University) joins Evan Rosa to open up about Flannery O’Connor’s life, her unique perspective as a writer, the theological and moral principles operative in her work, all as an immense invitation to read O’Connor and find the beauty of God’s grace that emerges amidst the most horrendous evils. Includes a discussion of Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “Greenleaf.”

Show Notes

Check out Jessica Hooten Wilson’s presentation of Flannery O’Connor’s final, unfinished novel: Flannery O’Connor’s Why Do the Heathen Rage?
Click here for an online copy of “Greenleaf” to follow along with our analysis
Spiritual formation through the works of Flannery O’Connor
How to read for a flourishing life
“Greenleaf” by Flannery O’Connor
Flannery O’Connor’s reading grounded in tradition of early church mothers and fathers.
Paying attention to every individual word.
First word: Mrs. Mays looses her agency.
Europa & the Bull, Ovid’s Metamorphosis
Mrs. May’s blinds as hiding pieces of reality, shutting out God
The spiritual truth of the story is concealed when not read attentively and intentionally
Flannery’s writings defying instant gratification
“The wrong kind of horror”
The development of American consumerism
Showing versus enjoying violence
Sacramental reading
The Holy Fool
The Violent Bear It Away as a hymn to the eucharist
O’Connor requires spiritual reading.
A summary of “Greenleaf”
Pierced by the bull, a violent union of Savior and sinner
O’Connor’s Christian characters; “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
Characters changing and choosing faith before death.
The final paragraph of “Greenleaf”
Mrs. Greenleaf as the opposite of Ivan Karamazov, in The Brothers Karamazov
Opening to the world with the knowledge of God
Pentecostalism and zeal in “Greenleaf”
Stabbed in the heart, medieval mysticism
“Lord, help us dig down under things and find where you are”

About Jessica Hooten Wilson

Jessica Hooten Wilson is the Fletcher Jones Endowed Chair of Great Books at Pepperdine University (’23) and previously served as the Seaver College Scholar of Liberal Arts at Pepperdine University (’22-’23). She co-hosts a podcast called The Scandal of Reading: Pursuing Holy Wisdom with Christ & Pop Culture, where she discusses with fellow authors, professors, and theologians with Claude Atcho and Austin Carty. She is the author of Flannery O’Connor’s Why Do the Heathen Rage?: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at a Work in Progres*s (Brazos Press, January 23, 2024); Reading for the Love of God: How to Read as a Spiritual Practice (Brazos Press, 2023);* Scandal of Holiness: Renewing Your Imagination in the Company of Literary Saints (Brazos Press, 2022) which received a Christianity Today 2023 Award of Merit (Culture & the Arts) and a Midwest Book Review* 2023 Silver Book Award (Nonfiction – Religion/Philosophy); co-author with Dr. Jacob Stratman of Learning the Good Life: Wisdom from the Great Hearts and Minds that Came Before (Zondervan Academic, 2022); Giving the Devil his Due: Demonic Authority in the Fiction of Flannery O’Connor and Fyodor Dostoevsky* (February 28, 2017), which received a 2018 Christianity Today Book of the Year Award in the Culture & the Arts; as well as two books on Walker Percy: *The Search for Influence: Walker Percy and Fyodor Dostoevsky* (Ohio State University Press, 2017) and Reading Walker Percy’s Novels (Louisiana State University Press, 2018); most recently she co-edited Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: *The Russian Soul in the West* (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020).

She has received numerous fellowships, grants, and awards, including a Fulbright Fellowship to the Czech Republic, an NEH grant to study Dante in Florence in 2014, and the Biola Center for Christian Thought sabbatical fellowship. In 2018 she received the Emerging Public Intellectual Award given by a coalition of North American think tanks in collaboration with the Centre for Christian Scholarship at Redeemer University College, and in 2019 she received the Hiett Prize in Humanities from The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Jessica Hooten Wilson
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, and Tim Bergeland
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

A World Out of Joint: Pilgrimage and the Possibilities of Homemaking / Ryan McAnnally-Linz Apr 04, 2024

This conversation is based on a free downloadable resource available at faith.yale.edu. Click here to get your copy today.

“We may heed the call of Jesus to follow me and find him leading us right into the home we already have.” (Ryan McAnnally-Linz)

What are the possibilities of homemaking in a world out of joint? What does it mean for Christians to be on a pilgrimage? To be sojourners in the world?

Ryan McAnnally-Linz joins Evan Rosa to discuss what it means for Christian life to be a journey not from here to there, but from here to … here. Together they discuss what it means for the world to be the home of God; the task of resisting the “dysoikos” (or the parodic sinful distortion of home); the meaning of Christian life as a pilgrimage; and three faithful ways to approach the work of homemaking that anticipates how the world is becoming the home of God—Ryan introduces examples from Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement, Julian of Norwich, and a modern-day farming family.

You Are A Tree: Metaphor & the Poetry of Our Humanity / Joy Marie Clarkson Mar 28, 2024

Help us improve the podcast! Click here to take our listener survey—5 respondents will be randomly selected to receive a signed and personalized copy of Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most.

We need the world to understand it. Human embodied experience and material life in the world has a profound effect on our thinking—not just poetry and pop music, but our intellectual reflections, philosophical theories and scientific observations, to the most mundane conversations.

Take a closer look at human language and ideas, and we’ll find we are deeply embedded, grounded, and built on a foundation of metaphor. That last sentence, for instance, depends on the metaphor KNOWLEDGE is a BUILDING. But navigating this terrain can be treacherous and we can easily get lost (another metaphor: LIFE is a JOURNEY). But to be a tree planted by streams of water, bearing fruit, flourishing with vibrant leaves, we can allow our roots to sink down into this reality and bloom and reach upward (YOU are a TREE).

Theologian Joy Marie Clarkson joins me and Macie Bridge today for a conversation about metaphor. It’s brimming and full of metaphor itself (that one’s KNOWLEDGE is a CONTAINER), but it’s not too meta.

Together we discuss: How we see ourselves as human: Are we trees? Are we machines? The beauty of language and the glory of poetry to reveal intangible or invisible wisdom and experience. Joy explains the hidden negation in metaphors and the dance between subjective convention and objective realities. We revel and play with language and its particularity. We discuss Julian of Norwich on Jesus as the source of motherhood. J.R.R. Tolkien on technology and redemption through trees and dark journeys. And we explore the many metaphors that seem to undergird Christian theological reflection on flourishing life.

About Joy Clarkson

Joy Marie Clarkson is research associate in theology and literature at King’s College London. She’s the author of Aggressively Happy: A Realist’s Guide to Believing in the Goodness of Life, as well as her most recent You Are a Tree: And Other Metaphors to Nourish Life, Thought, and Prayer. Her writing has also appeared in The Tablet, Christianity Today, and Plough Quarterly. She is the Books and Culture Editor for Plough Quarterly and hosts a podcast called Speaking with Joy. Check out her Substack here.

Show Notes

Explore the book: Joy Clarkson, You Are a Tree: And Other Metaphors to Nourish Life, Thought, and Prayer
Joy Clarkson’s Substack
Metaphor embedded throughout thought and language
Are you a machine? Are you a tree?
Hidden negation within metaphors
Bill Collins poem, “Litany”: “You are the goblet and the wine.”
Aristotle on metaphor: Carry over the properties of one thing to another.
Whispering “not really though”
Metaphors about God and internal or hidden negation
Complexity of the world
Posture of humility
Literal language is a kind of trick to think that “we actually have said the thing finally and completely.”
Thomas Aquinas, medieval theologians and speaking about God by way of analogy
“The words we can say about God kind of come from, the perfections we perceive and things in the world.”
Medieval bestiaries
“The true panther is Christ.”
“The sweet breathed, multicolored Christ panther.”
When language falls short
Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite
Unspeakability of things and the radical particularity of language
Julian of Norwich, Jesus as the source of motherhood: “Jesus our true mother.”
Bobby McFerrin’s “The 23rd Psalm”
Metaphors about humanity
Humanity as machines vs humanity as trees
Mechanical metaphors for humanity fall short and become dangerous when it implies that we are only as good as our productivity
Trees are an older and more mysterious metaphor for human beings.
Security and success—top dog vs underdog
Metaphor: SUCCESS is UP and climbing the corporate ladder
“We need each other.”
The Giving Tree and Treebeard from J.R.R. Tolkein’s, The Lord of the Rings
*The Two Towers—*Saruman vs the Ents and ecological and technological ethics that provide insight for our humanity and lived environment
The Christian life as a metaphor
“You are God’s poem. You are kind of this living, breathing poem that's drawing its imagery from the goodness of God.”
Poesis and the imago Dei
Phenomenological description of things in everyday life
“Paying attention to those kind of very everyday experiences just filled me personally with a sense of how densely meaningful and poetic our everyday lives are.”

Production Notes

This podcast featured Joy Marie Clarkson
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, & Tim Bergeland
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

Chinese Political Theology: Protests in Blood Letters, Freedom, and Religion in China Today / Peng Yin Mar 20, 2024

"There were a lot of people with moral courage to resist, to protest the communist revolutions, but few of them had the spiritual resource to question the system as a whole. Many intellectuals really protested the policies of Mao himself, but not the deprivation of freedom, the systematic persecution, the systematic suppression of religion and freedom as a whole—the entire communist system. So I think that's due to Lin Zhao's religious education. It's very helpful to have both moral courage and spiritual theological resource to make certain social diagnosis, which, I think, was available for Lin Zhao. So I would think of her as this exceptional instance of what Christianity can do—both the moral courage and the spiritual resource to resist totalitarianism." (Peng Yin on politically dissident Lin Zhao)

What are the theological assumptions that charge foreign policy? How does theology impact public life abroad? In this episode, theologian Peng Yin (Boston University School of Theology) joins Ryan McAnnally-Linz to discuss the role of theology and religion in Chinese public life—looking at contemporary foreign policy pitting Atheistic Communist China against Democratic Christian America; the moving story of Christian communist political dissident Lin Zhao; and the broader religious, philosophical, and theological influences on Chinese politics.

Show Notes

Religion’s role in Chinese political thought.
Thinking beyond Communist Authoritarianism and Christian Nationalism.
American foreign policy framed as “good, democratic” US versus “authoritarian, atheistic” China.
Chinese Communist party borrowing from Christian Utopianism
Sole-salvific figure: Not Christ, but the Party
Chinese Communism is a belief, not something that is open to verification. It’s not falsifiable.
Did the communist party borrow from Christian missionaries?
Communist party claiming collective cultivation over Confucianism’s self cultivation.
History of religious influence in Chinese political thought
Religion’s contemporary influence in Chinese public life
Lin Zhao, Christian protestor.
Lin Zhao as “exceptional instance of what Christianity can do: both the moral courage and the spiritual resource to resist totalitarianism.”
“New Cold War Discourse”
Chinese immigration influx after 1989 Tiananmen Movement.
Inhabiting a space between two empires.
“God's desire for human happiness is not simply embodied in one particular nation in an ambiguous term.”
The nexus of democracy, equality, and theological principles
Historical impacts of religion in Chinese public life—particularly in Confucianism and Buddhism and eventually Christianity
Peng reflects on his own moral sources of hope and inspiration—which arise not from the State, but from a communion of saints.

About Peng Yin

Peng Yin is a scholar of comparative ethics, Chinese theology, and religion and sexuality. He Assistant Professor of Ethics at Boston University’s School of Theology. He is completing a manuscript tentatively entitled Persisting in the Good: Thomas Aquinas and Early Chinese Ethics. The volume explores the intelligibility of moral language across religious traditions and rethinks Christian teaching on human nature, sacrament, and eschatology. Yin’s research has been supported by the Louisville Institute, Political Theology Network, Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History, and Yale’s Fund for Gay and Lesbian Studies.

A recipient of Harvard’s Derek Bok Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, Yin teaches “Comparative Religious Ethics,” “Social Justice,” “Mysticism and Ethical Formation,” “Christian Ethics,” “Queer Theology,” and “Sexual Ethics” at STH. At the University, Yin serves as a Core Faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, and as an Affiliated Faculty in Department of Classical Studies and Center for the Study of Asia. In 2023, Yin will deliver the Bartlett Lecture at Yale Divinity School and the McDonald Agape Lecture at the University of Hong Kong.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Peng Yin & Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, & Tim Bergeland
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

The Transforming Fire of Theological Education: Learning to See the World / Mark Jordan Mar 14, 2024

What are the goals of education? Are we shaping young minds or corrupting the youth? Theologian Mark Jordan joins Matt Croasmun for a conversation about the meaning of theological education today. Mark is the R. R. Niebuhr Research Professor at Harvard Divinity School, and is the author of ten books, including Telling Truths in Church: Scandal, Flesh, and Christian Speech. He came on the show to discuss his 2021 book, Transforming Fire: Imagining Christian Teaching—along the way, he reflects on Christian pedagogical principles; the question of the teacher’s power and the potential to enact an abusive pedagogy; he looks at the enigmatic, provoking, and sometimes deliberately elusive teaching strategy of Jesus through his parables; the role of desire in learning—and a shared love for the divine between teacher and student; he acknowledges the expansiveness of theological education that occurs outside a classroom setting; and he questions the very purpose of Christian theological education.

Mark D. Jordan is the R. R. Niebuhr Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School. He is the author of ten books, including Telling Truths in Church: Scandal, Flesh, and Christian Speech. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright- Hays Fellowship, and a Luce Fellowship in Theology.

Show Notes

Check out Mark Jordan's book Transforming Fire: Imagining Christian Teaching.
Louis Agassiz's story of the fish exemplifies a strong pedagogy.
Teaching should center on the text itself, not the teacher: “In the space between the text and the student, I need to just step aside as far as possible and put the fish on the table.”
The parables of Jesus are themselves a pedagogy. They are “enigmatic, provoking, sometimes deliberately elusive” in order to “stop the hearer in his tracks or her tracks.”
The shift of theological education primarily from monastic schools to universities suggests the site of divine revelation is also primarily confined to the university classroom.
The shift of theological education to universities also requires theological education to follow the schedule of a university which limits the time some texts require to be read properly.
The texts being taught intend to transform students' lives with the lessons they hold.
Teachers of Christian theology can invite transformation, but ultimately divine action is beyond teachers' control: “Faith is a divine gift.”
Teachers often communicate to their students in bodily and affective ways in addition to the actual words they use: “Bodies learn best from bodies.”
Mark Jordan's thoughts on teaching are especially true of theological education, but they can be true of other subjects as well.
“Education depends on desire.” That is, it depends on the student and teacher's shared love for the divine, for other people, and for the world.
Using the model of Jesus, who gently corrected his students' misguided expectations of him, teachers can also gently correct a student who “is beginning to mistake [the teacher] for the actual point of the course.”
Theological education can and is taking place everywhere, not just in the classroom setting.
“The question is not, will there will be a future of theology? It's where will there be a future of theology?”
In many universities and seminaries, the time and expense of formal theological education prevent potential students from undergoing academic training. How can we reimagine theological education to allow for greater accessibility, even to those not interested in professional formation as a church leader?

Production Notes

This podcast featured Mark Jordan and Matt Croasmun
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Macie Bridge, and Tim Bergeland
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

The Heart of Theology: Emotions, Christian Experience, & the Holy Spirit / Simeon Zahl Mar 06, 2024

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“For theology to be worth anything, it must traffic in real life, and that real life begins in the heart.”

Theologian Simeon Zahl (University of Cambridge) joins Evan Rosa to discuss his book, The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience, reflecting on emotion and affect; the livability of Christian faith; the origins of religious ideas; the data of human desire for theological reflection; the grace of God as the ultimate context for playfulness and freedom; and the role of the Holy Spirit in holding this all together.

About Simeon Zahl

Simeon Zahl is Professor of Christian Theology in the Faculty of Divinity. He is an historical and constructive theologian whose research interests span the period from 1500 to the present. His most recent monograph is The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience, which proposes a new account of the work of the Spirit in salvation through the lens of affect and embodiment. Professor Zahl received his first degree in German History and Literature from Harvard, and his doctorate in Theology from Cambridge. Following his doctorate, he held a post-doc in Cambridge followed by a research fellowship at St John’s College, Oxford. Prior to his return to Cambridge he was Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Nottingham.

Show Notes

Explore Simeon Zahl’s The Holy Spirit & Christian Experience
“For theology to be worth anything, it must traffic in real life, and that real life begins in the heart.”
Theology becoming abstracted from day to day life
“There is a tendency that we have as human beings, as theologians to do theology that gets abstracted in some way from the concerns of day to day life that we get caught up in our sort of conceptual kind of towers and structures or committed to certain kinds of ideas in ways that get free of the life that Christians actually seem to lead.”
“Real life begins in the heart.”
God is concerned with the heart.
Emotion, desire, and feelings
Where does love come in?
Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon
Philip Melanchthon’s 1521 Loci Communes: Defining human nature through the “affective power”
Affect versus rationality at the center of Christian life
Credibility, plausibility, and livability of Christianity
Authenticity and the disparity between values and beliefs and real lives.
Doctrine of Grace
Enabling a hopeful honesty
“What Christianity says and what it feels need to be closer together.”
Evangelical conversion in George Elliot’s novella, Janet’s Repentance
“Ideas are often poor ghosts; our sun−filled eyes cannot discern them; they pass athwart us in thin vapour, and cannot make themselves felt. But sometimes they are made flesh; they breathe upon us with warm breath, they touch us with soft responsive hands, they look at us with sad sincere eyes, and speak to us in appealing tones; they are clothed in a living human soul, with all its conflicts, its faith, and its love. Then their presence is a power, then they shake us like a passion, and we are drawn after them with gentle compulsion, as flame is drawn to flame.” (George Eliot)
Art’s ability to speak to desire.
T.S. Eliot: “Poetry operates at the frontiers of consciousness.”
Exhausted by religious language
How the aesthetic impacts the acceptance of ideas
Durable concepts
Where theological doctrine comes from
Simeon Zahl: “In what ways are theological doctrines themselves developed from and sourced by the living concerns and experiences of Christians and of human beings more broadly? Doctrines do not develop in a vacuum or fall from the sky, fully formed. Human reasonings, including theological reasonings, are never fully extricable in a given moment from our feelings, our moods, our predispositions, and the personal histories we carry with us. furthermore, as we shall see in the book, doctrines have often come to expression in the history of Christianity, not least through an ongoing engagement with what have been understood to be concrete experiences of God's spirit and history.”
“People were worshipping Christ before they understood who he was.”
“Speaking about human experience just is speaking about the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.”
Desire and emotion as pneumatological experience
Sourcing emotional and experiential data for theological reflection
Ernst Troelsch: “Every metaphysic must find its test in practical life.”
“The half-light of understanding”
Nietzsche: “The hereditary sin of the philosopher is a lack of historical sense.”
Augustine’s transformation of desire
Emotional experience as inadequate tool on its own
Noticing our own emotional experiences
“If you want to pay attention to the Holy Spirit in theology, that means you have to pay attention to embodied experiential realities.”
Worshipping of God as Trinity before identifying the doctrine of the Trinity
Karen Kilby’s “apathetic trinitarianism”
Pentecostalism, affect, and play
Establishing a spiritual connection between you and God
Touch, sweat, and movement
Nemi Waraboko’s The Pentecostal Principle: Ethical Methodology in New Spirit
Openness to new things, dynamism
Play and grace
An embarrassment of play, in the best way possible
The freedom of the Spirit: free to get it wrong in a “relaxed field”
Grace as the ultimate “relaxed field”

Production Notes

This podcast featured Simeon Zahl
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, & Tim Bergeland
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

A Voice Crying Out: Brown Church & Critical Race Theory / Robert Chao Romero Feb 29, 2024

There’s a 500-year history of social justice activism that emerged from Christianity in the Americas, and it comes to us through the Brown Church. Rev. Dr. Robert Chao Romero (Associate Professor of Latina/o Studies at UCLA) joins Evan Rosa to discuss the history of Christian racial justice efforts in the Americas, as well as a constructive and faithful exploration of Christianity & Critical Race Theory. He is a historian, legal scholar, author, a pastor, and an organizer who wants to bring the history of Christian social justice around race to bear on the systems and structures of racism we see in the world today. He is an Asian-Latino who straddles the worlds of Chinese and Mexican heritage; Latin American history and Law; scholarship and a pastoral ministry; and a contemplative and an activist. He’s author of Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity—and is co-author (with Jeff M. Liou) of Christianity and Critical Race Theory: A Faithful & Constructive Conversation.

About Robert Chao Romero

Rev. Dr. Robert Chao Romero is "Asian-Latino," and has been a professor of Chicana/o Studies and Asian American Studies at UCLA since 2005. He received his Ph.D. from UCLA in Latin American History and his Juris Doctor from U.C. Berkeley. Romero has published more than 30 academic books and articles on issues of race, immigration, history, education, and religion, and received the Latina/o Studies book award from the international Latin American Studies Association. He is author of Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity, which received the InterVarsity Press Readers’ Choice Award for best academic title; as well as his most recent book, Christianity and Critical Race Theory: A Faithful & Constructive Conversation, co-authored with Jeff M. Liou. Romero is a former Ford Foundation and U.C. President's Postdoctoral Fellow, as well as a recipient of the Louisville Institute's Sabbatical Grant for Researchers. Robert is also an ordained minister and community organizer.

Show Notes

Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity
Christianity and Critical Race Theory: A Faithful and Constructive Conversation
About Robert Chao Romero
Asian-Latino Heritage
Spiritual Borderlands and liminality
The 500-year history of the Brown Church
Fr. Antonio de Montesinos and the first racial justice sermon in the Americas
Bartolome De Las Casas and concientización (repentance, metanoia)
Mision Integral
Christianity & Critical Race Theory
The four basic tenets of Critical Race Theory and how Christians can understand them in light of the Gospel
Hope and eschatological vision for justice and unity
The imago Dei

Production Notes

This podcast featured Robert Chao Romero
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, and Tim Bergeland
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

Christianity as a Way of Life: Practice & Belief / Kevin Hector Feb 22, 2024

What would it mean for us to take Christianity seriously as a way of life, a set of practices and ways of being in the world—and not merely a list of beliefs?

Theologian Kevin Hector (University of Chicago Divinity School) joins Ryan McAnnally-Linz for a discussion of his latest book, Christianity as a Way of Life. Together they reflect on the practice of Christianity; the role of devotion to God in framing the importance of Christianity to a practitioner; the unique practices embedded in the life of Christians; the plausibility of Christianity today; what it means to see Jesus in people and look for the image of God in others; the practices of imitation and forgiveness; the conflicted character of Christian experience; loving God as loving what God loves; the significance of shame; and what it means to renarrate your life in light of the Gospel.

About Kevin Hector

Kevin Hector is the Naomi Shenstone Donnelley Professor of Theology and of the Philosophy of Religions; also in the College. His teaching and research are devoted largely to interpretive questions, particularly (a) how best to understand faith commitments, and (b) how the outworking of such commitments can shed light on broader cultural issues. Hector's first book, *Theology without Metaphysics* (Cambridge University Press, 2011), thus defends a novel approach to the problem of metaphysics by developing a philosophically-informed and critically-articulated theology of language. In his second book, The Theological Project of Modernism: Faith and the Conditions of Mineness (Oxford University Press, 2015), Hector explores the idea of 'mineness,' in the sense of being able to identify with one's life or experience it as self-expressive, by tracing the development of this idea in modern theology. His third book, Christianity as a Way of Life: A Systematic Theology (Yale University Press, 2023) argues that we can understand Christianity as a set of practices designed to transform one’s way of perceiving and being in the world or, in sum, as a way of life. And in his forthcoming book-project, tentatively entitled “Life as a Theological Project: Creating a Usable Past,” Hector focuses on memoirs as a site of theological reflection, not least because memoirs shed light on issues that people wrestle with more generally.

Follow him on Twitter/X here.

Show Notes

Check out Christianity as a Way of Life: A Systematic Theology (Yale University Press, 2023)
Disconnect between academic theology and ordinary Christians
Losing God to Christian practices
Devotion as God’s importance being important to you.
Imitation as practice for learning devotion.
LeBron James as an example of devotion
“The Martha Stewart effect”
Being yourself as a form of devotion
Mother Teresa and “seeing Jesus in people”
Looking for the image of God in others
The hermeneutical circle: making sense of the parts through the whole, and revising our sense of the whole through the parts.
Nick Wolterstorff, forgiving as naming the wrong as a wrong, while excusing is ignoring the wrong.
Indignation versus resentment
How transparent are we to ourselves?
Practice as building habitual reflexes
Practices make it more and more sensible to orient towards God
Shame in Hector’s Christian framework
Marilynne Robinson’s Lila

Production Notes

This podcast featured Kevin Hector
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, & Tim Bergeland
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

Renovating the Heart of Our Politics / Michael Wear Feb 14, 2024

With unflagging and unwavering hope in our civic life Michael Wear (Center for Christianity & Public Life) wants to renovate the character of Christian political engagement. He’s a former White House and presidential campaign staffer and his new book is called The Spirit of Our Politics: Spiritual Formation and the Renovation of Public Life.

In this conversation with Evan Rosa, he reflects on what it means to seek the good of the public; the problem of privatization; what it means to be politically homeless and how to avoid angst about that; the meanings of political parties and how we end up fractured and confused when we look for an identity in them; he reflects on Dallas Willard’s epistemological and moral realism and its prospects for political life; and the virtue of gentleness and giving away the last word.

About Michael Wear

Michael Wear is the Founder, President and CEO of the Center for Christianity and Public Life, a nonpartisan, nonprofit institution based in the nation's capital with the mission to contend for the credibility of Christian resources in public life, for the public good. For well over a decade, he has served as a trusted resource and advisor for a range of civic leaders on matters of faith and public life, including as a White House and presidential campaign staffer. Michael is a leading voice on building a healthy civic pluralism in twenty-first century America. He has argued that the spiritual health and civic character of individuals is deeply tied to the state of our politics and public affairs.

Michael previously led Public Square Strategies, a consulting firm he founded that helps religious organizations, political organizations, businesses and others effectively navigate the rapidly changing American religious and political landscape.

Michael's next book, The Spirit of Our Politics: Spiritual Formation and the Renovation of Public Life, will be released on January 23, 2024. Michael’s first book, Reclaiming Hope: Lessons Learned in the Obama White House About the Future of Faith in America, offers reflections, analysis and ideas about the role of faith in the Obama years and what it means for today. He has co-authored, or contributed to, several other books, including Compassion and Conviction: The AND Campaign's Guide to Faithful Civic Engagement, with Justin Giboney and Chris Butler. He also writes for The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Catapult Magazine, Christianity Today and other publications on faith, politics and culture.

Michael holds an honorary position at the University of Birmingham’s Cadbury Center for the Public Understanding of Religion.

Michael and his wife, Melissa, are both proud natives of Buffalo, New York. They now reside in Maryland, where they are raising their beloved daughters, Saoirse and Ilaria.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Michael Wear
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, & Tim Bergeland
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

Asian Americans, Racism, and Capitalism / Jonathan Tran Feb 07, 2024

What are the economic forces that underly racist thinking? What are the theological dimensions of racism? How does the “political economic distortion of the divine economy” impacts the contemporary experience of and response to racism?

In this episode, Jonathan Tran (Baylor University) joins Matt Croasmun to discuss his book, Asian Americans & the Spirit of Racial Capitalism, focusing on the unique experience of Asian Americans, and Jonathan’s own experience growing up as a war refugee in southern California; where race and racialized thinking really comes from and how we can understand its history and its impact today; Christian moral psychology; meritocracy and capitalism; and they discuss a unique Christian community—Redeemer Community Church in San Francisco that offers a unique experiment in bearing witness to the economic and racial realities of life today, but through the theological framing of the Gospel.

About Jonathan Tran

Jonathan Tran is a theologian and ethicist, and is Associate Dean for Faculty in the Honors College and Professor of Theology in Great Texts at Baylor University. His research focuses on the human life in language, and what that life reveals about God and God’s world. Lately, that research has focused on race and racism, and his book Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism attempts to present racism as a theological problem, a political economic distortion of the divine economy, and a problem given to the usual redress, the church laying claim to God’s original revolution.

Show Notes

The roots of Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism
Are we thinking about racism backwards?
Race as a self-interpreting category
Is race just obvious? Is it just about the racialized relationships we have with each other?
“Rather than thinking of race as basic, we want to ask the question, when and where and how did race come to capture our imaginations, such that we just now assume it as basic?”
What is political economy?
Connecting an understanding of economy to God’s essence and existence
“The structure of creation is in a sense hardwired as gift.”
“One of the first ways we talked about the gospel in the early church was as the divine economy, an economy of gratuity and grace over and against the world's privation and predation.”
Gift economy
Pope Francis’s “Our Common Home”
“What is the material political economy out of which the concept and category of race began?”
“Race was utilized in Europe and America to create a kind of ideological justification for relationships of property and labor.”
Race and unjust labor practices
Is capitalism coextensive with racism?
Marxism vs theological answers to the problem of capitalism and racism
Understanding Marxism with an example: Waco, Texas
Black Marxism as a corrective to White Marxism
Christianity and Moral Psychology
Anti-racism, post-racialism, identitarianism
Reverse engineering racism to produce Black dignity, Black power, or Black politics
Giving race explanatory power
“I’m not essentially Asian, but I've been racialized as an Asian person.”
Does racism against Asian Americans count?
Double marginalization: first by racism, then by anti-racism
Foucault’s “history of the present”
“[Race] is necessarily binary thinking.”
Meritocracy and capitalism
Case Study: Redeemer Community Church in San Francisco (https://www.redeemersf.org/)
The Joy–Dispossession Elipse: “Joy without dispossession is escapist. Dispossession without joy is sadist.”
The Gospel as proclamation instead of resistance
“Marxists in our sense are waiting for the revolution to start. Christians are leaning into a revolution that's a few thousand years old.”

Production Notes

This podcast featured Jonathan Tran & Matt Croasmun
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, & Tim Bergeland
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

Becoming Whole in a Fragmented Age / Anne Snyder Jan 31, 2024

Imagine a future that brings personal and communal wholeness, a commitment to truth even when it hurts, and the beauty of pursuing integration in the wake of fragmentation. Anne Snyder joins Evan Rosa to talk about her vision and hopes for a whole-person revolution that honors our moral complexity, holds us accountable to virtue, and seeks a robust form of love in public life.

In this conversation they discuss: the meaning of wholeness and what it could mean to become a whole person; the importance of character, virtue, and moral formation; our need to come to terms with violence—listening to the language of threat and safety and preservation and protection; tribalism, fear, and moral realities; the ideas at the root of democracy; the connection between cynicism, distrust, and a feeling of threat and need to survive; and Anne describes a hard-won wholeness rooted in a sober and persevering hope that doesn’t die.

About Anne Snyder

Anne Snyder is the editor-in-chief of Comment magazine and oversees our partner project, Breaking Ground. She is the host of The Whole Person Revolution podcast and co-editor of Breaking Ground: Charting Our Future in a Pandemic Year, published in January 2022.

Prior to leading Comment, she directed The Philanthropy Roundtable‘s Character Initiative, a program seeking to help foundations and business leaders strengthen “the middle ring” of morally formative institutions. Her path-breaking guidebook, The Fabric of Character: A Wise Giver’s Guide to Renewing our Social and Moral Landscape, was published in 2019. From 2014 to 2017 Anne worked for Laity Lodge and the H.E. Butt Foundation in Texas, and before that, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, World Affairs Journal and The New York Times. She is a Senior Fellow of The Trinity Forum and a Fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, a Houston-based think tank that explores how cities can drive opportunity for the bulk of their citizens. She has published widely, including The Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Post, Bittersweet Monthly and of course Comment, and now serves as a trustee for Nyack College. Anne spent the formative years of her childhood overseas before earning a bachelor’s degree from Wheaton College (IL) and a master’s degree from Georgetown University. She currently lives in Washington, D.C.

Show Notes

“Whole person revolution”
Individual whole person as head, heart, and helping hands.
We are porous to our contexts
The individual as a part of a greater whole.
Exploring fear in our societies to understand the other
Wholeness must be considered on the granular level and broad scale
A “hard won” wholeness
Healing relational divides and brokenness
Curling inward around oneself
Watching cynicism arise in the vacuum of encounter

Production NOtes

This podcast featured Anne Snyder
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, and Tim Bergeland
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

Listeners Dare: Courage and the Act of Sermon-Listening / Will Willimon Jan 24, 2024

We often think of speaking up as an act of courage. And of course, there are times when it most certainly is. But what about the courage to listen? The best kind of generous listening is interesting because it seems to acknowledge and create a mutual agency. The courageous, generous listener grants the speaker an authority to have the floor and make a point or drop a bomb or tell it like it is. But that act of listening is itself an active mode of receptive agency. So the best kind of listening is a truly powerful thing because each party involved in this miracle of communication gets to be present in fullness.

That is not something that can be done by the speaker alone. The ability to create the conditions for that mutual agency is up to the listener. But when you apply that to a religious scenario—the preaching and hearing of the gospel, things get interesting.

Whether its from the window of St. Peter’s Basilica, or from the screams of a megaphone wielding street preacher, or the pulpit of your small, faithful community church… something profound seems to be happening when we listen to someone speak and illumine the Word of God.

Will Willimon, who has trained many preachers and written several books on preaching and homiletics, has written a book for listeners, both acknowledging and uplifting the act of listening to sermons. Will is Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry at Duke Divinity School and he came on the show with me to talk about his book, Listeners Dare: Hearing God in the Sermon.

Together we discuss the act of listening and the rare achievement it seems to be; the definition and purpose of a sermon, and what that might mean for its listeners; how to cultivate the charity and courage to listen; and the inherent risk involved in genuinely and generously listening to the gospel.

Show Notes

Listeners Dare: Hearing God in the Sermon
Preaching is a demanding skill for both preachers and their audiences.
Scripture itself pays attention to audiences as well as speakers.
Listeners come to sermons with expectations. For sermons to most benefit the audience, preachers can guide their listeners to ask the right questions of a sermon.
What is proclamation?
Like the Bible itself, sermons can take a wide array of literary forms to communicate the truth of God. Because it proclaims truth about God, the Bible itself can be seen as a sort of sermon.
“Christian sermons, ought to arise out of an encounter with scripture.”
The gospels began a new genre of literature to communicate the truth of Christ.
The genre or form of sermons continues to evolve and diversify today with outside influences such as TED Talks.
Fred Craddock and the narrative unfolding sermon
Verse-by-verse discovery in a sermon
One definition of preaching is “a biblical preacher goes to the biblical text hoping to make a discovery. Then you announce that discovery to the congregation.”
At times when a preacher has no audience, such as street preachers, there is still something compelling about the preacher's commitment to their message, that regardless of its reception it must be spoken.
Preaching requires charity and risk from listeners, so they can open themselves to the possibility of hearing and being transformed by another's message.
Listening requires daring because the gospel message presented by Christian preachers has the power to upend listeners' preexisting beliefs.
“Preaching is a confrontation with the God who came to us, who is a Jew from Nazareth, who lived briefly, died violently, and rose unexpectedly—preaching is about that.”
Listening, and listening to God, are skills that can be cultivated.
“We have a revealing, talkative, loquacious God.”
It is helpful for listeners of sermons to assume both the preacher and God hope to communicate with their listeners.
Listeners must be willing to learn from, critique, and engage with sermons.
“Listeners are the playground of the Holy Spirit.”
Preachers partner with the Holy Spirit to bring sermons to their congregation, even using difficult passages of scripture to further engage listeners.
John 6 and the “hard sayings” of Jesus
Listeners Dare! :) Will mentions a teenagers compliment to him once: “That was the most f—ed up thing I have ever heard… it was wonderful.”
The courage to keep listening

About Will Willimon

The Reverend Dr. William H. Willimon is Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry at the Divinity School, Duke University. He served eight years as Bishop of the North Alabama Conference of The United Methodist Church, where he led the 157,000 Methodists and 792 pastors in North Alabama. For twenty years prior to the episcopacy, he was Dean of the Chapel and Professor of Christian Ministry at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. He is author of over 100 books, including Worship as Pastoral Care, Accidental Preacher, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony, and his most recent, God Turned Toward Us: The ABCs of the Christian Faith. His articles have appeared in many publications including The Christian Ministry, Quarterly Review, Plough, Liturgy, Worship and Christianity Today. For many years he was Editor-at-Large for The Christian Century. For more information and resources, visit his website.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Will Willimon
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Macie Bridge, and Tim Bergeland
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

Power & American Evangelicalism: Sword or Cross? / Tim Alberta Jan 08, 2024

American Christianity enjoys a great deal of power and influence at home and abroad. Is the church better for it? Is the world better for it? Or is Christian Nationalism just another idolatry—a temptation to take up the sword instead of taking up the cross? Journalist Tim Alberta (The Atlantic, POLITICO) joins Evan Rosa for a discussion of his new book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism. Tim explains his reporting on American Evangelicalism from 2019 through 2023 as well as his own Christian faith and spiritual background. He also reflects on a variety of challenging issues that influence life far upstream from political theatre, including:

how faith matures or erodes
the impact of Constantinian Christianity and the Christian embrace of power, influence, and glory in American public life
the difference between Christ and Christendom, and our allegiance to one or the other
and the meaning and unique threat of idolatry—which takes on a unique form in contemporary American life.

Show Art

Grégoire Guérard, “The Arrest of Christ”, circa 1520-1522, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon, France

About Tim Alberta

Visit Tim’s personal website for more of his writing, or follow him on X/Twitter.

Tim Alberta is an award-winning journalist, best-selling author, and staff writer for The Atlantic magazine. He formerly served as chief political correspondent for POLITICO. In 2019, he published the critically acclaimed book, "American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump" and co-moderated the year's final Democratic presidential debate aired by PBS Newshour.

Hailing from Brighton, Michigan, Tim attended Schoolcraft College and later Michigan State University, where his plans to become a baseball writer were changed by a stint covering the legislature in Lansing. He went on to spend more than a decade in Washington, reporting for publications including the Wall Street Journal, The Hotline, National Journal and National Review. Having covered the biggest stories in national politics—the battles over health care and immigration on Capitol Hill; the election and presidency of Donald Trump; the ideological warfare between and within the two parties—Tim was eager for a new challenge.

In 2019, he moved home to Michigan. Rather than cover the 2020 campaign through the eyes of the candidates, Tim roved the country and reported from gun shows and farmers markets, black cookouts and white suburbs, crowded wholesale stores and shuttered small businesses. He wrote a regular "Letter to Washington" that kept upstream from politics, focusing less on manifest partisan divisions and more on elusive root causes: the hollowing out of communities, the diminished faith in vital institutions, the self-perpetuating cycle of cultural antagonism, the diverging economic realities for wealthy and working-class citizens, the rapid demographic makeover of America—and the corollary spikes in racism and xenophobia.

Tim joined The Atlantic in March 2021 with a mandate to keep roaming and writing and telling stories that strike at the heart of America's discontent. His work has been featured in dozens of other publications nationwide, including Sports Illustrated and Vanity Fair, and he frequently appears as a commentator on television programs in the United States and around the world. Tim's first book, "American Carnage," debuted at No. 1 and No. 2 on the Washington Post and New York Times best-seller lists, respectively. He lives in southeast Michigan with his wife, three sons, and German Shepherd.

Show Notes

Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory
Intellectually re-examining the faith of childhood
A generational disillusionment in today’s exit from Christianity
Generational break in attitude & behavior
Distance from the moral majority generation to evaluate critically
Inverse relationship where the more one learns about Christ, the less they like Christianity
The creation of the secular, evil “other”
“They created this other, this outsider, this enemy that had to be defeated.”
Current American Christianity is often looking to find our identities on the good side of zero-sum equation.
Shrinking our theology into something pathetic and miniscule.
St. Augustine, St. Paul, and C.S. Lewis
“One way to find meaning is to locate an enemy.”
From Cal Thomas’s Blinded by Might” —”Unless you have the power to right every wrong and cure every ill and what better way to do that than with An all powerful God on your side.”
The church most often seems to thrive when it is at the margins.
“We can understand the relationship between this lust for dominance in our, in a society, the inverse relationship between that lust for dominance and the health of the church.”
Satan’s temptation of Christ in the Gospel of Luke—the temptation to bow down.
St. Peter, “Blessed are you Simon bar Jonah…” and then… “Get behind me Satan.”
Reaching for the sword versus reaching for the cross
The impact of Constantinian Christianity
John Dixon’s Bullies and Saints
Constantine wielding Christianity to dominate—the imposition of Christian faith
“Is Christianity an end or is it a means to an end?”
“It's easy to forget about the teachings of Christ if you are preoccupied with the, crusades of Christianity”
“An idol is something that starts as a good and healthy thing, but then becomes the ultimate thing.”
America as a kingdom
American Christendom as a source of idolatry
Baptizing the American experience and past
E.g., Thomas Jefferson, Donald Trump, and Paula White
“The other part of it that I find to be uniquely problematic and sometimes just downright gross, is this willful merging of scripture with the American mythos.”
Mike Pence, and “Let us set our eyes on Old Glory.”
“Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.”
An age of gnawing unknowns
Tim Alberta’s reflections on his father
“Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus.”
The influence of Jesus’s life and teaching
“We are in sales, not management.”

Production Notes

This podcast featured Tim Alberta
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, and Tim Bergeland
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

How the Light Gets In: Restlessness, Christ, & Belonging / Graham Ward Dec 23, 2023

Help the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; click here to donate today.

How does the light get in? Leonard Cohen suggests, "There's a crack in everything / That's how..." Whether from our restlessness, our fear, or our trauma, to see the world rightly might start with the need to acknowledge the crack in everything.

Only then can we see a new world of understanding and belonging and well-being.

Graham Ward (University of Oxford) joins Ryan McAnnally-Linz to reflect on the purpose of theology, Christology as the place where the divine and the human come together, trauma, restlessness, fear, the human capacity for creativity and destruction (and which will we choose?), and how the Gospels offer a new sense of belonging.

About Graham Ward

Graham Ward is Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford and is author of several books, including How the Light Gets In and Another Kind of Normal.

Show Notes

Graham Ward’s Ethical Life books under discussion in this episode: How the Light Gets In and Another Kind of Normal
Creating inner coherence through a systematic theology
Scripture as the common text all Christians return to
Reading with a sense of original language
“We do believe God speaks to us through the scriptures.”
Writing titles that invite non-Christians to the books
“There’s a lot of the church who are not in church on Sunday.”
“I always think that, one, theology lost in a sense when it became professionalized. And two…theology has got to be pastoral.”
“Good writing can find the phrasing which unlocks experiences that other people have had.”
Theology as speaking more to being human than being divine
Dogma (Matt Damon and Ben Affleck) and the problem with “Buddy Jesus”
Theology that defamiliarizes Christ
The strangeness of Christ as drawing out
Balancing defamiliarization with the glory of Creation
None of us actually know what the resurrection truly means
Trauma in the early church
“What is it we're looking for in our restlessness?”
Restlessness as fundamentally connected to our fear
The conflict between losing control in Christ, and being a predatory creature
Grace breaking through in the rubbish heap, like sunlight on a violet
“This is the hard love which demanded God's sacrifice, but also demands my sacrifice of what I think love should be.”
Julian of Norwich
“I was just playing with the phrase ‘because the devil is in the detail’, and it's not, it's God that's in the detail.”
Will you be creative or will you be destructive?
The role of the church in people who are discerning
Mystagogy, living what you worship
The role of liturgy in community
Fragmentation and non-belonging within our contemporary relationships
The gospels as incorporating a new type of belonging

Production Notes

This podcast featured Graham Ward
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge
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

Advent Love: Prayer, Trauma, & the Loving Gaze of Christ / Bo Karen Lee Dec 23, 2023

Help the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; click here to donate today.

Part 4 of 4 in our 2023 Advent Series. Bo Karen Lee discusses how Ignatian spirituality, contemplative prayer, and meditating on the loving gaze and deep compassion of Christ—a love that suffers with—can be a transformative experience to heal trauma, pain, and deal with powerful emotions.

About Bo Karen Lee

Bo Karen Lee, ThM '99, PhD '07, is associate professor of spiritual theology and Christian formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She earned her BA in religious studies from Yale University, her MDiv from Trinity International University in Deerfield, Illinois, and her ThM and PhD from Princeton Seminary. She furthered her studies in the returning scholars program at the University of Chicago, received training as a spiritual director from Oasis Ministries, and was a Mullin Fellow with the Institute of Advanced Catholic Studies. Her book, Sacrifice and Delight in the Mystical Theologies of Anna Maria van Schurman and Madame Jeanne Guyon, argues that surrender of self to God can lead to the deepest joy in God. She has recently completed a volume, The Soul of Higher Education, which explores contemplative pedagogies and research strategies. A recipient of the John Templeton Award for Theological Promise, she gave a series of international lectures that included the topic, “The Face of the Other: An Ethic of Delight.”

She is a member of the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women, and the American Academy of Religion; she recently served on the Governing Board of the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality, and is on the editorial board of the journal, Spirtus, as well as on the steering committee of the Christian Theology and Bible Group of the Society of Biblical Literature. Before joining Princeton faculty, she taught in the Theology Department at Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland, where she developed courses with a vibrant service-learning component for students to work at shelters for women recovering from drug addiction and sex trafficking. She now enjoys teaching classes on prayer for the Spirituality and Mission Program at Princeton Seminary, in addition to taking students on retreats and hosting meditative walks along nature trails.

Show Notes

Help the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; click here to donate today.
Macie Bridge and Evan Rosa introduce the episode
The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola
Christ in solidarity with me
Who was Ignatius of Loyola?
The Life of Christ by Ludolf of Saxony
Four weeks: beloved, walking with Christ in his ministry, walking with Christ in his suffering, knowing the risen Christ
“Gazing upon God who gazes upon me in love.”
How does God look upon me? How do others look upon me? How do I look upon myself?
Attachment Theory in Psychology
Still Face Experiment and Trauma
Trauma is the opposite of human flourishing
Learned secure attachment
Growing in confident awareness of God’s love for me through prayer, meditation, and community.
First image of God comes through human relationships
Anger
Bo’s experience of dealing with trauma during 2022’s wave of violence against Asian Americans
Prayer, doubt, and whether God is with us
Hearing the wailing of women
Mary holding the collapsed Christ
“Bo, they killed me too.”
“I was companioned in my grief.”

Production Notes

This podcast featured Bo Karen Lee
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge
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

Advent Joy: Resistance Against Despair, Celebrating the Beauty of Black Joy / Stacey Floyd-Thomas & Willie James Jennings Dec 18, 2023

Help the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; click here to donate today.

Part 3 of 4 in our 2023 Advent Series. Stacey Floyd-Thomas presents a vision of Black joy—which the world can't give and the world can't take away. Looking into several depictions of female agency in the Gospels, she outlines a picture of joy that celebrates beauty, redemptive self-love, virtuous pride, and critical engagement with the world. Then Willie James Jennings offers a definition of joy as an act of resistance against despair and its forces that lead to death. He presents a creative, communal joy characterized by fullness, connected to but transcending grief and sorrow.

Show Notes

Help the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; click here to donate today.
Macie Bridge and Evan Rosa introduce the episode
Stacey Floyd-Thomas explains Black joy
"This Joy That I Have"
"The world didn't give it / the world can't take it away."
Beauty and Blackness
Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye
Womanist Theology
Radical subjectivity
Communitarian
Redemptive self-love
Critical engagement
Female agency in the Gospels
Mary and Jesus at the Wedding in Cana
Mary and Martha
Syro-Phoenician Woman
Willie James Jennings defines joy—"an act of resistance against despair"
"Resisting all the ways in which life can be strangled and presented to us as not worth living"
Singing a song in a strange land
Making productive use of pain, suffering, and the absurd—taking them serious
How does one cultivate joy? You have to have people who can show you how to sing a song in a strand land, laugh where all you want to do is cry, and how to ride the winds of chaos.
"In contexts where your energies have to be focused on survival, it doesn’t leave a lot of energy for overt forms of complaint—you’re spending a lot of energy just trying to hold it together."
The commercialization of joy in the empire of advertising—contrasting that with the peoples serious work of joy
The work and skill of making something beautiful out of what has been thrown away
Segregated joy—joy in African diaspora communities
Joy is always embedded in community logics
The Christological center of joy
Pentecost joy—joy together
Geographies of joy: Christians tend not to think spatially, but we should
Public rituals bound to real space
Hoping for joyous infection, where the space has claimed you as its own
Where can joy be found? The church, the hospital room, the barber shop and beauty shops—“things are going to be better"

Production Notes

This podcast featured Stacey Floyd-Thomas and Willie James Jennings
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge
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

Speaking to the Unspeakable: Catastrophe, Silence, and Respect in Aboriginal Australian Life / Stan Grant Dec 18, 2023

Help the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; click here to donate today.

How do you speak to the unspeakable? How does a people connected to place retain their sense of meaning and time when they are displaced and ignored? Indigenous Australian journalist and public intellectual Stan Grant (Monash University) joins Evan Rosa for a discussion of his experience as an Aboriginal Australian, the son of Wiradjuri and Gamilaraay people in the Outback of New South Wales, Australia. He tells the story of his family’s Christian faith and Aboriginal identity—how the two work together. He shares the sense of aboriginal homelessness and displacement and his efforts to seek justice for Aboriginal people in modern Australia, a place with no memory. He teaches us the meaning of Yindyamarra Winhanganha—which is Wiradjuri concept meaning a life of respect, gentleness, speaking quietly and walking softly, in a world worth living in. He comments on declining democracy, how to live with dignity after catastrophe, what it means to be both nothing and everything—and we learn from Stan about the power of silence to speak to the unspeakable.

About Stan Grant

Stan Grant is an indigenous aboriginal Australian journalist, former war correspondent, and an award-winning author of multiple books, including 2023's The Queen Is Dead: Time for a Public Reckoning (Harper Collins). He served in high profile roles in Australia as a current affairs and news presenter with Channel 7, CNN, SBS and the ABC. He was recently appointed inaugural Director of the Constructive Institute Asia Pacific in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University.

Show Notes

To learn more about Stan Grant and the Constructive Institute, click here.
What is home in a place of exile?
Coolah, New South Wales, Australia
Entering “Australia”
What it means to be an indigenous person—an Indigenous Australian or Aboriginal in particular
Australia is a place with no memory.
Stan Grant’s Christian faith: “Waiting for God”
Simone Weil and giving voice to affliction through silence and waiting
What it is to be nothing
Suffering and meaninglessness
“We find our nothingness, which is everything.”
“I don't have to look for the meaning of affliction and I don't have to look for someone to answer for that affliction, because Christ is already there to hold the weight of that affliction.”
Biame—Aboriginal Creator God Spirit—Rainbow Serpent
Depth of spiritual connection to place
“Jesus is a tribal man, living in a place of occupation.”
Jesus’s totem: Water
Deep time, deep silence
A breaking point with modernity
“We are, at our essence, spiritual people, poetic people of place. We are not political people of enlightenment, and that, that is a hard weight to bear, to live as poetic people of God in a world of politics that seeks to kill God.”
Responsibility
Yindyamarra winangana—”respect in a world worth living in”
“I am not responsible for what I do. I'm also responsible for what you do. And that is the essence of what it is to be a First Nations person in Australia. That is the essence of It is a respect and a responsibility beyond who we are, but connects us to where we are.”
1 Peter 2:17: “Honor everyone.”
Individual identity vs communal belonging
Uluru Statement, “Makarrata”
Australia is the only Commonwealth country that has not recognized First Nations peoples politically, and given them a voice to Australian Parliament.
Secondary citizenship
Struggle of Aboriginal Australians
What is it to live with catastrophe?
“The absence of love makes us know love is real.”
The Crow People: Chief Plenty Coups: “After that, nothing happened.”
How to live with dignity after catastrophe.
Miroslav Volf on remembering rightly
“This is my quest to try to understand those things. And it's the quest of an exile. It's, it's exile that I was forced into, that my people were forced into, that I share with others, that I seek to embrace as an exile of silence, an exile of love, and an exile of belonging and not identity. James Joyce, James Baldwin, Tony Morrison, these people have shared this journey, the great poets, the great writers, the great artists who have sought to give expression to that sense of what it is to be exiled from the modernity of who we are, what we all want to be something. And maybe when we are reduced to nothing, we may find what it is to be everything.”
After Queen Elizabeth died
A people of suffering, but not tragedy
What it means to be human: Born from the dust
Self-giving and Yindyamarra
Weightlessness of liberalism
America: Can it hold the weight?
Declining democracy around the world
“There’s no ancestors in Rawls. There’s no history in Rawls.”
“For me, a life worth living is to know where I am.”

Production Notes

This podcast featured journalist Stan Grant
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge
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

Advent Peace / Non-Violent Resistance & the Uninvited Christ / David Dark Dec 11, 2023

Part 2 of 4 in our 2023 Advent Series. David Dark introduces a new way of thinking about non-violent resistance, which he dubs "Robot Soft Exorcism," whereby, in an appeal to our common humanity, we call each other out of the potentially violent power structures and systems we all (knowingly or unknowingly) inhabit.

Show Notes

Help the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; click here to donate today.
Evan Rosa & Macie Bridge introduce the episode
Thomas Merton, “The Time of the End Is the Time of No Room” in Raids on the Unspeakable, pages 51-52 (check it out): “Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ comes uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it, because he is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, his place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world. He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing but the world at its worst.”
David Dark's Robot Soft Exorcism Twitter Thread: https://twitter.com/DavidDark/status/1012804184868048896
Robot Soft Exorcism
Ephesians 6:12: "For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places."
Walter Wink's Powers series
Turning the other cheek; demanding to be punched as an equal
"Robot soft exorcism is inviting someone to be a human being rather than just being their position."
Breaking it down: The Robot Part
Breaking it down: The Exorcism Part
Thoreau: "We all crave reality."
Buddhists surrendering a spirit of conflict or difference before parting
Karl Barth: If you don't have any solid difference with the person with whom you exchange the peace of Christ, the peace of Christ isn't there because the peace has to overcome some kind of difference."
Opinion, Posture, Position: None ever have to be confused with one's identity.
Divesting ourselves of the power we carry through the world
Breaking it down: The Soft Part
Civil Rights Movement is actually the Non-Violent Movement of America
"One human exchange at a time."
Mantra: "I wrestle not against flesh and blood." (Ephesians 6:12)
Advent/Christmas as the prototypical Robot Soft Exorcism
Bruce Coburn: "Redemption rips through the surface of time in the cry of a tiny babe."
"We're really going against the news cycle if we insist on the meaning of human history being in this manger scene. To be alive to it, to be citizens of a better future than what is being settled for by our robot overlords."

Production Notes

This podcast featured David Dark
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge
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

How to Read as a Spiritual Practice: Books, Shared Meaning, and the Love of God in the Text / Jessica Hooten Wilson & Matthew Smith Dec 09, 2023

To read is human. Even as literacy rates or the quality of that literacy make us nervous for the future, the act of reading looks like it’s somewhere near the essence of what it means to be human. Because reading doesn’t end, or even start, with books. Reading is this search for meaning. A turning and tuning of our senses outward. Looking for symbols, looking for signs of life. It’s the longing for a message in a bottle, in hopes of discovering, making, and living in a shared meaning together. Jessica Hooten Wilson (Pepperdine University) and Matthew J Smith (Hildegard College) join Evan Rosa to discuss the joys and perils of reading, how to make young readers, how to teach and cultivate mature readers in the university context, and the significance of reading as a Christian spiritual practice.

Help the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; visit faith.yale.edu/give to donate today.

About Jessica Hooten Wilson

Jessica Hooten Wilson is the Fletcher Jones Endowed Chair of Great Books at Pepperdine University and formerly Louise Cowan Scholar in Residence at the University of Dallas. She is the author of several books, most recently Reading for the Love of God. Her book Giving the Devil his Due: Flannery O’Connor and The Brothers Karamazov received a 2018 Christianity Today book of the year in arts and culture award and The Scandal of Holiness received a 2022 Award of Merit. In 2019 she received the Hiett Prize for Humanities from the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. Other awards include a Fulbright Fellowship to Prague, an NEH to study Dante in Florence, a Biola University sabbatical fellowship funded by the John Templeton Foundation, and the 2017 Emerging Public Intellectual Award. She is a Senior Fellow at The Trinity Forum.

About Matthew J. Smith

Matthew J. Smith is Founder and President of Hildgard College in Southern California. He holds a Ph.D. in Literature from the University of Southern California, an M.A. from the University of Connecticut, and a B.A. from Biola University. He taught for ten years at Azusa Pacific University before founding Hildegard College. His scholarship is on medieval and renaissance literature and especially the works of Shakespeare, Milton, Herbert, Donne, and late medieval drama. Dr. Smith is the author and editor of four books: Performance and Religion in Early Modern England: Stage, Cathedral, Wagon, Street (Notre Dame), Face to Face in Shakespearean Drama: Ethics, Performance, Philosophy (Edinburgh), Literature and Religious Experience: Beyond Belief and Unbelief (Bloomsbury), and a recently finished manuscript: Shakespearean Recognitions: Philosophies of the Post-Tragic. He is also an editor of the journal Christianity & Literature and has guest-edited three special issues: The Sacramental Text Reconsidered, Sincerity, a Literary History, and The Future of Christianity and Literature in Literary Studies.

Dr. Smith founded Hildegard College in 2022 with the conviction that higher education needs a reset. Where typical universities are growing ever larger into multi-versities, abandoning the traditional liberal arts and giving students a predominantly anonymous learning experience, Dr. Smith argues that the future of quality education, especially Christian education, is focused, tight-knit, rigorous, and recommitted to the classics of the liberal arts tradition. His vision for Hildegard College is to create an environment where young people can explore the riches of the classical tradition while also exploring and gaining experience in different areas of work—part monastery and part startup incubator. Mentorship, deep learning, and personal formation are the bedrock of a classical education.

Matt Smith lives in Fullerton, CA with his wife and three children. He serves on the boards of Veritas Classical Academy and of the Classic Learning Test. When he isn’t teaching, he cooks, plays soccer, trains in jiu jitsu, mountain bikes, plays with his dog, and writes.

Show Notes

Help the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; visit faith.yale.edu/give to donate today.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Jessica Hooten Wilson and Matthew J Smith
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge
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

Advent Hope: Darkness, Endurance, and No-Exit Situations / Miroslav Volf Dec 04, 2023

Help the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; visit faith.yale.edu/give to donate today.

A special Advent bonus episode on hope. Theologian Miroslav Volf reflects on "Hope is the thing with feathers" by Emily Dickenson, comments on the dark hope of Martin Luther & the Apostle Paul, and how hope and endurance are intrinsically connected in Christian spirituality.

Show Notes

Evan Rosa & Macie Bridge reflect on the theme of the first week of Advent: “Hope”
“Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul / And sings the tune without the words / And never stops at all / And sweetest in the Gale is heard / And soar must be the storm / That could abash the little bird / That kept so many warm / I've heard it in the chillest land / And on the strangest sea / And yet never an extremity, / It asked a crumb of me” – Emily Dickenson
“In hope, a future good, which isn't yet, somehow already is”
Luther – "just as love transforms the lover into the beloved, so hope changes the one who hopes into what is hoped for."
The present is pregnant with the future
But hope does not come from what is happening in the present, it is something entirely new
Hope lives apart from reason
Hope and God belong together
“The God who creates out of nothing, the God who makes the dead alive, that God justifies hope that is otherwise unreasonable”
“Genuine hope remains alive when there is no good reason to expect something positive in the future."
Hope transfers a person “into the unknown, the hidden, and the dark shadow, so that he does not even know what he hopes for.” Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, 25:364
"Hope is open to the difference between how we imagined fulfillment and how it arrived, openness even to recognize in the actual fulfillment what we in fact have wanted all along."
"We are most in need of hope in threatening situations which we cannot control; but it is in those same situations that it is most difficult for us not to lose hope. That is where patience and endurance come in."
"Hope needs endurance and endurance needs hope. Or: Genuine endurance is marked by hope; and genuine hope is marked by endurance."
Hope is for no-exit situations.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Miroslav Volf
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge
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

N.T. Wright & Miroslav Volf / Violence in God's Name: Monotheism, Nationalism, Violence, and Our Ultimate Allegiance Dec 03, 2023

As you listen today, would you consider helping the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for 2024 podcast production? visit faith.yale.edu/give to donate today.

"Christians are called to collaborate without compromise and to critique without dualism." (N.T. Wright, from today's episode)

What better way to secure the greatness of your political state (or maybe political party) than to invoke the name of God as being uniquely supportive of your team? It brings a sickening and divisive new meaning to Romans 8:31—”If God is for us, who can be against us?”

In this episode, revered New Testament scholar N.T. Wright joins Miroslav Volf to discuss Monotheism, Nationalism, & Violence. Together they reflect on the history and current realities of what happens when these three elements converge. The conversation was inspired by N.T. Wright's response to a short digital booklet by Miroslav Volf entitled Monotheism, Nationalism, & Violence: 25 Theses, which is available for download at faith.yale.edu.

Click here to download Monotheism, Nationalism, & Violence: 25 Theses, a short digital booklet by Miroslav Volf, via faith.yale.edu.

“In this essay, written in form of 25 interlocking theses, I approach the problem of religiously motivated or legitimized violence by exploring the relation between monotheism and nationalism. The first is allegedly the most violent of all forms of religion and the second one of the most violent forms of political arrangements, especially when it is cut loose from universal moral commitment and tied to some form of tribal identity (“exclusive nationalism”). I argue that monotheism is a universalist creed and that it is compatible only with inclusive nationalism, a nationalism that is a form of special relations framed by a universal moral code. When monotheism is aligned with exclusive nationalism—when it becomes a “political religion” aligned with exclusivist nationalism—monotheism betrays its universality, a feature which lies at its very core, and morphs into violence, generating and legitimizing henotheism: our god of our nation in contrast and competition to other nations with their gods. Alternatively, if monotheism keeps its universality while associated as political religion with exclusive nationalism it will tend to underwrite dreams of nationalist imperialism: our god and our nation as masters of the world.”

Show Notes

Help the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; visit faith.yale.edu/give to donate today.
Download Miroslav Volf’s short digital booklet, Monotheism, Nationalism, & Violence: 25 Theses
Volf introduces Monotheism, Nationalism, & Violence
“The price monotheism always has to pay for its alliance with exclusive nationalism is the loss of its soul. When monotheism embraces exclusive nationalism, monotheism’s God morphs from the creator and lover of all people and all creatures into a selfish and violent idol of a particular nation.”
Instrumentalizing God
What is religion anyway?
Brent Nongbri, Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept
Martin Riesenbrot, A Promise of Salvation, A Theory of Religion
Christians were regarded with suspicion, as atheists
Wright: “…this leads some to say religion is itself a dangerous and violent thing because it leads to people saying I have this God and he's more important than your God or whatever. And all sorts of violence stem from that. Indeed, one could argue that the Enlightenment's redefinition radical redefinition of the word religion over against its, say, early centuries use, has been part of the problem. But that, that would be perhaps a more polemical thesis.”
Religion plays an important role in political society.
How did religion work in the ancient world?
Is religion a force for evil in society? Working from a secularist paradigm or not?
Monotheism revised by Christology
Two Christian groups anathematizing each other
“Nothing hangs on the word religion.”
Ultimate allegiance, and to what?
What are the political responsibilities of the state to religion?
Naming proper allegiance
Wright on Jesus and Political Authority in John 19: “In other words, in the famous Romans 13, um, it's not a totalitarian passage, though some have read it like that. But Paul says there is no authority except from God. In other words, there is the one God, but God wants his world to be wisely governed by human authorities. But he will then call them to account. And my favorite passage on that is in John 19, when Jesus is being interviewed by Pontius Pilate. And Pilate says, don't you realize I have the right to have you killed? And Jesus says, and it's extraordinary, think of Johannine theology, that Jesus says this to Pilate. You could have no authority over me unless it was given to you from above and then the corollary is therefore the one who handed me over to you has the greater sin and that's that's a very interesting differentiation which no doubt Pilate couldn't understand at all and of course violence enters in straight away because Pilate's response is to send him off to be crucified.”
Polycarp (paraphrased by N.T. Wright): “Now I won't worship your God, but I will respect you enough to honor you if you want to have a conversation about this.”
“That one God is doing justice in the world.”
Jan Assman: creating the states in which violence in the name of God is possible
Bringing in atonement theology
“All three monotheisms in some sense affirm the freedom of religion.”
Noble ideal of the post-enlightenment world: an inclusive nationalism and inclusive monotheism.
Freedom of religion
Christianity as trinitarian monotheism
Romans 8: Spirit groaning
Jesus’s cry for dereliction
Wright: “Collaborate without compromise and to critique without dualism.”

Production Notes

This podcast featured N.T. Wright and Miroslav Volf
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge
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

Interchange of Love: Gratitude, Gift, and Joyful Recognition / Miroslav Volf Nov 19, 2023

“Gratitude enlivens the world.”

Gratitude is the emotional expression of the interchange of love between giver and receiver. So of course we’re looking for more of that in public—it’s the very evidence of giving to one another, grace with each other, beneficence for one another. In this conversation, Miroslav Volf and Evan Rosa discuss this remarkable interchange of love between giver and receiver that leads to gratitude.

They discuss the meaning of gratitude in emotional, moral, and theological terms; and he introduces a variety of views on gratitude, from the story of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, to Thomas Aquinas, to Anthony Kronman’s “born-again pagan” critique of Christian gratitude, and finally Martin Luther’s take on gratitude which draws on the Magnificat of Mary, which Miroslav expounds.

Special thanks to the Gratitude to God Project for helping to make this episode possible.

Show Notes

Show Art: Henry Ossawa Tanner, "The Thankful Poor", 1894
Happy Thanksgiving from the Yale Center for Faith & Culture!
Gratitude to God Project Website: Psychological, Philosophical and Theological Investigations
Gratitude as a moral emotion
“identification of the good for which we should be grateful.”
The Pharisee & the Tax Collector
Looking inside the figures of scripture.
The performance of gratitude
Why does gratitude seem so important or basic in spiritual life?
“We should be grateful to our parents for having brought us into the world, raised us, spent all these incredibly long, wakeful hours at the beginning of our lives; and many, many more, many hours and days of worries, gratitude is appropriate. How much then more not to God, to whom we owe everything?”
Repayment of a debt
Anthony Kronman, Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan
Is gratitude too heavy a burden? To somehow pay back God for the gifts of the world?
Gratitude not as repayment, but as giving an equivalent gift
John Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost
Abysmal Gap Between God and Creature
Aquinas on Gratitude
Receiving a benefit
Feeling thankfulness
Repaying a favor suitably, and according to our means
The Widow’s Mites
Joyful recognition
Recognize that what we have received is in fact a gift
Recognizing the moral worth of the giver on account of the moral worth of the deed
I receive the gift not with grumpiness, but with joy—over the giver, over the gift, and spilling over into other aspects of the relationship
Understanding Martin Luther’s Theology of Gratitude
Kronman’s misreading of Luther
Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation: “The love of God does not find, but creates what is pleasing to it.”
“But if you have somebody who truly gives, selflessly, gifts—then it's a kind of insult to them if you want to treat them as if they were trying to get something out of you for that.”
Misconstruing the relationship between giver and receiver.
Thomas Hobbs
“A circle of mutual benefit” where the person who has power dominates
The dearth of gratitude in public life today
Luther on Mary’s Magnificat and “God’s gift-giving to the nobodies of the world”
“No one can love God unless God makes himself known to that person in the most lovable and intimate fashion. And God can make himself known only through those works of his which he reveals in us, and which we feel and experience within ourselves. But where there is this experience, namely, that he is a God who looks into the depths and helps only the poor, despised, afflicted, miserable, forsaken, and those who are nothing, there the hearty love for him is born. The heart overflows with gladness and goes leaping and dancing for the great pleasure it has found in God.” (from Martin Luther’s Commentary on the Magnificat)
“God is the one who, in humility, always reaches to that which is lower than God in order to lift it up. And that's how he comes to the nobodies, to the despised, which are primarily the objects of God's love.”

Production Notes

This podcast featured Miroslav Volf
Special thanks to Robert Emmons, Pete Hill, and the Gratitude to God Project for helping make this episode possible
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge
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

Thanks A Lot: The Complicated Emotional World of Gratitude / Jo-Ann Tsang Nov 11, 2023

Recent psychological studies find that gratitude can help us create, cultivate, and maintain the kinds of relationships that make life worth living. Other studies are finding that gratitude is far more complicated, and plays a nuanced role in our complex emotional lives. Research psychologist Jo-Ann Tsang (Baylor University) joins Ryan McAnnally-Linz to talk about the complicated emotional world that gratitude inhabits, the scientific study of giving thanks and the contexts where its prosocial or adaptive for us, the dark side of gratitude, and the role it plays in a life of flourishing.

This episode was made possible in part by the support of the Gratitude to God Project.

About Jo-Ann Tsang

Jo-Ann Tsang is a social psychologist, and is Associate Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience at Baylor University.

Show Notes

Gratitude to God Project Website: Psychological, Philosophical and Theological Investigations
Tryptophanic food coma dreams of John Madden ranting about football and turducken
Daniel Tiger: “Sometimes you feel two feelings at the same time, and that’s okay.”
Empirical psychological research on gratitude
Intrinsic vs instrumental reasons for being grateful
Self-determination theory
The downsides of gratitude
Gratitude in marriage: matching affective responses of support and gratitude in relationships
Gratitude toward God
Julie Exline on Spiritual Struggle (link)
“It’s not always adaptive to be happy?”
Prosocial behavior
Find, Remind, Bind Theory
What is pro-sociality?
What is adaptivity?
Happiness is not always adaptive.
What’s adaptive depends on your goal in a certain situation.
Happiness and adaptivity as malleable concepts that depend on your definition of the good.
Does gratitude reduce protest?
Increased forgiveness and willingness to accept oppression rather than oppression
Quietism and perpetuating unjust structures
Gratitude might put on the brakes for the motivation to protest or press for change
“Give thanks in all things.” vs “Give thanks for all things.”
“Life is complicated.”
Gratitude doesn’t rule out anger
“How can I feel happy when there’s all these bad things going on?”
Is gratitude related to prejudice, stigma, or discrimination?
Why is it we keep chasing after happiness?
“If you're in a bad relationship, and gratitude's making you stick more strongly with that relationship partner, then that's not good.”
The role of gratitude in a life worth living

Production Notes

This podcast featured research psychologist Jo-Ann Tsang and theologian Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge and Kaylen Yun
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

Fearing Rightly: Horror Films, Theology, and Living with the Terror of Life / Kutter Callaway Oct 30, 2023

Why do we like horror films? Why do we gravitate to the theatre for a collective catharsis—living out our nightmares vicariously through the unwitting victim on the screen? What draws us to the shadows? All the more poignant for the Christian who shouldn’t watch the bad movies. But let’s take the point seriously: How might we watch horror films Christianly? Which is to say: How do we watch them well?

Theologian and film critic Kutter Callaway (Fuller Theological Seminary) joins Evan Rosa for a discussion of some truly frightening horror films. His new podcast “Be Afraid” is produced by Christianity Today, and explores horror films and the theology and psychology of fearing rightly.

In addition to discussing some of our favorite scary movies Kutter Callaway and Evan Rosa discuss: The psychology of fear and why people might willingly rehearse their fears; the radical vulnerability of human life that makes us susceptible to horrors; the Bible as horror genre; the human inclination toward the numinous, unknown, mysterious, and uncanny; managing our terror about death; and ultimately, how to fear rightly.

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

Show Notes

Listen to Be Afraid, with Kutter Callaway
What’s so scary about clowns and dolls? And why is Kutter Callaway afraid of them?
Toy Story as Horror Flick
The Shining, psychological horror, and when children are involved.
William James, Father of American Psychology
Rudolf Otto
Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans—the numinous, equal parts compelling and terrifying
Awe and terror—”big, overwhelming, and unknown”
Marilyn McCord Adams’ Christ & Horrors
“It brings us to the end of ourselves”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of” is a lie!
Should we be afraid?
“Perfect love casts out fear”
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
Learning how to fear rightly
Christian leverages fear all the time
“Fear the one who can destroy both body and soul.”
M1028—graphically violent and theologically backwards
What have you learned about fear from a psychological perspective?
Justin Barrett and the cognitive science of religion
Humans have the near-universal tendency to infer agency to things that go bump in the night.
“We don't run from a bear because we're afraid. We're afraid because we're running.”
Practicing and rehearsing “how to be afraid”
Storytelling and catharsis
Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, and feeling the chills of tragedy
Art and storytelling that traffics in empathy
Get Out—empathy and viscerally feeling something—”that movie disturbed me on a level that I needed to be disturbed.”
Paul Riceour on narrative and reappropriation—applied to horror and feeling empathy for the other
The Exorcist—slow and quiet by modern standards, but outbursts of terror
Theodicy in The Exorcist
Are horror films beautiful?

About Kutter Callaway

Kutter Callaway is the William K. Brehm Chair of Worship, Theology, and the Arts, as well as associate dean of the Center for Advanced Theological Studies, and associate professor of theology and culture. He is actively engaged in writing and speaking on the interaction between theology and culture—particularly film, television, and online media—in both academic and popular forums.

Dr. Callaway holds two PhDs, one in theology and the second in psychological science, both from Fuller. His most recent book is Theology for Psychology and Counseling: An Invitation to Holistic Christian Practice (2022). Past books include Techno-Sapiens in a Networked Era: Becoming Digital Neighbors (2020), which he coauthored with Fuller’s Associate Professor of Church in Contemporary Culture Ryan Bolger; The Aesthetics of Atheism: Theology and Imagination in Contemporary Culture (2019); and Deep Focus: Film and Theology in Dialogue (2019). Past books include Breaking the Marriage Idol: Reconstructing our Cultural and Spiritual Norms (2018), Watching TV Religiously: Television and Theology in Dialogue (2016) and Scoring Transcendence: Contemporary Film Music as Religious Experience (2013). In addition, he contributed to God in the Movies (2017); Halos and Avatars (2010), the first book on theology and video games; and Don’t Stop Believin’ (2012), a dictionary of religion and popular culture.

Callaway cochairs the Religion, Film, and Visual Culture group at the American Academy of Religion. He also partnered with Paulist Productions to produce the YouTube series Should Christians Watch? His professional memberships include the American Academy of Religion, American Psychological Association, and the Society of Biblical Literature. He is ordained as a Baptist minister.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Kutter Callaway
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge
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
This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

How to Lead with Peace, Humility, Compassion, and Faith / Christian Faith & Democratic Leadership / Evan Mawarire Oct 14, 2023

Activist, Pastor, and Global Leader Evan Mawarire reflects on the role of Christian faith in democratic leadership, specifically looking at three significant Gospel passages that reveal not just Jesus’s approach to leadership, but how he teaches his disciples to lead with peace, humility, compassion, and faith.

In Mark 4, we find Jesus leading from peace, rest, control, and trust, peacefully sleeping in the midst of a storm, while the disciples prematurely conclude: “Don’t you care that we are going to die?” In Mark 10, when two of the disciples play political games for their own glory, Jesus responds with a teaching of humility and a subversive glory—that the greatest will in fact be the servant of all. And in John 13, Jesus displays this humility and compassion by washing the gross and grungy feet of his friends, and teaching Peter that a leader is first a student, and the student isn’t greater than their teacher.

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

Show Notes

Featured Artwork: “Study, Christ Washing the Feet of the Disciples 1898”, Henry Ossawa Tanner and “Christ Washing the Disciples’ Feet”, Jan Lievens, 1630/35
Urgency, peace, and the exit door of fear
The shallow sleep of anxiety
Jesus calm’s the storm:
- Mark 4:35-41 — 35 On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’ 36 And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. 37 A great gale arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. 38 But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’ 39 He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. 40 He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’ 41 And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’
- See also: Luke 8:22-25, Matthew 8:23-27
“Don’t you care that we are going to die?”
Jesus’s goal of leadership development
Mark 10:35-45 ****
- 35 James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, ‘Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’ 36 And he said to them, ‘What is it you want me to do for you?’ 37 And they said to him, ‘Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.’ 38 But Jesus said to them, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?’ 39 They replied, ‘We are able.’ Then Jesus said to them, ‘The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; 40 but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.’ 41 When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. 42 So Jesus called them and said to them, ‘You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 43 But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 45 For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’
Pastor Evan’s work in Zimbabwe’s Citizen’s movement
“Lord, give us a seat at the table that decides the future of this nation.”
Prayer: We ask for harvest, God plants a seed.
How do we prepare our leaders?
Luke 6: “The student is not above the teacher.”
Reversing the roles: being served versus serving
Leadership is not designed to be comfortable
People are at their worst when we are in crisis, but this is when we’re supposed to see leaders at their best when we’re in crisis.
Sheep without a shepherd
Loss of trust and the Global Trust Barometer
Leadership is not just about the right skill set, it’s importantly about the right heart set.
Washing the feet of the disciples
- John 13:1-17
- 1 Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. 2 The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper 3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, 4 got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. 5 Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. 6 He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” 7 Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” 8 Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” 9 Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” 10 Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” 11 For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.” 12 After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? 13 You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. 14 So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. 15 For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. 16 Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. 17 If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.
Humility
Compassion
It’s not easy to lead
Starfish Story: “To that one it made a difference.”
“Someone who knows how to lead, knows how they have been served themselves.”
“Where can plant seeds of impact?”
“How do we faithfully look after these sprouting of servant leadership, of people that understand that leadership is about serving are more than it is about being served.”
Back to urgency and patience—the only way to plant seeds is to plant now and wait.
“Where purpose is not known, abuse is inevitable.”
“There are two most important days in your life—the day you were born and the day you discover why.”
Patience and the crafting of leadership

About Evan Mawarire

Evan Mawarire is a Zimbabwean clergyman who founded #ThisFlag Citizen’s Movement to challenge corruption, injustice, and poverty in Zimbabwe. The movement empowers citizens to hold government to account. Through viral videos, the movement has organized multiple successful non-violent protests in response to unjust government policy. Evan was imprisoned in 2016, 2017, and 2019 for charges of treason, facing 80 years in prison. His message of inspiring positive social change and national pride has resonated with diverse groups of citizens and attracted international attention.

Evan has addressed audiences around the world, and Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the 100 global thinkers of 2016. The Daily Maverick Newspaper of South Africa named him 2016 African person of the year. Evan is a 2018 Stanford University Fellow of the Centre for Democracy Development and the Rule of Law. He is a nominee of the 2017 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression awards and the 2018 Swedish government’s Per Anger Prize for democracy actors. He was a 2023 World Fellow at Yale University’s Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellows Program.

Visit his website or follow him on X.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Evan Mawarire
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge & Kaylen Yun
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
This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

How Disability Reframes Humanity: Three Bible Stories to See Disability as the Site of Divine Revelation / Calli Micale Oct 07, 2023

“Wrestling with oneself, with one’s past, with one’s relationships, with God … These stories push us to use disability to think about the human condition more broadly.”

Longstanding narratives about disability shaped our emotional responses, our caregiving responses, and our social commentary, and our treatment of the disabled. But what if we saw disability as the site of divine revelation about God’s kingdom and our place in it? As an expression of power and wisdom and agency, rather than a merely a source of suffering and lack and ignorance.

Calli Micale (Palmer Theological Seminary) joins Evan Rosa to discuss how disability reframes our humanity in the Bible. They reflect on three passages: starting in the Old Testament—in Genesis 32—with the story of Jacob wrestling with the Angel, and walking away with much more than a limp and a new name. Continuing with the Gospel, John 9, the story of the Man Born Blind, famous for at least two reasons: the utter stupidity of the disciples to assume “Rabbi, who sinned that this man was born blind?” and the utter visceral of having Jesus make mud with his spit and rub it in the man’s eyes. And finally The Gospel of Mark, chapter 5, the story of the bleeding woman—a story of reaching out in desperate faith, an act of incredible agency and audacity, to touch the edge of Jesus’s garment and be healed.

Whether its intellectual disability or physical disability, and regardless of how its acquired, disability plays a role in what we might call God’s subversive kingdom. God’s upside-down-ness (or, maybe we should say human upside-down-ness). The least of these in the eyes of human society are chosen by God to communicate the good news of shalom and justice and salvation—that even those who are already “whole” can be saved.

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

Show Notes

Artwork: “Untitled (The Bleeding Woman)”, Unknown, Fresco, 4th Century AD, Catacombs of Marcellinus and Peter, Rome, Italy
Artwork: “The Healing of the Man Born Blind”, Duccio, 1311, Tempera on wood, National Gallery, London
Artwork: “Vision of the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel)”, Paul Gauguin, 1888, Oil on canvas, Scottish National Gallery
Genesis 32:22-32 (see below for full text)
“Wrestling with oneself, with one’s past, with one’s relationships, with God”
Disability as a plot device: exploit
Elaborate disguise of Jacob’s impersonization of Esau
Each of us wrestles with our identity
“No one can see God and live”
Jacob’s limp: a narrative and metaphorical significance
Is disability a sign of or consequence of one’s sinfulness?
Is disability a divine punishment?
Subverting our understanding of disability
“Disability extends beyond Jacob’s physical form and continues to influence the the community—how they relate with their tradition and their practices.”
“The memory of the struggle with God and the intimate presence of God in the wrestling in the body, and then is preserved in memory of the body.”
Is being struck on the hip socket a blessing to Jacob?
The wounds of martyrs as battle wounds
Disability becomes inextricable from histories of violence
Is it Jesus that strikes and maims Jacob’s hip?
John 9: The Man Blind from Birth
Jesus rejects the assumption that disability is a punishment for sin.
“Dumb and blind”
Disability as the site of divine revelation
Jesus spitting in the mud is kind of gross. It takes a lot of spit to make that much mud.
Vulnerable and visceral moment of pasting dirty mud
The question of Jesus’s sin (for breaking Sabbath law) is now in play
An extended metaphor about where knowledge and wisdom apply.
Mark 5: The Hemorrhaging Woman
Agency and Power
Mutual caregiving within disabled communities
“These stories push us to use disability to think about the human condition more broadly.”

Genesis 32

The same night he got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’ So he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’ Then the man said, ‘You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.’ Then Jacob asked him, ‘Please tell me your name.’ But he said, ‘Why is it that you ask my name?’ And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’ The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the thigh muscle that is on the hip socket, because he struck Jacob on the hip socket at the thigh muscle.

John 9

As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’

When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam’ (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, ‘Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?’ Some were saying, ‘It is he.’ Others were saying, ‘No, but it is someone like him.’ He kept saying, ‘I am the man.’ But they kept asking him, ‘Then how were your eyes opened?’ He answered, ‘The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, “Go to Siloam and wash.” Then I went and washed and received my sight.’ They said to him, ‘Where is he?’ He said, ‘I do not know.’

They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, ‘He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.’ Some of the Pharisees said, ‘This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.’ But others said, ‘How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?’ And they were divided. So they said again to the blind man, ‘What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.’ He said, ‘He is a prophet.’

The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, ‘Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?’ His parents answered, ‘We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.’ His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. Therefore his parents said, ‘He is of age; ask him.’

So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, ‘Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.’ He answered, ‘I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.’ They said to him, ‘What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?’ He answered them, ‘I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?’ Then they reviled him, saying, ‘You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.’ The man answered, ‘Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.’ They answered him, ‘You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?’ And they drove him out.

Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’ He answered, ‘And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.’ Jesus said to him, ‘You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.’ He said, ‘Lord, I believe.’ And he worshipped him. Jesus said, ‘I came into this world for judgement so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.’ Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, ‘Surely we are not blind, are we?’ Jesus said to them, ‘If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, “We see”, your sin remains.

Mark 5:25-34

See also Luke 8:43-48 and Matthew 9:20-22

Now there was a woman who had been suffering from haemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, ‘If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.’ Immediately her haemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my clothes?’ And his disciples said to him, ‘You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, “Who touched me?”’ He looked all round to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.’

About Calli Micale

Calli Micale is Assistant Professor of Theology and Ethics and Director of the MDiv Program at Palmer Theological Seminary. She is a theologian with a particular interest in the ethical implications of theological talk for the whole of human life. Her research brings together the history of Christian thought with sustained attention to rhetoric as it grounds perceptions of the body and health in Western societies. She joined the Palmer Theological Seminary faculty in 2023 after earning a PhD from Yale University.

Writing and teaching correspond in Dr. Micale’s work to form students as faith leaders oriented towards gender, disability, and racial justice. She has published articles with the Journal of Disability and Religion and the Disability Studies Quarterly (forthcoming). Micale is currently working on a book manuscript, tentatively titled Crip Conversion: Narratives of Disability and Grace. The book analyzes the stories theologians tell about intellectual disability and argues that deploying intellectual disability as narrative metaphor allows one to come at the Protestant tradition from a helpful vantage point—such that the significance of sensation for the reception of grace comes to the fore.

As a candidate for ordination in the ELCA with 10+ years of preaching experience, Dr. Micale delights in the variety of ways her students take up theological resources for ministry and social justice action. In each course, she aims to take students beyond learning concepts by letting divergent beliefs shape and change their perspective on what really matters—their own intellectual and spiritual lives called to make a difference in the world

Production Notes

This podcast featured Calli Micale
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge and Kaylen Yun
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
This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

How to Eat, Drink, and Be Human (Lessons from Revolutionary Women) / Alissa Wilkinson Sep 18, 2023

Show Notes

Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking, and Living from Revolutionary Women
Creative non-fiction and “essays” as a genre
“I guess what I was trying to do was come up with ways into the lives of these women who I find interesting. That would also be compelling to someone who had never heard of them.”
Dinner party
Hannah Arendt and her cocktail parties
A subversive feast among friends
Arguing in order to find out what you think
Thinking as a conversation with the self
Love in the specificity of relationship
Amor mundi—love of the world
“Loving the world means working on two specific tasks. The first is to doggedly, insist on seeing the world just as it is with its disappointments and horrors and committing to it all the same. The second is to encounter people in the world and embrace their alterity, or difference.”
Arendt’s “banality of evil”
The importance of letter-writing for sharing the self and inhabiting a years-long friendship
Edna Lewis, Freetown, Virginia, and “The Taste of Southern Cooking”
Farm-to-table cooking used to be out of economic necessity, not a hip or high fine dining experience
Edna Lewis’s Southern identity: "Lewis defines Southern as the experience of an emancipated people and their descendants, a cultural and culinary heritage to be proud of a distinctly American culture. And as she offers definitions, readers are reminded, she's refusing to be defined by anyone but herself.”
“What Is Southern?” Gourmet Magazine—reclaiming Southern cooking for Black Southerners
The Los Padres National Forest Supper Club
Babette’s Feast (1987)
The menu from Babette’s Feast
The place of joy and pleasure in a flourishing spiritual life
Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb
Food and recognition
“Learning how to taste”
“Every dinner party is an act of hope.”

About Alissa Wilkinson

Alissa Wilkinson is a Brooklyn-based critic, journalist, and author. She is a senior correspondent and critic at Vox.com, writing about film, TV, and culture. She is currently writing We Tell Ourselves Stories, a cultural history of American myth-making in Hollywood through the life and work of Joan Didion, which will be published by Liveright.

She's contributed essays, features, and criticism to a wide variety of publications, including Rolling Stone, Vulture, Bon Appetit, Eater, RogerEbert.com, Pacific Standard, The Dallas Morning News, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Books & Culture, Christianity Today, and others. I’m a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, the National Society of Film Critics, and the Writers Guild of America, East, and was an inaugural writing fellow with the Sundance Institute’s Art of Nonfiction initiative. She's served on juries at the Sundance Film Festival, DOC NYC, Sheffield Doc/Fest, the Hamptons International Film Festival, and others, and selection committees for groups including the Gotham Awards and the Sundance Documentary Film Program.

In June 2022, her book Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking, and Living from Revolutionary Women was published by Broadleaf Books. In 2016, her book How to Survive the Apocalypse: Zombies, Cylons, and Politics at the End of the World was released, co-written with Robert Joustra.

I frequently pop up as a commentator and guest host on radio, TV, and podcasts. Some recent appearances include CBS News; PBS Newshour; CNN International Newsroom; BBC America’s Talking Movies; NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered, On Point, and 1A; HBO’s Allen v. Farrow; AMC's James Cameron's Story of Science Fiction; WNYC's The Takeaway; ABC's Religion & Ethics and The Drum; CBC Eyeopener, Vox’s Today, Explained and The Gray Area; and many more.

For 14 years, until the college ceased offering classes in 2023, she was also an associate professor of English and humanities at The King’s College in New York City, and taught courses in criticism, cinema studies, literature, and cultural theory. She earned an M.F.A in creative nonfiction from Seattle Pacific University, an M.A. in humanities and social thought from New York University, and a B.S. in information technology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

You can read my most up-to-date work on my Vox author page, or subscribe to my mostly-weekly newsletter.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Alissa Wilkinson
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Liz Vukovic, Macie Bridge, and Kaylen Yun
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

Reframing Disability: Agency, Possibility, and Radical Dependency / Calli Micale Aug 19, 2023

Show Notes

Instructive irony: Evan’s disabling experience of setting up a microphone for a podcast interview
Three ways to think about disability: Minority Model (Impairment of Individuals), Social Model (Societal factors create impairment), and Political Model (emerges from collective action and identity; generated from Americans with Disabilities Act)
Chronic pain, real suffering
All three models are important
“Look at the arrangement of society—the conditions of possibility that empower our lives or that create obstacles to our flourishing.”
How to Speak About Disability 101
Care, solidarity, advocacy, and inclusion
Understanding the ethics of disability through stories: narratives of the body, biblical narratives of healing, and theological stories
Augustine’s City of God and moral impurity and the wounds of martyrs as glorified and amplified in resurrected bodies
The hurt of “fixing” those with disabilities
Doubting Thomas and exploring the resurrection wounds of Christ
Story: Physical disability and amputation
“It always starts with thinking about the loss”
Hope and possibility through the loss
Religion and spirituality as a tool to both help and also a self-critique of the “wholeness” or “normal” narrative.
Critiquing the brokenness-wholeness narrative of disability
“Drawing attention to the site of divine activity.”
Is disability connected to sin?
John 9:1-41: Jesus Heals the Man Born Blind
Slowness, constancy, unwavering faith
Story: Intellectual disability and autism
Oxana’s Cymbalstern
Cymbalstern (or Zimbelstern) is a star-shaped organ stop that makes a clanging, ringing sound during organ playing.
Xenophobia, fear of difference, and stigma
Calli reacts to the truism: “There are only two kinds of people: those who are disabled and those who will be disabled.”
Visible and invisible disabilities: depression, anxiety, and mental health
Are disabled lives worth living?
Story: A surgeon develops multiple sclerosis
Radical dependence on others
Power, agency, and interdependency on others
Start with the bare conditions of possibility, and then how those conditions of possibility change when disability emerges?

About

Calli Micale is Director of the MDiv Program; Assistant Professor of Theology and Ethics at Palmer Theological Seminary. She is a theologian with a particular interest in the ethical implications of theological talk for the whole of human life. Her research brings together the history of Christian thought with sustained attention to rhetoric as it grounds perceptions of the body and health in Western societies. She joined the Palmer Theological Seminary faculty in 2023 after earning a PhD from Yale University.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Calli Micale
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Logan Ledman, Macie Bridge, and Kaylen Yun
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
This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

What Boredom Means: Cultivating Attention & Leisure for a Life Connected to Time & Place / Kevin Gary & Drew Collins Aug 01, 2023

Where does boredom come from? Have humans always experienced boredom, or has it only come on in the entertainment age, having more time than we know what to do with? Kevin Gary (Valparaiso University) is author of Why Boredom Matters: Education, Leisure, and the Quest for a Meaningful Life. He joins Drew Collins & Evan Rosa to reflect on the discontent and disconnection that boredom constantly threatens. They discuss the phenomena of boredom, the childhood experience of it, whether its good or bad, the definition of boredom, its connection to entertainment and education, and finally the role of attention and leisure in cultivating a healthy understanding and response to being totally bored out of our minds.

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

About Kevin Gary

Kevin Gary is a Professor of Education at Valparaiso University. He has a Ph.D. in cultural and educational policy studies from Loyola University Chicago with a focus in the philosophy of education and an M.A. in systematic theology from the University of Notre Dame. His teaching experience includes 10 years of teaching theology at Loyola Academy High School in Wilmette, Illinois.; seven years as a professor of education and philosophy at Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana; 8 years as a professor of education at Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Indiana; and one year as faculty director of Goshen College’s international studies program in Lima, Perú.

Dr. Gary’s research is primarily in philosophy of education. He recently published, Why Boredom Matters: Education and the Quest for a Meaningful Life with Cambridge University Press in 2022. K-12 educators (and parents) face bored students every day. Drawing on multiple disciplines Dr. Gary makes a case for teachers guiding students to engage with boredom constructively, steering clear of restless boredom avoidance on the one hand, or passive submission to boredom on the other.

Dr. Gary has published in multiple journals, including Educational Theory, the Journal of Philosophy of Education, and Studies in Philosophy and Education.

Dr. Gary is one of the founding executives of the North American Association for Philosophy and Education (NAAPE), launched in 2018. NAAPE provides an international forum for scholars working at the intersection of philosophy and educational thought, where disciplines such as ethics, political philosophy, epistemology, philosophical anthropology, history, and others meet the practical challenges of teaching and learning.

Dr. Gary is passionate about liberal education, especially within the context of a Christian liberal arts university, which aims to cultivate practical wisdom, compassion, and a Renaissance spirit.

Show Notes

Kevin Gary’s Why Boredom Matters: Education and the Quest for a Meaningful Life
A quick and incomplete history of boredom
The Preacher of Ecclesiastes laments over human toil, “everything is vanity and chasing after wind” around 250 BC. “The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing.”
Stoic Roman philosopher Seneca noticed a nauseating tedium in his famous letter “On Tranquility,” describing a familiar quote “vacillation of a mind that nowhere finds rest, and the sad and languid endurance of one’s leisure. Thence comes mourning and melancholy and the thousand waverings of an unsettled mind, which its aspirations hold in suspense, and then disappointment renders melancholy. Thence comes that feeling which makes men loathe their own leisure and complain that they themselves have nothing to be busy with.”
The ancient Christian monks of the desert struggled with the noonday demon of acedia, a spiritual boredom with their vocation of prayer and faithfulness.
Aquinas and other scholastics disciplined the “roving mind.”
Variants of the English “boredom”—including being bored to death!—show up in Lord Byron, Charles Dickens, and Herman Melville in the mid 19th century.
Kierkegaard calls it the root of all evil.
Heidegger sees it in a positive light, saying that philosophy begins in the nothingness of boredom.
C.S. Lewis’s Uncle Screwtape advises that “anything or nothing is sufficient to attract the wandering attention” of Jr. Demon Wormwood’s human patient.
The French bourgeoisie nailed it with ennui that many a suburban latchkey kid can relate to.
In the King-Kubrick masterpiece, The Shining, boredom goes very dark when “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
Boredom for children: How to respond to the boredom children feel
Is boredom bad or good?
What’s the definition of boredom?
Tolstoy on boredom
Kierkegaard on living life to avoid boredom
Kierkegaard as a form of existential despair; boredom as an indicator that we’re not comfortable with ourselves.
Chasing novelty, looking for the new; or giving up and resigning our agency
Heidegger was influenced by Kierkegaard; and thought you must push through it to find your true, authentic self.
Kierkegaard’s view of the “authentic self” is the self resting in God.
“Schola” (Latin): attentively receptive.
Simone Weil on tedium, boredom, and attention
Living in an “attention economy” and controlling or stewarding others’ attention
Attention as an antidote to boredom
Simone Weil’s experience working in a car factory and losing her sense of agency and self
Philosopher Albert Borgmann on “focal practices” and guardrails.
Go chop wood for an hour, and simply do it.
Go for a walk for an hour without your smartphone.
Boredom and entertainment in a perverse binary orbit
Simone Weil “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God” in Waiting for God (link to PDF)
Entertainment is, therefore, not the problem.
“The entertainment-boredom cycle just becomes more boring.”
Leisure as antidote to boredom
Sabbath as oasis from work filling up our lives.
Thomas Aquinas’s “roving mind”
Let’s go birding!
Liturgy as the guardrails of attention
Be an apprentice and learn to experience and perceive in a new way.
Mindful in the mundane
Gordon Wood’s History of the American Revolution: politicians as “disinterested men of leisure”
Fighting against instrumentalization.
Intrinsic goods of doing the dishes.
“The bored mind is missing an opportunity for leisure.”
“I like to fish… and any fishing guide will tell you they call it fishing, not catching, for a reason.”
“Having resources does not guarantee the experience of leisure.”
Josef Pieper and Abraham Heschel and the tradition of Intellectus and Wonder
How leisure as both active and contemplative, and its role in a flourishing life

Production Notes

This podcast featured Kevin Gary and Drew Collins
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge 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
Special thanks to the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

Kelly Corrigan, Claire Danes, & Kate Bowler / The Practice of Flourishing / Life Worth Living Book Club, Part 5 of 5 Jul 22, 2023

The final installment of our 5-part book club series on Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most, produced and hosted by Kelly Corrigan, and featuring Claire Danes & Kate Bowler. Special thanks to the Warren Smoot Carter III and Meagan Carter Charitable Fund for making this series possible.

Show Notes

About Kelly Corrigan

Kelly Corrigan has written four New York Times bestselling memoirs in the last decade, earning her the title of “The Poet Laureate of the ordinary” from the Huffington Post and the “voice of a generation” from O Magazine. She is curious and funny and eager to go well past the superficial in every conversation. More on KellyCorrigan.com.

Show Notes

This episode featured Kelly Corrigan, Kate Bowler, and Claire Danes
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Kaylen Yun, and Logan Ledman
Special thanks to Tammy Stedman, Kelly Corrigan, and the Warren Smoot Carter III and Meagan Carter Charitable Fund
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

Claire Danes, Kate Bowler, & Kelly Corrigan / Consumption, Responsibility, Failure, Repair, & Forgiveness / Life Worth Living Book Club, Part 4 of 5 Jul 15, 2023

Show Notes

About Kelly Corrigan

Production Notes

This episode featured Kelly Corrigan, Kate Bowler, and Claire Danes
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Kaylen Yun, and Logan Ledman
Special thanks to Tammy Stedman, Kelly Corrigan, and the Warren Smoot Carter III and Meagan Carter Charitable Fund
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

Claire Danes, Kate Bowler, & Kelly Corrigan / Envy, Desire, and Struggling with Belief / Life Worth Living Book Club, Part 3 of 5 Jul 01, 2023

Today’s episode is part 3 of a 5-part book club series produced and hosted by Kelly Corrigan. The PBS host and author of four New York Times bestselling memoirs is taking a deep dive into the latest book from the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. Written by Miroslav Volf, Matt Croasmun, and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most, the book is based on a Yale College course that takes up some of the most pressing questions of life, but doesn’t keep the implications, challenges, confusion, and demands of those questions at arms length. Both the course and the book invite life-long learners to ask, “For any idea, if that idea were true, how would your life have to change?”

In this episode, Kelly convenes a podcast book-club with two really cool friends: Kate Bowler—host of the Everything Happens podcast and Associate Professor of American Religious History at Duke Divinity School—and celebrated actress Claire Danes, who starred in the Showtime series Homeland and the 90s MTV hit series My So-Called Life.

If you’re interested in reading along with Kelly, Kate, and Claire, please visit lifeworthlivingbook.com—that’s where you can find links to buy the book and a free discussion guide when you sign up for the Life Worth Living email list.

About Kelly Corrigan

Production Notes

This episode featured Kelly Corrigan, Kate Bowler, and Claire Danes
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Kaylen Yun, and Logan Ledman
Special thanks to Tammy Stedman, Kelly Corrigan, and the Warren Smoot Carter III and Meagan Carter Charitable Fund
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

Claire Danes, Kate Bowler, & Kelly Corrigan / Values, Vocation, Curiosity & Dealing with Circumstance / Life Worth Living Book Club, Part 2 of 5 Jun 25, 2023

Today’s episode is part 2 of a 5-part book club series produced and hosted by Kelly Corrigan. The PBS host and author of four New York Times bestselling memoirs is taking a deep dive into the latest book from the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. Written by Miroslav Volf, Matt Croasmun, and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most, the book is based on a Yale College course that takes up some of the most pressing questions of life, but doesn’t keep the implications, challenges, confusion, and demands of those questions at arms length. Both the course and the book invite life-long learners to ask, “For any idea, if that idea were true, how would your life have to change?”

About Kelly Corrigan

Production Notes

This episode featured Kelly Corrigan, Kate Bowler, and Claire Danes
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Kaylen Yun, and Logan Ledman
Special thanks to Tammy Stedman, Kelly Corrigan, and the Warren Smoot Carter III and Meagan Carter Charitable Fund
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

Life Worth Living Book Club Part 1 of 5 / Kelly Corrigan with Miroslav Volf, Matt Croasmun, & Ryan McAnnally-Linz Jun 17, 2023

"Your life is too important to be guided by anything less than what matters most."

Part 1 of a 5-part book club series on Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most. Written by Miroslav Volf, Matt Croasmun, and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, the book is based on a Yale College course that takes up some of the most pressing questions of life, but doesn’t keep the implications, challenges, confusion, perplexity, and demands of those questions at arms length. Both the course and the book invite life-long learners to ask, “For any idea, if that idea were true, how would your life have to change?”

Later in the series, Kelly is joined by Kate Bowler—host of the Everything Happens podcast and Associate Professor of American Religious History at Duke Divinity School—and actress Claire Danes of the Showtime series Homeland and the '90s MTV series My So-Called Life.

This series is produced and hosted by Kelly Corrigan and was originally featured on the Kelly Corrigan Wonders podcast and Kate Bowler's Everything Happens podcast.

About Kelly Corrigan

Show Notes

For more information about Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most, visit lifeworthlivingbook.com.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Kelly Corrigan, Miroslav Volf, Matt Croasmun, and Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Special thanks to Tammy Stedman, Kelly Corrigan, and the Warren Smoot Carter III and Meagan Carter Charitable Fund
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

Human Uniqueness & the Imago Dei: Clues for Flourishing in Our Biological Niche / Justin Barrett on Bringing Psychology to Theology Jun 10, 2023

We homo sapiens sapiens are “fearfully and wonderfully made,” but why? What’s so special about being human? What makes us unique? And can we equate our uniqueness in the world with the Imago Dei?

Experimental psychologist and cognitive scientist Justin Barrett joins Evan Rosa to discuss the image of God as a blueprint for each of us as individuals; human uniqueness as a theological and psychological category; the place of homo sapiens among other species; uniquely human capacities, such as executive function, hypersociality, and acquisition of specialized knowledge; the human biological niche construction—or changing the environment—and how our psychological traits factor; the psychological and biological underpinnings of human culture and the problem of creating cities; and how human technology interacts with our biological niche.

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of Blueprint 1543. For more information, visit Blueprint1543.org.

Show Notes

Learn more about bringing psychology to theology at Blueprint1543.org.
Download your copy of Justin Barrett’s A Psychological Science Primer for Theologians (2022)
TheoPsych Academy
Psalm 139: 13-14
13 For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.
Genesis 1:1-31
26 Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’
27 So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ 29 God said, ‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so. 31 God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
The image of God as a blueprint for each of us as individuals
Nicholas Wolterstorff’s conception of the Imago Dei in Justice: Rights & Wrongs.
Some varieties of understanding what about us makes us imagebearers, according to scripture
Human uniqueness as a theological and psychological category
Considering the place of homo sapiens among other species
Uniquely human capacities, such as executive functions of the brain, sense of self, self-regulation and awareness
Human hypersociality and relationality, and our interpersonal theory of mind
Attachment as an evolved biological function
The intellectual capacities for acquiring specialized knowledge like how to use fire, cook, and teach each other
The human biological niche construction—or changing the environment—and how our psychological traits factor
The psychological and biological underpinnings of human culture and the problem of creating cities
How human technology interacts with our biological niche
Dr. Ian Malcolm "...they didn't stop to think if they should"—from Jurassic Park.

About Justin Barrett

Justin L. Barrett is an honorary Professor of Theology and the Sciences at St Andrews University School of Divinity. An experimental psychologist by training, he is concerned with the scientific study of religion and its philosophical as well as theological implications. He is the author of a number of books including Why Would Anyone Believe in God?, Born Believers: The Science of Childhood Religion, and Religious Cognition in China: Homo Religiosus and the Dragon.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Justin Barrett
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Kaylen Yun, & 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
This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of Blueprint 1543. For more information, visit Blueprint1543.org.

Made for Relationships: The Sacred Responsibilities of Marriage and Parenting / Mari Clements on Bringing Psychology to Theology May 30, 2023

We tend to take these claims for granted: “Human beings are essentially relational.” “No man is an island.” “We’re created for connection.” “We’re made for relationships.” And testing the limits of this can be pretty much diabolical. Evan Rosa traces two stories of parental deprivation: Harry Harlow's "Monkey Love Experiments" and the horror of 1990's discovery of Romanian asylums for orphans, documented in the 1990 report "The Shame of a Nation,” on 20/20.

Then psychologist Mari Clements (Glenville State College, formerly Fuller School of Psychology) discusses the importance of healthy marriage dynamics for young children’s development and how it provides a secure emotional base; the relational imago Dei; the close emotional bonds that must take place early in life in order to provide the relational stability relational creatures need; we talk about important phases of human development, into adulthood; and the theological backdrop to these questions of the human drive and need for emotional connection.

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of Blueprint 1543. For more information, visit Blueprint1543.org.

About Mari Clements

Mari Clements is Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and Professor of Psychology at Glenville State College. Prior to this, she taught at Fuller School of Psychology and Penn State University.

Show Notes

We tend to take these claims for granted: “Human beings are essentially relational.” “No man is an island.” “We’re created for connection.” “We’re made for relationships.” And testing the limits of this can be pretty much diabolical.
Harry Harlow’s Monkey Love Experiments—Rhesus Monkeys (Video)
“The Shame of a Nation,” 20/20 (1990) (Video)
How family dynamics and marital conflict impacts children
“If you stay in your marriage for the sake of the children, then you deserve, and your child deserves, for you to work on your marriage for the sake of the children. Just being together is actually not better for kids. The kids who look really bad are the kids whose parents are engaged in repetitive and nasty and awful conflict. And they're not getting good models for how to solve problems in their own relationships. They're not getting good models for what to expect from marriage. They're not getting good models for what that marriage relationship is supposed to be.”
Even four-year-olds notice when parents are in conflict.
Marriage as a secure emotional base for children.
Parenting together as stewardship and sacred responsibility
“In your relationship, you should glorify God better together than you would separately.”
“There's a very important connection between how it is that children see their parents and how it is they typically see God.”
Conditional love can produce an earning mindset in a child, not just with respect to the parent, but to God.
Don’t be a Karen-parent who thinks their child can do no wrong.
“That's the interesting thing about people, even when they're doing terrible things, they often are doing them for good reasons, right? In therapy you can hear couples say incredibly hurtful and awful things to each other.”
The relational image of God
Study of Infants in Orphanages during World War I and World War II: Infants with physical needs taken care of still wasted away and even died without human contact.
God as Trinity, Jesus as Incarnational
Relating rightly to our neighbors
Impact of spousal treatment on how children treat parents and others.
Wire Monkey vs Soft and Cuddly Monkey
A close emotional bond must take place early in life in order to provide the relational stability relational creatures need.
Definition of adulthood
Babies can do amazing things.
Still Face Experiment
Intellectual vs Relational definitions of the Imago Dei
Intellectual disability
Bringing psychology into the service of theology

Production Notes

This podcast featured Mari Clements
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge and Kaylen Yun
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
This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of Blueprint 1543. For more information, visit Blueprint1543.org.

Tapestry of Knowledge: Theology and Psychology as Truth-Seeking Partners / Oliver Crisp on Bringing Psychology to Theology May 23, 2023

"Theology is truth-apt and truth-aimed." Too often the faith-science debate ends up a zero-sum game where either science or theology overstep their bounds. But analytic theologian Oliver Crisp (University of St. Andrews, Scotland) describes a tapestry of knowledge that requires the best of both worlds. In this episode he discusses the purpose and future prospects of theology in light of empirical and experimental science. How might science, philosophy, and theology can work together to help us understand human uniqueness? Can science help us better understand the imago Dei?

About Oliver Crisp

Oliver D. Crisp (PhD, University of London; DLitt, University of Aberdeen) is the Principal of St. Mary's College, Head of the School of Divinity, Professor of Analytic Theology, and Director of the Logos Institute at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. He has written or edited numerous books, including The Word Enfleshed, Analyzing Doctrine, Deviant Calvinism, and Jonathan Edwards among the Theologians.

Production Notes

This podcast featured theologian Oliver Crisp
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge & Kaylen Yun
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
This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of Blueprint 1543. For more information, visit Blueprint1543.org.

Tolerating Doubt & Ambiguity: Psychological Tools to Deal with Uncertainty and Deconversion / Elizabeth Hall on Bringing Psychology to Theology May 15, 2023

Is your faith a house of cards? If you were wrong about one belief would the whole structure just collapse? If even one injury came to you, one instance of broken trust, would the whole castle fall? If one element was seemingly inconsistent or incompatible—would you burn down the house?

This depiction of the psychology of faith is quite fragile. It falls over to even the lightest breath. But what would a flexible faith be? Resilient to even the heaviest gusts of life’s hurricanes. It would adapt and grow as a living, responsive faith.

This metaphor isn’t too far off from the Enlightenment-founding vision of Rene Descartes—whose Meditations sought to build an edifice of Christian faith on a foundation free from doubt, ambiguity, uncertainty, or falsehoods. Even the slightest of doubts had to be categorically obliterated in order to prove the existence of God and the reality of the soul. He was clear about this in the preface. This was a work of apologetics. And he thought a good offense is your best defense. So he went on a whack-a-mole style doubt-killing spree that he hoped would secure a faith built on certainty.

Now, here’s a question for you: Does a quest for certainty strengthen and fortify the Christian faith? Or does it leave you stranded on the top floor of a house of cards?

Today, we’re continuing our series on Bringing Psychology to Theology, with a closer look at what to do about doubt, uncertainty, and ambiguity, in all sorts of stakes, but especially when it comes to faith.

In this series we’ve been exploring the tools of psychological science that might contribute to a deeper, greater, more nuanced theological understanding of the world.

We began the series by establishing certain normative questions about the integration of psychology and theology—experimental psychologist Justin Barrett offered to Miroslav Volf the suggestion that to build your cathedral of theology, you need the tools of psychological sciences.

Then, developmental psychologist Pamela King offered a vision of thriving that expresses the dynamic, human telos or purpose throughout our lifespan. Research psychologist Julie Exline followed with a psychological exploration of spiritual struggle and one of the most embattled and suppressed of human emotions: anger at God.

In this episode, I’m joined by Elizabeth Hall of Biola University’s Rosemead School of Psychology. She’s both a clinically trained therapist, helping people deal with life’s difficulties, as well as a psychological researcher exploring human spirituality, personality and character traits, women’s mental health, and human relationships. Most recently she co-authored Relational Spirituality: A Psychological-Theological Paradigm for Transformation, and I asked her to come on the show to talk about her recent work on tolerance for ambiguity in a life of faith.

Here we discuss the domains of psychology and theology and what it means for each to “stay in their lane”; she introduces a distinction between implicit and explicit knowledge, and identifies the social- and self-imposed pressure to know everything with certainty; we reflect on the recent trends toward deconversion from faith in light of these pressures; and she offers psychologically grounded guidance for approaching doubt and ambiguity in a secure relational context, seeking to make the unspoken or implicit doubts explicit. Rather than remaining perched upon our individualized, certainty-driven house-of-card faith; she lays out a way to inhabit a flexible, resilient, and relationally grounded faith, tolerant of ambiguity and adaptive and secure amidst all our winds of doubt.

About Elizabeth Hall

M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall (PhD, Rosemead School of Psychology) is professor of psychology at Rosemead School of Psychology at Biola University, where she teaches courses on the integration of psychology and theology. She has published over 100 articles and book chapters and serves as associate editor for Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. She lives in Whittier, California, with her husband, Todd, and her two sons.

Show Notes

Relational Spirituality: A Psychological-Theological Paradigm for Transformation
On the integration of psychology and Christianity in life
Vocationally; psychology is the “little area of God’s creation” where she gets to work, she attempts to bring it back to Jesus’s lordship
Jesus as owner of all
Intellectually; if all truth is God’s truth, she is trying to get the most complete sense of what humans are all about
God gave us the capacity to study using psychology
Faith, theology, and religion lend themselves into a psychological domain more than other fields, providing rich content that comes together easily with what the Bible says about humans.
What helps the intellectual puzzle pieces come together for you?
“I need to allow theology and psychology to stay in their lanes. I can’t expect more from each discipline than what it is constructed to offer.”
Ex: Psychology gets in trouble when making prescriptive statements (vs descriptive)
People are seeking clinical based advice for how to live better
“When someone sits down with a client to help them with whatever they're dealing with, they do have notions of human flourishing in the background that, whether they've thought through it or not, are going to come up in the course of how the therapy is steered.”
Defining flourishing is not easy, so choosing criteria becomes difficult for psychology
What does it mean when doubt enters the mind? When we act on doubts?
It is difficult to be a Christian with questions about your faith in this current moment.
Social Pressure:
We are continually being confronted with people who live and think differently than us, and who seem to be doing well in life, opposed to the homogenous communities we historically lived in.
Intellectual pressure:
We naturally want to seek truth that is certain.
There is a strand of Christianity where we’ve reduced what faith is to an intellectual ascent to the affirmations of our faith.
What is it to know something? What might psychologists be working with as definitions of knowledge that would offer alternatives to knowledge as certainty?
A useful distinction from cognitive scientists has been the definition between the explicit and implicit knowing
We know important things about the world at an implicit level:
Via nervous systems, without words
Emotions and relationships
What are the ways that gut knowledge comes to us, relationally or culturally?
Our initial reaction to something in our environment is immediately a “push or pull” towards or against that thing. Then it becomes refined by past experiences (culture, past relationships, etc.) This then shapes what happens on the conscious level.
Being aware of that psychological force between our unconscious and conscious thought becomes important when breaking down doubt in a religious context.
Hall grew up in the Evangelical church, feeling certain that faith was set of propositions about Jesus and God that was very certain.
Early church had more of an interpersonal dimension to faith, centering on trust and loyalty.
Relying on propositions/blanket statement of Christian faith creates a “house of cards” vision of faith: If you pull one card out, all come down.
This relates to an intellectual need for certainty, but there is also a social dimension to this stack
Guilt by association: disgust, remorse, shame, around the association of a particular belief with Christianity, which can feed all the way back to one’s experience of God
This becomes particularly heightened when the larger culture is confronting/criticizing these beliefs or institutions
Our experienced relationship of God also has implicit foundations
Studies on deconversion show that people who turn from Christianity find that the reason is usually a perceived injury (with God, another person, the church) that sets off the process
Many people say “science” is the reason, but it’s not actually until the betrayal of trust comes in that most people start cognitively deconverting
Most of our shaping and life happens outside of our conscious awareness
Psychology does not understand well how the explicit knowledge systems can influence our implicit beliefs
Two kinds of doubt:
Explicit: content, perceived competing claims with Christianity and (usually) science
Implicit: betrayal of trust. God has let a person down
Different people will encounter the same perceived discrepancy and will experience it in vastly different ways.
It is difficult to be a thoughtful creature and not wonder at how things fit together
Some people may meet a discrepancy and decide their whole life has been built on a lie
The factors that allow a person to entertain doubts with more confidence:
Solid relational attachments (such as parental) early in childhood
Helps a person to be overwhelmed by a question because they know they have faced and managed similar situations before
Being okay with doubt: some people can live with it, intellectual resilience
If it’s very threatening, you have to do something because you can’t live in a state of constant tension: deconverting is one possible solution
Tension: literal physiological arousal
How to help people find their way through the doubt:
Try to make what is implicit, explicit. Explore the process of the doubt.
Provide a window into a person’s capacity for uncertainty tolerance
Envisioning faith a different way: Rethinking our churches for relational spirituality
There are ways to be attuned to caring for peoples relational experiences of the love of God

Production Notes

This podcast featured Elizabeth Hall
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge & Kaylen Yun
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

Angry at God: The Psychology of Spiritual Struggle, Coping with Challenges to Faith, Handling Conflicts with God / Julie Exline May 08, 2023

Sometimes things go wrong. Your British premiere league football club loses a game; maybe your dog eats the birthday party cupcakes; maybe someone cuts you off in traffic. And you get angry—looking for someone to hold responsible.

Sometimes things go wrong in even more serious ways. Your kid’s getting bullied or mistreated; the justice system fails you or someone you love; you’re betrayed or deeply hurt by a friend. And you get angry—still looking to hold them responsible, take a form of vengeance, and even if you can muster the strength to forgive and absolve, the anger might persist.

But what about when things go so seriously wrong in life that questions of meaning, purpose, and sense of existence come under doubt? When there’s no human left to hold accountable, do you then turn your eyes to God—the creator of all of this, you know: “the whole world in his hands” kinda thing?

Have you ever been angry at God?

Today, we’re continuing our series all about “Bringing Psychology to Theology” with a look at the psychology of spiritual struggles and specifically, a scientific study of what happens when we get angry at God. In this series we’ve been exploring the tools of psychological science that might contribute to a deeper, greater, more nuanced theological understanding of the world.

We started with a conversation between Miroslav Volf and experimental psychologist Justin Barrett. Justin evokes the image of erecting a giant cathedral of theology—and how the task must be done with a variety of tools and subcontracted skills. Then we heard from Pamela Ebstyne King with a developmental approach to thinking about human spirituality, the dynamic nature of human purpose, and how relationships factor in moving from surviving to thriving.

The hope for this series is to highlight the prospects of a science-engaged theology and how it might contribute to the most pressing matters for how to live lives worthy of our humanity.

In this episode Ryan McAnnally-Linz is joined by research psychologist Julie Exline. She’s Professor of Psychology of Religion & Spirituality at Case Western Reserve University and author most recently of Working with Spiritual Struggles in Psychotherapy: From Research to Practice. Her research has examined forgiveness, humility, and human spirituality, and she’s widely recognized for her work on the psychology of anger at God and religious struggles.

In this episode, Julie reflects on the meaning of spiritual struggle, as well as the possible outcomes and factors that contribute to a personal sense of healing and growth. She speaks to the anxiety and fear that seem to hover around an expression of anger toward God, dealing with objections and concerns that it’s immoral or presumes God to be guilty of wrongdoing. And she offers practical considerations in light of the psychological research around what happens when people choose to express their anger at God or not—how different responses of disapproval or acceptance can lead to positive growth or a sense of successfully dealing with the anger.

About Julie Exline

Julie Exline is Professor of Psychology of Religion & Spirituality at Case Western Reserve University and author most recently of Working with Spiritual Struggles in Psychotherapy: From Research to Practice. Her research has examined forgiveness, humility, and human spirituality, and she’s widely recognized for her work on the psychology of anger at God and religious struggles.

Show Notes

Working with Spiritual Struggles in Psychotherapy: From Research to Practice
Spiritual struggles
The shadow side of religion
Researching the more challenging side of religion and spirituality.
Looking at the dark side of things: a defensive pessimist at heart
Big picture: coping with challenging events around faith
Conserving beliefs, fitting things in
Choosing to engage struggle: approach God, seek support, or decline and disengage
Prayer, talking to God or other trusted people
Struggling with God versus struggling with another human being
Growth often comes from staying engaged but addressing the problem
Being angry at God
Is it okay to be angry at God?
“Are you sure you should be studying this?”
People feel like it’s morally wrong to question God.
Beth Moore: Questioning God's Authority vs Asking God Questions
Questioning God's authority is sometimes thought to lead people on a path to spiritual decline.
Asking God questions can lead people toward growth.
Feeling angry at God doesn't imply a lack of respect for God.
Anger and Love are independent of one another.
"Difficulty Forgiving God"—implying that God did something wrong; now using language "resolving anger at God"
Anger as a response to injustice.
Finding a way to live with the problem of evil: Are people wrestling with anger toward God articulating it in a similar way as those worrying about the problem of evil?
Theodicy
“Why did God allow…”
The role of theological presuppositions in anger with God
Changing beliefs and theological tinkering
Responding to others who wrestle with anger with God: the gift of presence
A response of acceptance and affirmation gave people a higher likelihood of reporting they had grown from the experience of anger at God.
A response of disapproval or moral judgment is associated with attempts to suppress the anger, making it more likely to remain, and can even increase the likelihood of substance abuse.
Anger with God as part of a healthy, dynamic spiritual life
Anger as a signal for what matters
Thinking about anger as part of an ongoing conversation with God: Two-chair technique
Anger as an approach-oriented emotion—allows you to approach a problem or issue worthy of our attention.
Using anger as an opportunity to clarify and solve a problem
Japanese “kintsugi”—golden repairs in the deepest fissures and cracks of life.
Practical recommendations for resolving anger with God
Experiential avoidance
Clarify your feelings and give yourself space to talk about it
“Shouldn't God be able to handle your anger?”
You don't have to express your anger disrespectfully; you can show your care and value for the relationship.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Julie Exline
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Kaylen Yun & Macie Bridge
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

Acknowledgements

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of Blueprint 1543. For more information, visit Blueprint1543.org.

From Surviving to Thriving: Human Purpose, Relational Intimacy, and Spiritual Connection via Developmental Psychology / Pamela Ebstyne King Apr 30, 2023

"Usually people think of a telos as an endpoint, but what if we think of telos as a dynamic process that sustains a thriving trajectory for the individual and the world around them? The imago Dei, which is deeply and inherently relational and social—we image God by being our unique selves in unity. So there is the particularity of personhood and the relatedness with other persons, God, and all of creation. And so that was what the reciprocating self was. It's 'How do I grow as a fully differentiated person in relationship and increasing intimacy, increasing contribution with the world around me?'

To thrive then is to pursue that fullness of self in the context of intimacy and accountability and relationships—not just with those closest to me ... that's essential—but also in contribution to the world beyond the self.

How does our faith, how does our devotion, fuel us to want to continue to reciprocate when life is hard? When there's a pandemic? We need something beyond ourselves, a power beyond ourselves, an orientation beyond ourselves to fuel that interrelatedness between our particularity and the greater good." (Pamela Ebstyne King)

Introduction

At the bedrock of our being as persons is relationality: our ability to be known, to be loved, and to know and love in return. But whoa whoa whoa. Wait a minute. What kind of claim is that? Is that theology or psychology? We’re used to hearing that from the likes of the Jewish existential philosopher and theologian Martin Buber—he’s well known for his suggestion that an intimate I-Thou relationship is what makes for our conscious personhood. It’d be impossible to become an “I” without coming into direct contact with a “You” and seeing it as a “You.”

But how interesting that research studies in developmental psychology find just that. You can for instance turn to John Bowlby and the beginnings of attachment theory to find that this theological claim holds up once you start testing it with the tools psychological. But more than holds up, the claim that relationality is fundamental to personhood starts to expand and develop nuance by examining the most universal by application in the unique, particular circumstances. Famous psychological experiments like the “Still Face” show how central the reciprocal response of our earliest attachment figure is for our mental health, even as babies. (Check below for an excruciating video example of the Still Face Experiment.)

But this is just one way that developmental psychology might offer some interesting tools to theological reflection.

And today we’re continuing a new series of episodes on For the Life of the World all about “Bringing Psychology to Theology”—we’re exploring the tools of psychological sciences that might contribute to a deeper, greater, more nuanced theological understanding of the world. Last week we introduced the series with a conversation between Miroslav Volf and experimental psychologist Justin Barrett. Justin evokes the image of erecting a giant cathedral of theology—and how the task must be done with a variety of tools and subcontracted skills.

Well, whether theology is the grand architect of a cathedral of human knowledge or the benevolent and humble Queen of the Sciences—either way we hope this series highlights the prospects of a science-engaged theology and how it might contribute to the most pressing matters for how to live lives worthy of our humanity.

My guest in this episode is Pamela Ebstyne King. She’s the Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology and is Executive Director of the Thrive Center for Human Development. An ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church USA, her research has focused on the intersections of developmental and positive psychology, human thriving, and spirituality.

In this episode, we discuss developmental psych as the observational study of human change and plasticity in the midst of a whole complex life; relational attachment for the sake of intimacy and exploration and ultimate purpose or meaning; the proper place of self-love; God’s enabling and loving presence as the ultimate secure attachment figure; the importance of learning, gaining skills, and the pursuit of expertise; The prospects of regaining emotional regulation through relationships; the game changing impact of deliberate psychological and spiritual practices to move us well beyond surviving to a life of thriving.

About Pamela Ebstyne King

Pamela Ebstyne King, Ph.D. joined Fuller Theological Seminary as assistant professor of Marital and Family Studies in 2008, after serving in the School of Psychology for eight years as an adjunct and research professor. She was installed in 2014 with a professorship named for her mentor, Peter L. Benson. In 2021 she was promoted to the position of Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science. Dr. King is also executive director of the Thrive Center for Human Development.

Dr. King’s academic and applied efforts aim to promote a movement of human thriving that contributes to flourishing societies. Her primary academic interests lie at the intersection of thriving and spiritual development. She is passionate about understanding what individual strengths and environments enable humans to thrive and become all God created them to be. She holds particular interest in understanding the role of faith, spirituality, religion, and virtues in this process. To this end she has led in building an empirical field of study of religious and spiritual development within developmental psychology that provides a psychological scientific perspective of spiritual formation.

She has extensively studied and written on conceptualizations of thriving and positive youth development. Her work on telos is noted to provide an interdisciplinary framework for human thriving and flourishing from different philosophical, theological, and cultural perspectives and to provide a structure for understanding practical concepts like purpose, vocation, and joy. Her work combines theology, empirical research, and community engagement to further understand what contexts and settings enable people to thrive. She has conducted research funded by Biologos Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation, the Fetzer Institute, Compassion International, and Tyndale House, among others. In addition to her scholarship, she finds deep joy in teaching and mentoring students at Fuller.

Dr. King is coauthor of The Reciprocating Self: Human Development in Theological Perspective and Thriving with Stone Age Minds: Evolutionary Psychology, Christian Theology & Human Flourishing, coeditor of The Handbook of Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence, and coauthor of the inaugural chapter on research on religious and spiritual development in the seventh edition of the Handbook of Child Psychology and Developmental Science. She has served on the editorial boards of Developmental Psychology, Journal of Positive Psychology, Applied Developmental Science, the Encyclopedia of Applied Developmental Science, and the Encyclopedia of Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence. She has also published articles in the Journal on Adolescent Research, Journal of Early Adolescence, New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, and Journal of Psychology and Christianity. King is a member of the Society for Research on Adolescents, Society for Research on Child Development, and Division 36 of the American Psychological Association.

In addition to her studies at Fuller, Dr. King completed her undergraduate studies at Stanford University and a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford’s Center on Adolescence; she was a visiting scholar under the divinity faculty at Cambridge University. Ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA), she has led high school and college ministries, and regularly speaks, preaches, and consults for various community organizations and churches. She lives in Pasadena with her husband and three children.

Show Notes

Martin Buber’s I and Thou
John Bowlby and Attachment Theory
Trolick’s Still Face Experiment (Video)
Justin Barrett & Pamela Ebstyne King, Thriving with Stone Age Minds: Evolutionary Psychology, Christian Faith, and the Quest for Human Flourishing
Developmental psych as the observational study of human change in the midst of a whole life of complexity
Plasticity of the human species
Relational attachment for the sake of intimacy and exploration
The Impact of environment on genetic expression
Law if reciprocity
Fullness of creation, redemption and consummation
Theology as establishing ends, and psychology as developing towards gods purposes
How psychology aids in the process of becoming our full selves as selfhood
The proper place of self-love
God’s enabling and loving presence
Thriving as psychological, vs Flourishing as philosophical
Meaningful life in eudaimonic and hedonistic terms
Imago dei
“Back to the future”—understanding the end toward the beginning
Reading psychology through a teleological lens
Linear stage theories of development
Life as a series of cycles
We can have a telos as a dynamic process
Thriving as pursuing the fullness of self
Reciprocity beyond ourselves when life is hard
Colossians and Jesus as the perfect image of God
Conformity is not uniformity
Parenting as helping children to become their unique selves
Telos as inhabiting the self, the relational, and the aspirational—purpose is found at the intersection of all three
William Damon on purpose
Purpose as enduring actionable goal, meaningful to the self and contributing beyond the self
Learning, gaining skills, and pursuit of expertise
Meaning making as a dynamic life-long project
Orienting life in the present moment by tethering to a consummate vision of the future
Sociality as inherent to human nature
Goals: self, expertise acquisition, and what we aspire to
Roles: who we are in our social networks
Souls: what ideals are most dearly held and most meaningful
The fundamental rejection of pre autonomy and independence; embrace of our relational selves
How malleable our brains are through intentional practices
Making meaning can change your brains
Surviving vs thriving
Attachment and regulation
Regaining emotional regulation through relationships
The game changing impact of deliberate psychological and spiritual practices—intention, motivation, and goals
Possible cutoff point — The relation of psychological science and theology
Psychology as a God-given tool to enable thriving and flourishing
Known, loved, and loving others
The role of suffering and loss as part of the thriving process
For the cynical and jaded: thriving that is real to loss, grief, vulnerability, and daring to thrive

Production Notes

This podcast featured Pamela Ebstyne King
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge and Kaylen Yun
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

Acknowledgements

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of Blueprint 1543. For more information, visit Blueprint1543.org.

Bringing Psychology to Theology / Justin Barrett & Miroslav Volf Apr 22, 2023

Imagine building a cathedral with just a hammer and nails. How might theologians today continue to build the grand cathedral where human knowledge meets divine revelation by implementing the tools of psychological science? Experimental psychologist Justin Barrett joins theologian Miroslav Volf for a conversation on how psychology can contribute to theology. This episode is made possible by Blueprint1543.

Introduction

To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Yep, we’ve heard that before. But imagine trying to make that work. Imagine, for instance, the visionary builder of a medieval cathedral… building it only with a hammer and nails.

And you know there’s an analogy coming here. Suppose the cathedral you’re trying to build is nothing less than the human inquiry into the nature of the cosmos and the nature of the God who created them—from the dark matter at the edges of the expanding universe, to the recycled space dust that’s found its way into the pristine fingernails of a newborn baby.

Artfully articulating the nature of reality with nuance and care—saying something true and meaningful about God, people, and thriving in the world we share—the task of theology could be just like that extravagant building project.

But imagine if the theologian only had one tool.

Experimental psychologist Justin Barrett tells a story like this to make a suggestion to theologians to consider how they might incorporate the tools of science—and psychological science in particular—into the building of their theological cathedral.

Justin is long-time researcher in cognitive science of religion. He’s author of a number of books, including Why Would Anyone Believe in God? and Born Believers: The Science of Childhood Religion. He just edited the Oxford Handbook of the Cognitive Science of Religion.

And in 2019 he co-founded Blueprint1543, an organization that’s bringing theologians and scientists together to accelerate better contributions to life’s biggest questions.

And today we’re launching a series of episodes on For the Life of the World that will explore the tools of psychological sciences that might contribute to a deeper and greater theological understanding of the world. By bringing a science-engaged theology to bear on the most pressing matters for how to live lives worthy of our humanity.

Throughout the series, we’re featuring conversations with psychologists who can offer insightful tools for crafting the cathedral where human knowledge meets divine revelation.

About Justin Barrett

Show Notes

Blueprint1543.org
Download your copy of Justin Barrett’s A Psychological Science Primer for Theologians (2022)
TheoPsych Academy
Normative vision the good life
Psychology as among the most secular of academic disciplines
Psychology’s historical (but non-necessary) anti-religious tendencies
There are plenty of Christian psychologists who are deliberate in thinking about the integration of Christianity and psychology
Comparing instrumental, explanatory psychology and purposes, meaning, and teleology in theology
How the purposes of our lives—normative visions—how do they then shape psychological inquiry
Are questions of the good life matters for science to determine, or are religious and theological perspectives essential to thinking about the purpose and meaning of human life?
When can theologians and philosophers be helped by psychological science?
Theologians often make use of psychological claims fairly uncritically—how human minds work, how emotions work, how social relationships work
Miroslav’s book The End of Memory
Is the theologian making descriptive psychological claims?
Are you the theologian making normative claims supported by descriptive psychological claims?
Are you making claims about what affects texts and rituals and practices have on people?
Are you constructing an argument that uses intuition as premises?
Experimental philosophy: Are philosophers’ intuitions universal?
Can there be an “experimental theology”?
Being careful about descriptive psychological claims—especially for practical theological questions or lived theology
Psychology needs to do its own inspecting
“The science of psychology has a great self-awareness of how we can't trust ourselves. … The entire method is built around, to put it in theological terms, a conviction about total depravity.”
Methodological rigor in sciences—checking findings with the community
Cultural situatedness
E.g., “How well do we know ourselves?”
Ludwig Wittgenstein: “The world of a happy man is not the same as the world of a sad man.”
“Affective states shape how we perceive the world.”
Mary Magdalene’s breaking a precious jar or oil on Jesus’s feet—the smell is refracted through how Judas and Jesus see the world. Judas finds the smell a terrible waste, and Jesus finds the smell beautiful.
“What we perceive in the world around us is set by our expectations.”
“Every Christian is a theologian because theology accompanies the life and situatedness of each individual in the world.”

Production Notes

This podcast featured cognitive scientist Justin Barrett and theologian Miroslav Volf
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

Acknowledgements

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of Blueprint 1543. For more information, visit Blueprint1543.org.

Micheal O'Siadhail / Testament: Through You I Gaze at All I Love Apr 07, 2023

Micheal O'Siadhail reflects on his latest collection of poetry, Testament. A confession of faith through Psalms refracted through his experience, and the Gospel story retold through rhyme, O'Siadhail's vibrant faith manifests as complaint, longing, grief, mourning, and doubt. With mountains and oceans of poetry written over the past 45 years, he writes on love, loss, modernity, music—all an experiment of drawing the universal down into the particular and right back up again. From Psalm 1, his opening verses, he writes, "Uncloseted, / Things once unsaid my life declares: / My words are prayers my being plays; / Through you I gaze at all I love."

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

Show Notes

Click here to get your copy of Micheal O'Siadhail's Testament (link)
Listen to Micheal O'Siadhail and David Ford in Episode 75: "Life Riffs: Improvisation in Poetry, Theology, and Flourishing" (link)
Religion versus spirituality
Micheal’s spiritual background
Psalm 1—”through you I gaze at all I love”
Time and temporality, finitude and mortality
John Donne—from sensual love poetry to devotional poetry
“This God remains on scene.”
Psalm 46—”all my life depends on friends … You are coring me, hollowing me out to love you more.”
Dependency in social and spiritual dimensions
Carapace = a shell, something to hide in
Individualism and independence: “We are ourselves only in relation to others.”
The “black hole of the self”
Hollowing out - “cored out by suffering”
Psalm 80: “You, not I, stretched out the sky”
Mourning and grieving loved-ones lost
Complaining, groaning, doubting—but alongside belief that God is there.
“Most only groan to those they love.”
Psalm 80: “Why does your night thief keep ambushing me?
The tandem psychology of compliant and dependence—and the acceptance of both.
“Madam Jazz” in Micheal O’Siadhail’s poetry—wild, unpredictable, improvisational nature of God
The history of jazz and the God of surprises, riffing on creation.
David Ford and The Gospel of John
The environmental message of Testament
Psalm 124: “I cry for us in my intensity.”
T.S. Eliot: “Old men ought to be explorers”
“Distracted by distraction from distraction” (T.S. Eliot, from “Burnt Norton”)
Poetry and universal down to particular
Hebrew morning prayer
The connection between Psalter and Gospel in Testament
Going from mystical poetry to particular incarnation
“Letting the story tell itself.”
“I” disappears in Gospel.
Two thieves
Legacy
“Years to leave love’s legacy behind”
Tetelestai—finishing one’s calling

About Micheal O'Siadhail

Micheal O'Siadhail is a poet. His Collected Poems was published in 2013, One Crimson Thread in 2015 and The Five Quintets in 2018, which received Conference on Christianity and Literature Book of the Year 2018 and an Eric Hoffer Award in 2020. He holds honorary doctorates from the universities of Manitoba and Aberdeen. He lives in New York.

Production Notes

This podcast featured poet Micheal O’Siadhail
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Logan Ledman, and Kaylen Yun
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
This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

Ukrainian Pastor Speaks Out: Resist Evil, Be Present, and Remember How Little You Control / Fyodor Raychynets & Miroslav Volf Mar 17, 2023

Imagine war becoming your new normal. Imagine getting used to things like airstrike sirens. Imagine sleeping through the distant bombs. Imagine passing through the rubble on your way to work, or school, or church.

Over the past year, war has become the new normal for Ukrainian pastor and theologian Fyodor Raychynets. Most of the expectations for how tthis war might go have fallen through. Worst case scenarios have come to pass. And the precarity and fragility of life outside of wartime—well, that continues too.

A year ago, 20 days into the war, Fyodor joined Miroslav Volf to catch up with his former professor for a conversation on the immediate impact of Russia’s invasion on Ukrainian life and culture. At the time, uncertainty filled the globe. Now, after 387 days of war, the shock has numbed into weariness. But a consistent message of presence pervades Fyodor’s mindset. Providing humanitarian aide, friendship, and surrogate family in the wake of so much destruction and loss, his church in the outskirts of Kiev has grown.

In this episode, Ukrainian pastor and theologian Fyodor Raychynets provides an update on life during wartime, in a war zone—which includes not only the pain of war, but the grief of losing his wife prior to the war, and his adult son just months ago. His faith persists in the face of all the cold reminders of how little control any of us exert on world events such as this. He now turns to the minor prophets—Nahum and Habakkuk in particular—to hope for justice, to complain and express his anger toward God, even with God. And he continues to minister to soldiers and civilians, holding their questions with presence and patience, while preaching a message of hope in the good and resistance to evil.

Thanks for listening friends, even on this 387th day of war in Ukraine.

About Fyodor Raychynets

Fyodor Raychynets is a theologian and pastor in Kyiv, Ukraine. He is Head of the Department of Theology at Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary, where he teaches courses in Leadership and Biblical Studies, particularly the Gospel of Matthew. He studied with Miroslav Volf at Evangelical Theological Seminary in Osijek, Croatia.

Follow him on Facebook here.

Production Notes

This podcast featured theologians Fyodor Raychynets and Miroslav Volf
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge & Kaylen Yun
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

Esau McCaulley / Lent: Season of Repentance, Renewal... and Rebellion Feb 22, 2023

It’s not a popular idea, but secular America is pretty damn religious. Pretty damn liturgical. Pumpkin spice lattes and apple cider donuts are the eucharistic elements of autumn. The militaristic pageantry of the 4th of July. Our children love asking about the next big event. Color coordinated myths drive the year along, shaping us into …. well, I’m not quite sure what this secular American liturgy is shaping us into. But I bet you and I could have had a great conversation about during a Super Bowl party earlier this month—where the eucharistic elements have changed—it’s Buffalo wings and light beer—but it even comes with a sacred gathering of fanatical religious nuts, worshipping the high priest as he barks his coded sermon, and singing along with the high priestesses at halftime, praying all along to the gods of the gridiron to grant victory. When you put it that way, observing Lent—which starts today, Ash Wednesday—seems pretty tame and sensible.

Joining me today on the show is Esau McCaulley—for a discussion of Lent. Esau is associate professor of New Testament at Wheaton college and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times.

He’s author of Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope, which won Christianity Today’s book of the year award in 2020, as well as a new book, Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal, which is part of a series entitled “The Fullness of Time”—which features other authors discussing different seasons of the Christian liturgical year and how it contributes to a Christian understanding of flourishing.

During our conversation, Esau McCaulley and I discuss the Christian practice of Lent—he speaks about it as both a collective wisdom, passed down through generations of Jesus followers, as well as a spiritual rebellion against mainstream American culture. He construes Lent as a season of repentance and grace; he points out the justice practices of Lent; he walks through a Christian understanding of death, and the beautiful practice of stripping the altars on Maundy Thursday; and he’s emphatic about how it’s a guided season of finding the grace to find (or perhaps return) to yourself as God has called you to be.

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

Show Notes

Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal
Commodifying our rebellion—the agency on offer is a thin, weakened agency.
Repentance, grace, and finding (or returning to) yourself
Examination of conscience
The Great Litany: “For our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty. Except our repentance, Lord.”
The beauty of Christianity
“Liturgical spirituality is not safe. God can jump out and get you at any moment in the service.”
“The great thing about the, the, the season of Blend in the liturgical calendar more broadly is it gives you a thousand different entry points into transformation.”
Lent is bookended by death. Black death, Coronavirus death, War death.
Jesus defeated death as our great enemy.
“Everybody that I know and I care about are gonna die. Everybody.”
“I, as a Christian, believe that because we're going to die. our lives are of infinite value and the decisions that we make and the kinds of people we become are the only testimony that we have and that I have chosen to, to, in light of my impending death, put my faith in the one who overcame death.”
Two realities: We’re going to die and Jesus defeated death.
Stripping of the Altars on Maundy Thursday.
Silent processional in black; Good Friday celebrates no eucharist.
“I'm, like, the one Pauline scholar who doesn't like to argue about justification all of the time.”
Good Friday’s closing prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, we pray you to set your passion cross and death between your judgment and our souls.”
“You end Lent with: Something has to come between God’s judgement and our souls. And that thing is Jesus.”
“Lent is God loving you enough to tell you the truth about yourself, but not condemning you for it, but actually saying that you can be better than that.”

About Esau McCaulley

Esau McCaulley, PhD is an associate professor of New Testament at Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL and theologian in residence at Progressive Baptist Church, a historically black congregation in Chicago. His first book entitled Sharing in the Son’s Inheritance was published by T & T Clark in 2019. His second book Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope was published by IVP academic in 2020. It won numerous awards including Christianity Today’s book of the year. His most recent work was a children’s book entitled Josey Johnson’s Hair and the Holy Spirit for IVP kids. His latest book is *Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal.* He is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. His writings have also appeared in places such as The Atlantic, Washington Post, and Christianity Today. He is married to Mandy, a pediatrician and navy reservist. Together, they have four wonderful children. Check out his website at https://esaumccaulley.com/.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Esau McCaulley
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Luke Stringer, and Kaylen Yun.
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 Dignity: The Struggle Against Domination and the Expression of True Freedom / Vincent Lloyd Feb 03, 2023

The primal scene of domination and slavery inevitably produces struggle. It must. Because domination is the idolatrous effort of one to exert control over the will of the other, and we are compelled as free beings to realize and always live that freedom. So the struggle produces dignity, and that dignity, declared and acted and performed and practiced and sung and chanted and screamed and whispered—when enacted by all human beings against various and sundry forms of domination, it leads to joy and love.

Vincent Lloyd (Villanova University) joins Evan Rosa to discuss his book Black Dignity: The Struggle Against Domination. We start with what struggle against domination is, especially how it’s expressed in Black life. We entertain the feeling of struggle psychologically and culturally; the ugly and vicious temptation to idolatry that seeking domination and mastery over others entails; how the humanity of both the master and the slave are lost or found; how struggle produces dignity; and an understanding of the debate between seeing dignity as purely intrinsic as opposed to performative. We close by thinking about how the Black struggle for dignity can inform all of us about what it means to actualize our humanity, embrace the power our freedom entails, culminating in joy and love.

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

About Vincent Lloyd

Vincent Lloyd is Associate Professor of Theology and Religious Studies and Director of the Center for Political Theology at Villanova University. He is the author of Black Dignity: The Struggle Against Domination (Yale University Press, 2022), Break Every Yoke: Religion, Justice, and the Abolition of Prisons, with Joshua Dubler (Oxford University Press, 2019), In Defense of Charisma (Columbia University Press, 2018), Religion of the Field Negro: On Black Secularism and Black Theology (Fordham University Press, 2017), Black Natural Law (Oxford University Press, 2016), The Problem with Grace: Reconfiguring Political Theology (Stanford University Press, 2011), and Law and Transcendence: On the Unfinished Project of Gillian Rose (Palgrave, 2009). Visit his personal website here.

Show Notes

What is struggle?
Augustine’s approach to struggle in Confessions: with oneself, with others, with the world, with the powers that be
Phenomenology of human struggle: What are the features of struggle that land on the human consciousness?
Struggling against not flesh and blood but powers and principalities.
Righteous indignation against idolatry
Rejecting humanity by presenting oneself in a position of mastery
Making distinctions between individual persons, the vice of the will to dominate, and the system those vices create
The struggle of a community
Ontological struggle: Aimed at defeating domination
“Is struggle dependent on the existence of some prior will to dominate?”
Understanding oneself as “master” and setting oneself up as a god.
Mastery is a particularly vicious form of idolatry.
The primal scene of master and slave is always behind the amorphous systems we struggle against.
What is the psychology of the will to dominate?
Is domination a special vice? Or is it a more ubiquitous vice?
Black theology, Black philosophy, and the experience of the Middle Passage
Enslavement continues to fuel anti-Blackness
The humanity of master and slave are both lost
Black rage and Audrey Lorde’s 1981 “The Uses of Anger”
Emotion as a symphony, not a cacophony
Airing rage next to each other and clarifying our vision of the world
Rethinking Human Dignity
Retelling the story of democratizing and Christianizing the aristocratic beginnings of “dignity”
“When we perform dignity, we’re struggling.”
Distinguishing dignity from respectability (and turning away from respectability)
“That's where dignity is truly democratized, right? What we all have in common as human is our capacity to turn away from domination, and turn toward the divine. That's where dignity has a universal quality.”
Understanding the debate between seeing dignity as intrinsic vs dignity as performative or extrinsic.
“We’re all dominated.”
How exactly does struggle produce dignity?
Emmanuel Levinas and responding to the Jewish Holocaust, giving morality new content by tethering it to encounter—seeing the infinite shine through in the face of the other, allowing new concepts to flow through like love and justice.
How do we finally move from domination, to struggle, to dignity, to joy and love?

Production Notes

This podcast featured Vincent Lloyd
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

The Complicated World of Christmas / Drew Collins, Frederica Mathewes-Green, Jeff Reimer, & Matt Croasmun Dec 24, 2022

A conglomeration of Advent people: Drew Collins on how the Magi were pushed willingly to the edge of their knowledge, open to the giving spirit of God. Frederica Mathewes-Green with an illustration of Mary, living in prayer, which proves just enough to know to say "yes" when met with her call. Jeff Reimer on W.H. Auden's common Joseph, asked only and profoundly to believe. And Matt Croasmun on St. Paul, offering an invitation to Christian joy that, well, differs from Santa's offer just a little.

Show Notes

EPISODE 44: The Reason We Follow the Star: Learning from the Magi How to Give, How to Receive, and How to Be Human / Drew Collins
EPISODE 98: Frederica Mathewes-Green / Mary Theotokos: Her Bright Sorrow, Her Suffering Faith, and Her Compassion
EPISODE 97: Jeff Reimer / W.H. Auden's For the Time Being: Post-Christmas Blues, the Darkness of Modernity, and the Human Response to Incarnation
EPISODE 43: Matt Croasmun / Santa, God, and the Obligation to Rejoice

Production Notes

This podcast featured art historian Matthew Milliner
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

The Story of a Global Icon: The Virgin of the Passion / Matthew Milliner on the Theological Aesthetics of Suffering Love, Powerless Compassion, and Mournful Silence Dec 17, 2022

Art historian Matthew Milliner (Wheaton College) reflects on one of the most powerful and moving Christian icons: “The Virgin of the Passion,” AKA, “Our Lady of Perpetual Help,” which he develops in his book, Mother of the Lamb: The Story of a Global Icon. First painted as a response to failed Christian Empire and the violence of the Crusades, then mass produced and proliferated as a norm of Christian aesthetic worship, the icon offers a unique filter for contemporary understanding of faith and power; the Christian temptation to nationalism, empire, and violence; the meaning and visual expression of suffering love; and the beauty of engaged, solidarity and prophetic witness.

This episode was made possible by a grant from the Tyndale House Foundation.

Support the Yale Center for Faith & Culture's $25,000 End of Year Matching Campaign by giving online today: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Show Notes

Click to view: “Virgin of the Passion, late 15th century” Andrea Rico di Candia, Cretan, active 1451–1492, tempera on wood panel (Princeton University Art Museum)
Click to get a copy of Matthew Milliner’s Mother of the Lamb: The Story of a Global Icon

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. He is author is author most recently of The Everlasting People: G.K. Chesterton and the First Nations and Mother of the Lamb: The Story of a Global Icon. 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 Thing_s. 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 Macie Bridge
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

William Cross on Winslow Homer / Looking Long, Finding Grace in Crisis, and Painting Truth to Power Dec 03, 2022

[Help us reach our $25,000 end of year goal! Give online to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture today.]

We often think that telling the truth only applies to words. But American painter Winslow Homer (February 24, 1836 – September 29, 1910) told the truth in pencil, water color, and famously, oil paintings. Coming of age in antebellum America, starting his artistic career as the Civil War began, and dramatically painting truth to power during the complicated and failed Reconstruction era—Winslow Homer looked long and hard at America in its moral complications and struggle toward justice. But he also looked long and hard at the natural world—a harsh, sometimes brutal, but nonetheless ordered world. Sometimes red in tooth and claw, sometimes shining rays of grace and glory upon human bodies, Homer's depiction of the human encounter with the world as full of energy and full of spirited struggle, and therefore dignity.

William Cross is author and biographer of Winslow Homer: American Passage—a biography of an artist who painted America in conflict and crisis, with a moral urgency and an unflinching depiction of the human spirit's struggle for survival and search for grace. As a consultant to art and history museums, a curator, and an art critic and scholar, when Bill sees the world, he's looking long for beauty and grace, and often finding it in art.

In this conversation, Bill Cross and I discuss the morally urgent art and perspective of Winslow Homer. We talk about the historical context of American life before, during, and after the Civil War. Including the role of Christianity and religious justification of the Confederacy and the institution of slavery. Bill comments on the beautiful and bracing expression of Black life in Winslow Homer's work—truly radical for the time. But Homer's work goes beyond human social and political struggles. We also discuss the role of nature in his work—particularly the human struggle against the power and indifference of the ocean and the wild, untamed animal kingdom.

Throughout, you might consider referencing each of the paintings we discuss, all of which are available in the show notes and can be found online for further viewing and reflection.

Show Notes

Give toward the Yale Center for Faith & Culture $25,000 matching campaign. Donate online here, or send a
William R. Cross, Winslow Homer: American Passage (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022)
Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents

Paintings

Click below for painting references

About William Cross

William R. Cross is an independent scholar and a consultant to art and history museums. He served as the curator of Homer at the Beach: A Marine Painter’s Journey, 1869–1880, a nationally renowned 2019 exhibition at the Cape Ann Museum on the formation of Winslow Homer as a marine painter. He is the chairman of the advisory board of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. Cross and his wife, Ellen, the parents of two grown sons, live on Cape Ann, north of Boston, Massachusetts.

About Winslow Homer: American Passage

The definitive life of the painter who forged American identity visually, in art and illustration, with an impact comparable to that of Walt Whitman and Mark Twain in poetry and prose—yet whose own story has remained largely untold.

In 1860, at the age of twenty-four, Winslow Homer (1836–1910) sold Harper’s Weekly two dozen wood engravings, carved into boxwood blocks and transferred to metal plates to stamp on paper. One was a scene that Homer saw on a visit to Boston, his hometown. His illustration shows a crowd of abolitionists on the brink of eviction from a church; at their front is Frederick Douglass, declaring “the freedom of all mankind.”

Homer, born into the Panic of 1837 and raised in the years before the Civil War, came of age in a nation in crisis. He created multivalent visual tales, both quintessentially American and quietly replete with narrative for and about people of all races and ages. Whether using pencil, watercolor, or, most famously, oil, Homer addressed the hopes and fears of his fellow Americans and invited his viewers into stories embedded with universal, timeless questions of purpose and meaning.

Like his contemporaries Twain and Whitman, Homer captured the landscape of a rapidly changing country with an artist’s probing insight. His tale is one of America in all its complexity and contradiction, as he evolved and adapted to the restless spirit of invention transforming his world. In Winslow Homer: American Passage, William R. Cross reveals the man behind the art. It is the surprising story of a life led on the front lines of history. In that life, this Everyman made archetypal images of American culture, endowed with a force of moral urgency through which they speak to all people today.

Production Notes

This podcast featured William R. Cross
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

**A Message from Miroslav: Help Us Reach Our 2022 Goal** Nov 26, 2022
**Help Miroslav Volf and the Yale Center for Faith & Culture reach our end-of-year goal $25,000 Matching Challenge for 2022!**
How to donate to YCFC and support the For the Life of the World podcast:
**Click here to give online**
Mail a check made out to "Yale Center for Faith and Culture" (409 Prospect St., New Haven, CT 06511).
Dear Friend,
Inspired by faith in Christ in whom God became one of us, at the Yale Center for Faith & Culture we help people discern and pursue lives worthy of our shared humanity. Our fragile, finite, fallible—but nevertheless beautiful and immeasurably precious—humanity.
This work matters so much to me personally because I believe it matters to God and it matters for the world.
And today, I am excited to tell you about a tremendous new opportunity for us to fund this important work.
Members of our Advisory Board have established a $25,000 challenge gift. If we raise $25,000 by December 31st we will unlock an additional $25,000, doubling the impact of your gift.
To put that in perspective: Meeting our goal would be enough to fund our For the Life of the World podcast and support two student fellows for all of 2023.
Would you consider a donation to our work today? Simply **click here to give online**, or mail a check made out to "Yale Center for Faith and Culture" (409 Prospect St., New Haven, CT 06511).
Lifting up my heart with gratitude,
Miroslav Volf
Director, Yale Center for Faith & Culture
Henry B. Wright Professor of Systematic Theology, Yale Divinity School

Miroslav Volf / Beautiful, Humane, & Hospitable: Dwelling in the Home of God (In Memoriam, Phil Love) Oct 22, 2022

"If the goal of God in creating the world is to make it the home of God and humans together, then it is the intention of God to make this place as beautiful and as humane—as hospitable—to human life as it can possibly be." Miroslav Volf reflects on why he wrote his latest book, The Home of God: A Brief Story of Everything. He also celebrates and eulogizes his friend Phil Love, to whom the book is dedicated.

Click here to buy The Home of God for 30% off!

Production Notes

This podcast featured Miroslav Volf
Special thanks to Patty & Phil Love
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

Fostering the Knowledge and Love of God / Yale Divinity School Bicentennial Oct 15, 2022

The mission of Yale Divinity School is "to foster the knowledge and love of God through scholarly engagement with Christian traditions in a global, multifaith context." A variety of Yale Divinity School faculty and alumni have been featured as guests on For the Life of the World, and this episode highlights some of those contributions, including Krista Tippett, Willie Jennings, Keri Day, Kathryn Tanner, and David Kelsey (not to mention Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz). Current Yale Divinity Student Luke Stringer introduces each highlight segment. Special thanks to Harry Attridge and Tom Krattenmaker.

Show Notes

Our first segment features Yale Divinity School alum Krista Tippett, the founder and CEO of the On Being Project. She's a nationally syndicated journalist who has become known for curating conversations on the art of being human, civil conversations, and social healing. Miroslav Volf invited Krista onto the show to talk about the importance of engaging otherness on the grounds of our common humanity, her personal faith journey from small town Baptists in Oklahoma, to a secular humanism in a divided Cold-War Berlin, and then back to her spiritual homeland and mother tongue of Christianity.
For the Life of the World launched in 2020 during an immensely chaotic and troubling year. The painful and confusing early days of the pandemic gave way to the horrifying footage of George Floyd's murder. In the days following this event, we aired a reflection by Yale Divinity School professor Willie Jennings and a conversation with Princeton Theological Seminary theologian and Yale Div school alum Keri Day. First, an excerpt from Willie Jennings' reflection on the murder of George Floyd. And then, theologian Keri Day shares the core motivations of Christians to embrace the other across lines of difference.
This next segment features theologian, Kathryn Tanner, who spoke to Ryan McAnnally-Linz about the virtue of patience through the lens of economy and capitalism. She's the Frederick Marquand Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School and her latest book is Christianity in the New Spirit of Capitalism.
This final highlight segment features theologian David Kelsey, who is the Luther A. Weigel Professor Emeritus of Theology at Yale Divinity School, where he taught for 40 years. Ryan McAnnally-Linz, himself an alum of Yale Divinity School, brings Kelsey onto the show to talk about the wild and inexplicable grip of evil on earthly creatures, and the analogously wild and inexplicable nature of God's grace—and God's immediate, if silent, witness and presence to human anguish.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Krista Tippett, Willie Jennings, Keri Day, Kathryn Tanner, and David Kelsey (not to mention Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz)
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa and Luke Stringer
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

Kelly Corrigan & Miroslav Volf / Experts at Means, Amateurs at Ends: Talking About Success & Flourishing at College Oct 03, 2022

“We’ve become experts at means but amateurs at ends.” Miroslav Volf and Kelly Corrigan discuss the role of education in seeking a flourishing life; the risks and rewards endemic to asking questions of meaning and existential import in the higher educational context; the meaning of success to college students, and how the specter of success drives our cultural narrative; what it takes to live a life based on one's deepest -held values; Miroslav shares his own personal experience of approaching what makes life worth living within a particular Christian vision; what made him decide to be the only openly Christian kid in his high school; and how suffering grief, forgiveness, and living faith informed his early childhood and shaped his family's life.

Show Notes

Listen to Kelly Corrigan Wonders on Apple Podcasts

About Kelly Corrigan

Production Notes

This podcast featured Kelly Corrigan and Miroslav Volf
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Special thanks to Kelly Corrigan and Tammy Stedman
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

Adam Eitel / Character As Authority: Theology as a Lived, Embodied Experience Sep 19, 2022

"Somewhere is better than anywhere." (Flannery O'Connor, as quoted by Wendell Berry in Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community) Today, Christian ethicist Adam Eitel (Yale Divinity School) sits with Matt Croasmun for a conversation on ethics and theology. Eitel is Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics at Yale Divinity School. Together, he and Matt discuss the demands of teaching and learning theology on personal character—holiness even; the relationship between ethics and theology; the locatedness and situatedness and particularity of Christian ethics; and the rooted, framing question, that animates Adam Eitel's writing and teaching: "What sort of life does the Gospel enjoin?"

About Adam Eitel

Adam Eitel is Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics at Yale Divinity School.

Show Notes

Teaching theology as a vocation
"Authority is linked to character"
Instruction in holiness
The millennial demand for personal character to matter in academic authority
Formation
"I see my work as a professor of Christian ethics as a theological vocation."
Millennial entitlement, juxtaposed with vulnerability
Theology as a lived, embodied enterprise
The lines between the personal and the pedagogical
Problems for Christian ethics
It's hard for Christian ethics to stay theological
Can Christian ethics appropriately express social criticism?
"The temptation for Christian ethics to bracket the theological commitments, that fund a specifically Christian moral imaginary."
Dichotomy between tradition and critique
"So we end up sawing off the branch that we're sitting on..."
Declaration of Independence's "All men are created equal." as both the impetus for reform and the object of reform.
"When we're doing theology, when we're doing ethics, we are always looking backwards in some respect, concatenating texts, bringing their different manners of speaking together and to, in order to see what can now be said on the basis of what's been said, that doesn't require an uncritical attitude toward the text or the social arrangements they endorse."
Locatedness and situatedness and particularity of Christian ethics
"What sort of life does the Gospel enjoin?"

Production Notes

This podcast featured Adam Eitel and Matt Croasmun
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

Graham Tomlin / Words About God: Theology as Worship, Reform, and Witness Sep 10, 2022

"If you don't really understand religion, if you don't understand faith, if you don't understand theology, you can't really understand the modern world."

"Words make worlds," says one of my podcasting heroes, Krista Tippett. Ask any poet, priest, or politician, and they'll agree. Language does have that power, for better or for worse.

But whatever power our words have to make a world that we can then ourselves inhabit—that power is drawn from the archetypal Word—the Word made flesh, by whom all things are made and in whom all things are held together, and for whom all tongues confess.

So this simple definition offered by Bishop Graham Tomlin, that theology is just "words about God" is actually quite expansive. When our words about God are directed first toward God, but then toward the church and the world, theology lives up to its purpose of worship, reform, and witness. Graham Tomlin is President of St. Mellitus College and author of many books of theology and Christian spirituality. He recently completed his tenure as Bishop of Kensington and now leads the Church of England's Center for Cultural Witness. He joins Matt Croasmun today for a conversation about the meaning and potential of theology. Thanks for listening.

About Graham Tomlin

The Rt Revd Dr Graham Tomlin is President of St Mellitus College and Bishop of Kensington. He served a curacy in the diocese of Exeter, and among past roles he has served as Chaplain of Jesus College, Oxford and Vice Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, where he taught within the Theology Faculty of Oxford University on Historical Theology, specializing in the Reformation period. He was closely involved in the foundation, and was appointed the first Dean, of St Mellitus College, a position he held for the first eight years of the College’s life, before being made Bishop of Kensington in 2015. He has spoken and lectured across the world, and in 2016 was awarded the Silver Rose of St Nicholas, a global award recognizing a significant contribution to theological education and learning. He was very involved in the response to the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017. He is married to Janet and has two married children and three grandchildren. He is a keen follower of various kinds of music and sport, suffering a lifelong addiction to Bristol City Football Club.

Show Notes

The Rt Revd Dr Graham Tomlin is President of St Mellitus College and Bishop of Kensington.
What's going well with theology
Theology connecting in the church; the church as context for theology
Spiritual theology deepening and nurturing human life
Ellen Charry and thinking about eudaimonia in theological context
Challenges to theology
Fragmentation
Three audiences for theology: God, Church, and World
Audience 1: God. Theology as prayer and worship
Audience 2: Church. Theology as reform and referendum, enabling the church to be the church
Audience 3: World. Theology as witness, declaring what life looks like, seen through the lens of the gospel.
Theology for the World: Pluralism and Secularity
"If you don't really understand religion, if you don't understand faith, if you don't understand theology, you can't really understand the modern world."
Religious studies and objectivity vs subjectivity in studying religion
Lived experience and inhabiting faith to understand it.
Theology's connection to every other academic endeavor
Theos, Logos: Words about God
God as the source of our being and the one to which we return.
Three aspects of Theology: Worship, Reform, and Witness
The God who reveals himself to us
Thinking holistically about the world
Engaging heart and mind
About St. Mellitus
Theology in the church doesn't mean dumbing it down or removing academic seriousness.
Theologians with a passion for the church and see the connection between theology and Christian life.
Churches don't always see the need for theology; they stay pragmatic.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Graham Tomlin
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

Matt Croasmun / Nourishing Mutual Encounter: Food, Meals, and the Hunger for Home in the Gospel of Luke Sep 03, 2022

Food and meals are hidden in plain sight throughout the Bible, providing a background context for Christian spirituality and flourishing. Matt Croasmun joins me on the podcast today to talk about his new book co-authored with Miroslav Volf, The Hunger for Home: Food and Meals in the Gospel of Luke. For them, a meal is a site of nourishing mutual encounter. It's this definition of a meal that makes that riddle work I think. It's also incredibly illuminating (and even delightfully surprising, really) to consider how that nourishing mutual encounter—a meal—provide a context that spans thousands of years and the whole of human history from creation to fall to redemption. It can all be understood as a site of nourishing mutual encounter with God, family, neighbor, world—everything. From the fruitful multiplying of living creatures to the forbidden fruit—from the passover seder, manna from heaven, water from the rocks, and feasts in the fields—to the Lord's table prepared before our enemies, turning water into wine, multiplying loaves and fish—from the Last Supper before the Crucifixion, and the final wedding supper of the Lamb. It's all a meal that we hunger for always; it's a meal that wherever we are, we're still home.

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

About

Matt Croasmun (PhD, Yale University) is Associate Research Scholar at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. He is the co-author, with Miroslav Volf, of For the Life of the World and The Hunger for Home and directs the Yale Life Worth Living Initiative. Follow him on Twitter @MattCroasmun.

Show Notes

Buy the book: The Hunger for Home: Food and Meals in the Gospel of Luke (Enter 17FALL22 for 20% off + Free Shipping)
What is home?
What is hunger?
Jesus fasting in the wilderness: "One does not live by bread alone..."
The human needs bread that is not only bread.
Word and world is one thing. Allow your bread to become an encounter with the creator of all good things.
Life, staying sustained, and feasting
Material life, sustained by the life of the Lord
False choice: word or bread. It's actually one thing, issuing from the mouth of the Lord.
Sinners at the Table: "The only kind of meals are meals among sinners."
"Sinners all."
Jesus dines with sinners because he's a doctor who comes to heal sinners. We dine with sinners because we're all patients of that doctor.
Rich and Poor at the Table
The eschatological feast
The Rich Man and Lazarus
The Unjust Steward (or, The Dishonest Manager)
"We're looking for homes to be invited into. And it may be the poor who have these homes."
Mutuality
Leveraging houses and the wealth they represent for entry into homes.
The Last Supper / Eucharist
"Made known in the breaking of bread"
The Road to Emmaus: "We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel."
Jesus as the ultimate Bible Study Leader: "The best bible study ever."
The eucharist is making sense later.
Recognition: It wasn't the bible study with Jesus on the road. It was the meal.
Norman Wirzba, Food & Faith
"Made known in the breaking of bread"

Production Notes

This podcast featured Matt Croasmun
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Special thanks to David Aycock and Baylor University Press
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

George Marsden / The Outrageous Idea of Theological Education: How Deep Teaching in Theology Might Work in and for the Church and the World Aug 27, 2022

A pervasive anti-intellectual tradition seems to haunt American Christianity. Paired with nationalism, xenophobia—a fear of the other, and an hypersensitive oscillation between defensiveness and jingoism in the culture war—it's worth asking what in the world happened to this religion which was founded by a peaceful, humble homeless preacher who healed the poor, the lame, and the blind.

But the over-correction to an intellectualizing of theology, to the exclusion of lived experience, swings the pendulum back in another erroneous direction. A merely cognitive theology that stays relevant only at abstract academic levels would be stale and dead—unlivable.

Perhaps what this moment needs is a widened perspective on the global, universal potential of theology, especially as it meets particular contexts and communities and the individual human life, where the transcendent meets the immanent and real human concerns inform the theological task. In other words, theology for the life of the world.

In today's conversation, Matt Croasmun discusses the purpose of theology with George Marsden, professor emeritus of history at the University of Notre Dame, and author of many books, including his celebrated biography of Jonathan Edwards, The Soul of the American University, and The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship. Together they discuss the relationship between theology and the church, the meaning of theological education in the university, the definition of human flourishing, pluralism and representation in higher education, the danger of privilege and prejudice in Christian theological teaching, and ultimately how theological perspectives gain plausibility in public life.

Production Notes

This podcast featured George Marsden and Matt Croasmun
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

Katie Grimes / Theology's Human Context: Jesus, Exemplarity, and Theologizing Through the Lens of Flourishing Aug 20, 2022

"You can be, at least according to Christian thought, the only sinless person in human history, and you can still be tortured and crucified in your early thirties."

From the perspective of Christian theology, it's probably not going too far to say that both the moral exemplarity and the suffering life of Jesus should be central to the Christian understanding of flourishing. Here's another way to put it. Jesus was morally perfect and sinless, but encountered immense suffering, poverty, marginalization, and eventual torture and death. Tempted, yet without sin. But also counted among the sinners, according to Isaiah 53's "Suffering Servant" theme. He is acquainted with grief, familiar with sorrow, anguished in his soul.

And so the big question here is: What kind of flourishing do we envision when we follow Christ toward that flourishing?

Today, we're sharing a conversation between Matt Croasmun and Katie Grimes, Assistant Professor of Theological Ethics at Villanova University. Together they discuss the social context of theology, trying to make sense of the role of Christ in approaching theology from the perspective of flourishing. For Katie, thinking about flourishing means thinking about virtues and vices, and that means thinking about the habits that pull us along toward the fully realized human good. But it also means pursuing a theological vision that accounts for the most troubling social realities.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Katie Grimes & Matt Croasmun
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

Casey Strine / Informed Empathy: Approaching Religion through Theology, Understanding, and a Commitment to Diversity Aug 13, 2022

You can't understand our globalized world without understanding religion. But that's easier said than done. For any given person, it's sometimes hard enough to understand your own religious perspectives. They often change throughout life, modified by experience and ideas. Modified by people and events. Modified by an encounter with the world and an encounter with God. Then go ahead and multiply that challenge by about 7.7 billion people and the ways that some of them collide and interact. Then we see a few things: we see that diversity is both a promise and a peril, we see that approaches to religious studies, sociology of religion, and the practice of theology all must be grounded in an "informed empathy," and we see that the only way to make progress is to accept responsibility and limits as an individual, and hope and commit to the necessity of collaboration.

Show Notes

Diversity and creativity are one of the strengths of theology today.
Sometimes diversity of thought and methodological practice can lead to fracturing.
Strine on one of the challenges of working in theology: “You know, my current project is on the book of Genesis, about which there's just a massive amount of literature from all manner of different perspectives. And that's really, really great. But at least once a week, I think about my book project as a fool's errand.”
Theology is more diverse and more creative than it ever has been, so it has to change and adapt. One person cannot keep up with everything going on.
There is a debate within theology about what to even call itself.
“Rather than building a new, different, hopefully improved theology, we may be building a lot of little different ones that go by a similar name, but don't look like anything that is the same when you get into more detail.”—Strine
Croasmun asks, given those challlenges, why should a student study theology?
“In a globalized world where religion isn't going away, the study of theology--of understanding, when we think about that term as how people think about God, what people say about God, how that impacts what they actually do, is as important or more important than it ever has been.”—Strine
Theology needs practitioners of religion and critical outsides talking with students.
Strine seeks “robust engagements” in theology that give students and others the opportunity to “[hear] strengths and weaknesses…from inside and outside, both to learn about it sort of in that third person view, but also then to make some decisions about what it is that they believe themselves.”
One of the challenges to robust engagements—”theology is a lonely vocation,” Croasmun points out.
Strine on the need for collaboration: “We're all finite, we're all human. There's only so much we can read. There only so many, so many hours we can work, no matter how hard we'd like to push ourselves, no matter how much coffee we drink.”
One vision of collaboration: “that might take the form of like-minded people from different areas, picking a question that's bigger than what any one sort of individual feels like they can do and, and kind of networking their brains together.”—Strine
Another vision of collaboration: “But it might equally be people from very different perspectives, putting their positions in dialogue, either with the hope that they find common ground they didn't know they had before, or simply they understand better where they agree and they disagree.”—Strine
There are powerful social and institutional pressures against collaboration in academia.
Strine warns against “cosmetic collaboration” which does not actually foster robust engagement and dialogue.
To build a theology of collaboration and community, “what's required is for those of us who are in the academy who would like to do that sort of work to be making an argument for why philosophically, epistemologically, and pragmatically there's value in that.”—Strine

About Casey Strine

Casey Strine is Senior Lecturer in Ancient Near Eastern History and Literature at The University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom. He specializes in Old Testament biblical studies, but thinks deeply about the historical connective tissue that links people and societies over time and through space. Casey is also a project partner with the Yale Center for Faith & Culture's Life Worth Living initiative. Follow him on Twitter @CaseyStrine.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Casey Strine and Matt Croasmun
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

Willie Jennings / Against Despair and Death: Cultivating and Gathering Joy in an Embodied Act of Resistance Aug 06, 2022

Willie Jennings defines joy in a surprising and profoundly physical way—as an act of resistance against despair and death. He explains joy as, "Resisting all the ways in which life can be strangled and presented to us as not worth living." Here, in a 2018 talk for the Theology of Joy and the Good Life Project, Willie Jennings comments on the powerful, embodied act of resistance that joy calls for, examining its scope and cultural context, exploring the musical form of the blues as a space for commonly held joy, and envisioning a pathway of life through the valley of the shadow of death.

About Willie Jennings

Willie Jennings is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology, Africana Studies, and Religious Studies at Yale University; he is an ordained Baptist minister and is author of The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race,Acts: A Commentary, The Revolution of the Intimate, and most recently, After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging. You can hear him in podcast episodes 7, 13, and 57 of For the Life of the World.

Show Notes

Watch Willie Jennings's 2018 lecture "Gathering Joy"—from the Theology of Joy and the Good Life Project, sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation
From The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien: "‘Despair or folly?’ said Gandalf. ‘It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not. It is wisdom to recognize necessity, when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope. Well, let folly be our cloak, a veil before the eyes of the enemy! For he is very wise and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice. But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it, that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it. If we seek this, we shall put him out of reckoning.’ ‘At least for a while,’ said Elrond. ‘The road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.’”
“The first thing that must be said about joy is that it is a work.”
“The Black church folks I knew understood that joy work begins with renouncing despair, renouncing despair by angling one's body against it.”
James C. Scott: Domination and the Arts of Resistance
“Despair has always been a currency born of death.”
“This is the art of making pain productive without ever trying to justify or glorify suffering.”
Hebrews 12:2
“Jesus's joy was a joy found in contradiction, not in the resolution of contradiction.”
“Joy work, my friends, always lives close to addiction. Addiction is the anti-side, the shadow side of joy work.”
“Even faith, any religious faith can be captured in addiction once it aligns itself with death.”
“Joy work rooted in Jesus is always work of the creature, vulnerable, fragile, and unstable, and in need of community and communion.”
“Music and joy have a long and celebrated history together among Black diaspora peoples. This sonic space often becomes a womb for joy, where it could live and breathe, take flight through sound, weaving together bodies and places in joy and habitation, the joy of the body and the joy of the place becoming one.”
“The blues at essence is a method of working contradiction and dissonance into a statement of pain.”
“We are yet to fully appreciate the role of the blues in creating sonic space, a space that many people can inhabit at the same time.”
“Too many Christians however, continue to promote segregated joy work through the limited ways we imagine life together bound as it is by racial reasoning and geographic segregation.”
John 15: 8-13
Albert J. Raboteau: “Slave Religion”
“A joy that moves through boundaries and overcomes social fragmentation requires the desire to locate joy work in new spaces that become more than a search for new commodities to consume.”

Production Notes

This podcast featured theologian Willie Jennings
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Martin Chan, Nathan Jowers, Logan Ledman, and 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

Jamie Tworkowski / To Be Known & Loved: Surprise, Hope, Resilience, and Identity Jul 30, 2022

As we're knit in the womb, a primal cry emerges from the very fact of our being, the very fact of our dependence, the fact of our contingency, the fact of our ultimate need: Do you love me? Jamie Tworkowski, the founder of To Write Love on Her Arms and bestselling author of If You Feel Too Much: Thoughts on Things Found and Lost and Hoped For, joins Evan Rosa for a discussion about the hope and resilience and human identity that emerges from being known and loved; what it means to live a life worth living; his own struggle with mental illness and therapy; the connection between mystery, not knowing, and the sort of surprise that makes life worth another day.

In this episode, we talk in some detail about the beautiful and heartbreaking founding story that led Jamie to start To Write Love on Her Arms, which includes references to self-harm and contains an expletive, which in Jamie's words is "more about identity than profanity". And if you are or anyone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide, self-harm, or if you need help even right now, call or text 988. 988 is the new nationwide number for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

Show Notes

jamietworkowski.com
Follow Jamie Tworkowski on Twitter
If You Feel Too Much: Thoughts on Things Found and Lost and Hoped For
Suicide & Crisis Lifeline
To Write Love on Her Arms
“Being loved looks like being known.”
Rebecca Solnit’s 2020 article describing hope as a commitment to the future.
“I've really come to believe that getting help, asking for help, recovery counseling for some people, sobriety, that it's not easy, but it's worth it.”
Giving up the need for control.
Clem Snide, “I Love the Unknown”
Looking past the things we feel are missing.
To Write Love On Her Arm: “that phrase at first, it was a, a goal for one person and pretty quickly because of this growing audience, it became a goal on a bigger scale.”
“And I hope that other people, in this case the listener who might be struggling, I hope that you would stay for the surprises: to be surprised by life, by love, by joy, by God; that there would be moments that you will experience and, and as a result, be so glad that you chose to keep going, that you chose to stay.”

Production Notes

This podcast featured author Jamie Tworkowski
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance and Episode Art by Luke Stringer
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

Bo Karen Lee / Trauma and Spirituality: From Bystander to Beloved, From Alarmed Aloneness to Gazing Upon the God Who Gazes Upon Me With Love Jun 29, 2022

How do you heal from trauma—whether individual, familial, or collective? Can Christian spirituality help?

The tumultuous time we find ourselves in serves up regular doses of the suffering and pain of others—war wages destruction, migrants are left to die of heat exposure, hate crimes based in bigotry and fear of ethnicity or orientation or identity leave us all feeling numbed to our humanity; and with the aid of our phones, we even risk a dependency relationship with that trauma. It's constantly leveraged for political gain, power, money, or ugly fame. If we see the game of human culture as a zero-sum struggle for power, someone's political gain is always another's loss. Someone's joy another's sorrow.

How are we supposed to find our human siblings? Add to this the unspoken trauma that haunts so many of us—myself, you listeners, that person in your life who seems strong and impervious to harm—we all carry our lifetime's worth of trauma even if we act like it's not there. But as Bessel Vander Kolk's best selling title captures so well, even when your conscious mind does that surreptitious work to ignore, deny, suppress, or forget trauma—"the body knows the score." But perhaps so too the spirit knows the score.

Today, Bo Karen Lee joins Ryan McAnnally-Linz for a conversation on trauma and Ignatian spirituality. Bo is Associate Professor of Spiritual Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary, and has written and taught contemplative theology, prayer, and the connection between spirituality and social justice.

This conversation is a beautiful and sensitive—and sometimes quite raw—exploration of trauma and the human experience. But the clarity and courage reflected in Bo's presentation of how trauma threatens the human mind and body is matched by a powerful empathy and peace, as she reflects on moving through a spiritual journey from victim or bystander of trauma to a beloved, seen, known, and loved by God and other deeply caring helpers. The discussion that follows offers a concise introduction to the Ignatian spiritual tradition, as well as a holistic comment on how trauma at the individual, genetic, family, and national level can be acknowledged, addressed, and acted on.

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

About

Production Notes

This podcast featured Bo Karen Lee and Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Annie Trowbridge and Luke Stringer
Special thanks to the Tyndale House Foundation for their generous support.
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

Lisa Sharon Harper / Fortune: How Race Broke My Family & the World—and How to Repair It All Jun 21, 2022

Seldom do we think of the study of history as a journey of self-discovery. And if that claim has any truth, it's because we modern people tend to see ourselves as autonomous, independent, untethered, and unaffected by our biological and cultural genealogies. But there's a story in our DNA that didn't start with us. And Lisa Sharon Harper has been on a decades-long journey of self-discovery, piecing together her family's lineage from their arrival on America's shores—via slave boats, through the twists and turns of slavery and indentured servitude, through America's post-civil war attempt at Reconstruction, down into the shadowy valley of Jim Crow and twentieth-century Civil Rights struggle, all to her life in the present. Her book is Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World—and How to Repair It All. Evan Rosa recently spoke with Lisa at length about how race broke her world and how she traced her family line back beyond the founding of America. And in continued celebration of Juneteenth and the Black joy which has transcended centuries of oppression, the Black history that deserves to be named and known, and the Black freedom which is real and yet still not fully realized and repaired—thanks for listening today friends.

How to Buy Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World—and How to Repair It All:

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.

Show Notes

“I never really understood the power of family history in scripture until I had done my own family history and understood the power of the context within which people live. So I used to look at the list of names that Jesus came from--Jesus is, you know, son of Mary, son of doo, son of Joseph, depending on who you're reading, and, and this is, and this is his lineage.”
“When we look at the context of American life, you cannot divorce it from the laws that were crafted to shape the flow of American life.”
Colonial laws legislating mixed-race marriage.
“Because on the first page of the Bible, we actually see very clearly: all humanity is created in the image of God.”
“But normally we think of repentance in the personal like, oh, I did somebody wrong so now I need to repent of that. But what would it look like for a society to repent? What would it look like for the church to repent of the assumptions we've had about who we are and how we should operate as the church?”
“The only way for people of European descent to find true peace is to lay down your arms and trust God to be God.”

Production Notes

This podcast featured Lisa Sharon Harper
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 Annie Trowbridge and Luke Stringer
Episode Art by Luke Stringer
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

Amy Brown Hughes / Hospitable Theology: Space for Questions, Diversity, and Reflection Jun 11, 2022

Does your approach to theology bring healing and reconciliation? Does it introduce Christianity as a way of life and peace, flourishing, justice, and shalom? Does your theology have space for diverse and difficult questions to occupy the same space? That kind of hospitable theology would indeed make a difference in our world. Today on the show, we're playing a conversation between Matt Croasmun and Amy Brown Hughes, Associate Professor of Theology at Gordon College and author of Christian Women in the Patristic World. Amy and Matt reflect on the promise and hope of a hospitable theology, grounded in a way of life, sensitive to the difference theology makes for the most pressing issues of our lives today.

About Amy Brown Hughes

Amy Brown Hughes is Associate Professor of Theology at Gordon College. She received her Ph.D. in historical theology with an emphasis in early Christianity from Wheaton College and is the author (with Lynn H. Cohick, Wheaton College) of Christian Women in the Patristic World: Their Influence, Authority and Legacy in the Second Through Fifth Centuries (Baker Academic). Amy also received a M.A. in history of Christianity from Wheaton College and her B.A. in theology and historical studies from Oral Roberts University. While at Wheaton, she worked with the Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies, which encourages dialogue about the interplay between our modern world and early Christian texts. The overarching theme of Amy’s work as a historical theologian is that early Christian writers continue to be fruitful interlocutors in modern discussions of theology. Her research interests include Eastern Christianity, Trinitarian and Christological thought, Christian asceticism, theological anthropology, the intersection of philosophy and theology, and highlighting the contributions of minority voices to theology, especially those of women. Her dissertation, “‘Chastely I Live for Thee’: Virginity as Bondage and Freedom in Origen of Alexandria, Methodius of Olympus, and Gregory of Nyssa,” explores how early Christian virgins contributed substantively to the development of Christology. She regularly presents papers at the annual meeting of the North American Patristics Society.

Recently, Amy contributed to an edited volume of essays from a symposium on Methodius of Olympus at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany,Methodius of Olympus: State of the Art and New Perspectives(De Gruyter) and co-authored a series of essays about early Christian writers with George Kalantzis (Wheaton College) for the early Christianity section of a volume for Protestant readers of the Christian tradition (T&T Clark).

Show Notes

Brown Hughes’s experience with theology students: “they're making the connection now much more than I've experienced in the past with, oh, this actually has to matter.”
A growing hunger for theology in churches: “The stuff that I do is not only mattering pedagogically in the academy for students, but also with the church as well, that it's starting to be something that they're starting to, like, want books and they want things recommended to them.”
A discussion of one challenge in modern theology: an inclination for saying "I have more theology on my side or more on this side. And so therefore I'm more right.”
A vision of theology: “I feel like theology can be a really hospitable place for people to actually access Christianity, where there are some big ideas and some values there that we can talk about.”
Brown Hughes’s vision of a participatory theology focused on the flourishing of life: “with the United Nation's global goals, for instance like gender equality, no poverty, these different goals, they're worldwide conversations about how humans can flourish, largely speaking. So how can theology with how we think about humanity--how can we participate in those conversations? And I think that sort of requiring ourselves to think, "can we actually participate in that conversation" and say, "yes, I think we can." So how can we do that? Like what can we bring to bear on the conversation of eradicating poverty in the world?”
Learn more about Gregory of Nyssa
A summary of the field: “theology's a little bit wilder, a little bit messier, but I think that's actually an opportunity for the future.”

Production Notes

This podcast featured Amy Brown Hughes and Matt Croasmun
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

Eric Gregory / Theology as a Way of Life Jun 04, 2022

If we all weren't so cynical, we might expect professional ethicists—or say a professor of ethics or morality at a university—to also be a really morally virtuous and good person. And by extension, you might also expect a theologian to be a person of deeper faith. And that's because intellectual reflection about matters of justice, right and wrong, God and human flourishing all cut to the core of what it means to be human, and the things you discuss in an ethics or theology course, if you took those ideas seriously, just might change the way you live.

Today, in our series on the Future of Theology, Matt Croasmun hosts Eric Gregory, Professor of Religion at Princeton University and author of Politics and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship. Eric reflects on what it's like to teach theology in a secular institution—the good, the bad, and the ugly of that exercise; the complications of making professors of humanities, ethics, and religion into moral or spiritual exemplars; the centrality of the good life in the purpose of higher education; and the importance of discerning and articulating the multifarious visions of the good life that are presumed by the institutional cultures in which we live, and move, and have our being.

About Eric Gregory

Eric Gregory is Professor of Religion at Princeton University. He is the author of Politics and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship (University of Chicago Press, 2008), and articles in a variety of edited volumes and journals, including the Journal of Religious Ethics, Modern Theology, Studies in Christian Ethics, and Augustinian Studies. His interests include religious and philosophical ethics, theology, political theory, law and religion, and the role of religion in public life. In 2007 he was awarded Princeton’s President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching. A graduate of Harvard College, he earned an M.Phil. and Diploma in Theology from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and his doctorate in Religious Studies from Yale University. He has received fellowships from the Erasmus Institute, University of Notre Dame, the Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Harvard University, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and The Tikvah Center for Law & Jewish Civilization at New York University School of Law. Among his current projects is a book tentatively titled, The In-Gathering of Strangers: Global Justice and Political Theology, which examines secular and religious perspectives on global justice. Former Chair of the Humanities Council at Princeton, he also serves on the the editorial board of the Journal of Religious Ethics and sits with the executive committee of the University Center for Human Values.

Show Notes

“Part of the virtue of the humanities, I think, is to kind of dislocate us and to kind of allow us to inhabit different worlds than the ones that we have prior to encountering these texts.”
“There is a kind of healthy way in which unifying or directing the task of theology with respect to a particular vision of that good life that will be fleshed out in different ways by different theologies is one way to find a place for the discourse of theology.”
“Universities are not just places of the production of information, but are also sites where people seek to ask questions about how they should live. And if universities can't do that, it's very difficult in our current culture to find spaces of reflection that allow that possibility.”
“[Universities should have] a desire to shape whole persons and to not just view education as a commodity that we are delivering to customers, but to kind of reconsider what a liberal arts education might look like.”

Production Notes

This podcast featured religious ethicist Eric Gregory and biblical scholar Matt Croasmun
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

Unimaginable: A Reflection after Uvalde May 30, 2022

Ryan McAnnally-Linz reflects on the May 24, 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

Keri Day / Targeting Normative Theology: Lived Experience, Practice, and Confessional Theology May 28, 2022

Miroslav Volf has said that every Christian is a theologian. This is important not so much because it demands of an individual Jesus-follower to exert the best of her cognitive abilities, but because it demands of theologians that theology take seriously the experience, perception, and lived realities of human life. As part of our Future of Theology series, Keri Day (Princeton Theological Seminary) joins Matt Croasmun to discuss the purpose and promise of theology today, honing in on this phenomena and the temptation to see theology as an abstract exercise cut off from the particularities of faith.

Keri Day is Associate Professor of Constructive Theology and African American Religion at Princeton Theological Seminary. She’s author of Unfinished Business: Black Women, The Black Church, and the Struggle to Thrive in America as well as Religious Resistance to Neoliberalism: Womanist and Black Feminist Perspectives.

About Keri Day

Production Notes

This podcast featured Keri Day and Matt Croasmun
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Nathan Jowers and Annie Trowbridge
Episode Art by Luke Stringer
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

Luke Bretherton / (Un)Common Life: Secularity, Religiosity, and the Tension Between Faith and Culture May 21, 2022

Jesus's teaching to be in but not of the world (John 17:14-15) has gone from a mode of prophetic witness that could lead to martyrdom, to bumper sticker ethics that either feeds the trolls or fuels the tribe. We're in a moment where the ways that Christianity's influence on culture—and vice versa—are writ large and undeniable. And yet, how are we to understand it? How are we to live in light of it? How does that relationship change from political moment to political moment? In this conversation, ethicist Luke Bretherton (Duke Divinity School) joins Matt Croasmun to reflect on the purpose of theology as a way of life committed to loving God and neighbor; the essential virtue of listening and its role in public theology; the interrelation between Church and World; the temptation to see the other as an enemy to be defeated rather than a neighbor to be loved; and how best to understand secularism and religiosity today.

Show Notes

Do you call yourself a theologian?
“You can't understand the water you're swimming in without understanding something of the theological frameworks that have helped shape it”
Where does the idea that our contemporary context is secular come from?
“The world is as furiously religious as ever”
People think that our modern age is like a shower, that we can just “step into the shower and be washed clean from the foul accretions of superstition and step out enlightened, rational men and women,” but we're actually in a ‘jacuzzi’ of ideas
The internet and plurality of opinion
What happens when we step away from the institutional framework of the Church?
“Who tells the children what Christianity is, who tells the children, what Islam is?”
Do you actually want to show up on a Sunday?
Then tension between believing and belonging
Sacrality and its many guises
“The many forms of life which we don't necessarily name as religious, but they're functioning in that way”
How do we name them?
If you talk to an atheist, they feel marginalized in this country, but if you talk to an Evangelical Christian they feel the same way
“Everyone feels under threat, whether you're a humanist or an atheist or a Christian or Muslim”
“But if you take the victim view, it generates a failure of imagination, a failure of patience, and a failure of paying attention”
Churches talk a lot about how to speak but not about how to listen
“What does Christian listening look like in a pluralistic context?”
Learning something about God by talking to an atheist
Listening is pointing to what is already there: “We point to what Christ and the Spirit are already doing. And it is a privilege is to participate in that.”
What is truth?
“It is how well you love God and neighbor. And the apprehension of the truth is measured by the quality of the relationships”
“So, I think faith begins with hearing and listening first”
What’s right with theology?
How can we have a synthesis of tradition and critique?
Having a sensitivity to political order and whether it is constructive or destructive is theological work
Epistemic humility and interdisciplinary study
The beauty in becoming aware of what you don’t know
What is the state of the field right now?
The overemphasis on the hermeneutics of suspicion, and the world as it is versus the world as it should be
Cynicism and redundancy
“If all we’re saying is that wolves eat sheep, well, we kind of knew that already”
What is a realistic hopefulness? What does ‘the world as it should be’ feel, taste, smell like?
What is the purpose of theology?
It “articulates what it means to heal a particular form of life in the light of who we understand God to be”
“There shouldn't be an over-inflation of what theology, as a technical act, does. But neither is it nothing”
“It is a cultivation of a faithful, hopeful and loving way of being alive”

About Luke Bretherton

Luke Bretherton is Robert E. Cushman Distinguished Professor of Moral and Political Theology and senior fellow of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. Before joining the Duke faculty in 2012, he was reader in Theology & Politics and convener of the Faith & Public Policy Forum at King's College London. His latest book is Christ and the Common Life: Political Theology and the Case for Democracy (Eerdmans, 2019). His other books include Resurrecting Democracy: Faith, Citizenship and the Politics of a Common Life (Cambridge University Press, 2015), which was based on a four-year ethnographic study of broad-based community organizing initiatives in London and elsewhere; Christianity & Contemporary Politics: The Conditions and Possibilities of Faithful Witness (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), winner of the 2013 Michael Ramsey Prize for Theological Writing; and Hospitality as Holiness: Christian Witness Amid Moral Diversity (Routledge, 2006), which develops constructive, theological responses to pluralism in dialogue with broader debates in moral philosophy. Specific issues addressed in his work include euthanasia and hospice care, debt and usury, fair trade, environmental justice, racism, humanitarianism, the treatment of refugees, interfaith relations, secularism, nationalism, church-state relations, and the church’s involvement in social welfare provision and social movements. Alongside his scholarly work, he writes in the media (including The Guardian, The Times and The Washington Post) on topics related to religion and politics, has worked with a variety of faith-based NGOs, mission agencies, and churches around the world, and has been actively involved over many years in forms of grassroots democratic politics, both in the UK and the US. His primary areas of research, supervision, and teaching are Christian ethics, political theology, the intellectual and social history of Christian moral and political thought, the relationship between Christianity and capitalism, missiology, interfaith relations, and practices of social, political, and economic witness. He has received a number of grants and awards, including a Henry Luce III Fellowship (2017-18).

Production Notes

This podcast featured ethicist Luke Bretherton and Matt Croasmun
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production & Editorial Assistance by Nathan Jowers and Annie Trowbridge
Illustration: Luke Stringer
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

Tyler Roberts / Taking Theology Seriously: A Perspective from Outside Christian Theology Apr 09, 2022

Over the past two centuries, colleges have slowly replaced theology departments with religious studies departments. But what happens when theology becomes religious studies? It can produce a more neutral, observational approach that might not fully appreciate the normative claims of religious adherents and their values, commitments, and beliefs.

A careful historical and objective study of religious history and the dimensions of religious practice are deeply valuable. But engaging religious texts and voices without a serious appreciation for the normative elements—that is, the things about a theological or religious idea that means your life would have to change—that would be a problem. It would evacuate the true substance and meaning of theological claims as they're experienced by religious adherents. But it would also fail to form students of religion and the humanities in a way that poses significant challenges to their own lived experience. For living a life worthy of their humanity.

Today, we share a conversation between Tyler Roberts and Matt Croasmun from November 2016. Tragically, Roberts died at the age of 61 on June 3, 2021. He was Professor of Religious Studies at Grinnell College. In this conversation, Roberts reflects on the contribution of theology to the humanities, the role of religious studies in a critical examination of theology, and the importance of appreciating the kinds of theological and moral claims that can change your life. May his memory be a blessing.

Show Notes

What happens when theology becomes religious studies?
Is serious appreciation missing?
How does theology contribute to the humanities?
What is going right in Christian theology?
Scholars like say what they do ‘is not theology,’ but they have the wrong definition of theology, according to Tyler
“We who care about studying religion have ‘dropped the ball’”
“It’s helpful to the Church to have external critique”
Theology as a straw man
What could theology be saying to those outside of the field?
“The line between theology as data and theology as something else is pretty blurry”
Theology reveals how self-critical religious people are
“More interestingly to me is how those of us in religious studies, perhaps the academy more broadly, can learn how to think from theologians”
‘Critical ascent’
The humanities can raise great questions, but can they articulate normative positions?
Theology and credulity
“It’s seemingly either/or, either you’re going to be critical, or you’ll believe anything”
How religious people appear credulous in the eyes of the secular
But in actuality, theology charts out how we come to our beliefs
“There’s nothing particularly blind about this”
Hermeneutics of suspicion
Students are very good at pointing to the limitations of a text
But how can we engage in texts in ways that make students think about their own lives?
“That’s a much harder task, and it’s one that many students, I find, aren’t that comfortable with”
It’s hard!
“Humanities is about reading not just what was true for the author, but what is true for me”
“How can we take these texts as real options for us?”
Christian theology has an important role to play in the pluralistic conversation
How does someone think constructively and critically at the same time? How theologians can teach us that
Obituary: Tyler Roberts (1960-2021) (Political Theology)

Production Notes

This podcast featured Tyler Roberts and Matt Croasmun
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Nathan Jowers and Luke Stringer
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

Aristotle Papanikolaou / Russian Christian Nationalism and Eastern Orthodoxy (and How Culture Wars Contributed to the War in Ukraine) Apr 04, 2022

"Real wars always begin with culture wars." Theologian Aristotle Papanikolaou discusses Eastern Orthodox perspectives on war and violence; the impact of Communism on Eastern Orthodox theology; the complicated ecclesial structures of Eastern Orthodoxy, where bishops, patriarchs, and nation-states interact in unpredictable ways; he reflects on Eastern Orthodoxy in Russia and Ukraine, the ways Christianity is enmeshed and caught up in the authoritarian, nationalist regime under Putin, and the idea of "Russkii Mir" (the Russian world), which has come to motivate and justify a great deal of violence and aggression in the name of peace and unity.

About

Aristotle Papanikolaou is Professor of Theology and the Archbishop Demetrios Chair in Orthodox Theology and Culture at Fordham University. He co-directs the Orthodox Christian Studies Center, and is author of The Mystical as Political: Democracy and Non-Radical Orthodoxy and has edited several volumes of Eastern Orthodox theological and political perspectives.

Show Notes

The long, complicated relationship between Eastern Orthodoxy and Communism in the former Soviet Union
David Bentley Hart on Orthodoxy and Communism (NYT article)
Eastern Orthodoxy on the ethics of war (book: Orthodox Christian Perspectives on War)
What's a patriarch? What's a patriarchate?
What does that mean for autonomy and power?
How does Ukraine factor in Orthodox patriarchates?
Autocephalous Ukrainian Church
2022 Sunday of Forgiveness sermon. Kirill states: Russia promotes traditional values, Ukraine led astray by western liberals and Nazis.
How does theology function in this conversation?
"Russkii Mir" as a political idea: we're one people with a common heritage
"To be Russian meant to be Orthodox."
Russian "Democracy"
Heresy of "Russkii Mir"
"A God given mission to save Ukrainians from themselves."
Theology of History
Formal and Material levels
Christian faith is a trans-national faith
Greece: "So in your country, are you Orthodox?"
Saving Ukrainians
Long-term implications
Dynamics within Orthodox Church
The hope for reconciliation: "that will take decades in my opinion"
Culture wars
Visit Public Orthodoxy online
Visit Fordham's Orthodox Christian Studies Center

Production Notes

This podcast featured theologians Aristotle Papanikolaou and Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Image Credit: An Orthodox church in Malyn, Ukraine, northwest of Kyiv, destroyed by Russian warplanes. Miguel A Lopes/EPA, via Shutterstock
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

Katherine Sonderegger / God, the Great Hope of Theology Mar 27, 2022

What is the future of theology? We asked that question of several leading theologians 7 years ago, including today's featured guest, Katherine Sonderegger, The William Meade Chair of Systematic Theology at Virginia Theological Seminary, a priest in the Episcopal Church, and has written widely, covering Creation, Christology, Election, the Jewishness of Jesus...

Her approach to theology is beautifully summed up in the following, “There really is no more beautiful thought in all reality than the thought of God. I believe that theology is ultimately just that: thinking the thought of God and worshipping the Reality who is God.”

In this conversation, Katherine Sonderegger joins Matt Croasmun to discuss the importance of a free and unapologetic, unembarrassed approach to Christian theology; the interplay of Christian theology with other religious texts and pluralistic perspectives; the practice of peace, listening, and being knit together even in difference; the strong unity and center of theology, which is the capital-R Reality that is God, who is, in Sonderegger's words, "the great hope of theology."

Show Notes

What’s right with theology these days?
Women and theology
The relationship between Old Testament studies, New Testament studies, and theology
“In the major universities, it is an odd thing to be a religious person”
Intellectualism, depth and transcendence
The relationship between Christianity and Judaism
Christianity between Judaism and Islam
What is central to Christianity?
Ties between Christian faith and the secular realm
“Religious people can bring our own reflections on wisdom, as well as folly”
Thomas Aquinas and God
‘God and all things in relation to God’
Theology and thinking the sublime
Theology is for exploration of God
Intellectual worship of God
Does theology have a center?
Scripture and the mystery of God
“I want to see theology losing itself in the ocean of reality”
God’s abundance
Galatians 5:14 “Love your neighbor as yourself,” Loving God through love of neighbor
Augustine: “Love God and do what you will”
The future of the field of theology
“God is the great hope of theology”
indifference to religion
The seminary graduates fill her with hope
“If it is of God, it cannot fail”

About Katherine Sonderegger

Katherine Sonderegger is The William Meade Chair of Systematic Theology at Virginia Theological Seminary. She joined the VTS faculty in 2002, after fifteen years as a professor of religion at Middlebury College. Her academic career began at Smith College, where she undertook interdisciplinary research in medieval studies. Her priestly vocation began at Yale Divinity School, where she completed her M.Div. and STM degrees, writing a thesis on feminist theology. The first years after graduation brought her to congregational ministry and chaplaincy training at Yale New Haven Hospital. Raised a Presbyterian, the Reformed roots run deep in her vocation. She brought these into the Episcopal Church when she was ordained deacon and priest in 2000.

Twin topics have characterized her academic career: the dogmatic theology of Karl Barth and constructive work in systematic theology. She has published in several areas of Barth studies, from Barth’s interpretation of Israel, Jews, and Judaism, to his Doctrine of God, his Christology, and his remarkable exegesis of Scripture. More recently, Sonderegger has turned to constructive theology, writing shorter works on the Doctrines of Election, Creation, and Christology, and launching a new systematics. Volume 1: The Doctrine of God appeared under the aegis of Fortress Press in 2015, and Volume 2: The Trinity: Processions and Persons was published in 2020. She is currently working on Volume 3: Divine Missions, Christology, and Pneumatology.

Sonderegger is also the author of That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew: Karl Barth’s “Doctrine of Israel” (University Park: Penn State Press, 1992) and coauthor, with artist Margaret Adams Parker, of Praying the Stations of the Cross: Finding Hope in a Weary Land (Wm. Eerdmans Press, 2019).

Production Notes

This podcast featured theologian Katherine Sonderegger and biblical scholar Matthew Croasmun
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production and Editorial Assistance 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

Miroslav Volf / War in Ukraine: Theological and Moral Reflections Mar 19, 2022

Miroslav Volf offers his personal reflections about the war on Ukraine. His theological and ethical commentary speaks to various facets of the situation, including: the global cultural clash between authoritarian nationalism and pluralistic democracy; the primacy and priority of God's universal and unconditional love for all humanity, including evildoers; the call to actively resist evil and guard our humanity; the importance of truth in an age of disinformation and suppression of real facts; the need for Christians to remain "unreliable allies" with governments or parties while remaining faithful to the humanity in the friend, neighbor, stranger, and enemy; but ultimately his message is one to soberly—and dare I suggest joyfully, with unabashed hope—lift up our hearts (and the hearts of those suffering through war, dislocation, death, and destruction) to the Lord.

Episode Art Provided by Fyodor Raychynets. "ні війні!" = "NO WAR!"

Show Notes

Gustavo Gutiérrez, On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent
Gustavo Gutierrez, The God of Life
Miroslav’s experience in Yugoslavia in the 90s and how it is reflected in Ukraine
The theological dimension of the war in Ukraine
“The war in Ukraine is part of a resurgence of nationalism as a global phenomenon”
Two types of nationalism: exclusive nationalism, inclusive nationalism or patriotism
Russian nationalism and the superiority of an ethnic group, the Russian Orthodoxy
“What is the role of religion in the public sphere?"
To what extent do Christians have stake in advocating for any position?
The birth of Russian Orthodoxy in Kyiv
The origins of faith and nation in Russia
“Such close ties between religion and religious sacred spaces have made religion complicit in the violence of the state”
Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
How Russian Orthodoxy is divided – the war is fought internally, rather than between Roman Catholicism + Protestantism and Orthodoxy on the other
the division between The Orthodox Church of Ukraine and Muscovite Patriarchate is reflected in the divisions in global Orthodoxy
The struggle within Orthodoxy for primacy in Moscow
God is love
“God does not simply love and therefore can love or not love, but God actually is love always and without exception. And therefore that the love of enemy is a central tenant of the Christian faith”
Every single oppressed and suffering person and every single wrongdoer, no matter how heinous the crimes they've committed, every single individual is an object of God's unconditional love.”
John 1:29 "The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world"
“in secular terms, we ought to respect the humanity of each person, even the worst among us, and that we ought to care for them”
God's love for the weak and assaulted
Love for the enemy
How does this fit with the idea of Jesus’ teaching on non-resistance?
“Resistance against the aggressor can be, and I think ought to be, an expression of love, both for the victims of aggression and for the aggressor”
The Just War Theory: there are different ways to transform an aggressor
“I myself do not subscribe to Just War Theory”
I think that any engagement with the enemy has to be led by the command of love
Oliver O’Donovan and love of the enemy
“The interest of the Christian faith is also interest in the good of the aggressor. And we cannot exempt the aggressor from the universality of the love of God”
“It's crucial to keep careful watch over the state of our humanity. Evil is infectious, especially for those who struggle against it”
Collective guilt
“It has been said that truth is often the first victim of war”
What is the place of emotions in war?
Job and suffering
“What's really interesting is that Job dares to speak to God. He brings his anger, his lament, his disappointment, all of this displaced before God”
How truth can transform anger
Psalm 137 “Blessed is the one who dashes your little ones against the rock”
Karl Barth: “Christians and unreliable allies.” Their ultimate allegiance is to God, not to a political party
Ron Williams: “God has no particular interest of God’s own”
The strength of pluralistic democracies
“One of the reasons for the rise of authoritarianism is a certain dysfunctionality of pluralistic democracies”
Reconciliation
One way to reconcile is to enforced peace and suppress war
But reconciliation is a moral practice
“Naming the wrong that has been committed and finding ways to go beyond that, to live together in peace"
How to sustain hope in the midst of such overwhelming powers of evil
"sursum corda,”"lift up your hearts," or more literally "hearts up!"

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, Logan Ledman, and 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

A Voice from Kyiv: Fyodor Raychynets / Faithful Presence in the War on Ukraine Mar 15, 2022

Today we're sharing a conversation between Miroslav Volf and Fyodor Raychynets, a former student of Miroslav's when he taught at Evangelical Theological Seminary in Osijek, Croatia in the early '90s. Fyodor is a theologian and pastor in Kyiv, and is head of the department of theology at Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary on the northwest outskirts of the city, 20 kilometers outside downtown Kyiv.

We spoke to Fyodor on Sunday, March 13, 2022, just as he came in for the 8pm curfew after a day of feeding the elderly, the sick, weary soldiers, and women and children stuck in the basements without electricity, without clean water, without medication, and increasingly, without a clear idea of how any of this will end for them. That day Fyodor visited his seminary campus to find it had been shelled by three missiles, destroying much of the campus, including his office, leaving his library of books destroyed.

In this conversation, Fyodor shares his experience, now after 20 days of war, 20 days of being under siege, and 20 days of prayer and feeding the hungry.

Fyodor posts daily updates and reflections on his Facebook page, you can find a link in the show notes. Each daily post begins with developments in the war and how it's impacting him, his team of fellow ministers, and the city around him. He then reflects on the nature of war itself, and its impact on human life. He closes each post with a prayer for Ukraine, for freedom, for humanity. I'll quote just a few of his moving passages.

Day 7, "War is when the safest place to sleep in your apartment is the bathroom, although that's obviously for other purposes.."

Day 11, "War is when the most vulnerable suffer. That's when ordinary things, for example, going to the store and buying fresh, warm and fragrant Ukrainian bread (I've visited about 70 countries, but I've never eaten such delicious bread) become impossible. It's when you meet people every day who haven't eaten bread for 4 or 5 days, not to mention anything else...."

Day 15, "War is when evil reaches unseen dimensions and lowest forms, and when good manifests itself in its highest manifestations against the backdrop of total uncontrollable madness."

Day 19, "War is when you wake up in the morning, if you managed to fall asleep at all, not from the alarm clock or birds singing, but to the sounds of sirens, or bomb explosions that make you tremble. War is when your emotional state shifts from optimistic to pessimistic more often than in peaceful time, and the emotional range itself is much wider."

Day 20, written just a few hours ago. "War is when your understanding changes when not in theory but in practice you especially appreciate the moment "here and now" and live it more consciously..."

Show Notes

"War is when the safest place to sleep in your apartment is the bathroom”
Fyodor’s connection with Miroslav Volf, and his experience with war in Croatia and Bosnia
“I was joking when I was coming back to Ukraine... that ‘I am returning to the most peaceful country in the world.’ And here we are.”
“When the US government and UK government warned us about the impending full-scale invasion of Russian troops, we thought that they were exaggerating.”
Three missiles hit his campus the day before this interview
Fyodor’s volunteer group feeds the elderly trapped in basements
Why Fyodor decided to stay and help, rather than leave
“Thanks to God, I was able to evacuate my children.”
The risks involved in visiting those trapped in basements
"Is it worth that degree of risk?"
Fyodor’s seminary was hit by a missile: “Let me put it in one word: it's an apocalyptic scene, you know?”
Giving communion in a destroyed landscape, “What does Christ's body, given for the life of the world, mean in that moment?”
“I started to believe in what we called an open Lord's Supper: when everyone is welcomed”
Giving communion to people from different religious backgrounds
‘What the people ask for’
Grappling with the Russian support for Putin’s war: “It’s a wider problem”
“When the intellectuals support that kind of aggression, we have a serious problem.”
“Ukrainians were always a pain in the back to the Russians because of our free will. We love freedom.”
Is the Russian Orthodox Church involved in a Russian imperial project?
Public versus private support of the war, and neutrality, by the Russian Church
“Martin Luther King used to say there is a special place in hell for these kinds of people who pull or choose neutrality in the times of moral crisis.”
“As we say in Ukraine, the war did not start 18 days ago, it started eight years ago.”
How can our humanity be preserved in the midst of evil?
“I have to remind myself on a daily basis that we are humans and we are-- not just remain --but it is so crucial, in the midst of hell, not to lose our humanity. But to preserve it, and to show it, and to demonstrate it.”
How to keep anger from taking control
Is faith a consolation?
“It is challenging to sustain a faith in the situation where there is a sense that you cannot control anything that is happening.”
Faith and responsibility
“Your faith is challenged by this simple statement of a soldier who says, ‘You go there on your own responsibility.’”
Faith tested by family as much as the war
1 John: “Love conquers all fear”
Emotional extremes in wartime, and the simple comforts of a croissant from the local church
“I don't know what's wrong with the policy in this world that we cannot square one crazy dictator.”

About Fyodor Raychynets

Follow him on Facebook here.

Production Notes

This podcast featured theologians Fyodor Raychynets and Miroslav Volf
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

Willie Jennings / The Christian Imagination: Theological Complexity, Communication, Cultivation, and Community Mar 12, 2022

Willie James Jennings (Yale Divinity School) joins Matt Croasmun for a conversation about the future of theology, addressing the Christian inability to hold complexity, public communication, and deep formation together in a way that shows how theology is for our very lives.

Seven years ago the Yale Center for Faith and Culture interviewed a diverse array of theologians about the present woes and future potential of theology. Some five years and a pandemic later, the landscape of theological education seems like it's at a crossroads. The driving purpose of Christian higher education is in question as colleges, universities, and seminaries across denominations and around the world consider how they'll move forward in the wake of stark realities this pandemic laid bare. So it's worth revisiting the conversation to see what has changed, what holds true, and what hopes we're still holding on to. For today’s episode, we're featuring a conversation between Matt Croasmun and Dr. Willie James Jennings, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies at Yale Divinity School, an ordained Baptist minister, and author of The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race, and more recently After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging. Willie reminds us to be looking for the opportunities in the middle of crises of theological education; he worries about the inability to hold complexity, public communication, and deep formation together in a way that shows how theology is for our very lives; he speaks to the recent aversion to pastoral ministry, which is theology for the sake of the people; he touches on the role of Christian theology in a pluralistic world, asking how theologians might learn from comedians; and he encourages all Christians to take up the theological call to courage, the call to see, listen, and and alleviate suffering, and the call to a theology of life.

Show notes

How to make theology attractive
Who do we want to teach?
Secular religious studies versus confessional environments
“Never let a good crisis go to waste”
educational ecology: learning environments
Doctoral students, do you want to be a teacher?
The pastor versus the professor: the call to teach
Theology and plurality
Theology and violence: naming the pressure points of suffering
The Christian frame versus the real matter at hand
“We want to be asking human questions, they’re not just Christian questions”
The alleviation of pain and suffering comes before questions of the good life
The real goal is the healthy neighborhood
Reverence and theology

About Willie Jennings

Willie Jennings is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology, Africana Studies, and Religious Studies at Yale University; he is an ordained Baptist minister and is author of The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race,Acts: A Commentary, The Revolution of the Intimate, and most recently, After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging.

Other Episodes Featuring Willie Jennings

Joy and the Act of Resistance Against Despair (with Miroslav Volf)
My Anger, God's Righteous Indignation (A Response to the Murder of George Floyd)
The Crowd Needs Faith: Control, Care, Economy, and Race (with Miroslav Volf)

Production Notes

This podcast featured theologian Willie James Jennings and biblical scholar 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

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

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

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

"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

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

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

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

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

"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

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

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

"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

Frederica Mathewes-Green / Mary Theotokos: Her Bright Sorrow, Her Suffering Faith, and Her Compassion Dec 18, 2021

"Her hands steadied the first steps of him who steadied the earth to walk upon; her lips helped the Word of God to form his first human words." (St. John of Damascus)

Who is Mary? Why is she called "Theotokos"? Frederica Mathewes-Green, an Eastern Orthodox writer and educator, joins Evan Rosa for a discussion about Mary, the Mother of God. During the first half of the episode, they discuss the Eastern Orthodox reverence for Mary and the scriptural account of her life—from the Annunciation and Nativity, to her parenting of Jesus, through to the Wedding at Cana and witnessing the unimaginable as her son was crucified, died, buried, and risen. In the second half of our conversation, Frederica sheds light on two ancient texts: The Forgotten Gospel of Mary, also known as the Protoevangelium of James, as well as one of the oldest known manuscripts that refer to Mary as Theotokos: a very short prayer scribbled on papyrus, and known as "Sub tuum praesidium" or "Under your compassion." But that's not all, Frederica draws out the beauty of Mary's exemplarity for all Christians, her suffering faith and bright sorrow, the conjoining of humility and magnanimity in her response to God, and so much more.

Show Notes

Frederica Mathewes-Green, Mary As the Early Christians Knew Her: The Mother of Jesus in Three Ancient Texts
Protoevangelium of James
Sub tuum Praesidium ("Under your compassion...")
Mary as Theotokos: "God's birth-giver"
"The Virgin of the Sign" icon
Orthodox view of Mary as worship leader
Mary in scriptural context: Luke 1 and 2
Mary, troubled and perplexed
Magnificat: Every line comes from the psalms, a very classic Jewish understanding of the Messiah as political revolutionary.
Mary's perplexity and expectations about Jesus's role as Messiah
Catacomb of Priscilla in Rome
Simeon's words to Mary: "This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel and to be assigned, that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed. In a sword will pierce your own soul too, and these words from Simeon to Mary, upon presenting Jesus at the temple." (Luke 2:34)
Sin in Eastern Orthodoxy: "It starts with a thought."
Epigraph: "Her hands steadied the first steps of him who steadied the earth to walk upon; her lips helped the Word of God to form his first human words." St. John of Damascus
Jesus's relationship with Mary
The leadership of Mary
The Wedding at Cana
Mary at the Cross
Mary's childhood in the Protoevangelium of James
Mary as a contemplative
Mary's achievement of theosis: "absorbing God" / "union with God"
Annunciation
Mary's anxiety when Jesus was lost at the temple
Bright sorrow in Mary—both dread and joy
Loneliness and autonomy
The practical spiritual benefits of the Protoevangelium of James
Prayer as a medium of communication; sending Mary prayer requests
The earliest prayer to Mary: "Sub tuum praesidium"
"Under your compassion we take refuge Theotokos. Do not overlook our prayers in the midst of tribulation, but deliver us from danger, O only pure, only blessed one."
Coming under the shelter of her protection
Matthew 23:37—"Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones, those who are sent to it, how often have I desired to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings and you were not willing."
Seeking shelter, refuge, and compassion during strident and striving times.

About Frederica Mathewes-Green

Frederica Mathewes-Green is a wide-ranging author who has published 10 books and 800 essays, in such diverse publications as the Washington Post, Christianity Today, Smithsonian, and the Wall Street Journal. She has been a regular commentator for National Public Radio (NPR), a columnist for the Religion News Service, Beliefnet.com, and a podcaster for Ancient Faith Radio. (She was also a consultant for Veggie Tales.) She has appeared as a speaker over 600 times, at places like Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Wellesley, Cornell, Calvin, Baylor, and Westmont, and received a Doctor of Letters (honorary) from King University. She lives with her husband, the Rev. Gregory Mathewes-Green, in Johnson City, TN. Their three children are grown and married, and they have fifteen grandchildren.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Mathewes-Green
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Martin Chan, Nathan Jowers, Natalie Lam, 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

Jeff Reimer / W.H. Auden's For the Time Being: Post-Christmas Blues, the Darkness of Modernity, and the Human Response to Incarnation Dec 11, 2021

In the midst of war, the loss of his mother, and the heartbreak of unrequited love, poet W.H. Auden was rediscovering his faith. And the fitting response to the darkness and despair and apathy around him, he thought, was the Christmas event. So he set to work on a Christmas Oratorio called For the Time Being. Originally meant to be performed and sung, what emerged is a much more sobering and stark retelling of the Christmas narrative than you're used to. Auden's modernist poetry becomes a way for a modern humanity—whose resources are spent, whose plans have gone awry, whose hopes have been misplaced, whose sense of time has been unwound—to find redemption amidst the quotidian, the mundane, and the everyday. But also always in an eternally full "moment of decision"—a response to the bare fact of the Incarnation of God in infant Jesus. Evan Rosa is joined by writer Jeff Reimer (Associate Editor, Comment Magazine), who suggests that this modernist retelling of Christmas helps us to diagnose and treat the quintessentially modern vice of acedia, the noonday demon. They discuss the anachronistic cast of characters Auden uses to comment on the human condition. They read and marvel at several passages of the text. And they consider what Auden takes to be the matter of ultimate importance in our experience of Christmas: responding to the audacious claim that God has become human.

About Jeff Reimer

Jeff Reimer is a writer with bylines at Commonweal, Comment, Plough, and Fare Forward. He is Associate Editor for Comment Magazine. Follow Jeff on Twitter @jreimr or check out his website for links to his writing.

Show Notes

W.H. Auden's For the Time Being (edited with introduction by Alan Jacobs)
Read Jeff Reimer's What Comes After: W. H. Auden’s cure for the post-Christmas blues
Dealing with the Post-Christmas Blues
Flipping the feast for the fast in contemporary Christmas culture
W.H. Auden's For the Time Being
Darkness, despair as the context for the Advent apocalyptic setting
"Very little Christmas cheer"
Auden's context for writing For the Time Being: World War II, the death of his mother, and his re-discovered faith
Possibilities for hope and redemption
Reason and optimism have run out
Central question of For the Time Being: "What do we do with this singular Christmas event?"
Cast of characters
Existentialist influence on Auden
The silence of Christ in the poem
Strange characters: Intuition, Sensation, Feeling, and Thought as an expression of the human self
Mary and Joseph: Divergent responses to the Angel Gabriel
Mary's humility and magnanimity together
What it's like to be Joseph
The temptation of St. Joseph
Redeeming the mundane and the quotidian
Acedia: the quintessentially modern vice
Charles Taylor: "Our present condition is one in which many people are happy living for goals which are purely imminent; they live in a way that takes no account of the transcendent."
"The Time Being"—ennui, acedia, and depression following Christmas
The noonday demon
Simeon: Auden's intellectual, theological response to the incarnation
Herod: Auden's stoic intellectual, politically indifferent, tragic-comic figure
Stoic virtue: apathea, or "cultivated indifference"
The incarnation does not allow for cultivated indifference
Herod's cultivated indifference ends up becoming outright violent resistance and the massacre of the innocents
The difficulty of inhabiting a moment the way we're meant to
The way, the truth, the life
"Seek him in the Kingdom of Anxiety."

Production Notes

This podcast featured writer Jeff Reimer
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Martin Chan, Nathan Jowers, Natalie Lam, 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

David Dark / Non-Violent Resistance, Robot Soft Exorcism, and the Blurry Binaries Between Christianity and Culture Dec 05, 2021

"I wrestle not against flesh and blood." (David Dark's Ephesians 6:12 mantra) / According to David Dark (Belmont University), each of us occupy a variety of robots—roles, titles, occupations, institutions, conglomerates, ways of being, social norms, etc.—and these robots exert a cultural force, sometimes benign, but then again, sometimes violently destructive and degrading of human life. And in order to appreciate and honor our shared humanity, those of us in violent, impersonal robot systems need to be softly, humanely, respectfully, lovingly exorcised from those violent systems. David Dark joins Evan Rosa to talk about his idea of "Robot Soft Exorcism"—a metaphor-slash-parable-slash-theory-slash-way-of-life—that he uses to explain and expound non-violent resistance and prophetic witness. Along the way, they discuss the righteous skepticism he was raised on, the blurry secular-sacred divide, how he met Henri Nouwen, the technological ethics of Jacques Ellul, the real meaning of turning the other cheek, and the constant need to divest ourselves of the power of our positions, our titles, our platforms ... our robots.

About David Dark

David Dark is an American writer and cultural critic; and is Assistant Professor of Religion and the Arts at Belmont University in Nashville, TN. He's author of several books including, Life's Too Short To Pretend You're Not Religious, The Sacredness of Questioning Everything, Everyday Apocalypse: The Sacred Revealed in Radiohead, The Simpsons, and Other Pop Culture Icons, and The Gospel According To America: A Meditation on a God-blessed, Christ-haunted Idea. Follow him on Twitter @DavidDark or his Substack, Dark Matter

Show Notes

David Dark's Robot Soft Exorcism Twitter Thread: https://twitter.com/DavidDark/status/1012804184868048896
Righteous skepticism in David Dark's family history
Godzilla and God
Secular–sacred divide
"I don't have to settle for the given dichotomies or dualisms."
Daoism, intellectual humility and the meaning of righteous skepticism in southern (fundamentalist) Christian context
The blurry binaries of Christianity and Pop Culture
Nashville: "The post-modern Vatican of the prayer trade"
Christian music industry in the'80s
"One might want to separate Christian marketing from the January 6th attack, but you really can't because association is currency."
"On human barnyard"; "there are no unrelated phenomena"
On meeting Henri Nouwen and learning the word social justice
"There is no non-social justice. Justice is relational."
Robot Soft Exorcism
Ephesians 6:12: "For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places."
Walter Wink's Powers series
Power dynamics of 2018's border crisis, separating families at the border, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders at the Red Hen Restaurant
Turning the other cheek; demanding to be punched as an equal
Dramatizing the conflict as part of the task of prophetic action
"Robot soft exorcism is inviting someone to be a human being rather than just being their position."
Breaking it down: The Robot Part
Jacques Ellul and the Technological Society
Use vs Reception
"I think that Twitter can be a wonderful tool. It is the tool upon which I inscribed my Robots Soft Exorcism. But Twitter is also can be a broken fire hydrant of sadness and rage."
"I think Ellul said: We speak of a computer as a companion, but a computer is actually a vampire."
"What we do with our screens is what we do with our lives. We are never escaping relationship."
"[Insert Soul Here]"
Philip K. Dick's "disinformation"
Beck: "Don't believe everything you breathe."
Breaking it down: The Exorcism Part
Mob Spirit on January 6
"Sitting with anger until it becomes sadness." (Sarah Mason)
Exorcism as social therapy
Thoreau: "We all crave reality."
Buddhists surrendering a spirit of conflict or difference before parting
Karl Barth: If you don't have any solid difference with the person with whom you exchange the peace of Christ, the peace of Christ isn't there because the peace has to overcome some kind of difference."
Opinion, Posture, Position: None ever have to be confused with one's identity.
U2's "Staring at the Sun": "Armor-plated suits and ties"
"Sometimes when we skip straight to Christ, we skip over Jesus of Nazareth. I'm not saying we all do that whenever we say Christ, but w if I say Christ enough that I'm not thinking about the sermon on the Mount, that I'm not thinking of the red letter words, Christ can become a kind of personal ghost friend who excuses me from my bad behavior."
Divesting ourselves of the power we carry through the world
Claudia Rankin: whiteness as an investment in not-knowing
The centrality of listening
Ellul: "Propaganda is monologue and monologue ends when dialogue begins."
Breaking it down: The Soft Part
Civil Rights Movement is actually the Non-Violent Movement of America
"One human exchange at a time."
Mantra: "I wrestle not against flesh and blood." (Ephesians 6:12)
Rage Against the Machine
Advent/Christmas as the prototypical Robot Soft Exorcism
Bruce Coburn: "Redemption rips through the surface of time in the cry of a tiny babe."
"We're really going against the news cycle if we insist on the meaning of human history being in this manger scene. To be alive to it, to be citizens of a better future than what is being settled for by our robot overlords."

Production Notes

This podcast featured author and cultural critic David Dark
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Martin Chan, Nathan Jowers, Natalie Lam, 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

Christian Wiman / Finding Home Through Exiles' Eyes Nov 27, 2021

"To be a poet is to be an exile," says poet Christian Wiman. He echoes the most influential writer on his early life and work, Simone Weil, who wrote in her Gravity & Grace: "We must take the feeling of being at home into exile. We must be rooted in the absence of a place." Wiman spent most of the 2020 leg of the pandemic curating a story about home using 100 poems, seamed with prose from some of the wisest denizens of our species to narrate the tale. He joins Evan Rosa to read some of the poetry from the collection, talk about the connection between poetry and faith, and continue to examine the meaning of home through exiles' eyes.

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

Show Notes

Home: 100 Poems
Joseph Brodsky, exile from Russa
Defining "Home"
Mahmoud Darwish, "I Belong There"
"I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them, a single word: home."
Josef Pieper on tautology
Poetry as a way of inhabiting rather than defining
The epigraph from He Held Radical Light: "The world does not need to come from a god. For better or worse, the world is here. But it does need to go to one (where is he?). And that is why the poet exists." (Juan Ramon Jimenez)
Why does the poet exist?
"Existence is not existence until it's more than existence."
Jack Gilbert, "Singing in My Difficult Mountains"
"My fine house that love is."
"To be a poet is to be an exile."
Simone Weil: "We must be rooted in the absence of a place." (Gravity & Grace)
A traveling place
Modern humanity in exile, a secular notion
Weil, The Need for Roots
"I think all poets though, experience the feeling of displacement that comes with perception."
W.B. Yeats on Maude Young, "I might have thrown poor words away and attempted to live."
"Life is the thing. Words are always a kind of displacement."
Wendell Berry's Sabbath: "There is a day when the road neither comes nor goes, and the way is not a way, but a place."
Frantically nomadic
Restlessness and the pull toward security
Rooted in relationships
"In my 20s, Simone Weil was the most important writer in my life. ... But now in my fifties, I feel a little differently. I still love Simone Weil, but I appreciate very much the work that someone like Wendell Berry has done to secure an existence against all the odds, secure a kind of existence in one place, and make it out of language as well."
Vincent Van Gogh and Gaston Bachelard
Stabilizing and Destabilizing
Van Gogh: Life is round
Bachelard: Dwelling in images and words
Some real element of the past, brought into the present with metaphysical power: "I think there's some real element of the past of memory, that is made alive and volatile and even salvific, and it's not an image of youth. It is the actual thing being brought into the present."
He Held Radical Light: seeking, through poetry, "those moments of mysterious intrusion, that feeling of collusion with eternity, of life and language riled to the one wild charge.”
Poetry: the main way faith sustains Wiman
"All poets are Jews." (Maria Sativa)
"All poets are believers." (Christian Wiman)
Something in poetry itself to further existence
"If you do not believe in poetry, you cannot write it." (Wallace Stevens)
Glory to God for dappled things
The role of mystery in poetry and faith
Following the music of poetry in a physical, physiological, improvisational way
Wendell Berry on the Kingdom of God: "We contain that which contains us."
Home in painful division in Wendell Berry
Carson McCullers: Improvisation
Braithwaite, "Bass"
How is poetry in conversation with perplexity?
James Baldwin, "Sonny's Blues" (Christian Wiman's "favorite short story in the world")
"Dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing an order on it."
Deep consolation in poetry
Responding to the music of poetry
Read poetry out loud
Can you write good poetry without suffering much?
George MacKay Brown, "Old Fisherman with Guitar"
What is a life worth living? Creating and loving
The pursuit of God is wrapped up with creating art and being freed to love.
The impact of Christian Wiman's "Prayer"

About Christian Wiman

Poet Christian Wiman is Professor of the Practice of Religion and Literature at Yale Divinity School. He’s the author of several books of poetry, including Every Riven Thing, Hammer is the Prayer, and his most recent, Survival Is a Style. His memoirs include the bracing and beautiful My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer and He Held Radical Light: The Art of Faith, the Faith of Art. He edited an anthology of 100 poems on Joy a few years ago, and just released Home: 100 Poems this month.

Introduction (Evan Rosa)

"To be a poet is to be an exile," says Christian Wiman, a poet and Professor of the Practice of Religion and Literature at Yale Divinity School. Wiman knows this personally. When he was younger than now, he moved 40 times over a 15 year period. He would come early to work as Editor of Poetry Magazine to write his own, spilling line after line onto page from the driver seat of his car (he wrote my favorite poem of his that way he tells me). And the writer that defined him then was Simone Weil, who wrote in her Gravity and Grace, "We must take the feeling of being at home into exile. We must be rooted in the absence of a place."

And I wonder, if all poets are exiles, does that make us all poets? The generalized unease and anxiety that comes with being human often leaves us longing for a home. And each of us imagine a particular place, a perspective, a people, when we think of home. But it's always longing, isn't it. Especially in light of the fact that "we are home to each other"—that home is ultimately a relational reality built and maintained and indwelled with people—if that's true then no wonder we long for home all the more, because we long to be accepted, received, and loved all the more.

A recent theme of the podcast has been exile and migration. War correspondent Janine Di Giovanni offered perspective on the vanishing Christian population in the middle east; biblical scholar Francisco Lozada helped us view faith through the eyes of the immigrants hopeful sojourn. Today, that continues, even as we consider the very meaning of home by way of poetry.

Christian Wiman spent most of the 2020 leg of the pandemic curating a story about home using 100 poems, using with prose from some of the wisest denizens of our species to narrate the tale. The book came out this month, and you can listen to Miroslav Volf and Christian Wiman discuss the project on episode 36 of the podcast.

I asked Chris to come back on the show to read more of the poems he selected, talk about the connection between poetry and faith, and continue to examine the meaning of home through exiles' eyes. You might think that's exactly the wrong way to wonder about home. But Odysseus would tell you different as he fights his way back to Ithaca. Moses would tell you different as he leads the Jews through the wilderness. Jesus would tell you different as he goes to prepare a place for you.

And what other option do we have as wandering wonderers anyway—always longing for home, always praying for, in Christian Wiman's words, "those moments of mysterious intrusion, that feeling of collusion with eternity, of life and language riled to the one wild charge.”

Thanks for listening, and enjoy.

Production Notes

This podcast featured poet Christian Wiman
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Martin Chan, Nathan Jowers, Natalie Lam, 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

Sameer Yadav / Gratitude Is Not a Debt: Giving, Receiving, and Sharing Thanks Nov 20, 2021

Happy Thanksgiving! We often misunderstand gratitude as either a means to our subjective well-being or as an obligation of debt to a giver. So what is the emotion of gratitude? Sameer Yadav (Westmont College) joins Ryan McAnnally-Linz to reflect on a better way to understand gratitude than owing it, being in debt to another person, seeing gratitude only through the dry indifference of a receiver's economic indebtedness to a giver. Gratitude as indebtedness creates problems especially when thinking about gratitude to God, and the two consider instead on a conception of gratitude based in sacrament and creatureliness, mystical shared witness, the meetness and rightness of thanks and praise, and a joyful recognition of the gifts in our lives. This understanding of gratitude would have truly seismic consequences for how we see the world. Thank you cards would no longer feel obligatory, and gratitude lists wouldn't have to be hacked for my subjective well-being, it would simply follow from the glad, mutual sharing in the gift of life from God, and the presence of being what we are to each other.

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

Show Notes

"A debt of gratitude": Is it helpful for Christians to think about gratitude?
What do we owe to one another?
Obligations tied up with debts
Gratitude is historically tied up with political economy
Robert C. Roberts, Spiritual Emotions: A Psychology of Christian Virtues
Debts of gratitude as deeply problematic because of (1) the dynamics it presents for human relationships and (2) Christian understanding of the emotion
David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years
Debt, calculation, equivalence
Owing money vs owing favors
Forcibly severing us from our contexts: Abstraction from relationships and dependencies
"The Labor that Pays My Salary" (Isaac Villegas, The Christian Century)
Seneca on gratitude—internal attention on gift
Thomas Aquinas on gratitude
Immanuel Kant on gratitude: You can never do enough as recipient, since you're only ever a respondent; the giver always acts first
Aristotle on gratitude: Not a virtue for the magnanimous person, since you'd have to owe someone, and self-sufficiency is better than dependence—better to be a giver than receiver
The role of social hierarchy and the economic image of gratitude
Gratia vs Gratitudo
Modeling "gratitudo" on social superiority/inferiority
Gratitude as an "unfortunate necessity"
Apostle Paul: "For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?" (1 Corinthians 4:7)
Affirmation of dependence as essential to the human condition; staunch independence as sinful pride
"Why not just be happy with indebtedness?"
Inverting the values of debt obligation
Indebted to God
Argument by analogy: Aquinas's distinction between gratitudo and gratia: Everyone has equal indebtedness to God. A bad analogy when you do it on economic terms.
Jeremy David Engels, The Art of Gratitude
Christianity and the cancellation of debt
Christian mystical tradition—Howard Thurman and the divine sharing with creation
God's life extended in creatures
Rather than benefactor or beneficiary relationships, God is a transcendent, holy other ...
"We're a witness and channel for God's holy presence."
Gratitude as joyful recognition offered to God
Praise and Gratitude
Howard Thurman: Gratitude as a sacrament
Abraham Joshua Heschel: Gratitude as a window
Reflecting light back to its source
David Graeber: "What could possibly be more presumptuous, more ridiculous than to think it would be possible to negotiate with the grounds of one's existence? Of course it isn't. Insofar as it is indeed possible to come to any sort of relation with the absolute, we are confronting a principle that exists outside of time or human scale entirely, therefore as medieval theologians correctly recognize when dealing with the absolute, there can be no such thing as debt."
Debt as a category mistake
Jacob's Ladder: "You give me everything, and I'll give a tenth back to you."
"God isn't dealing with losses and gains here."
Transfiguration
Intrinsic relationality
Eucharistic prayer: "Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. / It is meet and right so to do."
Glad, mutual sharing in the gift of one another to one another
Intrinsically egalitarian dimension to sharing
Eugene McCarraher, The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity: "without faith in the sacramental nature of the world, we anchor ourselves in the illusionary and inevitably malevolent apparatus of domination."
Eucharist = "thanks"

Introduction (Evan Rosa)

This is the obligatory gratitude podcast for the week before Thanksgiving. Thank you. You're welcome. But in all seriousness: Here's to hoping that you're listening to this in the peace and rest and warmth of family and loving community.

But I have to be honest about something; I'm not very good at thank you notes. Don't get me wrong, I try my best to communicate verbally my gratitude for the people and gifts in my life, and I'm ever—often painfully aware of my dependence on others, my need for them, my profound linkage to them. But I feel pretty bad that when it comes to writing the note and formalizing the payment of my debt of gratitude, I falter.

Part of the problem, I gauge, besides the grossness of my narcissism, is that I feel so indebted, so obligated to do it, like my gratitude to you just doesn't count if I don't write the note, or that it's less about the giver and more about the card or the transaction. There's something wrong there.

But I'm equally tempted to err in another way: Ever since I learned from positive psychology that I could hack my own thankfulness for happiness, I tend to exploit gratitude just to feel better.

Our episode today will correct me on both counts, both for thinking of gratitude as something to be exploited for my personal well-being and for thinking of gratitude as an obligation.

Today on the show Sameer Yadav, a theologian at Westmont College, joins Ryan McAnnally-Linz to reflect on a better way to understand gratitude than owing it, being in debt to another person, seeing gratitude only through the dry indifference of a receiver's economic indebtedness to a giver. Gratitude as indebtedness creates problems especially when thinking about gratitude to God, and the two consider instead on a conception of gratitude based in sacrament and creatureliness, mystical shared witness, the meetness and rightness of thanks and praise, and a joyful recognition of the gifts in our lives.

This understanding of gratitude would have truly seismic consequences for how we see the world. Thank you cards would no longer feel obligatory, and gratitude lists wouldn't have to be hacked for my subjective well-being, it would simply follow from the glad, mutual sharing in the gift of life from God, and the presence of being what we are to each other.

And I would be remiss if I didn't take the opportunity to thank each of you, our listeners and subscribers, for joining us each weekend for these conversations. It's our joy to produce them for you, and I don't even feel obligated to say that. Not in the least. So I guess remiss was the wrong word there cuz that means faulting a duty. Aye! That's why we need this episode.

So, how about this: Thanks for sharing in the gift of making this podcast. Enjoy.

Production Notes

This podcast featured theologians Sameer Yadav and Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Martin Chan, Nathan Jowers, Natalie Lam, 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

Francisco Lozada / Theology of Immigration: Crossing Porous Borders, Welcoming Strangers, and the Faith of the Migrant Nov 13, 2021

What can the faith of the migrant teach us about a living theology? The resilience and communal outlook of immigrants offers a way of seeing human relationships—political, social, religious—as porous and permeable, meant to encounter God in the other, welcoming each other in love and hospitality. Francisco Lozada (Brite Divinity School) joins Evan Rosa to reflect on his experiences at U.S.-Mexico borderlands, leading travel seminars and teaching about immigration and justice from a theological framework—they discuss the influence of liberation theology's guiding principle of the preferential option for the poor, the centrality of history in understanding immigration, the problem of American xenophobia, and the racialization of U.S. immigration policy.

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

"Building bridges, not walls."

"God doesn't see borders. In my theological thinking, I don't imagine a God or theologize a God asking, "show me your papers." God's asking different questions: Did you feed me, did you give me something to drink, did you clothe me?

During this trip to Nogales, we came across a group of students and they were celebrating mass. We were walking right by them. We were on the U.S. side, they were on the Mexican side, and they asked, do we want to celebrate mass there? And what I see that moment is, that mass, that prayer was a form or expression of resistance, of pushing back there. There are no borders between us.

Prayer doesn't see borders. Faith doesn't see borders. That's the power religion. I think the power of theology, the power of prayer, is that it works—not always, but in its true sense—it works to build bridges, not walls." (Francisco Lozada, from the interview)

Introduction (Evan Rosa)

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

"The New Colossus" Emma Lazarus, 1883

The generous spirit, the welcome for the wandering, taking in the homeless stranger, the refugee—these words that inscribe the Statue of Liberty offer a hopeful image of an America with open arms, a beacon of hospitality and safety in a dangerous world. How do we square this symbol of welcoming freedom with the reality of immigration policy today? Detention centers crowded with young children separated from their families, exploitation of undocumented migrants for agricultural labor, billions of dollars spent on "the wall," the false nativism of fair-skinned European-American immigrants.

Alongside the ideals of The New Colossus embracing the "tired, poor, huddled masses," a history of racial purity, exclusion, xenophobia, and fear can be seen in immigration policy, from the Chinese Exclusion Act just four years before the dedication of Lady Liberty, to the discriminatory immigration quotas of the Johnson-Reed Act in 1924, all the way up to the Muslim Travel Ban of 2017.

In the spring of 2018, approximately 5,500 children were separated from their families by Trump's zero tolerance policy. 1,700 children still live in detention centers, 3 years later.

But how does this balance with the rights of a nation to enforce and manage its political borders? How should those borders be enforced justly? How should we prioritize national security and cultural integrity with the call to welcome the tempest-tost stranger through our "golden doors"?

Well, beyond the dizzying political and moral questions that we have with us always, Francisco Lozada is thinking theologically about immigration and the migrant experience. He is the Charles Fischer Catholic Professor of New Testament and Latinx Studies at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, Texas.

Lozada draws on his experiences at U.S.-Mexico borderlands, leading travel seminars and teaching about immigration and justice from a theological framework. In this episode we discuss the influence of liberation theology's guiding principle of the preferential option for the poor, the centrality of history in understanding immigration, the problem of American xenophobia, the racialization of U.S. immigration policy, and the ways Jesus, himself a migrant and refugee, crosses borders and boundaries throughout the Gospel narrative.

Thanks for listening.

About

Francisco Lozada, Jr. is the Charles Fischer Catholic Professor of New Testament and Latinx Studies at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, Texas. He holds a doctorate in New Testament and Early Christianity from Vanderbilt University. He is a past co-chair of the Johannine Literature Section (SBL), past chair of the Program Committee of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), and a past member of SBL Council. He is a past president of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States, a past steering committee member of the Bible, Indigenous Group of the American Academy of Religion (AAR), and past co-chair of the Latino/a and Latin American Biblical Interpretation Consultation (SBL). He also serves on the board of directors for the Hispanic Summer Program, and mentored several doctoral students with the Hispanic Theological Initiative (HTI). Dr. Lozada’s most recent publications concern cultural and ideological interpretation while exploring how the Bible is employed and deployed in ethnic/racial communities. As a teacher, he co-led immersion travel seminars to Guatemala to explore colonial/postcolonial issues and, most recently, to El Paso, TX, and Nogales, AZ, to study life and society in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Click here to check out his personal website.

Show Notes

Introduction (Evan Rosa)
"The New Colossus," Emma Lazarus, 1883 (see above)
Relationality, borderlands, and solidarity
Life shared together
What does solidarity mean in the context of immigration?
Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Jon Sobrino, SJ
"How do you bring us churches in solidarity with the plight of the poor in Latin America?"
The guiding principles of liberation theology and their influence on immigration theology
Preferential option for the poor
Jesus as someone with us
Resilience and the migrant's journey
Reframing the narrative of why migration occurs.
Common misconceptions (narratives) about why people migrate
"How you understand migration will influence how you respond to immigration."
Nationalism, nativism, and scarce resources
Responsibility comes from our relatedness and living off the benefits of oppressive history
"Immigration is historical. You can't construct an immigration response that's ahistorical."
Oscar Martinez, Troublesome Border
"The border is not fixed."
Jesus crossing borders in the Gospel of John
Relationships that break through borders
Samaritan woman
Centurion
Are borders meant to be crossed?
Why migrants cross, how migrants cross, and how borders are maintained.
The narrative is the encounter itself.
Xenophobia
A reckoning with our complicity with the construction of whiteness
Nationality Act of 1790
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882
Johnson-Reed Act of 1924
Hart-Celler Immigration Act of 1965
Whiteness and the history of U.S. Immigration Policy
"The New Colossus" (Inscription on the Statue of Liberty): "Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
How do we interpret human mobility?
How do we understand our past?
"It can't begin out of an abstract reality, it has to begin with a lived reality. That's liberation."
The faith of the migrant
Resilience

Production Notes

This podcast featured biblical scholar Francisco Lozada
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Martin Chan, Nathan Jowers, Natalie Lam, 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

Janine Di Giovanni / The Vanishing: War Correspondence, Humanitarian Journalism, and the Twilight of Christianity in the Middle East Nov 06, 2021

Can Christianity survive in the Middle East? Ancient communities of Christian faithful are currently being decimated not just by religious violence, persecution, and war—but the economic factors that motivate emigration and refuge. Janine Di Giovanni is an award-winning journalist and war correspondent, and is Senior Fellow at Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. She joins Evan Rosa to discuss her journalistic style and approach to human rights reporting, the alarming decimation of the Christian population in the Middle East, the difference between survival and flourishing, and what it means to adapt to being an outsider. Her latest book is The Vanishing: Faith, Loss, & the Twilight of Christianity in the Land of the Prophets.

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

From the Introduction (Evan Rosa):

There are many ways to be a journalist in our noisy digital commons. And likely, there's a place for them all, but everyone—whether writer or reader—needs to ask: What is a journalist for? Presenting the truth, spreading knowledge, yes. But reporting for mere awareness pushes the question all the more for us news junkies, hooked on headlines replete with bad news.

My guest today sees journalism as an endeavor of human empathy—recording the truth not from embassies or palaces or political centers, but from the leaky tents of refugee camps; telling stories not of the powerful politicians and generals executing a war, but the widows and orphans caught up in the chaos; publishing news and correspondence not to feed the insatiable news gluttony of American media, but to give voice to the voiceless.

Show Notes

The Vanishing: Faith, Loss, & the Twilight of Christianity in the Land of the Prophets
How Janine Di Giovanni became a "human rights reporter"
Palestinian occupation and intifada
Bosnian War
War is not about religion or tribe, but power
Embedded within a community
Giving voice
Expressing agency
The Vanishing: Documenting Christian communities before they disappear
Di Giovanni's personal faith and commitment to neighbor love
Coats on the Bowery
Journalistic style: bringing the reader close
"If you have the ability to go to these places and bring the story to other people, then you have the obligation."
Confusion, frustration, fear
War makes life change in an instant
Perspective-taking, empathy, and compassion
"Celebrating the fact that we still exist."
Christian persecution around the world
The purpose of The Vanishing: to honor the people who have decided to stay, even amidst persecution
Pope Francis's trip to Iraq during covid, for solidarity
"Emigration is our enemy."
Good refugees vs bad refugees
Chaldean Christian Iraqis chanting in Aramaic
Faith rooted in the land
Adapting to being an outsider vs adapting to being an insider
Egyptian Coptic Christians
Courage to be a stranger in a strange land
What is a life worth living?

Production Notes

This podcast featured journalist and war correspondent Janine Di Giovanni
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Martin Chan, Nathan Jowers, Natalie Lam, 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

Will Willimon / Gospel Oddity: The Purpose of Pastors and the Problem with Self-Care Oct 30, 2021

As the political world casts a leery eye on Christians—especially as the meaning of "Evangelical" changes—the focus on the meaning and purpose of the pastor is especially relevant. Amidst our consumeristic, narcissistic culture, what does it mean to pursue self-care? How does caring for oneself square with caring about what Jesus cares about? (Even and especially when Jesus cares about you?) Upholding the call of the pastor to take on the cares of Christ, Will Willimon (Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry at Duke Divinity School) suggests we've developed a disordered approach to self-care, proving the triumph of the therapeutic and mimicking our consumeristic world rather than embodying the oddity of the Christian Gospel. Interview by Evan Rosa.

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

Introduction (Evan Rosa)

What is the purpose of a pastor? To teach you how to think (or vote)? To reassure you that you're safe? To heal your wounds? The goal of pastoral ministry is surely in question right now. Everything from the toxic masculinity of the bully pulpit, to the pastor as political pollster, to the staggering need to be cool of hipster celebrity pastor—there's lots of ways to go wrong in pastoral ministry, and a razors edge of getting it right. It's a demanding job. Perhaps its so demanding because the primary call of the pastor is to take up the cares of Christ, speaking the truth when the truth hurts, listening from both sides of the conversation between God and the Church, comforting the grieving when there's plenty in your own life to grieve, standing with the marginalized and oppressed when its the unpopular, difficult thing.

That is to say: it's a dangerous world, the world of pastoral ministry. But as my guest on the show today suggests, this danger ought to be faced with courage and eyes wide to the cares of Christ.

Will Willimon is Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry at Duke Divinity School and author of over 100 books, including Worship as Pastoral Care, Accidental Preacher, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (with Stanley Hauerwas), and his most recent, God Turned Toward Us: The ABCs of the Christian Faith. He's been a pastor in the United Methodist Church for a long time, including an 8 year stint as a Bishop.

Will Willimon is concerned about the direction the church is headed and is asking uncomfortable but necessary questions. Amidst our culture of consumerism, narcissism, where the vision of flourishing reaches no higher than getting whatever it is you want most, how does caring for oneself square with caring about what Jesus cares about? (Even and especially when Jesus cares about you?) Upholding the call of the pastor to take on the cares of Christ, Will Willimon suggests we've developed a disordered approach to self-care, proving the triumph of the therapeutic and mimicking our consumeristic world rather than embodying the oddity of the Christian Gospel.

About Will Willimon

Show Notes

How Will Willimon became a pastor and educator in pastoral ministry
What is the purpose of pastoral ministry?
Equipping
Mutuality of care in Christian community
The sermon as conversation between the preacher, the congregation, and God
Preaching as "double listening"
Helping and caring, overemphasizing the role of help and care in pastoral ministry
Will Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas recent article: "The dangers of providing pastoral care"
The triumph of the therapeutic in pastoral ministry
"... how tough it is in a kind of therapeutic culture to do pastoral care, because our care keeps getting captured by certain secular, therapeutic mindsets."
"Jesus healed, but had an odd, ambiguous relationship to his healing."
"Our care is offered in tension."
Wading into people's pain is dangerous territory.
Christ as "wounded healer"
Flourishing as opposed to curing or healing
"Jesus loves to take sick, hurting people in pain and give them a job to do—that is be a Christian disciple."
Is ministry a therapy for me?
Triumph of the therapeutic
Consumerism, possession, and life without limits
Willie Jennings's After Whiteness
T.S. Eliot: "Why should people love the church?"
Christian humility
The oddness of the Christian Gospel
Jesus on marriage
"Jesus has a different idea of what it means to be a human being."
The modern myth of the role-less self
The role of the community in supporting the individual
"I wonder what God is doing with your pain right now."
"Is the corporate practice of Christianity optional?"
Hauerwas: "How do you minister to people in a pandemic who think that death is optional or think that death is an injustice God has worked on them?"
Muddling through
Embedded in community
To whom are we responsible?
How to become a community worthy of the name of "community in Christ"?
"Maybe in God's hands, the present moment is not a call for lament and despair, but a call for: 'Wow. Let roll with Christ.'"

Production Notes

This podcast featured pastor and educator Will Willimon
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Martin Chan, Nathan Jowers, Natalie Lam, 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

Julian Reid / Musical Spiritual Hotel: Rest, Hospitality, and Sacred Music Oct 23, 2021

Julian Reid explores the way music and scripture can come together to create a sacred space. Extending metaphors of music as architecture and dwelling and spiritual experience as a river, the jazz pianist, producer, writer, and performer explains a recent project of his, "Notes of Rest," combining African-American spirituals with classical hymns for an experience of spiritual hospitality, gratitude, and proclamation of the Gospel into the full spectrum of human experience, in all its pain, frustration, frenzy, stillness, and joy. Throughout the conversation you'll hear Julian play along to accompany his points; he also graciously provided beautiful meditative interludes, much like the kind you'd experience in one of his "Notes of Rest" sessions. Interview by Matt Croasmun.

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

Show Notes

Click here to learn more about Julian Reid's "Notes of Rest"
Introduction: Evan Rosa
"God has given us music so that above all it can lead us upwards. Music unites all qualities: it can exalt us, divert us, cheer us up, or break the hardest of hearts with the softest of its melancholy tones. But its principal task is to lead our thoughts to higher things, to elevate, even to make us tremble… The musical art often speaks in sounds more penetrating than the words of poetry, and takes hold of the most hidden crevices of the heart… Song elevates our being and leads us to the good and the true. If, however, music serves only as a diversion or as a kind of vain ostentation it is sinful and harmful." (Friedrich Nietzsche at 14 years old; see Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography by Julian Young; h/t Brain Pickings)
Bringing together music and scripture
Engendering wonder and trust as a seedbed for a life of faith
Creating space, the architecture that music creates
Weekly liturgical practices
The ends and uses of music in sacred spaces
Living in a tent, motel—a musical spiritual hotel
Scripture is like a cathedral or museum.
Performance: "Thank You, Lord"
Gratitude—the way we enter into hospitality, "what it means to be hosted by God"
Hotel art—the artwork invites and calms rather than jarring and provoking
Curiosity vs calmness
Invoking a different kind of response
Sanitizing the Psalms
Performance: "Give Me Jesus"
Speaking to different registers
Aimed at an encounter with the living God
Grace
Proclamation: music and preaching
Taking risks over the pulpit
Karl Barth: "God tempts the church through God's absence."
Kerygma: "proclamation"
Performance: "Lord, Hear My Prayer" (Taize)
Word and Water
The metaphor of water utilized in "Notes of Rest"
Black musical idioms
Finding the use of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM)
Balm in Gilead
The Hymns of Isaac Watts, colonizing, historical context
Combining musical genealogies
Braxton Shelly's Healing for the Soul
Imaginative fuel from the mystics
Cistercian monastics: worshipping in silence and solitude; "a long-standing faith"
Performance: "Lord, Hear My Prayer / Give Me Jesus" (Medley)

Introduction (Evan Rosa)

One of the most gripping and influential philosophers of the last 200 years once wrote:

"God has given us music so that above all it can lead us upwards. Music unites all qualities: it can exalt us, divert us, cheer us up, or break the hardest of hearts with the softest of its melancholy tones. But its principal task is to lead our thoughts to higher things, to elevate, even to make us tremble… The musical art often speaks in sounds more penetrating than the words of poetry, and takes hold of the most hidden crevices of the heart… Song elevates our being and leads us to the good and the true. If, however, music serves only as a diversion or as a kind of vain ostentation it is sinful and harmful."

That Friedrich Nietzsche, written when he was 14 years old.

There is plenty of "vain ostentation" in popular music today, and certainly not excluding the music played in church.

But the unitive depth and invitation into transcendence that music offers us of course pairs beautifully with scripture. And whatever else might have changed in Nietzsche's thinking, even at the end of his life in Twilight of the Idols, he suggested that "Without music life would be a mistake. The German imagines even God as a songster." And I say: Well, not just the German, but the human.

In today's episode, Matt Croasmun welcomes Julian Reid, jazz pianist and producer, writer, and performer (not to mention Yale and Emory educated). You can hear his hip-hop infused jazz project The JuJu Exchange on episode 26 of For the Life of the World, when Julian joined us to talk about How Jazz Teaches us Faith and Justice. Today, Matt and Julian explore the way music and scripture can come together to create a sacred space. Extending metaphors of music as architecture and dwelling and spiritual experience as a river, Julian explains a recent project of his, "Notes of Rest," combining African-American spirituals with classical hymns for an experience of spiritual hospitality, gratitude, and proclamation of the Gospel into the full spectrum of human experience, in all its pain, frustration, frenzy, stillness, and joy.

Throughout the conversation you'll hear Julian play along to accompany his points; he also graciously provided beautiful meditative interludes, much like the kind you'd experience in one of his "Notes of Rest" sessions.

Thanks for listening.

About Julian Reid

Julian Reid is a Chicago-based jazz pianist and producer, writer, and performer (B.A. Yale University / 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. Julian's latest project is "Notes of Rest"—a spiritual mini-retreat that places meditations from the Bible on a bed of music, cultivating rest, contemplation, and creativity in all who will hear Jesus’ call.

Production Notes

This podcast featured musician Julian Reid and biblical scholar Matt Croasmun
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Martin Chan, Nathan Jowers, Natalie Lam, 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

Alysia Harris / Attention, Wonder, Permeability, & the Space Between Activity & Passivity Oct 16, 2021

Over-worked or over-entertained? Our humanity gives us the joint gifts of both activity and passivity. We act and we are acted upon. But how do we balance and mediate these states? How do we cultivate long practices and habits that help us to inhabit the space between activity and passivity, bringing them together in a beautiful agency?

Poet and linguist Alysia Harris joins Matt Croasmun for a discussion of that space between active and passive in human life—bringing the concepts of wonder, awareness/attention, patient receptivity to the natural world and to God, bearing witness to the autonomy and action of the other, and how she cultivates and meditates on these things in her own life.

Show Notes

Norman Wirzba, This Sacred Life: Humanity's Place in a Wounded World
Active life vs passive life
Intermediate category between activity and passivity: attentive awareness
Active receptivity and bearing witness
Human beings enacting and reacting
Witness as perception and response
Carl Sagan, Robin Kimmerer, Timothy Wilburn
Wonder as a mediating emotion between active and passive
"I'm not the entire system."
Granting autonomy to a natural system
Making the right impact through granting the sovereignty of the other
Adam and Eve as gardeners—beauty vs productivity
Genesis: "Avad and Shamar"—Till and Keep, Serve and Protect
Restrain, observe, attend, and magnify
"Me and God"
Capitalism, scarcity mentality, and "enough"
Ping-ponging between over-worked and over-entertainment—deficient visions of activity and deficient visions of passivity
Mark 4: Parable of the Sower. Scattering Seeds
Dynamic reciprocity and intentional permeability
The patience an orchid demands
"Ideas have no use unless they have something to do with our lives."
Practices and rituals to inhabit the space between active and passive
Writing habits—"faithful stewardship with less brings faithful stewardship with more"
Dance as an embodied balance with intellectual work
Intercessory prayer and producing opportunities
Working out of hope instead of striving
Running, walking, granting the natural world autonomy

About Alysia Harris

Follow Alysia Harris @Poppyinthewheat

Alysia Nicole Harris was born in Fremont, California but grew up in Alexandria, VA and considers herself on all accounts a member of the ranks of great Southern women. At age 10 she wrote her first poem, after hearing about sonnets in English class. That class began her life-long love of poetry and the literary arts.

Alysia went to The University of Pennsylvania where she experienced her first success as a writer and a performer. In 2008 she featured on the HBO documentary: Brave New Voices where she wowed audiences with her piece "That Girl". In 2010 Alysia graduated UPENN Summa Cum Laude with honors and was also inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.

Alysia received her MFA in poetry from NYU in 2014 and her PhD in linguistics from Yale University in 2019. Her dissertation “The Non-Aspectual Meaning of African-American English ‘Aspect’ Markers” breaks with traditional analyses and explores the discourse-oriented uses of the preverbal particles ‘be’ and ‘done’ in varieties of African-American English.

Although she has experienced scholastic success, poetry has always come first in her heart. Cave Canem fellow, winner of the 2014 and 2015 Stephen Dunn Poetry Prizes, Pushcart Nominee, her poetry has appeared in Best American Poets, Indiana Review, The Offing, Callaloo, Solstice Literary Magazine, Squaw Valley Review, Letters Journal, and Vinyl Magazine among others. Her first chapbook How Much We Must Have Looked Like Stars to Stars won the 2015 New Women's Voices Chapbook Contest and is available for purchase on site.

Alysia was also a founding member of the internationally known performance poetry collective, The Strivers Row and has garnered over 5 million views on YouTUBE. She has toured nationally for the last 10 years and also performed at the United Nations and the US Embassies in Jordan and Ukraine, as well as in Australia, Canada, Germany, Slovakia, South Africa, the UAE, and the UK.

Alysia now lives in Atlanta, GA where she works as a consultant for the Morehouse Center for Excellence in Education and as arts and soul editor at Scalawag Magazine, a nonprofit POC-led, women run media organization focused on Southern movement, community, and dissent. She is working on a book of poems and a collection of essays about the intersections of faith, violence, and the natural world.

Production Notes

This podcast featured poet Alysia Harris and biblical scholar Matt Croasmun
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

Charles Taylor & Miroslav Volf / Finding a Shared Moral Understanding: Progress, Evil, Freedom, and Solidarity (Part 2) Oct 09, 2021

This is Part 2 of 2—don't miss the previous conversation with Charles Taylor on "What's Going Wrong with Our Democracies?"

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

Part 2 of 2: Philosopher Charles Taylor joins Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz for a two-part conversation about what's gone wrong with our democracies and finding common moral understanding. In this episode, Charles Taylor explains his most recent thinking about the growth of common ethical understanding in a world that often fails to live up to those shared moral principles of respect, dignity, and care. The conversation also covers the promise of hope in its political and theological context; the response we need for the epistemological crisis of post-truth politics; how to restore trust in each other; the relation between individual freedom and public common good; the need to recover solidarity and sacred encounter between humans during our time; and finally the promise of democracy for living up to our moral ideals.

Introduction: Ryan McAnnally-Linz

We’re living at the end of a strange moral century. 100 years ago, the world was marked by a global pandemic, the end of a long war, fights over gender inequality and racial injustice, and the precipice of a broken economy. And people in 1921 simply had no idea what kind of violence, bloodshed, and upheaval was coming.

And yet, even over the course of a century filled with all-too-human evil, we can trace a faint golden thread of moral invention. Commitments to human dignity, universal human rights, suffrage and democracy, solidarity with the marginalized and suffering, equality—the spread of these ideas also mark the last 100 years. The disparity is stark. At another moment of conflict and uncertainty, the fate of that golden thread is unclear.

This is part 2 of our conversation with philosopher Charles Taylor. Author of Sources of the Self, The Ethics of Authenticity, A Secular Age, and much more, Taylor exemplifies determined, imaginative, generous intellectual commitment to a fundamental question: What is humanity for? This is one of the foundational questions of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture and this podcast—seeking and living a life worthy of our humanity. Following Taylor, we want to help people to better understand themselves, their world, and the significance of their lives.

Show Notes

Introduction: Ryan McAnnally-Linz
A strange moral century
Hope
How have we got as far as we've got?
The progress of ethical understanding through history
Disparity with human propensity for evil
Non-violent resistance
How non-violence shapes Miroslav Volf's approach to democracy
Miroslav's first democratic act of protest in Czechoslovakia
"Fear not" as a command; hope as an obligation
The hope that permeates Charles Taylor's work
How do you cultivate a sense of hopefulness?
The quest for moral certainty and purity
Listener question from Bonnie Kristian: "How to achieve ethical growth/gain moral knowledge in a time of epistemic crisis?"
Listener question from Jennifer Herdt: "You have written in such illuminating ways about the quest for certainty and moral purity, and about how these often end up rationalizing violence in service of the eradication of error and evil. I'm wondering how you would you relate your analysis to our contemporary post-truth historical moment, in which various groups that perceive themselves as under attack seek epistemic closure, sealing themselves off from an enemy regarded as absolutely unworthy of engagement--even at the cost of massive loss of life, as we see in politically-motivated anti-masking and anti-vaccination campaigns. What sources of hope would you name for restoring basic forms of social trust and commitment to pursuit of a common life?"
Tribalism that overtakes the sacred encounter between human beings
How the COVID pandemic has made things harder for tribalism
Democracy, freedom, choice, and the public good
Listener question from David Moe: It might be good to ask him these: "what kind of democracy the religiously pluralistic world needs today? How does religion shape the moral principle of that democracy?
What makes democracy a worthwhile pursuit for the human community?
The polis allows agents together to determine their common life by reason.
Pope Francis's Encyclicals: Solidarity, collaboration, and universal human dignity in Laudato Si, and Fratelli Tutti
"A cross-confessional ecumenical discussion about what the telos of human life is about."

Production Notes

This podcast featured philosopher Charles Taylor, theologian Miroslav Volf, and theologian Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

Charles Taylor & Miroslav Volf / What's Wrong with Our Democracies?: Fear of Replacement, Post-Truth, and Entrenched Tribal Factions (Part 1) Oct 02, 2021

Philosopher Charles Taylor joins Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz for a two-part conversation about what's gone wrong with our democracies and finding common moral understanding. They discuss Christian nationalism, authoritarian government, the future viability of Christian faith and practice, the chaos of the post-truth epistemic crisis that’s rampant in political dialogue today, the role of social media in that crisis, and Taylor's most recent thinking about the growth of common ethical understanding in a world that often fails to live up to those shared moral principles of respect, dignity, and care.

(Part 1 of a 2-part series)

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

Introduction: Ryan McAnnally-Linz

The human world today is not the same as it was three hundred years ago. Far from it. Technology, economics, politics, art, culture—all have seen transformations, even revolutions, around the globe. Thirty years ago, a triumphalist narrative of these changes was in vogue: “modernity,” it was said, had solved humanity’s perennial problems, broken through our narrow-minded ethical traditions, and set us towards a future of comfort and perpetual peace after, in Francis Fukuyama’s phrase, “the end of history.” Even three years ago, we thought the world was different. I mean, I did.

No wonder so many of us are trying to understand the revolutions and mechanics of human society. If you’re paying attention, you’re driven to understand. And so columnists and talking heads—academics and public intellectuals—not to mention your radicalized high school friend on Facebook—we all have these theories about ideal human society and culture, and, like how the hell we wound up here. Unfortunately, our desire to know and understand often exceeds our abilities to perceive and explain.

Charles Taylor is our guest for the next two episodes of For the Life of the World. He sees human life and action not as something to be explained, but to be elucidated, lived with, and made sense of. Over 7 decades, he's produced an astonishing and magisterial body of work, spanning social theory, religion, epistemology, history, politics, the self, aesthetics, science, technology, and more.

But you might be surprised to know that 30 years ago he described himself as a "monomaniac"—he meant that his ultimate concern is really singular: human life. The one issue that motivates his entire body of work is "philosophical anthropology." But answering the questions of what human persons are and what it means to live a life worthy of that humanity, he says, requires thinking along the borders and intersections of the massive diversity of human society and culture.

He has a long history of political engagement as well. As an undergraduate at Oxford in 1955, he launched one of the first campaigns to ban nuclear weapons. During the '60s he ran several times for Canadian parliament as a major-party candidate, but fell short by a small margin each time. The result for us, of course, is gratitude for the incredible body of work that came in the wake of his attempts to gain office, including Sources of the Self, The Ethics of Authenticity, A Secular Age, The Language Animal—all the way up to his 2020 book, Reconstructing Democracy: How Citizens Are Building from the Ground Up.

Taylor graciously joined Miroslav and me this summer for a long conversation about what's gone wrong with our democracies and finding common moral understanding. We cover a lot of ground, discussing Christian nationalism, authoritarian government, the future viability of Christian faith and practice, the chaos of the post-truth epistemic crisis that’s rampant in political dialogue today, the role of social media in that crisis, and Taylor’s most recent thinking about the growth of common ethical understanding in a world that often fails to live up to those shared moral principles of respect, dignity, and care.

We'll run this conversation in two parts, this week and next. Special thanks goes to many of you listeners and friends who responded with thoughtful and important questions. Those questions helped to frame this conversation. Thanks for listening.

Show Notes

Introduction: Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Charles Taylor's history of political engagement and his interest in philosophy
What role did Vatican II, especially on freedom of religion, play on Taylor's politics?
Catholic intellectuals: French philosopher and theologian Emmanuel Mounier and French priest Henri de Lubac
Integralism and Dominionism
From Constantine on, we've lived with Christendom
Christendom is a "straight jacket for spiritual growth of the Christian faith."
What is the telos of history?
The Pope Francis approach: "Stop worrying about defending what's there and you reach out and just be a Christian."
Democracy isn't functioning the way it should be.
Voting for Trump: "It'd be laughable if it weren't cryable."
"If Trump pulled off his coup d'etat, that would be so catastrophic for the Western democratic world."
Democracies worldwide aren't in good shape: in what respects and what's underlying that?
Are we seeing the erosion of (1) common sense of identity and (2) universal principles of democracy?
"Even common human nature is being called into question."
"Democracy is no longer perceived as a moral ideal, but is simply a tool of governance."
"The fear of White replacement": The problem with political alignment that resists White minoritization.
"The fear of being replaced is very profound."
Question from Peng Yin (Emory University): "In A Secular Age, you described a rather uplifting modern social imaginary. Society is a realm of mutual benefits where our purposes mesh. In the present moment, however, society is increasingly seen in conflictual terms, as no more than a theatre of competing interests. Has that social imaginary you captured more than a decade ago vanished in our current crises of democracy? If so, do you see any prospect for its recovery?"
Question from listener Lynette Roth: "In a polarized world, where the divisions are falling along religious lines (and the religions are black-and-white, take no prisoners), how is democracy (where every voice counts) possible? How can democracy and religious conservatives live together?"
Entrenched in political tribal factions.
"Fear that we're going to disappear—that our version of Christianity is going to leave the earth."
Second only to "Follow me" in the scriptures is the phrase: "Be not afraid."
"This is not the end of the story."
Hope for the future: "The evangelical virtue that we need."

Production Notes

This podcast featured philosopher Charles Taylor, theologian Miroslav Volf, and theologian Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

David Brooks & Miroslav Volf / The Road to Character Sep 25, 2021

The world today seem to prefer politics to morality, a personal brand to inner character, resume virtues that achieve success over eulogy virtues that reveal who you truly are... and it like this from the news to Instagram, at PTA meetings and little league fields, from the grocery store line to the protest front lines. David Brooks thinks we need to find our way back on the road to character.

Today, New York Times columnist David Brooks joins Miroslav Volf for a conversation about his 2015 book The Road to Character. Together, they reflect on the central virtues in a life of flourishing that leads to joy, the importance of reintroducing the concept of sin back into public conversation, and the challenge of finding the resolve to pursue the commitments to vocation, faith, community, and family in a culture that tempts us toward individualism and idolatry of the self.

This is part 2 of a 2-part conversation on Flourishing, Character, and the Good Life. Check out Part 1 , featuring David Brooks interviewing Miroslav Volf about his 2016 book, Flourishing: Why We Need Religion in a Globalized World.

Show Notes

Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik: Adam 1 vs Adam 2
Resume Virtues vs Eulogy Virtues
The power of a good mom for developing character
Christian Smith and the dearth of moral dilemmas in young people, reducing everything to emotivism and individualism
Sin vs "insensitive"
"How do you introduce sin into the secular conversation?"
Brooks sense of vocation: Shifting the conversation out of politics and into morality.
Tim Keller: don't talk about depravity, talk about disordered loves.
Character development requires awareness of sinfulness, correcting where we've gone wrong.
Managing the "Big Me"
How to motivate humility
Humility: Not thinking lowly of oneself, but seeing yourself accurately.
Humanity as crooked tinder: Confront your broken nature.
Flourishing is a commitment to four things: vocation, faith/philosophy, community, spouse/family
"The tree is my only friend. ... The tree talks to me and says, 'I am life, I am life, I am eternal life.'"
Biblical imagination of the world to come: Lion with lamb; everyone sitting under their own fig tree; entering into joy.
A "deeply embedded" life
"Every day in government sucks, but the whole experience is tremendously rewarding."
Flourishing and suffering, enlarging capacity for empathy
Love to enlarge our hearts
Moments where it comes together in joy
The gratuity and deficit that comes with joy
The way David Brooks writes his column: piles of papers and notes, crawling around on the floor
Joy as advent and anticipation
Market economy, competition, self-projection as a brand, selling oneself
The rise of fame in recent years: By 2 to 1, college students prefer a life of fame to a life of sex
"You need a counter-culture within yourself."
Tough interview question about character: "Name a time you told the truth and it hurt you."
"There is a vacuum for people to think and talk about their own internal lives."
People are hungry and thirsty for a discussion of character and flourishing amidst their default lives of success and individualism.
Practices and habits to form character
Experiencing great love that fuses one with another
Overcoming challenges and suffering
Deep involvement in an act of service
"Do the reading."
Latch on to a tradition, rather than build your own system.
The role of education in being drawn toward beauty and moments of transcendence

Production Notes

This podcast featured David Brooks and Miroslav Volf
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

David Brooks & Miroslav Volf / What Is Human Flourishing? Sep 18, 2021

What is the shape of a flourishing human life? Once upon a time this question came pre-answered—by culture or tribe, by religion or philosophy, by tradition or way of life—but these days, given our increasingly individualized world and its emphasis on autonomy and self-expression, given the breakdown of social trust and the increasing degree of polarization and suspicion of the other: we each have to ask and answer these questions for ourselves: What is the good life?

What does it mean to live a flourishing life, and how can we actually do it? These are difficult questions on their own. They require intellectual muscles we've long let atrophy; they require reading deeply and at length; they require a willingness to listen across the chasm of disagreement. But one begins to wonder: if each of us must answer these questions for ourselves, how do we even begin to have this conversation together? The fact is, we need one another. Not just to answer them well. But to ask them well.

For the coming two weeks, we'll be airing a conversation between New York Times columnist David Brooks and theologian Miroslav Volf. In this first part of the dialogue, David interviews Miroslav about his 2016 book, Flourishing: Why We Need Religion in a Globalized World. In next week's follow up, Miroslav and David discuss his 2015 book The Road to Character.

Show Notes

Life going well, life led well, life feeling right
"Flourishing extends over long periods of time."
"Does flourishing involve some eternal standard?"
How can we engage in meaningful debate about religion and flourishing in a globalized world?
Reading Nietzsche devotionally as a Christian theologian
The world is becoming, for ill or for good, a more religious place
What does religion offer the individual person today?
"I don't see any reason why washing the feet of the destitute... why that wouldn't be an even more noble calling than working for Goldman Sachs."
Market economy and flourishing
"Religious traditions take us out of ourselves, into something transcendent."
Can you be good without God?
"You can be good without believing in God, but you can't be without God."
If you have no connection to the transcendent realm, do you have a chance at being good?
Secularization
The state of the world: Globalization and religion are in crisis, tearing human communities and nations and cultures apart.
Global capitalism letting down our hopeful expectations, because it's not delivering on the creation or distribution of wealth
Sin and grace in public debate—"Why did the secular sermons go away?"
Life Worth Living course at Yale College
The unbearable lightness of being
Two nihilisms
Is it possible to combine the pleasure of freedom and belief in God?
Joy in and joy of the world: taking pleasure in the created order
The sacraments of relationships and admiring the good of the world
Pluralism and contending particular universalisms

Production Notes

This podcast featured journalist and columnist David Brooks and theologian Miroslav Volf
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

Miroslav Volf on 9/11 / A Grave in the Air: The Lasting Impact of 9/11 on Faith & Culture Sep 11, 2021

As the first plane was crashing into the World Trade Center, Miroslav Volf was giving an address at the UN headquarters along the East River in Manhattan, just blocks away from Ground Zero. As the first plane shook the first tower and smoke rose into the sky, Miroslav was quoting Romanian poet Paul Celan. Specifically, his poem "Death Fugue"—which paints a dark picture of human suffering during the Holocaust and the living death that was the concentration camps. "We shovel a grave in the air."

Miroslav went on to outline the features of reconciliation as embrace. "Embrace," he said that morning, "is the horizon of the struggle for justice. You will have justice only if you strive for something greater than justice, only if you strive after love."

In this episode, Miroslav talks about his experience on 9/11 with Evan Rosa, including short clips from his UN remarks 20 years ago. They consider the lasting impact of 9/11 on both American and global life, and how the event and its continuing aftermath have shaped the world.

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
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

Ryan McAnnally-Linz and Evan Rosa / Courage, Control, Kairos Time, and Roasting S'mores as an Exercise in Patience / Patience Coda Sep 04, 2021

You can't just chatter about patience. If patience moderates our sorrows, then it's ultimately a deeper spiritual virtue that can't be instrumentalized to feel better—it's more deeply connected to a joy and hope that recognizes to what and to whom we are in demand, to whom we're responsible, brings closer attention to the present moment, and acknowledges our limitations and lack of control. In this episode, Ryan McAnnally-Linz and Evan Rosa review and reflect on the six episodes that made up our series on patience: why it’s so hard, what’s good about it, and how we might cultivate it.

These six episodes explored patience in its theological, ethical, and psychological context, offering cultural and social diagnosis of our modern predicament with patience, defining the virtue in its divine and human contexts, and then considering the practical cultivation of patience as a way of life.

This series featured interviews with Andrew Root (Luther Seminary), Kathryn Tanner (Yale Divinity School), Paul Dafydd Jones (University of Virginia), Adam Eitel (Yale Divinity School), Sarah Schnitker (Baylor University), and Tish Harrison Warren (priest, author, and New York Times columnist).

Show Notes

Moderating sorrows
James 5:7: "Be patient therefore beloved until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it, until it receives the early and the late rains. You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts. For the coming of the Lord is near."
The patient way to make a s'more
An unexpected s'mores tutorial
Kairos vs Chronos: often overdone, it applies when you're talking about patience.
Time with kids at bed time is incommensurate with work productivity time; comparing the two is a category mistake.
"One of the things that these conversations about patients had had started to clue me into was the importance of being attuned to the proper activity or thing for which this time is—a less uniform account of time that says for instance, you know, the bedtime routine with my children that time is for that. And so thinking of it as somehow commensurate with work productivity time would be a category mistake of a sort. It would be an unfaithfulness. And so that impatience derives from a lack of attentiveness to the temporal texture of our lives in really relation to God." (Ryan)
There can be "patient hurry"
Patience is like audio compression: it sets a threshold that is sensitive to the sorrow in our life and moderates or mitigates it.
Episode summaries
Patience Part 1, Andy Root: "To say that I'm busy is to indicate that I'm in demand."
Feeling busy = feeling important
Recognition
Attending to the present, accepting a different form of "being in demand."
Patience Part 2, Kathy Tanner: "There's no profit in waiting."
Connecting economy to patience.
"Something has to hold firm in order for you to take risks."
Stability and the steadfast love of God.
Patience Part 3, Paul Dafydd Jones: "The Psalms of lament and complaint can get, as we know, incredibly dark, incredibly bleak. One operation of divine patience could be that God gives ancient Israel the time and space to accuse God. God is patient with expressions of trauma, expressions of guilt, expressions of deep anguish. And God is so patient with them that they get included in the Canon. Like, some of the most powerful, skeptical, doubtful, angry moments are found in the Psalms. So God's letting be at this moment and letting happen includes within it God's honoring of grief and trauma, such that those moments become part of the scriptures."
Psalms of complaint
Psychologist Julie Exline on anger with God
Anger with God is consistent with patience
Patience Part 4, Adam Eitel: "Moderating sorrow is not to suppress it or develop an affected callousness or disenchanted, jaded relation to the things one really loves."
It's hard to chatter about patience.
Patience and joy
Patience Part 5, Sarah Schnitker: Identify, Imagine, and Sync
Normativity and a truer cognitive reappraisal of one's emotional state
Patience Part 6, Tish Harrison Warren: "God intended man to have all good, but in his, God's, time and therefore all disobedience, all sin consists essentially in breaking out of time. Hence the restoration of order by the Son of God had to be the annulment of that premature snatching at knowledge, the beating down of the hand, outstretched toward eternity, the repentant return from a false, swift transfer of eternity to a true, slow confinement in time. Hence the importance of patience in the New Testament, which becomes the basic constituent of Christianity. More central, even the humility, the power to wait, to persevere, to hold out, to endure to the end, not to transcend one's own limitations, not to force issues by playing the hero or the titan, but to practice the virtue that lies beyond heroism: the meekness of the Lamb which is led."
Control and Meekness: Meekness is controlled strength

Production Notes

This podcast featured Ryan McAnnally-Linz and Evan Rosa
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

Part 1 Show Notes: Andrew Root

Doubling down and the temptation to make up for lost time
Hartmut Rosa and Modernity as Acceleration
Acceleration across three categories: technology, social change, and pace of life
"Decay rate” is accelerating—we can sense that things get old and obsolete much faster (e.g., phones, computers)
Riding the wave of accelerated social change
"We’ve become enamored with gadgets and time-saving technologies."
“Getting more actions within units of time"
Multi-tasking
Expectations and waiting as an attack on the self
"Waiting feels like a moral failure."
Give yourself a break; people are under a huge amount of guilt that they’re not using their time or curating the self they could have.
"You’re screwing up my flow here, man."
When I’m feeling the acceleration of time: “Get the bleep out of my way. My humanity is worn down through the acceleration."
Busyness as an indicator of a good life
“To say that I’m busy is to indicate that I’m in demand."
"Stripping time of its sacred weight."
Mid-life crises and the hollowness of time
Patience is not just "go slower”
Eric Fromm's "having mode" vs "being mode" of action
Waiting doesn’t become the absence of something
Pixar’s Soul, rushing to find purpose, failing to see the gift of connectedness to others
Not all resonance is good (e.g., the raging resonance of Capitol rioters)
How would the church offer truly good opportunities for resonance
Bonhoeffer and the community of resonant reality
Luther's theology of the cross—being with and being for—sharing in the moment
Receiving the act of being with and being for
Instrumentalization vs resonance
Bearing with one another in weakness, pain, and suffering
Encountering each other by putting down accelerated goals to be with and for the other
Flow or resonance in one’s relationship to time
Artists, mystics, and a correlation with psychological flow

Part 2 Show Notes: Kathryn Tanner

Listen to Patience Part 1 on Time, Acceleration, and Waiting, with Andrew Root (July 24, 2021)
What does patience have to do with money?
Is time money?
What is finance dominated capitalism?
Viewing economy and our relationship to time through past, present, and future
"Chained to the past”—debt is no longer designed to be paid off, and you can’t escape it
“Urgent focus on the present”—emergencies, preoccupation, short-term outlook, and anxiety
Workplace studies
Poverty, Emergency, and a Lack of Resources (Time or Money)
Lack of time and resources makes you fixated on the present
A Christian sense of the urgency of the present
Sufficient supply of God's grace
The right way to focus on the present
"Consideration of the present for all intents and purposes collapses into concern about the future."
The future is already embedded and encased in the present value of things.
Stock market and collapsing the present into future expectations
Pulling the future into the present
Gamestop and making the future present, and the present future
Patience and elongating the present
Fulsomeness, amplitude, expansiveness of God’s grace
Race, savings, and dire circumstances
Patience as a means to elongating the present
Stability, volatility, and waiting
“There’s no profit in waiting"
God's steadfast love and commitment
Kierkegaard's Works of Love
Augustine’s unstable volatile world and the implication of investing only in God's love and stability
"Something has to hold firm in order for you to take risks."

Part 3 Show Notes: Paul Dafydd Jones

God's patience
Apostle Peter: “The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you.” (2 Peter 3)
Tertullian and Cyprian
"You need to think about who God is, and what God is doing before you think about who human beings are, and what we're called to become."
Augustine: "God is patient, without any passion."
Patience: Creation, providence, incarnation, Trinity
Creatures are given time and space to "reward God's patience"
This is not God getting out of the way; it's non-competitive between God and world.
Colin Gunton: for the problem of evil, God's patience is a good place to start.
"God's patience occurs at a pace that is rarely congenial to us ... the world's history is not unfolding at the pace or the shape we would like."
"God gives ancient Israel the time and space to accuse. God is patient with expressions of trauma, expressions of guilt, expressions of deep anguish. And God is so patient with them that they get included in the Canon."
"Some of the most powerful, skeptical, doubtful, angry moments, are found in the psalms."
"God patiently beholds the suffering of God's creatures, particularly with respect to ancient Israel, that somehow the traumas of creaturely life are present to God, and God in some sense has to bear or endure them."
Beholding Suffering vs Enduring Suffering
God's responsibility for the entirety of the cosmos: "There's no getting God off the hook for things that happen in God's universe."
And yet God doesn't approve of everything that occurs.
Confident expectancy: "Moving to meet the kingdom that is coming towards us."
"God's patience empowers us to act."
The patience of God incarnate; Christ is patience incarnate
"Israel is waiting for a Messiah."
We cannot understand Christ as savior of the world without understanding him as Messiah of ancient Israel.
God's solidarity with us
"The pursuit of salvation runs through togetherness with creation in the deepest possible sense."
Letting Be vs Letting Happen
"Jesus has to negotiate the quotidian."
Crucifixion as the one moment of divine impatience with sin
Theology of the cross as an imperative
"Christians often are not comfortable with complexity. We want to think in terms of assurance. And we want that assurance to be comforting in a fairly quick-fire away. I think theologians have the task of exposing that as an ersatz hope and insisting that faith includes complexity. It involves lingering over ambiguity. Trying to fit together. multi-dimensional beliefs that are this lattice work—none of which can be reduced to a pithy, marketing quip."
"Theologians need to be patient in order to honor the complexity of Christian faith. ... That's called intellectual responsibility."
"Christianity is not going to cease to be weaponized by snake-oil salespeople."
Staying with complexity and ambiguity
"The capacity to tell the truth is in short supply."
"Human beings are called to respond to God's patience. Human beings are called to make good on God's patience. The covenant of grace, which is fulfilled in Christ and which is animated by the spirit, makes that a possibility. It's not an easy possibility of real life. I mean, not just because of sin and finitude, but because of the complexities of the world that we live in. But learning how to respond to God's patience, both through forms of waiting, through forms of activity, and sometimes through moments of intemperate resistance is I think at the heart of Christian life."
"People should not get in the way of human flourishing ... brought about by the empowering patience of the Holy Spirit. ... That's a gospel moment. That's a kairos moment."

Part 4 Show Notes: Adam Eitel

The context for Thomas Aquinas and his friars
"The friars are on the verge of being canceled."
What is a virtue? "To have them is to have a kind of excellence and to be able to do excellent things."
Where does patience fit in the virtues?
Matter and Object
The matter of a virtue is the thing it's about, and the matter of patience is sorrow.
Sorrow can have right or wrong objects and can be excessive or deficient.
Sorrow is elicited by evil, that is, the diminishment of good.
Patience is a moderating virtue for the passions, similar to courage.
Patience is connected to fortitude or courage in moderating our response to "the saddest things."
"Patience moderates or constrains sorrow, so that it doesn't go beyond its proper limit. When we become too absorbed in trouble or woe, alot of other things start to go wrong. That's what Gregory the Great called patience the guardian of the virtues. .... deteriorate." (or to ... guardian of the virtues in that sense.")
What does it feel like to be patient on this account?
You can't experience patience without experiencing joy.
"Joy is the antithesis of sorrow. Its remedy."
Remedies: Take a bath, go to sleep, drink some wine, talk to a friend ... and at the top of the list is contemplation of God.
Contemplation for Aquinas: prayer, chanting psalms, drawing one's mind to the presence of God.
Experientia Dei—taste and see
"This is scandalous to most virtue theorists ... but you can't have patience, or at least not much of it, without contemplation."
"Moderating sorrow is not to suppress it or develop an affected callousness or disenchanted, jaded relation to the things one really loves."
"Patience never means ignoring or turning away from the thing that's genuinely sorrowful."
Diminishment of sorrow by nesting it among the many other goods.
Modulate one's understanding of the thing that's sorrowful.
The sorrow of losing a child
You can only write about it from inside of it.
What is it? "Beneath the agitation, some kind of low grade anger, is there some sorrow? What has been lost? What have I been wanting that is not here? What's beneath the anger? What is it?"
What scripture anchors you? "Find that scripture that anchors you in patience, and let it become yours. Let God speak to you through it.

Part 5 Show Notes: Sarah Schnitker

This episode was made possible in part by a grant from Blueprint 1543.
Why study patience from a psychological perspective?
Patience as notably absent
Can we suffer well? Can we wait well?
David Baily Harned: Has patience gone out of style since the industrial revolution (Patience: How We Wait Upon the World)
Waiting as a form of suffering
Daily hassles patience, interpersonal patience, and life hardships patience
Measuring patience is easier than measuring love, joy, or gratitude, because it isn’t as socially valued in contemporary life
How virtue channels toward different goals
Patience can help you achieve your goals by helping you regulate emotion, allowing you to stay calm, making decisions, persist through difficulties
Patience and the pursuit of justice
Patience and assertiveness
“If you’re a doormat, it’s not because you are patient, it’s because you lack assertiveness."
Aristotelian "Golden Mean” thinking: neither recklessly pushing through or giving up and disengaging. Patience allows you to pursue the goal in an emotionally stable way
Unity of the virtues: “We need a constellation of virtues for a person to really flourish in this world."
Golden Mean, excess, deficiency, too much and too little
Acedia and Me, Kathleen Norris on a forgotten vice
Acedia in relationship: “Even in the pandemic… monotony…"
The overlapping symptoms of acedia and depression
Patience is negatively correlated with depression symptoms; people with more life-hardships patience is a strength that helps people cope with some types of depression
Patience and gratitude buffer against ultimate struggles with existential meaning and suicide risk
How do you become more patient?
“It requires patience to become more patient."
Three Step Process for becoming more patient: Identify, Imagine, and Sync
Step 1: Identify your emotional state. Patience is not suppression; it begins with attention and noticing—identifying what’s going on.
Step 2: Cognitive reappraisal: one of the most effective ways to regulate our emotions. Think about your own emotions from another person’s perspective, or in light of the bigger picture. Take each particular situation and reappraise it.
Find benefits. Turn a curse into a blessing. Find opportunities.
Step 3: Sync with your purpose. Create a narrative that supports the meaning of suffering. For many this is religious faith
Reappraising cognitive reappraisal: How convinced do you have to be? You’d have to find something with “epistemic teeth”—is this something you can rationally endorse and know, and can you feel it?
Combining patience and gratitude practices, allowing for multiple emotions at once, and reimagining and reappraising one's life within your understanding of purpose and meaning.
Provide psychological distance to attenuate emotional response.
The existential relevance of faith for patience; theological background of patience
Patience and a life worth living
Love, the unity of the virtues, and "the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation" (2 Peter 3)

Part 6 Show Notes: Tish Harrison Warren

"Part of becoming more patient is noticing how impatient you are. ... It's so not-linear."
Kids will slow you down and expose your impatience
Patience often looks like other things—"it looks like contentment, it looks like trust, it looks like endurance."
Patience and humility: "We are not the President of the United States. Things can go on without us."
"Our entire life is lived in a posture of waiting."
Waiting for the eschaton, the return of Christ, and things set right
The illusion of control—James 4:13-14
Has Urs Von Balthasar: "God intended man to have all good, but in his, God's, time and therefore all disobedience, all sin consists essentially in breaking out of time. Hence the restoration of order by the Son of God had to be the annulment of that premature snatching at knowledge, the beating down of the hand, outstretched toward eternity, the repentant return from a false, swift transfer of eternity to a true, slow confinement in time. Hence the importance of patience in the New Testament, which becomes the basic constituent of Christianity. More central, even the humility, the power to wait, to persevere, to hold out, to endure to the end, not to transcend one's own limitations, not to force issues by playing the hero or the titan, but to practice the virtue that lies beyond heroism: the meekness of the Lamb which is led."
"We are creatures in time."
Robert Wilken: "singular mark of patience is hope"
Activism and patience together
"Patience can get a bad rap, that Christians are just wanting to become bovine."
Patience but not quietism, a long wait but not gradualism
The ultimate need to discern the moment
Clarence Jordan and Martin Luther King Jr.
The practices of discernment for individuals and communities
Social media trains us to be impatient
The meaning of urgent change is changing
Internet advocacy and a connected world makes us less patient people
"It takes real work to slow down and listen to another person's perspective, especially if you disagree with them."
We often don't have the patience to even understand someone else.
Real conversations with real people
Silence, solitude
"Having a body requires an enormous amount of patience."
"My kids are so slow. They're the one's teaching me to be patient!"
Little hardships of boredom and discomfort
"Life with a body and life with real people inevitably involves patience."
"Patience is something we learn our way out of through privilege and through being, you know, important adults."

Adam Eitel / Taste and See / Patience Bonus Sep 02, 2021

"It's just that I know it's real. The Lord is ever present in trouble. And you can know, and be known, and love, and be loved by God. And that's different than thinking about God." Ethicist Adam Eitel on the tasting and seeing of Psalm 34, Thomas Aquinas's interpretation of that psalm, and the foundation of experience for theological reflection.

Bonus episode from our 6-part podcast series on patience.

Show Notes

"When the Psalmist says "taste and see how sweet," he's urging us toward an experience. He's exhorting us to experience dwelling together with God.
Psalm 34
Thomas Aquinas on Psalm 34
Finding delight in and encouragement from Psalm 34 and the feeling intellect of Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas as lumbering saint living between his ears, or tasting and seeing the sweetness of God
"Living between your ears"
"It's just that I know it's real. The Lord is ever present in trouble. And you can know, and be known, and love, and be loved by God. And that's different than thinking about God."
Becoming a theologian can wreck your soul, when faith is merely cerebral.
Coming soon on For the Life of the World: philosopher Charles Taylor on October 2, 2021.

About Adam Eitel

Adam Eitel is Assistant Professor of Ethics at Yale Divinity School. He focuses his research and teaching on the history of Christian moral thought, contemporary social ethics and criticism, and modern religious thought. Dr. Eitel has roughly a dozen books, chapters, edited volumes, and articles published or in progress. These include an ethical analysis of drone strikes and a theological account of domination. His current book project explores the role of love in the moral theology of Thomas Aquinas. A 2004 Baylor University graduate and a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Fribourg, Dr. Eitel received his M.Div. and Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary, completing the latter in 2015.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Adam Eitel and Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

Tish Harrison Warren / Control, Creatureliness, and the Practice of Patience / Patience Part 6 Aug 28, 2021

"We are creatures in time."

Today, the Reverend Tish Harrison Warren explores patience as spiritual formation. She’s an Anglican priest and author of Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life, which was Christianity Today's 2018 Book of the Year, and Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work, or Watch, or Weep. She recently started a weekly newsletter on faith in private and public life for The New York Times.

She reflects on the human demand for control in both ordinary and extraordinary life events, from the line at the supermarket to the cancer ward; the recognition of human vulnerability and just hating the fact that we can’t control what happens next; the temptation to break out of time; and the difficult balance between the urgent need for justice and the acceptance of our human and societal limits. The entire conversation is illuminated by the beauty of what Hans Urs Von Balthasar calls “the meekness of the Lamb which is led.”

Part 6 of a 6-episode series on Patience, hosted by Ryan McAnnally-Linz.

About Tish Harrison Warren

Tish Harrison Warren is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America. She is the author of Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life, which was Christianity Today's 2018 Book of the Year, and Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work, or Watch, or Weep. She has worked in ministry settings for over a decade as a campus minister with InterVarsity Graduate and Faculty Ministries, as an associate rector, and with addicts and those in poverty through various churches and non-profit organizations. Currently, she is Writer in Residence at Resurrection South Austin. She is a monthly columnist with Christianity Today, and her articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Religion News Service, Christianity Today, Comment Magazine, The Point Magazine, and elsewhere. She is a founding member of The Pelican Project and a Senior Fellow with the Trinity Forum. She lives with her husband and three children in the Austin, Texas area.

Show Notes

"Part of becoming more patient is noticing how impatient you are. ... It's so not-linear."
Kids will slow you down and expose your impatience
Patience often looks like other things—"it looks like contentment, it looks like trust, it looks like endurance."
Patience and humility: "We are not the President of the United States. Things can go on without us."
"Our entire life is lived in a posture of waiting."
Waiting for the eschaton, the return of Christ, and things set right
The illusion of control—James 4:13-14
Has Urs Von Balthasar: "God intended man to have all good, but in his, God's, time and therefore all disobedience, all sin consists essentially in breaking out of time. Hence the restoration of order by the Son of God had to be the annulment of that premature snatching at knowledge, the beating down of the hand, outstretched toward eternity, the repentant return from a false, swift transfer of eternity to a true, slow confinement in time. Hence the importance of patience in the New Testament, which becomes the basic constituent of Christianity. More central, even the humility, the power to wait, to persevere, to hold out, to endure to the end, not to transcend one's own limitations, not to force issues by playing the hero or the titan, but to practice the virtue that lies beyond heroism: the meekness of the Lamb which is led."
"We are creatures in time."
Robert Wilken: "singular mark of patience is hope"
Activism and patience together
"Patience can get a bad rap, that Christians are just wanting to become bovine."
Patience but not quietism, a long wait but not gradualism
The ultimate need to discern the moment
Clarence Jordan and Martin Luther King Jr.
The practices of discernment for individuals and communities
Social media trains us to be impatient
The meaning of urgent change is changing
Internet advocacy and a connected world makes us less patient people
"It takes real work to slow down and listen to another person's perspective, especially if you disagree with them."
We often don't have the patience to even understand someone else.
Real conversations with real people
Silence, solitude
"Having a body requires an enormous amount of patience."
"My kids are so slow. They're the one's teaching me to be patient!"
Little hardships of boredom and discomfort
"Life with a body and life with real people inevitably involves patience."
"Patience is something we learn our way out of through privilege and through being, you know, important adults."

Production Notes

This podcast featured priest and author the Reverend Tish Harrison Warren and theologian Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

Sarah Schnitker / The Psychology of Patience / Patience Part 5 Aug 21, 2021

What is the place of patience in a life worth living? Evidence from psychology suggests that it plays an important role in managing life's stresses, contributing to a greater sense of well-being, and is even negatively correlated with depression and suicide risk. Psychologist Sarah Schnitker (Baylor University) explains her research on patience, how psychological methodology integrates with theology and philosophy to define and measure the virtue, and offers an evidence-based intervention for becoming more patient. She also discusses the connection between patience and gratitude, the role of patience in a meaningful life, and how acedia, a forgotten vice to modern people, lurks in the shadows when we are deficient in patience.

Part 5 of a 6-episode series on Patience, hosted by Ryan McAnnally-Linz.

Show Notes

This episode was made possible in part by a grant from Blueprint 1543.
Why study patience from a psychological perspective?
Patience as notably absent
Can we suffer well? Can we wait well?
David Baily Harned: Has patience gone out of style since the industrial revolution (Patience: How We Wait Upon the World)
Waiting as a form of suffering
Daily hassles patience, interpersonal patience, and life hardships patience
Measuring patience is easier than measuring love, joy, or gratitude, because it isn’t as socially valued in contemporary life
How virtue channels toward different goals
Patience can help you achieve your goals by helping you regulate emotion, allowing you to stay calm, making decisions, persist through difficulties
Patience and the pursuit of justice
Patience and assertiveness
“If you’re a doormat, it’s not because you are patient, it’s because you lack assertiveness."
Aristotelian "Golden Mean” thinking: neither recklessly pushing through or giving up and disengaging. Patience allows you to pursue the goal in an emotionally stable way
Unity of the virtues: “We need a constellation of virtues for a person to really flourish in this world."
Golden Mean, excess, deficiency, too much and too little
Acedia and Me, Kathleen Norris on a forgotten vice
Acedia in relationship: “Even in the pandemic… monotony…"
The overlapping symptoms of acedia and depression
Patience is negatively correlated with depression symptoms; people with more life-hardships patience is a strength that helps people cope with some types of depression
Patience and gratitude buffer against ultimate struggles with existential meaning and suicide risk
How do you become more patient?
“It requires patience to become more patient."
Three Step Process for becoming more patient: Identify, Imagine, and Sync
Step 1: Identify your emotional state. Patience is not suppression; it begins with attention and noticing—identifying what’s going on.
Step 2: Cognitive reappraisal: one of the most effective ways to regulate our emotions. Think about your own emotions from another person’s perspective, or in light of the bigger picture. Take each particular situation and reappraise it.
Find benefits. Turn a curse into a blessing. Find opportunities.
Step 3: Sync with your purpose. Create a narrative that supports the meaning of suffering. For many this is religious faith
Reappraising cognitive reappraisal: How convinced do you have to be? You’d have to find something with “epistemic teeth”—is this something you can rationally endorse and know, and can you feel it?
Combining patience and gratitude practices, allowing for multiple emotions at once, and reimagining and reappraising one's life within your understanding of purpose and meaning.
Provide psychological distance to attenuate emotional response.
The existential relevance of faith for patience; theological background of patience
Patience and a life worth living
Love, the unity of the virtues, and "the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation" (2 Peter 3)

About Sarah Schnitker

Sarah Schnitker is Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Baylor University. She holds a PhD and an MA in Personality and Social Psychology from the University of California, Davis, and a BA in Psychology from Grove City College. Schnitker studies virtue and character development in adolescents and emerging adults, with a focus on the role of spirituality and religion in virtue formation. She specializes in the study of patience, self-control, gratitude, generosity, and thrift. Schnitker has procured more than $3.5 million in funding as a principle investigator on multiple research grants, and she has published in a variety of scientific journals and edited volumes. Schnitker is a Member-at-Large for APA Division 36 – Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, is a Consulting Editor for the organization’s flagship journal, Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, and is the recipient of the Virginia Sexton American Psychological Association’s Division 36 Mentoring Award. Follow her on Twitter @DrSchnitker.

Production Notes

This podcast featured psychologist Sarah Schnitker and theologian Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

Adam Eitel / Constraining Sorrow, Contemplating Joy / Patience Part 4 Aug 14, 2021

"So here's a fact of human life. We have sorrow and, in many ways, That's neither here nor there, neither good nor bad, but we know intuitively that there are ways in which our sorrow can become excessive or misplaced.What the virtue of patience does is it moderates sorrow or constrains it, so it doesn't go beyond its proper limit. When we become too absorbed in trouble and woe, a lot of other things start to go wrong and that's why someone like Gregory the Great called patience the guardian of the virtues, because sorrow, if it's not checked, can easily devolve into anger, hatred, and fear. ... What it means to moderate sorrow isn't to suppress it, or to develop some kind of affected callousness or disenchanted, jaded relation to the things that one actually really loves."

"You'll discover really quickly that you can't think about patience—you can't experience patience—without thinking about and experiencing joy. Joy is the antithesis of sorrow—its remedy."

Though it's tempting to think patience is a correction for hurry, busyness, scarcity of time, and haste, it's ultimately about managing your sorrow. Adam Eitel is an ethicist at Yale Divinity School who specializes in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. In this episode, he reflects on the human side of the virtue of patience and its place in the moral life—examining how it moderates our passions and responses to sorrow, finding surprising connections between patience, joy, and contemplation, and opening up toward an experiential theology that must comment on patience only from inside the struggle to receive it.

Part 4 of a 6-episode series on Patience, hosted by Ryan McAnnally-Linz.

Show Notes

The context for Thomas Aquinas and his friars
"The friars are on the verge of being canceled."
What is a virtue? "To have them is to have a kind of excellence and to be able to do excellent things."
Where does patience fit in the virtues?
Matter and Object
The matter of a virtue is the thing it's about, and the matter of patience is sorrow.
Sorrow can have right or wrong objects and can be excessive or deficient.
Sorrow is elicited by evil, that is, the diminishment of good.
Patience is a moderating virtue for the passions, similar to courage.
Patience is connected to fortitude or courage in moderating our response to "the saddest things."
"Patience moderates or constrains sorrow, so that it doesn't go beyond its proper limit. When we become too absorbed in trouble or woe, alot of other things start to go wrong. That's what Gregory the Great called patience the guardian of the virtues. .... deteriorate." (or to ... guardian of the virtues in that sense.")
What does it feel like to be patient on this account?
You can't experience patience without experiencing joy.
"Joy is the antithesis of sorrow. Its remedy."
Remedies: Take a bath, go to sleep, drink some wine, talk to a friend ... and at the top of the list is contemplation of God.
Contemplation for Aquinas: prayer, chanting psalms, drawing one's mind to the presence of God.
Experientia Dei—taste and see
"This is scandalous to most virtue theorists ... but you can't have patience, or at least not much of it, without contemplation."
"Moderating sorrow is not to suppress it or develop an affected callousness or disenchanted, jaded relation to the things one really loves."
"Patience never means ignoring or turning away from the thing that's genuinely sorrowful."
Diminishment of sorrow by nesting it among the many other goods.
Modulate one's understanding of the thing that's sorrowful.
The sorrow of losing a child
You can only write about it from inside of it.
What is it? "Beneath the agitation, some kind of low grade anger, is there some sorrow? What has been lost? What have I been wanting that is not here? What's beneath the anger? What is it?"
What scripture anchors you? "Find that scripture that anchors you in patience, and let it become yours. Let God speak to you through it.

About Adam Eitel

Production Notes

This podcast featured theologians Adam Eitel and Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

Paul Dafydd Jones / God's Patience, Human Action, and Complex Faith / Patience Part 3 Aug 07, 2021

"God's patience empowers us to act. ... Human beings are called to respond to God's patience. Human beings are called to make good on God's patience. The covenant of grace, which is fulfilled in Christ and which is animated by the spirit, makes that a possibility. It's not an easy possibility of real life. I mean, not just because of sin and finitude, but because of the complexities of the world that we live in. But learning how to respond to God's patience, both through forms of waiting, through forms of activity, and sometimes through moments of intemperate resistance is I think at the heart of Christian life."

Theologian Paul Dafydd Jones comments on the bearing of God's patience on human experience and action. The patience of Christ-incarnate means that Christ is patience-incarnate. This makes it possible to "live otherwise"—contesting the reign of sin and resisting evil by responding to God's patience. Jones emphasizes the togetherness and solidarity of God with creation. And suggests the importance of appreciating the complexity of Christian faith.

Part 3 of a 6-episode series on Patience, hosted by Ryan McAnnally-Linz.

About Paul Dafydd Jones

Paul Dafydd Jones is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and the Co-Director of The Project on Religion and its Publics at the University of Virginia. He is a theologian specializing in Karl Barth, Christology, political theology, and religion in public life; and is author of the forthcoming research project: Patience: A Theological Exploration.

Show Notes

God's patience
Apostle Peter: “The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you.” (2 Peter 3)
Patience series recap
Episode summary
Tertullian and Cyprian
"You need to think about who God is, and what God is doing before you think about who human beings are, and what we're called to become."
Augustine: "God is patient, without any passion."
Patience: Creation, providence, incarnation, Trinity
Creatures are given time and space to "reward God's patience"
This is not God getting out of the way; it's non-competitive between God and world.
Colin Gunton: for the problem of evil, God's patience is a good place to start.
"God's patience occurs at a pace that is rarely congenial to us ... the world's history is not unfolding at the pace or the shape we would like."
"God gives ancient Israel the time and space to accuse. God is patient with expressions of trauma, expressions of guilt, expressions of deep anguish. And God is so patient with them that they get included in the Canon."
"Some of the most powerful, skeptical, doubtful, angry moments, are found in the psalms."
"God patiently beholds the suffering of God's creatures, particularly with respect to ancient Israel, that somehow the traumas of creaturely life are present to God, and God in some sense has to bear or endure them."
Beholding Suffering vs Enduring Suffering
God's responsibility for the entirety of the cosmos: "There's no getting God off the hook for things that happen in God's universe."
And yet God doesn't approve of everything that occurs.
Confident expectancy: "Moving to meet the kingdom that is coming towards us."
"God's patience empowers us to act."
The patience of God incarnate; Christ is patience incarnate
"Israel is waiting for a Messiah."
We cannot understand Christ as savior of the world without understanding him as Messiah of ancient Israel.
God's solidarity with us
"The pursuit of salvation runs through togetherness with creation in the deepest possible sense."
Letting Be vs Letting Happen
"Jesus has to negotiate the quotidian."
Crucifixion as the one moment of divine impatience with sin
Theology of the cross as an imperative
"Christians often are not comfortable with complexity. We want to think in terms of assurance. And we want that assurance to be comforting in a fairly quick-fire away. I think theologians have the task of exposing that as an ersatz hope and insisting that faith includes complexity. It involves lingering over ambiguity. Trying to fit together. multi-dimensional beliefs that are this lattice work—none of which can be reduced to a pithy, marketing quip."
"Theologians need to be patient in order to honor the complexity of Christian faith. ... That's called intellectual responsibility."
"Christianity is not going to cease to be weaponized by snake-oil salespeople."
Staying with complexity and ambiguity
"The capacity to tell the truth is in short supply."
"Human beings are called to respond to God's patience. Human beings are called to make good on God's patience. The covenant of grace, which is fulfilled in Christ and which is animated by the spirit, makes that a possibility. It's not an easy possibility of real life. I mean, not just because of sin and finitude, but because of the complexities of the world that we live in. But learning how to respond to God's patience, both through forms of waiting, through forms of activity, and sometimes through moments of intemperate resistance is I think at the heart of Christian life."
"People should not get in the way of human flourishing ... brought about by the empowering patience of the Holy Spirit. ... That's a gospel moment. That's a kairos moment."

Production Notes

This podcast featured theologians Paul Dafydd Jones and Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

Kathryn Tanner / Money, Markets, and the Economy of Grace / Patience Part 2 Jul 31, 2021

What does patience have to do with money? It's much more than timing the market just right. The economic factors of our market economy hold great sway over our relationship to the past, present, and future. Theologian Kathryn Tanner reflects on the ways finance-dominated capitalism controls our experience of time, and offers insights for a Christian approach to living in the present, informed by an economy of abundant grace. Part 2 of a 6-episode series on Patience hosted by Ryan McAnnally-Linz.

Show Notes

Listen to Patience Part 1 on Time, Acceleration, and Waiting, with Andrew Root (July 24, 2021)
What does patience have to do with money?
Is time money?
What is finance dominated capitalism?
Viewing economy and our relationship to time through past, present, and future
"Chained to the past”—debt is no longer designed to be paid off, and you can’t escape it
“Urgent focus on the present”—emergencies, preoccupation, short-term outlook, and anxiety
Workplace studies
Poverty, Emergency, and a Lack of Resources (Time or Money)
Lack of time and resources makes you fixated on the present
A Christian sense of the urgency of the present
Sufficient supply of God's grace
The right way to focus on the present
"Consideration of the present for all intents and purposes collapses into concern about the future."
The future is already embedded and encased in the present value of things.
Stock market and collapsing the present into future expectations
Pulling the future into the present
Gamestop and making the future present, and the present future
Patience and "elongating the present"
Fulsomeness, amplitude, expansiveness of God’s grace
Race, savings, and dire circumstances
Patience as a means to elongating the present
Stability, volatility, and waiting
“There’s no profit in waiting."
God's steadfast love and commitment
Kierkegaard's Works of Love
Augustine’s unstable volatile world and the implication of investing only in God's love and stability
"Something has to hold firm in order for you to take risks."

About Kathryn Tanner

Theologian Kathryn Tanner is the Frederick Marquand Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School. Her research relates the history of Christian thought to contemporary issues of theological concern using social, cultural, and feminist theory. She is the author of God and Creation in Christian Theology: Tyranny or Empowerment? ; The Politics of God: Christian Theologies and Social Justice ; Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology ; Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity: A Brief Systematic Theology ; Economy of Grace ; Christ the Key; and most recently Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism.

Production Notes

This podcast featured theologians Kathryn Tanner and Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

Andrew Root / Time, Acceleration, and Waiting / Patience Part 1 Jul 24, 2021

Modern life presents a crisis of time, bringing the value of patience into question. Andrew Root joins Ryan McAnnally-Linz to provide some context for our modern patience predicament. As a professor of youth ministry at Luther Seminary, he has years of both experience and careful thinking about what it means for kids, families, churches, and communities to flourish in an impatient world, cultivating the mindset, the virtues, and the community we need to wait well. Part 1 of a 6-episode series on Patience hosted by Ryan McAnnally-Linz.

Show Notes

Doubling down and the temptation to make up for lost time
Hartmut Rosa and Modernity as Acceleration
Acceleration across three categories: technology, social change, and pace of life
"Decay rate” is accelerating—we can sense that things get old and obsolete much faster (e.g., phones, computers)
Riding the wave of accelerated social change
"We’ve become enamored with gadgets and time-saving technologies."
“Getting more actions within units of time"
Multi-tasking
Expectations and waiting as an attack on the self
"Waiting feels like a moral failure."
Give yourself a break; people are under a huge amount of guilt that they’re not using their time or curating the self they could have.
"You’re screwing up my flow here, man."
When I’m feeling the acceleration of time: “Get the bleep out of my way. My humanity is worn down through the acceleration."
Busyness as an indicator of a good life
“To say that I’m busy is to indicate that I’m in demand."
"Stripping time of its sacred weight."
Mid-life crises and the hollowness of time
Patience is not just "go slower”
Eric Fromm's "having mode" vs "being mode" of action
Waiting doesn’t become the absence of something
Pixar’s Soul, rushing to find purpose, failing to see the gift of connectedness to others
Not all resonance is good (e.g., the raging resonance of Capitol rioters)
How would the church offer truly good opportunities for resonance
Bonhoeffer and the community of resonant reality
Luther's theology of the cross—being with and being for—sharing in the moment
Receiving the act of being with and being for
Instrumentalization vs resonance
Bearing with one another in weakness, pain, and suffering
Encountering each other by putting down accelerated goals to be with and for the other
Flow or resonance in one’s relationship to time
Artists, mystics, and a correlation with psychological flow

About Andrew Root

Andrew Root is the Olson Baalson Associate Professor of Youth and Family Ministry at Luther Seminary. He teaches classes on youth ministry, young adults, family, church, and culture; he has lately been writing about issues surrounding the intersection of faith and science, including a project called Science for Youth Ministry. He is author of several books, including The End of Youth Ministry?, The Congregation in a Secular Age, The Pastor in a Secular Age, and Faith Formation in a Secular Age.

Production Notes

This podcast featured theologians Andrew Root and Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

Life Riffs: Improvisation in Poetry, Theology, and Flourishing / Micheal O'Siadhail & David Ford Jul 17, 2021

"Be with me, Madam Jazz, I urge you now, / Riff in me so I can conjure how / You breathe in us more than we dare allow." (Micheal O'Siadhail, The Five Quintets)

Irish poet Micheal O'Siadhail and theologian David Ford discuss the improvisational jazz that emerges in the interplay of poetry and theology, riffing on life and love, the meaning of covenant, retrieving wisdom from history, and imagining a future by letting go in communion with Madam Jazz. Interview by Drew Collins.

About Micheal O'Siadhail

About David Ford

David F. Ford OBE is Regius Professor of Divinity Emeritus in the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Selwyn College. He is a renowned theologian and leader in inter-faith relations and is author of Christian Wisdom: Desiring God and Learning in Love and the forthcomingThe Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary.

Show Notes

Book: The Five Quintets, Micheal O'Siadhail
Jazz, poetry, improvisation
Reading: Epigraph to The Five Quintets
Madam Jazz, Improvisation, syncopated peace, "Let there be"
Modernity, science, and history
Secular supersessionism
Deep conversation from your own tradition, with others
The formation of historical figures
Second sight and recovering history and wisdom from the past
"Some of things we thought we have surpassed, we need to retrieve."
History in service of the present and the future
Paul Ricoeur
50 years of friendship
Reading: "Covenant"
One of the most important words of life: covenant
Unity across generations: family, friend, and institutional covenants
"Loving God for nothing"
Unity, trust, and interdependence, even across difference and pluralism
Culture of suspicion
Without trust you have nothing
Enora O'Neil on trust in the public sphere
Susan Highland: belief and trust in John's Gospel
O'Siadhail on "a life worth living"—decency and "bringing talents back"
Ford on "a life worth living"—delighting in God and each other
Taking roads not normally taken

Production Notes

This podcast featured poet Micheal O'Siadhail, theologian David Ford, and theologian Drew Collins
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

Are You Not Entertained?: Art, Attention, and Watching Culture / Alissa Wilkinson & Drew Collins Jul 10, 2021

"The artist has the ability to direct the attention of the audience. If you agree to engage with their work, then they will show you something. And you agree to pay attention to that thing. And I think the act of attending to things is basically the act of love. And when I look at the life of Christ, he's forever drawing people's attention to things as lessons or just things they wouldn't have seen otherwise: a person they would have passed by, or a lesson from nature, or something that they would have missed. That discipline and virtue of attention flies directly in the face of everything that we experienced today."

What is the role of entertainment in human flourishing? Vox film critic Alissa Wilkinson reflects on how her early life formed her critical and cultural sensibilities, the role of entertainment in a flourishing life, how biblical interpretation lends itself to the attentive task of the critic, the challenge of boredom and seeing entertainment as mere consumption, and how creating art and watching film well cultivates the virtues of attention and hospitality. Not to mention: The saddest song ever to score a film, why film is not a storytelling medium, how Jesus and Terrence Malick direct our attention, and much more. Interview by Drew Collins.

Show Notes

Attention economy (introduction by Evan Rosa)
About Alissa Wilkinson
Art and the shared experience of attention by artist and audience
Art and propaganda
How Alissa's upbringing cultivated her cultural sensibilities
Reading a text, understanding it and being able to reinterpret
How to watch vs. what to watch
Remaking our visual vocabulary
The communal, public nature of entertainment
The public nature of art
Catharsis and emotion as a public act
"Learning to perform my emotions..."
"The experience we have together"
Compare religious liturgy to public entertainment
Entertainment and the life of Jesus
Telling stories and singing songs
"Singing is such a useless thing."
The saddest song in the world: Max Richter's "On the Nature of Daylight"
The discipline and virtue of attention
Directing the attention of the audience
Terrence Malick helping viewers "see"
Film is not a storytelling medium; it's primarily visual. You can have no sound, no characters, but you can't have no video.
"Good artists are hospitable"
Young Adult Movie Ministry and the ministry of attention
Christian engagement with film
A.O. Scott and Hail, Caeser!
"A bad movie can instruct you as much as a good one. ... Every movie critic knows it's more fun to write about a bad movie"
Apocalyptic pop culture
The Daniel Option: The prophet Daniel as an exemplar of public engagement
Responsibility and authorship
Hand it over to the audience to making meaning together
The share-ability of art
We're all getting hit differently by the movies we see
Jean Luc Marion's Idols and Icons
Boredom and entertainment in a life worth living
Michael Chabon's reclaiming entertainment in "The Pleasure Principle" (LA Times)
C.S. Lewis's An Experiment in Criticism
Boredom
"A lot of what passes for criticism is just cultural amnesia."
The role of entertainment in a life worth living

About Alissa Wilkinson

Alissa Wilkinson is Vox's film critic; she also writes about culture more generally. She's been writing about film and culture since 2006, and her work has appeared at Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, Vulture, RogerEbert.com, The Atlantic, Books & Culture, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Paste, Pacific Standard, and others. Alissa is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics, and was a 2017-18 Art of Nonfiction writing fellow with the Sundance Institute. Before joining Vox, she was the chief film critic at Christianity Today.

Alissa is also an associate professor of English and humanities at The King's College in New York City, where she's taught criticism, cinema studies, and cultural theory since 2009. Her book Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking, and Living from Revolutionary Women is forthcoming from Broadleaf Books. She is also the co-author, with Robert Joustra, of How to Survive the Apocalypse: Zombies, Cylons, Faith, and Politics at the End of the World. Alissa regularly gives lectures around the world on film, pop culture, postmodernity, religion, and criticism. She holds an MA in humanities and social thought from New York University and an MFA in creative nonfiction writing from Seattle Pacific University.

Read Alissa's articles on Vox.com

Listen to Alissa's podcast Young Adult Movie Ministry
Production Notes

This podcast featured critic and journalist Alissa Wilkinson and theologian Drew Collins
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

Think Again: Changing Your Mind, Political-Religious Conversion, and the Emotional Life / Nichole Flores & Matt Croasmun Jul 03, 2021

Is it possible for anyone to change their mind anymore?

Matt Croasmun welcomes theologian and ethicist Nichole Flores (University of Virginia) onto the show for a discussion of changing our minds in political and religious contexts. They discuss the meaning of intellectual, political, and religious conversion; how aesthetic and emotional experience of beauty is often the key ingredient in changing one's mind and behavior; the value of open-mindedness and intellectual humility as well as the value of a firm sturdiness and courageous conviction; and the role of changing one's mind in a life worth living.

About Nichole Flores

Nichole Flores is a social ethicist who is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. She studies the constructive contributions of Catholic and Latinx theologies to notions of justice and aesthetics to the life of democracy. Her research in practical ethics addresses issues of democracy, migration, family, gender, economics (labor and consumption), race and ethnicity, and ecology. Visit NicholeMFlores.com for more information.

Show Notes

Recovery mode from 2020 general election
538 Podcast and Nate Silver as original demographic determinist
Is it possible for us to change our minds?
"I'm a Christian and I believe that conversion is possible."
"I live in the world as if it were possible to change one's mind."
Political conversion and mind-changing
Changing one's mind can be the result of a conversion
Political conversion focuses as much on a profound experience
Anecdote: A Catholic student who voted for Donald Trump because of abortion
Registering for a political party is a little like getting married...
"Catholics like to think of ourselves as politically homeless... maybe political misfits is the better category."
A political party should not be a place of comfort.
Charles Taylor, hypergoods, and the impossibility of reasoning oneself into a "firmer grip"
Changing your mind about American Football: "Young men shortening their lives for my entertainment."
"I remember when I quit football ... I knew the shift happened when I turned on a game and I felt sick ... This shift was on the affective level."
Treating students like "brains on a stick" or "free floating rationalities"
How does the importance of affective emotional role in conversion shape an approach to teaching?
"Learning is a version of changing your mind."
Community of the beautiful: gathering around a shared aesthetic experience
Social-political commitments that can change theological commitments
Mutual encounter with the world and the other
"The church is the light of the world. The church is bringing joy and hope to our society. But also the church is being chastened by what we encounter in society. And we are seeing where we can more fully image the body of Christ."
The open-mindedness of an annoyingly sturdy Christian. "I want to get that knowing eye-roll."
The value of intellectual humility
What is the role of changing one's mind in seeking a life worthy of our humanity.
Compromise: Negative or Positive
"The unassailable value of human life created in the image of God: That's a value worth fighting for, worth holding onto."

Production Notes

This podcast featured Matt Croasmun and Nichole Flores
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

Juneteenth: Looking Back to Step Forward / Charles B. Copher and Anne Streaty Wimberly Jun 19, 2021

In celebration of Juneteenth, Jamal-Dominique Hopkins and Angela Gorrell offer appreciation Old Testament scholar Charles B. Copher and Christian Educator Anne Streaty Wimberly.

About Charles B. Copher

Charles Buchanan Copher (1913-2003), a United Methodist minister and Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Scholar, held an illustrative academic career at his alma mater, Gammon Theological Seminary, which later became part of the Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC) consortium. A respected educator and beloved by his students, he was Professor for Biblical Studies and Languages from 1958-1978. Following his death in 2003, ITC honored his life work by creating the Charles B. Copher Annual Faculty Lectures. He was author of Black Biblical Studies: Biblical and Theological Issues on the Black Presence in the Bible.

About Anne Streaty Wimberly

Anne E. Streaty Wimberly, Professor Emerita of Christian Education at the Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC), is a renowned African American researcher, scholar, professor, advocate, and champion of black youth. A leading Christian educator rooted in the United Methodist Church, she has inspired students, colleagues, pastors, church leaders, and countless admirers to pursue education with a “zest to know.” For Wimberly, education centers on the big questions of life’s meaning and purpose, and she has enthusiastically pursued these questions throughout her spiritual and educational journey in light of her embrace of the generating theme of hope. While her teaching and scholarship encompass a wide range of ministerial and educational themes, she is most passionate about youth and family ministry in the black church. She currently serves as the Executive Director of the Youth Hope-Builders Academy at ITC and founder and coordinator of the Annual Youth and Family Convocation. Her passion for learning has undergirded her educational ministry and life-long vocation.

Production Notes

This podcast featured biblical scholar Jamal-Dominique Hopkins and theologian Angela Gorrell
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

Collapse and Rebuild: How Spirituality Informs Social Action in Hong Kong / Kevin Lau & Andrew Kwok Jun 07, 2021

"It's not just internal peace. It's internal healing. Healing of your memory." (Kevin Lau)

After suffering a brutal knife attack that nearly killed him, journalist Kevin Lau, then editor-in-chief of Ming Pao, chose to forgive his two attackers. Since then, he has continued to support social participation through deep Christian spirituality. In this episode, he is joined by theologian Andrew Kwok of Hong Kong Baptist University. Together they reflect on the spirituality of social participation in a society that is experiencing censorship, political disagreement and disenfranchisement that leads to violence, increasing polarization, and tribalized media consumption curated only to confirm the views you already hold.

Interview by Evan Rosa.

Show Notes

Learn more about the 2014 attack on Kevin Lau: South China Morning Post / BBC / NYT
Read more from Kevin Lau in his address at the 2015 Human Rights Press Awards

About Kevin Lau

Kevin Lau Chun-to is the former editor-in-chief of Ming Pao, a moderate Chinese-language news outlet based in Hong Kong and known for its commitment to journalistic freedom and reporting integrity. In 2014 he was viciously attacked in a premeditated slashing for his work. The attack was an international news event that sparked protests and demonstration for freedom of the press. Since then, he has spoken widely about his forgiveness for his attackers and remains an advocate for freedom of the press and Christian spirituality of social participation in Hong Kong and beyond.

About Andrew Kwok

Wai Luen (Andrew) Kwok is Associate Professor in the Department of Religion & Philosophy in Hong Kong Baptist University. His research includes Chinese Christianity, public theology, and Christian doctrine and hermeneutics. He has written and taught about religious discourse, social participation, and identity construction of Hong Kong Protestant Christians from 1970 to 1997; as well as the concept of social justice in the periodicals of foreign religions in China 1911 to 1949. He is currently working on a reconciliation project between Christians occupying different ends of the political spectrum in Hong Kong.

Production Notes

This podcast featured journalist Kevin Lau and theologian Andrew Kwok
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

Gilded Wounds, Co-Mingled Tears: The Gratuity of God in Art and Faith / Makoto Fujimura & Miroslav Volf May 30, 2021

"Jesus is the great kintsugi master."

"Something that's broken is already more valuable than when it's whole."

"The imagination creates, through the fractures, a river of gold, a mountain of gold."

Makoto Fujimura joins Miroslav Volf to discuss Art & Faith: A Theology of Making. Fujimura is a painter who practices the Japanese art of nihonga, or slow art. His abstract expressionist pieces are composed of fine minerals he grinds himself and paints onto several dozens of layers, which take time and close attention both to make and to appreciate.

Mako and Miroslav discuss the theology and spirituality that inspires Mako's work, the creative act of God mirrored in the practice of art, the unique ways of seeing and being that artists offer the world, which is, in Mako's words "dangerously close to life and death." They reflect on the meaning of Christ's humanity and his wounds, the gratuity of God in both creation from nothing and the artistic response in the celebration of everything.

Show Notes

Makoto Fujimura's Art & Faith: A Theology of Making
Illuminated Bible by Makoto Fujimura
Mary, Martha, & Lazarus
Genesis Creation Narrative
Art follows in the footsteps of the creator
The reasons for God's creation
Why would an all-sufficient God create anything?
God as "a grand artist with no ego and no need to create."
Communicating about art and theology outside the boundaries of the institutional church
Reconciliation between art and faith
God's gratuitous creation doesn't need a utilitarian purpose
Creating vs making
In artistic creation, something new does seem to emerge
"God is the only artist"
The scandal of God's incarnation: In becoming incarnate, God's utter independence is flipped to utter dependence.
Psalmist's cry to God
How art breaks the ordinary
The artist's way of seeing and being
Seeing as survival
Seeing with the eyes of your heart
"Artists stay dangerously close to death and life"
Getting beyond the rational way of seeing
Letting the senses become part of our prayer
William James on conversion: everything becomes new for the converted
Seeing with a new frame of beauty
Faith and the authenticity of seeing with the eyes of an artist
Emily Dickenson on the "tender pioneer" of Jesus
Hartmut Rosa on resonance—in modernity, the world becomes dead for us, and fails to speak with us, but we need a sense of resonance
Kandinsky and Rothko—artists' intuitive sense of resonance that has escaped the church in the wake of mid-century destruction
Mary's wedding nard oil and the gratuitous cost of art
The non-utilitarian nature of art
Using precious materials in art
Tear jars
Miroslav's mother regularly weeping and crying: "I wonder why God gave us tears? Only humans are the animals who cry."
Helmut Plessner's Laughing and Crying: Weeping as relinquishing self-possession and merging the self with the flesh (as opposed to reason/ratio or technique/techne)
N.T. Wright—the greatest miracle is that Jesus chose to stay human.
Jesus's remaining wounds
Co-mingling our tears with Christ's tears
Kintsugi and Japanese Slow Art
Accentuating the fracture
"The imagination creates, through the fractures, a river of gold, a mountain of gold."
This is the best example of new creation.
"What would happen to our scars? That's a question with no answer."
Through his wounds, our wounds would look different
Jesus is the great kintsugi master, leading a path of gold along the fractures of life
The permanence of scars
Is it possible to be in the good and be truly joyous?
"God is not the source of beauty. God is beauty."
Fundamental "new newness": So new that it evades understanding
Goodness, truth, and beauty
God loved the world so much, it wasn't enough to merely admire it—he had to join it.
What is a life worthy of our humanity?
Fujimura's practice of art as an attempt to answer that question.
"Our lives as the artwork of God, especially as a collaborative community in the Body of Christ."

About Makoto Fujimura

Makoto Fujimura is a leading contemporary artist whose process driven, refractive “slow art” has been described by David Brooks of New York Times as “a small rebellion against the quickening of time”. Robert Kushner, in the mid 90’s, written on Fujimura’s art in Art in America this way: “The idea of forging a new kind of art, about hope, healing, redemption, refuge, while maintaining visual sophistication and intellectual integrity is a growing movement, one which finds Makoto Fujimura’s work at the vanguard.”

Fujimura’s art has been featured widely in galleries and museums around the world, and is collected by notable collections including The Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, The Huntington Library as well as Tikotin Museum in Israel. His art is represented by Artrue International in Asia and has been exhibited at various venues including Dillon Gallery, Waterfall Mansion, Morpeth Contemporary, Sato Museum in Tokyo, Tokyo University of Fine Arts Museum, Bentley Gallery in Phoenix, Gallery Exit and Oxford House at Taikoo Place in Hong Kong, Vienna’s Belvedere Museum, Shusaku Endo Museum in Nagasaki and Jundt Museum at Gonzaga University. He is one of the first artists to paint live on stage at New York City’s legendary Carnegie Hall as part of an ongoing collaboration with composer and percussionist, Susie Ibarra. Their collaborative album "Walking on Water" is released by Innova Records.

As well as being a leading contemporary painter, Fujimura is also an arts advocate, writer, and speaker who is recognized worldwide as a cultural influencer. A Presidential appointee to the National Council on the Arts from 2003-2009, Fujimura served as an international advocate for the arts, speaking with decision makers and advising governmental policies on the arts. His book “Refractions” (NavPress) and “Culture Care” (IVPress) reflects many of his thesis on arts advocacy written during that time. His books have won numerous awards including the Aldersgate Prize for “Silence and Beauty” (IVPress). In 2014, the American Academy of Religion named Fujimura as its 2014 “Religion and the Arts” award recipient. This award is presented annually to professional artists who have made significant contributions to the relationship of art and religion, both for the academy and a broader public. Previous recipients of the award include Meredith Monk, Holland Cotter, Gary Snyder, Betye & Alison Saar and Bill Viola. Fujimura's highly anticipated book "Art+Faith: A Theology of Making" (Yale Press, with foreword by N.T. Wright, 2021) has been described by poet Christian Wiman as "a real tonic for our atomized time".

Fujimura founded the International Arts Movement in 1992, now IAMCultureCare, which over sees Fujimura Institute. In 2011 the Fujimura Institute was established and launched the Four Qu4rtets, a collaboration between Fujimura, painter Bruce Herman, Duke theologian/pianist Jeremy Begbie, and Yale composer Christopher Theofanidis, based on T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. The exhibition has travelled to Baylor, Duke, and Yale Universities, Cambridge University, Hiroshima City University and other institutions around the globe.

Bucknell University honored him with the Outstanding Alumni Award in 2012.

Fujimura is a recipient of four Doctor of Arts Honorary Degrees; from Belhaven University in 2011, Biola University in 2012, Cairn University in 2014 and Roanoke College, in February 2015. His Commencement addresses has received notable attention, being selected by NPR as one of the “Best Commencement Addresses Ever”. His recent 2019 Commencement Address at Judson University, was called “Kintsugi Generation”, laying out his cultural vision for the next generation.

Production Notes

This podcast featured artist Makoto Fujimura and theologian Miroslav Volf
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

How to Respond to Other Peoples' Pain: Silent Presence in the Wild Inexplicability of Evil and Grace / David Kelsey May 22, 2021

How should we respond to the pain of others? We are too often quick to justify God's permitting horrendous evils, answering why, and talking too much. In this episode, theologian David Kelsey reflects on Human Anguish and God's Power, noticing the anomaly of evil and its wild and inexplicable grip on creatures, the constant temptation of such creatures to talk and explain evil in the face of others' pain, and finally the analogously wild and inexplicable nature of God's grace in his immediate, if silent, presence among human anguish. Interview by Ryan McAnnally-Linz.

Show Notes

“When you're consoling somebody who’s in deep anguish, let them raise the why questions”
“As people of faith, we don't know the answer. What we do affirm is that God is present in the situation of the people who are anguishing and the people who are suffering”
“God is affirming the value of that life, even as it suffers”
“And God is as offended at the suffering as you are”
“You don't have to talk. Better to acknowledge what's there, witness to the presence of God's grace in the midst of it and be silent”
David was one of Ryan’s professors at Yale Divinity School
What to do about the pain of others?
Observing human suffering when it is not our own
People who have lost loved ones in the Pandemic, what do you say to them? What do you do?
How to live in that sacred yet difficult place?
Isaiah 6, “I’m a man of unclean lips”
David Kelsey: “The main problem is that we seek explanations where there are in fact two mysteries”
the positive mystery that is God cannot be grasped
the negative mystery, which is evil
And the two make no sense together
"Look, when you look for an explanation there, you're going to get God wrong and you're going to hurt people. There's a better way and it starts and ends with silence”
David Kelsey, Imagining Redemption
David Kelsey, Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology
David Kelsey, Human Anguish and God's Power
Human Anguish and God's Power – what made you interested in this?
Clergy are appalled about the rhetoric that people would say to those in anguish in the hospital. “This was sent for a purpose,’ ‘there is a plan here.’ It makes grief more complicated.
So why do people say those things?
The Abrahamic traditions asserted that God created the Earth out of nothing, which implies that God can do anything He wants. That leads to people think God wants people to suffer
Initially the title was Human Anguish and Divine Power, but he realized that was wrong
God so exceeds our capacity to get our minds around what it is to be God that everything we say about God should be "God is kind of like someone who loves," "God is kind of like someone who is focused on justice"
We don’t really know what justice, in God’s case, really means
“When people talk very fluently about God, I get very uneasy. It's too slick”
Reading scripture in light of the text
The drive to want an explanation
Lutheran theologian, Deanna Thompson, has written about this in experience as a cancer victim
“Christians have trouble with this: God did not create evil, and yet evil is there. It’s absurd, and it’s real.”
“How it came to be that way, we don’t know. Presumably God knows, but I’ m not God”
“Not short-circuiting the mysteriousness of evil and yet affirming somehow the priority of what you call ‘the positive mystery that is God’”
Christians often think evil and grace are reconcilable if you think hard enough
The wildness of God's grace: "why in the world would God love us this way?”
Don’t try to talk, be a witness to the mystery
“The wildness of evil is parasitic because it’s a deep distortion of God’s created good”
Evil as distortion
“Disease is a distortion of the dynamics of a healthy organism, but not some other sort of dynamic. It's just that gone awry”
“And so it's that asymmetry where the mystery of evil is parasitic on the mystery of what grace produces”
Where does silence land in a person’s life?
“Worship: it's praying; it's singing; it's asking for help; it's confessing our sins; it's helping our neighbors”
Praise of God’s glory as foundation of worship
First silence, then praise

About David Kelsey

David Kelsey is Luther A. Weigle Professor Emeritus of Theology at Yale Divinity School. He is author of several works of theology, including Imagining Redemption, Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology, and most recently Human Anguish and God's Power.

Production Notes

This podcast featured David Kelsey & Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Edited by Evan Rosa
Co-produced by Evan Rosa & Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right: Racial History, Reparations, and Belonging / Lisa Sharon Harper & Miroslav Volf May 15, 2021

About Lisa Sharon Harper

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

The Freedom of Forgiveness: Ancient Christian Wisdom on The Happiness Lab / Laurie Santos & Miroslav Volf May 08, 2021

A conversation on the ancient wisdom of Christian forgiveness, between Yale psychologist Laurie Santos (host, The Happiness Lab) and Miroslav Volf. Recently appearing on The Happiness Lab, Miroslav and Laurie discuss his older brother's tragic death as a child and his family's response to forgive. Miroslav reflects on the formative impact of these events. He contrasts forgiveness as an obligation with forgiveness as a gift that frees one from captivity to the past and opens up possibilities for the future. Forgiveness, for him, is more than an event but a practice cultivated throughout life, offering a way of recognizing the sacred and holy in the other.

Reposted with permission from The Happiness Lab. Listen and subscribe at www.happinesslab.fm.

Show Notes

Introduction: Evan Rosa
"Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."
Subscribe to The Happiness Lab: https://www.happinesslab.fm/
The story of Miroslav Volf's family forgiving the soldier responsible for the death of his brother as a child
Forgiveness as transcending the rage and deep sorrow
"Forgive one another as you have been forgiven in Christ." (Ephesians 4:32)
The love of enemy as a fundamental Christian stance
How many times should I forgive: 70 x 7
A definition of forgiveness—dealing with resentment, or freeing one's life from the burden of injury.
Gift
"Unstick the deed from the doer. This is what forgiveness does."
Nietzsche against forgiveness, treating all injury as minor and ineffectual.
"Time does not run backwards."
In the gift of forgiveness, I relate to you as if you had not done that particular wrong.
Forgiveness as an arduous process; a release into new possibilities for the future.
"We are often held captive by the past."
Forgiveness reconfigures the relationship with have the other. We give the possibility (not the actuality) for a different future. Imagine and live into a joint future.
Forgiveness must be a voluntary act.
We shouldn't think of forgiveness as a burden, but as a gift.
Life becomes better when we can transcend the self.
Turning from injury and loss to a new life. "Forgiveness made it possible for her to invest herself into the good around her."
Release into the future
The Volf family's forgiveness of the soldier who was responsible for their son's death.
Practical steps to move toward forgiveness
Invoking the command to forgive
"Forgiveness isn't a one-time event. ... It's a messy process. It's in this messiness—in this gradual character of forgiveness—that we actually grow into forgiveness. And forgiveness ends up being not so much an act as it ends up being a a practice."
Prodigal Son governs the logic of Christianity
"People have a hard time forgiving themselves."
"To forgive myself, I somehow have to distinguish between who the core of myself is, and what I have done. I cannot have an account of the self that is simply the sum of what I have suffered and what I have committed. If I have that kind of account of the self, there's no way to delete that from the self, because that wrongdoing is integral to the self. ... In the Christian tradition—other traditions as well, to a significant degree—there's always been a sense that there is a core of the self that is loved by God, and that we ought to love in each other that is untouched by anything that person might or might not have done, or what that person has suffered."
"Would you love me if I turned into a donkey?"
Seeing the sacred in the other

About Laurie Santos

Dr. Laurie Santos is Professor of Psychology and Head of Silliman College at Yale University. Dr. Santos is an expert on human cognition and the cognitive biases that impede better choices. Her course, “Psychology and the Good Life,” teaches students what the science of psychology says about how to make wiser choices and live a life that’s happier and more fulfilling. The class is Yale’s most popular course in over 300 years and has been adapted into a free Coursera program that has been taken by over 3.3 million people to date. Dr. Santos has been featured in numerous news outlets including the New York Times, NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, CBS This Morning, NPR, GQ Magazine, Slate, CNN and O, The Oprah Magazine. Dr. Santos is a winner of numerous awards both for her science and teaching from institutions such as Yale and the American Psychological Association. She has been featured as one of Popular Science’s “Brilliant 10” young minds and was named TIME's “Leading Campus Celebrity.” Her podcast, The Happiness Lab, launched in 2019 has over 35 million downloads.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Miroslav Volf and Laurie Santos
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Special thanks to Laurie Santos, Ryan Dilley, and Pushkin Media
Production Assistance by Martin Chan & Nathan Jowers
Listen and subscribe to The Happiness Lab at www.happinesslab.fm
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

Beyond Invisible | American 한 (Han): An Artistic Response to Anti-Asian Violence / Sarah Shin & Shin Maeng May 07, 2021

"The tears were always there. / You just didn’t recognize my face." Author, artist, and theologian Sarah Shin reads her poem "Beyond Invisible"—a response to the March 2021 Atlanta shootings that left six Asian women dead—a crescendo of increasing anti-Asian violence.

Sarah's poem and her husband Shin Maeng's accompanying illustration ask the pointed question, "Can you see me now?"—dealing with the recognition not just of grief over recent events, but the generational tears that have flowed unseen, unacknowledged, and unaddressed.

American 한 (Han)

Click here to view "American 한 (Han)," illustrated by Shin Maeng.

Beyond Invisible

by Sarah Shin

The tears were always there.
You just didn’t recognize my face.
Nor did you see behind the hunched back of the one doing your nails
The steel frame of a mother feeding her family with 14 hour work days.

Instead of seeing in our bodies and our face
The altar of the broken faithful awaiting resurrection
You make them instead into a graveyard for your sins.
But some habits just die hard, huh?

Inconvenient convenience it would be
To behold in a flattened story
The freedom-fighters who battled war, demagogues, oceans, and despair
And tore themselves from everything they knew to be home
The heartache of sacrificing family past to give family future a chance.

Anchors they have served to be as we strive to make this home
But cut into them and you’ve cut loose
Everything that told us to bear it
Everything that said hope was worth it
To swallow tears and keep our heads down.

No more now.

Our dams are broke and now they flood
All around you, all around me.

Do you see beyond just my face now?
Do you see beyond what you didn’t see in my eyes now?
Do you see me
Can you see me
Can you see me now?

To read more of Sarah's thoughts on the Atlanta shootings, read her piece, "Honoring the Lives of Women Who Refuse to Be Scrubbed Away" (MissioAlliance.org).

About Sarah Shin

Sarah Shin is author of Beyond Colorblind: Redeeming Our Ethnic Journey. She is currently studying at the Logos Institute for Analytic and Exegetical Theology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Prior to that she served as Associate National Director of Evangelism for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. She regularly trains leaders and speaks at the intersection of evangelism, ethnic reconciliation, justice, beauty, and technology.

About Shin Maeng

Shin Maeng is an artist and illustrator. Make sure to check the show notes to examine his illustration, "American 한 (Han)" which was a direct response to Sarah's poem, "Beyond Invisible." Follow him @ShinHappens on Instagram.

Active Mystic: How Wonder Unifies Justice and Spirituality / Sameer Yadav May 01, 2021

Which is greater: action or contemplation? Which is more excellent and therefore more central and determinative in human flourishing? A life of action—focused outward in service of humanity and exterior, public, practiced love? Or a life of contemplation—focused inward in reflection and meditation and communion with God, a private, interior castle of wisdom?

You might be quick to point out that it's a false dilemma and of course we need both. But this is quite an old conundrum in both the history of philosophy and the history of Christianity and it continues to find expression in contemporary life as we struggle with the idea of personal morality and social justice.

The world today is as broken a place as ever; individual people are as broken as ever—and what will heal us? Meditation and mindfulness and prayer? Or doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly?

If the answer is in fact both, what unites the contemplative life with active life in your life?

Today on the show, Sameer Yadav joins us for a conversation on mysticism, activism, and wonder. He explains the history of thinking about these jointly necessary elements of human flourishing, understanding the terms in relation to spirituality and contemporary activism, and drawing together two thinkers from different cultures and times: the Cappadocian Father Gregory of Nyssa and the spiritual father of the American Civil Rights movement, Howard Thurman. They share fascinating perspectives on what it means to be human, the need for cooperative caretaking as a reflection of God's relation to the world, and an attentiveness to wonder as a hinge between the contemplative and active life, with lasting implications for everything from interpersonal relationships, to democracy, to ecological care.

Show Notes

“The basic consideration has to do with the removal of all that prevents God from coming to Himself in the life of the individual”
The ‘altar of the heart’ and Thurman’s theology
“Social action is never an end in and of itself. It is for the sake of God's life manifest in oneself”
Which is better, action or contemplation?
Public love? or inwardness, communion with God?
It’s a false question: we need both
The state of the world today: what will heal us?
“Is it meditation and prayer, or doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly? And if the answer is in fact both, what unites contemplative life with active life?”
Mysticism, activism, and wonder
Reflecting on Gregory of Nyssa and Howard Thurman
Cooperative caretaking and attention to wonder
How attention affects everything from relationships, to democracy, to ecological care
The mystic versus the prophet, according to history
“Dispell the idea that they’re at odds”
Luke 10:38, Mary and Martha sitting at the feet of Jesus in contemplation and active service
These have always been seen as two necessary components of a whole Christian life
The relationship between imagining life and responding to it
Gregory of Nyssa, a Christian thinker influenced by Greek philosophy, emphaisized virtue. The way we engage with the world is the way we engage with God.
Howard Thurman, remove all “that prevents God from coming to himself within, in the life of the individual, whatever there is that blocks this, that's what calls for action."
Social work enriches the individual
The alter to God in the community is linked to the alter to God in the individual
Direct experience versus experience mediated by God
“Be a mirror of God’s own relationship to creatures. It’s a form of caretaking”
Seeing humanity as one, as the mystics do, motivates the way we care for the world
“In self-help, attention is getting a lot of attention. The economy of our attention, how what we pay attention is driving our experience of the world”
How do you understand spiritual attention versus social attention?
Attention is not just emotion, it’s virtue. The way we perceive is shaped by the kind of person we are
Wonder versus attention
“Wonder is a kind of interest directed on the final value of a thing, not its usefulness. Final value appears to us as mysterious. It’s also attractive.”
“Wonder is like a hinge between contemplation and action”
Epistemic humility, what can we know about each other?
Wonder as a moral emotion
Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: the Intelligence of Emotions
Jeremy Bendik-Keymer, "our ecological responsibility is unlikely to be met purely out of a sense of duty"
To wonder at the natural order actually makes us responsible to it
Wonder creates sacredness, and that gives rise to a need for preservation and care
“Wonder and be drawn to it, before rushing into judgment”
Wonder and danger
Alex Nava, Wonder and Exile in the New World
Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750
What does it look like to see the world of injustice through the attentiveness of the mystic?
“Seeing God manifest through the oppressor, not just the oppressed. How the oppressor’s own humanity is distorted and disfigured
The oppressor as morally injured
Forming a moral disposition requires forming a practice.
What are some of those practices?
“The formations of dispositions is not a flash of light and insight, but rather a long slow life of contemplation”
“Cultivation of wonder requires engagement with each other and the natural world. People who work on ecological ethics, it’s through positive engagements with the natural world, through exposure”
Attending to the natural world, rather than getting something done by it”
“Sometimes activism is geared towards creating the opportunity for the attention and engagement that makes contemplation possible”

About Sameer Yadav

Sameer Yadav is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Westmont College and specializes in systematic and philosophical theology, theology and race, and mysticism and religious experience. He is the author of The Problem of Perception and the Experience of God (Fortress Press, 2015), and has published in various journals including The Journal of Analytic Theology, Journal of Religion, Faith and Philosophy and Pro Ecclesia. Dr. Yadav has reading competency in biblical Aramaic, Greek, Hebrew, French and German. He is a member in American Academy of Religion, Society of Christian Philosophers, Society of Christian Ethics, and Society of Scriptural Reasoning.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Sameer Yadav
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
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

Have You Eaten Yet?: Hospitality, Solidarity, and the Great Banquet of Justice / David de Leon & Matt Croasmun Apr 24, 2021

"Kumain ka na ba?”—Have you eaten yet? (Tagalog) This beautiful phrase of welcome and care and intimacy evokes and offers more than just the pleasure and nourishment of a meal. It calls out to the hunger, the thirst, and the need for love that we can greet in one another. David de Leon joins Matt Croasmun for a discussion of hospitality and solidarity and justice, applying the parable of the Great Banquet to cultures of inhospitality, and especially to the context of the increased targeting, discrimination, marginalization, and violence against the Asian American community over the past year.

Show Notes

“I think it can be really easy to believe that joy and justice, or even our grief--that expressing that comes at the expense of other people, that there isn't enough space for all of our joy to be together”
“Life together in the family of God, at the banquet of God is…a radical conviction that God has enough for us all”
Luke 14, the parable of the great banquet
"Kumain ka na ba?”—a greeting and an invitation - have you eaten yet?
“‘Kumain ka na ba?’ Is the lavish invitation of Christ to a banquet that sustains our weary, divided, broken and lonely selves”
“I miss hosting people”
Jesus says, "Don't invite people to your parties who can pay you back. Invite the people who never get invitations. Then you'll have it good"
“The racial justice uprisings of this past year remind us that this country still remains inhospitable to black and brown lives”
The increase in violence towards Asian American and Asian American elders since the beginning of the Pandemic
The legacy of inhospitality towards Asian people in America
“It rears its head in our internalized hatred and the loss of memory and story, the separation of our families, and then the incomprehension of our heart languages”
“The pressure to present yourself in ways that display your competence, your control, the need to check their whole self at the waiting room of your zoom calls, leaving pieces of yourself off the pages of the papers you write”
Justice is not scarce
There’s room for all of our joy at this banquet
“Perhaps Jesus is inviting us to partake in the feast of rest, the feast of vulnerability and community, to entrust our imperfections and limitations to one another”
“The food that tastes like home” – how expansive home can be
“I think there's something about the deep vulnerability of inviting somebody into something that feels very ordinary for you, but it's very comfortable, and then having people enjoy that thing with you”
Sharing the most unglamorous parts of ourselves
Unphotogenic food
How gendered racial violence can be
“It just seemed like yet another moment where we're not woken up until there's loss of life”
“Our shared life together should be our orienting hope and dream, as opposed to just the quite proper anger that we might experience in response to death?”
“It can be really easy to believe that joy and justice, or even our grief – that expressing that comes at the expense of other people”
A radical conviction that God has enough life for us all
Are you going to come to the banquet? Are you going to turn away?

About David de Leon

David de Leon is a graduating Master of divinity candidate at Yale Divinity School, and is an incoming PhD student studying Systematic Theology at Fordham University. He’s a child of Pilipino immigrants and was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, and for the last 12 years has worked in college campus ministry, leading Pilipino American focused ministries, and working to mobilize Asian Americans to pursue racial justice.

Production Notes

This podcast featured David de Leon and Matt Croasmun
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa & Matt Croasmun
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

Passionate God, Crucified God, Joyful God / Jürgen Moltmann & Miroslav Volf Apr 10, 2021

"Without living theologically, there can be no theology." (Jürgen Moltmann)

Miroslav Volf interviews his mentor, German theologian Jürgen Moltmann, who reflects on the meaning of joy and its connection to anxiety, fear, wrath, hope, and love.
Moltmann tells his story of discovering (or, being discovered by) God as a 16-year-old drafted into World War II by the German Army, enduring the bombardment of his hometown of Hamburg, and being held for 3 years in a Scottish prison camp, where he read with new eyes the cry of dereliction from Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
This cry would lay a foundation that led to his most influential book, The Crucified God. Moltmann explains the centrality of Christ, the human face of God, for not just his theological vision, but his personal faith—which is a lived theology.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz introduces the episode by celebrating Jürgen Moltmann's 95th birthday and reflecting on his lasting theological influence.

Show Notes

Happy 95th Birthday, Jürgen Moltmann!
Find the places of deepest human concern, and shine the light of the Gospel there.
“Without living theologically, there can be no theology."
Jürgen Moltmann’s Theology of Joy (1972)—“How can I sing the Lord’s song in an alien land?"
Joy today: Singing the Lord’s song in the broad place of his presence
"Hope is anticipated joy, as anxiety is anticipated terror."
"How does one find the way to joy from within anxiety and terror?"
Seeing the face of God as an awakened hope
Jesus Christ as the human face of God: “Without Jesus Christ, I would not believe in God."
God is present in the midst of suffering
Discovering and being discovered by God
Moltmann’s story of being drafted to the Germany army at 16 years old (1943)
In a prison camp in Scotland, Moltmann read the Gospel of Mark and found hope when there was no expectation.
The Crucified God, the cry of dereliction, and the cry of jubilation
Contrasting joy with American optimism and the pursuit of happiness
Christianity as a unique religion of joy, in virtue of the resurrection of Christ
Joy versus fun—“You can experience joy only with your whole heart, your whole soul, and all your energies."
"You cannot make yourself joyful… something unexpected must happen."
Love and joy
"The intention of love is the happiness of the beloved."
"We are not loved because we are beautiful… we are beautiful because we are loved."
Joy and gratitude
Love comes as a gift and surprise, and therefore leads to joy.
Blessed, therefore grateful—receiving the gift as gift
“Anticipated joy is the best joy.”
The Passion of God as the foundation of joy
Passionate God of the Hebrew Bible or Absolute God of Greek Metaphysics?
An apathetic God makes apathetic people; the compassion of God makes compassionate people
A Feeling God or an Apathetic God? God’s participation in suffering and joy
“God participates in the joy of his creation."
Luke 15: “There is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 just…"
Lost coin, lost sheep, prodigal son...
The wrath of God is God’s wounded love
“My wrath is only for a moment, and my grace is everlasting."
"Joy, in the end, wins."

Watch a video of this interview here.

Production Notes

This podcast featured theologians Jürgen Moltmann, Miroslav Volf, and Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa & Ryan McAnnally-Linz
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

Dead Quiet: The Death Penalty in Theological, Moral, and Political Context / Elizabeth Bruenig & Ryan McAnnally-Linz Apr 03, 2021

"Once a person has done evil, they have destroyed a significant part of themselves. They have made that turn towards non-being, non-existence, chaos, disorder, and loss. And so when you execute a person who has already done that kind of moral damage to themselves, not to mention all the damage they've done to other people, but at that point, the only thing remaining in them is the good, which is that this is a human being, alive and made in the image of the living God. And so at that point, that's all they have. And you're destroying it."

Ryan McAnnally-Linz is joined by Elizabeth Bruenig (New York Times) to discuss the theological, moral, and political implications of the death penalty, best summed in her bracing piece released days after the execution of Alfred Bourgeois, which she witnessed in person.

Show Notes

Evan Rosa, Holy Saturday Reflection
Elizabeth Bruenig, "The Man I Saw Them Kill”—Liz Bruenig witnesses the execution of Alfred Bourgeois
Mark Oppenheimer, "A Death Row Inmate Finds Common Ground With Theologians”—Jurgen Moltmann’s relationship with death row inmate Kelly Gissendaner
Elizabeth Bruenig, "The Government Has Not Explained How These 13 People Were Selected to Die”—Liz Bruenig: "The federal death penalty cannot be fixed. It’s time to end it."
Elizabeth Bruenig, "Witness to an Execution: A Chilling Account”—Readers react to Elizabeth Bruenig’s essay about the recent federal execution of Alfred Bourgeois.
"Execution as theater”
What does the death penalty do to us?
Hoping for the destruction of another person
“I think anytime you’re sitting around hoping someone is destroyed, that’s a morally compromising position to be in. It’s certainly the case that people can commit crimes that make me feel like they should be themselves wiped off the face of the earth and eliminated from the cosmos, but I know that those impulses are not the best in me.”
The impulse to destroy
Rationality, irrationality, and the extremity of the death penalty
Moral loss and moral injury
The question of accidentally executing innocent people versus the impulse to destroy
Deserted island
Intense revulsion at evil
The VVitch (The Witch, 2015)
St. Augustine on the death penalty. Hate the sin, love the nature.
"Nothing was restored, nothing was gained. There isn’t any justice in it, nor satisfaction, nor reason: There was nothing, nothing there.”
Agnes Callard
The permanence of harm
“Harm can’t be undone… What can we do about the fact that harm is so permanent. … It may seem symmetrical in a literary sense but it doesn’t actually do anything to undo the harm."
“What can we preserve? What can we prevent from being destroyed any further?"
Wounds of the martyrs
Miroslav Volf’s view that the sins, harms, and wounds of life will not come to mind in heaven; social reconciliation that goes along with the settling of accounts in judgment
The Prodigal Son and the moral damage done to oneself
“You were always with me. Why are you complaining? Everything I have is yours. Why are you upset about that?"
Hen Meme: “Sorry my mom said no”
“Hiding in God’s wing and feeling like, whatever else anyone does, however angry anyone else makes me, I am here with the Lord. He has me. I’ll be okay. I have it in me to forgive because I have everything my Father has, which is everything there is."
Public policy and the death penalty abolition movement; states will slowly trail off in the use of the death penalty
Federal death penalty, Trump and Barr’s abuse of federal executions
The role of the Supreme
What to expect and the range of possibilities for the future of federal capital punishment
Jürgen Moltmann and death row inmate Kelly Gissendaner
The political calculation of commuting sentences or abolishing the death penalty.
“They don’t want to spend political capital on criminals, people who’ve done terrible things."
Capital punishment and public policy

About Elizabeth Bruenig

Elizabeth Bruenig is an American journalist and opinion writer for the New York Times.

Production Notes

This podcast featured journalist Elizabeth Bruenig and theologian Ryan McAnnally-Linz
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

You Do You: Ethics of Authenticity in Disney's Frozen and Moana / Matt Croasmun and Ryan McAnnally-Linz Mar 29, 2021

Enroll now for our 7-week Life Worth Living Course through Grace Farms: http://gracefarms.org/life-worth-living. The course runs from May 4 to June 15, and we expect it to fill up quickly, so don’t wait to sign up!

One of the most prominent visions of the good life present in Disney films could be called "expressive individualism," perhaps best captured by the phrase "you do you." In this episode Ryan McAnnally-Linz and Matt Croasmun interpret and unpack the ethics of the authentic self, belonging, and the implicit visions of flourishing life in two contemporary classics from Disney: Frozen and Moana.

Support the For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Show Notes

Who is my most authentic self? How can I become who I truly am?
Matt Croasmun’s course at Grace Farms: http://gracefarms.org/life-worth-living
How would your life change if the idea you were reading about were true?
“Aim to become indigenous to a place” Robin Kimmerer
What way of being human is particular to you?
Disney and the quest for the self
Charles Taylor: “Our most essential responsibility is our responsibility to ourselves to become our most authentic self “
If we strive for uniqueness, what happens to universal values?
Moral relativity in Charles Taylor
What if we hurt each other on the way to becoming ourselves?
‘Let It Go,’ the anthem that’s everywhere
Reading the song to mean ‘you do you’ is a shallow reading
Our values run deep in our culture, entertainment, and mythology
Elsa’s hidden, dangerous powers: ‘conceal don’t feel’
The disciplined, buffered self
“But freedom as ruleless-ness is too shallow a reading”
In becoming her authentic self, Elsa knows she is at risk of hurting Ana
Elsa is saved by Ana’s love, which allows her to have her powers without hurting anyone
Resolution is not isolation
Every child belting ‘Let It Go’ is missing part of the resolution
Our society tells the movie: “just be yourself, other people be damned,” missing the emphasis on love and acceptance of each other
Frozen stands in a line of post-modern reinterpretations of fables that celebrate the villain
Elsa was supposed to be the villain, but ‘Let it Go’ was so humanizing they changed the story
The Nietzschean impulse to discard moral framework
Elsa is expressing her ‘will to power’ when she sings, " No wrong, no right, no rules for me"
By making the villain the hero, the writers get beyond good and evil
The recovery of the pre-modern moralist villain
Turning to Moanna:
Moanna discovers that her true self is in tension with the way of her people. She wants to travel, but her people say, “The island gives us what we need”
When she learns that her people are actually voyagers, it draws her into relationship with her grandmother
We know what she means when she belts, ‘I am Moanna”
Taylor calls it ‘The Horizon of Significance:’ he wants to celebrate particularity, without an overemphasis on difference
What matters can’t just be random. You must give an account
The cosmology of Moanna: taking the power of nature and giving it to humans
Moanna provides an account for how magic relates to its cosmology, where Frozen’s magic comes out of nowhere
Our choices should be free and also meaningful
Frozen highlights the dignity of the return to ordinary life, whereas in Moanna, all of life is transformed into adventure. This is the heroic life. “To be truly human is to aim for something that is beyond the ordinary life” - Matt Croasman
“But what about the Hobbits!” – Ryan McAnnally-Linz
How these stories charm and influence our theology must include a critical look at the culture we are inside of
“None of us are in a vacuum.” Film as a stream of meaning that we’re already swimming in
“At the end of the day, ‘you do you’, is the thin way of finding our way into a ‘thicker meaning:’ how to live as the individual whom God created”

When Hospitals Become Battlefields: The Impact of Spiritual Abuse on Faith & Flourishing / Dan Koch Mar 20, 2021

Thinking of the Christian church as a field hospital is a wonderful thought, but what happens when the very place you go to for healing becomes the locus of trauma? What happens to faith and flourishing when the hospital becomes a battlefield? For all the media attention given to cases of spiritual abuse, there is very little by way of psychological research. Dan Koch, host of the podcast You Have Permission and a doctoral student in counseling psychology at Northwest University, explores the tragic and damaging phenomenon of spiritual abuse; its impact on the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual life; and identifies some of the most important factors in understanding its underlying causes and developing approaches to healing for victims. Interview with Evan Rosa.

Show Notes

"Religion is like nuclear fission. When done well, nuclear fission can give us free electricity indefinitely with a little bit of care and a little bit of grooming. It's this tremendously powerful source of energy and flourishing. But it also, when done poorly, can melt a reactor, kill tens of thousands of people, and irradiate land for a million years."
"What we do when we spiritually abused someone, not only do we harm them, we cut them off from what may have been their primary healing source. In the same move, we make it harder for them to use their faith, use their spirituality to heal from the harm we just did to them."
“The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.”
For our purposes, "spiritual abuse" means any form of physical, mental, sexual, or spiritual harm or trauma that occurs in a religious context.
About You Have Permission
Theology and psychology—TheoPsych and Blueprint1543
How Dan Koch got interested in spiritual and religious abuse
End-times terror as a form of spiritual abuse
Spiritual and religious abuse has scant literature, but covers a variety of species of abuse and harm.
A Venn diagram with other kinds of abuse and harm, in religious contexts
Controlling and narcissistic pastors
Conditionality
Violence, horror, and terror
Developing a God image
Restricting negative emotions and unhappiness
The prevalence of spiritual abuse—Liz Oakley's study of the U.K.
Jean Vanier and Ravi Zacharias—celebrity, fame, and power dynamics that lead to spiritual and sexual abuse
The power of religious leaders in American life
Conflating the religious leader with God
The impact of spiritual abuse on the plausibility of faith: rationality, emotion, and the holistic response of a person to abuse
Responding to spiritual abuse
Standing in solidarity with victims

About Dan Koch

Dan Koch is host of the podcast You Have Permission and a doctoral student in counseling psychology at Northwest University. Follow him on Twitter @DanKoch.

The Gravity of Joy / Angela Gorrell Mar 13, 2021

Theologian Angela Gorrell discusses her book The Gravity of Joy, a theological memoir that lays bare the experience of finding the bright sorrow of joy alongside devastating grief, suffering, and pain. The book recounts her experience of joining the Yale Center for Faith & Culture in 2016 as an Associate Research Scholar for our Theology of Joy and the Good Life Project and to teach our Yale undergraduate course, Life Worth Living. That winter, the reality, the extent, and the dangerous potential of joy would become devastatingly clear. The highly abstract question of what it means to live a life worth living would become painfully acute. Interview with Ryan McAnnally-Linz.

Support For the Life of the World by supporting the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: faith.yale.edu/give

This episode contains some sensitive material about suicide. Use some discretion as you consider listening, and if you are feeling suicidal, thinking about hurting yourself, or are concerned that someone you know may be in danger of hurting themselves, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK.

Show Notes

Read the book: The Gravity of Joy: A Story of Being Lost and Found
A devastating winter of loss
Suicide and opioid deaths as “deaths of despair"
“Despair is the feeling I think that people can feel when they feel like no one can reach them. No one can get to them. And for me, joy is a counteragent to despair because joy is the feeling that we get after recognizing truth, meaning beauty, goodness, our relationship to other people."
Joy as a work of resistance against despair (e.g., Willie James Jennings)
"Joy as an illumination that there is something more.”
Grief vs Despair—what prevented your grief from becoming despair? Who reached you?
“Even though I was a year and five months in grief… angry… constantly afraid of getting another call."
Suicide watch in a women’s correctional facility—“These women are going to minister to me."
"Is our study of joy too shallow?"
Different kinds of joy
Joy and sorrow—from the book: "Joy doesn’t obliterate grief. . . . Instead, joy has a mysterious capacity to be felt alongside sorrow and even—sometimes most especially—in the midst of suffering."
The ocean as a spiritual sanctuary, the rain as an indicator that change is coming
"I suddenly found myself rejoicing over what ought to be, what was to come. I suddenly believed that joy might make its way to me again. And just the mirror. Like what if of joy like found me on that beach, running in the pouring rain?"
Women’s prison bible study—feeling welcome to a community without shame
Humanizing one another in a dehumanizing institution: “The Gravity of Joy is my effort to humanize people who are incarcerated."
God’s activity in suffering, pain, and joy: “God was always seeking after you."
Romans 8:28 "All things work together for good"
I hope people feel seen.

About Angela Gorrell

Dr. Angela Williams Gorrell is Assistant Professor of Practical Theology at Baylor University's George W. Truett Theological Seminary and author of The Gravity of Joy: A Story of Being Lost and Found and Always on: Practicing Faith in a New Media Landscape. Prior to joining the faculty at Baylor University, she was an Associate Research Scholar at the Yale Center for Faith & Culture, working on the Theology of Joy and the Good Life Project, and a lecturer in Divinity and Humanities at Yale University. She is an ordained pastor with 15 years of ministry experience. Dr. Gorrell’s expertise is in the areas of theology and contemporary culture, education and formation, new media, and youth and emerging adults.

Befriending Reality: Engaging Otherness with Hospitality, Artfulness, and Particularity at Depth / Krista Tippett & Miroslav Volf Mar 06, 2021

“For me, the spiritual task is to befriend reality in all its mess and complexity—to do that with grace." Krista Tippett joins Miroslav Volf for a conversation on the importance of engaging otherness on the grounds of our common humanity; her personal faith journey from small town Baptists in Oklahoma, to a secular humanism in a divided Cold-War Berlin, and then back to her spiritual homeland and mother tongue of Christianity in an expansive and engaging new way; the art of conversation, deep listening, cultivating hospitality; the spiritual task of befriending reality; and the challenge of being alone and being together as we seek to live a life worthy of our humanity.

Support For the Life of the World by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: faith.yale.edu/give

Show Notes

Julian of Norwich today: "All shall be well." Read the Revelations of Divine Love
Krista Tippett and On Being
The art of being human and speaking of faith in the twenty-first century
The animating questions behind the human enterprise
Creating a space for a conversations we couldn’t (but needed to) hear
Certainties and beliefs
What it means to be human, how we want to live, and what we want to be to each other
Hospitality—intellectual virtue, social art, sophisticated technology for inviting the best of other people into the room
How to invite someone into a good conversation, inviting them in their fullness
The discipline and public service of holding back your own opinions for the sake of listening
Balancing listening and speaking in a good conversation
What binds and unites various voices within the diversity of On Being?
"My primary intention is not to find similarities, but to be fascinated by particularity and go deep into that."
Abraham Joshua Heschel’s “Depth Theology”
Drawing opposites and counterintuitives even within the same person
Similar themes emerging from very different mouths—struggle for justice, struggle for wholeness, aspiring to both praise and lament
The complexity and fine textures of the melodies of humanity
Confounding ourselves
"There are no storybook heroes in the Hebrew Bible … it shows all the mess."
Befriending reality, which has a lot about it we wouldn’t choose, like, or expect—and then make a life of meaning with that and from that.
“For me, the spiritual task is to befriend reality in all its mess and complexity—to do that with grace."
Christian faith as a “mother tongue”—spiritual complexity and Krista’s conservative Baptist upbringing: “I got a lot of lived theology."
"There is an order—there is a love that infuses all of this."
“I’m not defined by what I reject, and I’m very slow to judge anyone else’s deep beliefs."
How Krista came back to Christianity while living in divided Cold War Berlin
Moral exhaustion
“I didn’t immediately head back to Christianity. First I got quiet, then I got intentionally quiet, and then I started wandered into praying ... and an imagination, and then that brought me back to my spiritual homeland."
Julian of Norwich and “All shall be well”—the cosmic sense of those words
“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well…”
"It’s a mystical statement. It doesn’t add up with what we can see and hear and touch. … At some cosmic level, which I can’t be articulate about, it makes sense for me."
What kind of life is worthy of our humanity?
We’re living in a time when we are open to hearing the truth about ourselves
We alone, and we’re together
Revisiting and grappling with binaries
Privileging the cultivation of knowing ourselves and spiritual technologies
“It’s hard to be inextricable from other human beings.”
We’re just as shaped by how we treat our enemies as how we treat our friends
Nurturing the interior life as we’re tempted to focus on external appearances
Invest in ourselves in order to be present to the world

About Krista Tippett

Krista Tippett is a Peabody Award-winning broadcaster, a National Humanities Medalist, and a New York Times bestselling author. She grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, attended Brown University, and became a journalist and diplomat in Cold War Berlin. She then lived in Spain and England before seeking a Master of Divinity at Yale University in the mid-1990s.

Emerging from that, she saw a black hole where intelligent public conversation about the religious, spiritual, and moral aspects of human life might be. She pitched and piloted her idea for several years before launching Speaking of Faith — later On Being — as a weekly national public radio show in 2003. In 2014, the year after she took On Being into independent production, President Obama awarded Krista the National Humanities Medal at the White House for “thoughtfully delving into the mysteries of human existence. On the air and in print, Ms. Tippett avoids easy answers, embracing complexity and inviting people of every background to join her conversation about faith, ethics, and moral wisdom.”

Krista has published three books at the intersection of spiritual inquiry, social healing, science, and culture: Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living; Einstein’s God, drawn from her interviews at the intersection of science, medicine, and spiritual inquiry; and Speaking of Faith, a memoir of religion in our time. In recent honors, she is a recipient of a Four Freedoms Medal of the Roosevelt Institute. She also received an honorary degree from Middlebury College, and was the Mimi and Peter E. Haas Distinguished Visitor at Stanford University.

Krista has two grown children. She is currently at work on a new book about moral imagination and the human challenges and promise of this young century.

Joy and the Act of Resistance Against Despair / Willie Jennings and Miroslav Volf Feb 28, 2021

"I look at joy as an act of resistance against despair and its forces. ... Joy in that regard is a work, that can become a state, that can become a way of life." Willie Jennings joins Miroslav Volf to discuss the definition of joy as an act of resistance against despair, the counterintuitive nature of cultivating joy in the midst of suffering, the commercialization of joy in Western culture, joy segregated by racism and slavery, how Jesus expands and corrects our understanding of joy.

Support For the Life of the World by making a gift to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: faith.yale.edu/give

Show Notes

Click here to watch the full interview in video
Click here to learn more about the Theology of Joy and the Good Life project
Defining joy—an act of resistance against despair
"Resisting all the ways in which life can be strangled and presented to us as not worth living"
Singing a song in a strange land
Making productive use of pain, suffering, and the absurd—taking them serious
How does one cultivate joy? You have to have people who can show you how to sing a song in a strand land, laugh where all you want to do is cry, and how to ride the winds of chaos.
"In contexts where your energies have to be focused on survival, it doesn’t leave a lot of energy for overt forms of complaint—you’re spending a lot of energy just trying to hold it together."
The commercialization of joy in the empire of advertising—contrasting that with the peoples serious work of joy
The work and skill of making something beautiful out of what has been thrown away
Segregated joy—joy in African diaspora communities
Joy is always embedded in community logics
The Christological center of joy
Pentecost joy—joy together
Geographies of joy: Christians tend not to think spatially, but we should
Public rituals bound to real space
Hoping for joyous infection, where the space has claimed you as its own
Where can joy be found? The church, the hospital room, the barber shop and beauty shops—“things are going to be better"

About Willie Jennings

Willie Jennings's After Whiteness: Belonging, Intimacy, and Resisting White Masculinity / Matt Croasmun Feb 25, 2021

Matt Croasmun honors theologian Willie Jennings and his work in After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging. Willie Jennings is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies at Yale Divinity School.

Show Notes

Willie Jennings, After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging
Arvo Pärt’s Te Deum
“Be ware the hidden curriculum."
White, self-sufficient masculinity: "a way of being that conflates knowing with owning, holding up possession, mastery, and control (vices all) as virtues” and “an ideal we cannot achieve"
Racial paterfamilias: conflating person and property
Beyond education
Mutual belonging and deep connection
Quote from After Whiteness: The cultivation of belonging should be the goal of all education. Not just any kind of belonging, but a profoundly creaturely belonging that performs the returning of the creature to the creator and a returning to an intimate and erotic energy that drives life together with God. These words, intimacy and eroticism, have been so commodified and sexualized that we, Christians have turned away from them and fear that they irredeemably signify sexual antinomianism, moral chaos, and sin, or at least the need to police, such words and the power of they invoke. But intimacy and eroticism speak of our birthright formed in the body of Jesus and the protocols of braking sharing, touching, tasting, and seeing the goodness of God. There at his body, the spirit joins us in an urgent work, forming a willing spirit in us that is eager to hold and to help, to support and to speak, to touch and to listen, gaining through this work, the deepest truths of creaturely belonging: that we are erotic souls. No body that is not a soul, no soul that is not a body, no being without touching, no touching without being. This is not an exclusive Christian truth, but a truth of the creature that Christian life is intended to witness."

About Willie Jennings

The Dignity of Work: Poverty, Property, and Fraternity in Pope Francis's Fratelli Tutti (Brothers & Sisters All) / Martin Schlag Feb 20, 2021

"There is no poverty worse than that which takes away work and the dignity of work. In a genuinely developed society, work is an essential dimension of social life, for it is not only a means of earning one’s daily bread, but also of personal growth, the building of healthy relationships, self-expression and the exchange of gifts. Work gives us a sense of shared responsibility for the development of the world, and ultimately, for our life as a people." (Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti 162)

In the resurgence of worldwide populism, Pope Francis has said that employment is the biggest issue. And because of the global pandemic, work has become a fraught and challenging part of life. In this episode, Father Martin Schlag explores the concept of work in Fratelli Tutti, explaining the Catholic social ethic of the dignity of work and inclusion of all people into the human economy; the Pope’s perspective on private property and the suggestion that “the world exists for us all”; and the relevance of Catholic social thought and Fratelli Tutti for businesspeople, with a vision of work grounded in friendship, responsibility, dignity, justice, and love. Interview by Ryan McAnnally-Linz.

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Show Notes

Read Fratelli Tutti in its entirety online here
Fratelli Tutti is basically a summary of all of Pope Francis’s teaching.
Pope Francis on politics and love: “The biggest issue is employment."
"Bread and work”
Psychological and sociological catastrophe of long term widespread unemployment
Pope Francis defines poverty as the exclusion of the dignity of earning one’s own bread
Left and Right are categories that don’t work for the Catholic social tradition.
Dignity and Catholic Social Ethics and Anthropology—labor and the common good
Human dignity is grounded in the Image of God, as a representative of the absolute and unconditional; never as a means, always as an end
Human dignity formulated as friendship or fraternity
The right to work and rights in work: access, just wage, safety, rest, social security (health care, insurance, retirement benefits)
Christian perspectives on private property: St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil, St. Gregory—“your affluence belongs to the poor"
Not communism but generosity and sharing
Private Property: One of the most striking passages for the outside reader
Two Christian perspectives on private property: (1) Augustinian strand—private property as consequence of original sin and is regulated only by human law; “in paradise there was no private property” / (2) Aristotelian/Thomist tradition—private property is derived from natural law and the common good (this is the dominant Catholic tradition)
Absolute vs Derived Rights. Property is a secondary, or derived, right.
Property has a social mortgage, creates responsibility
Horizontal vs Vertical dimensions of private property
Vertical dimension of private property: “The world exists for us all”; the universal destination of all goods;
Horizontal dimension of private property: 7th commandment presupposes private property (“Thou shall not steal”); under human society, private property exists and needs to be protected by laws
“We belong to the whole.” Aquinas: Human beings exist as part of a whole, a human being stops being a human being when they leave the polis/community or whole. Aquinas corrects that: Only to God do we belong.
Catholic social teaching has four big principles: Human dignity, Common good, Solidarity, Subsidiarity
All people of good will. What two or three big takeaways are available for someone who does own property/business person?
No to the idolatry of money. You need money in the world, but it’s only a means to an end, like gas in a car
Friendship: How can you create meaningful work for others and yourself, creating variety of tasks, giving significance, give recognition, empowered, autonomously?
Oppose elitism and false universalism: does my business have an inclusive mechanism, do we listen, have regular debates, does everyone contribute to decision making?
Where societal change comes from: not come from the elites but from the peripheries
“The People”
What does a fraternal society look like in Pope Francis’ imagination?
Consider the French revolution: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”—liberalism built a politics on liberty; socialism built a politics on equality; but who has built a politics on fraternity?
“Good politics combines love with hope and with confidence in the reserves of goodness present in human hearts.” (Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti 197)
'At times, in thinking of the future, we do well to ask ourselves, “Why I am doing this?”, “What is my real aim?” For as time goes on, reflecting on the past, the questions will not be: “How many people endorsed me?”, “How many voted for me?”, “How many had a positive image of me?” The real, and potentially painful, questions will be, “How much love did I put into my work?” “What did I do for the progress of our people?” “What mark did I leave on the life of society?” “What real bonds did I create?” “What positive forces did I unleash?” “How much social peace did I sow?” “What good did I achieve in the position that was entrusted to me?”’ (Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti 197)

About Father Martin Schlag

Father Martin Schlag is Alan W. Moss Endowed Chair for Catholic Social Thought at the University of St. Thomas and is author of The Business Francis Means: Understanding the Pope's Message on the Economy. He studies the nexus of Christian faith with markets, trade and exchange, money, private property, and their net effect on social justice.

Howard Thurman's Mystical Activism: Connection, Alienation, and Black Vitality / Sameer Yadav Feb 19, 2021

"A strange necessity has been laid upon me to devote my life to the central concern that transcends the walls that divide and would achieve in literal fact what is experienced as literal truth: Human life is one and all humans are members of one another" (Howard Thurman, The Luminous Darkness). Sameer Yadav honors Howard Thurman, minister, theologian, philosopher, civil rights activist. Thurman was the author of the influential book, Jesus & the Disinherited, which Martin Luther King, Jr. was known to carry around with him.

Links

Show Notes

Belonging and connectedness
The trauma of alienation in the Jim Crow segregation
Vitality of Christian faith and Black Christian resistance to slaveholder Christianity
"The humanity we share with Jesus is one that cannot be reduced or dominated, but holds a value in union with God that goes beyond any attempt we can make to manipulate it for our own purposes."
Thurman’s ministry and theology represents the bringing together of these three themes: (1) divine common ground with all living things, (2) the devastating effects of social injustice on human personhood, and (3) sharing in the humanity of Jesus uniquely revealed in the history of Black suffering and the resilience of Black joy.
Christian mystical tradition
Influenced by Ghandi’s approach to non-violence (soul force)
Jesus and the Disinherited—finding the inward strength to stand up to oppression
Mysticism and activism belong in vital connection with each other
Thurman’s impact on Martin Luther King, Jr. at Boston University
MLK was known to carry a copy of Jesus & the Disinherited with him wherever we went.
From Preface of Luminous Darkness (1960): "The fact that 25 years of my life were spent in Florida and in Georgia has left deep scars in my spirit and has rendered me terribly sensitive to the churning abyss separating white from black. Living outside of the region, I am aware of the national span of racial prejudice and the virus of segregation that undermines the vitality of American life. Nevertheless, a strange necessity has been laid upon me to devote my life to the central concern that transcends the walls that divide and would achieve in literal fact what is experienced as literal truth: Human life is one and all humans are members of one another. And this insight is spiritual and it its 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. The slaves made a worthless life—the life of chattel property, a mere thing, a body—worth living. They yielded with abiding enthusiasm to a view of life which included all the events of their experience without exhausting themselves in those experiences. To them this quality of life was insistent fact because of that which deeply was within them. They discovered God, who was not or could not be exhausted by any single experience or series of experiences. To know God was to live a life worthy of the loftiest meaning of life. People of all ages and times, slave or free, trained or untutored, who have sensed the same values, are their fellow pilgrims, who journey together with them in increasing self-realization, in quest for the city that has foundations whose builder and maker is God.”

About Sameer Yadav

David Walker's Dangerous Appeal: Black Abolitionism and Belonging to God / Ryan McAnnally-Linz Feb 15, 2021

David Walker was an early 19th-century black abolitionist and activist, who wrote An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World. Ryan McAnnally-Linz celebrates his ideas in this influential pamphlet that gave dignity, hope, and courage to slaves and freed black people alike, urging them to continue fighting for their freedom while the United States struggled toward the end of slavery.

This episode is part of our celebration of Black History Month; we offer these short reflections in appreciation and gratitude for the black voices who’ve shaped how we experience the world, how we think about it, and how we live in it.

Show Notes

Read about David Walker here.
Read the entire Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World.

This Economy Kills: Healing the Human Environment in Pope Francis's Fratelli Tutti (Brothers & Sisters All) / Sister Helen Alford Feb 13, 2021

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Shortly after Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis in March 2013, he released an exhortation, very similar to an encyclical, but addressed to a Christian audience. "Evangelii Guadium” or the "Joy of the Gospel,” begins by articulating the most pressing challenges for the contemporary Church. First on his list is the economy of exclusion. What does he mean by that? He writes:

Just as the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say “thou shalt not” to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape. (Evangelii Gaudium)

Sister Helen Alford reflects on the economic implications of Pope Francis's Fratelli Tutti, including concerns about unrestrained free markets, the importance of allowing human life and dignity to frame our economic policy, what behavioral economics tells us about human relationality, and how we can understand the big picture of politics, economics, faith, and flourishing operating in Catholic social thought. Interview by Ryan McAnnally-Linz.

Show Notes

What is the goal of Fratelli Tutti? (And understanding it in light of 2015’s Laudato Si: Care of Our Common Home.)
Integral ecology: how we relate to each other in our nature environment (ecology) and human environment (economy)
Ecology and economy share a common root: oikos (home)
An economy that puts life and human dignity at the center, which also means respect for the environment
The economic donut principle: the inner ring is social minimum to take care of all people, the outer ring is the environmental ceiling for impact. We need to live within the donut!
"Fratelli tutti wants to see the economy as situated within a bigger vision of human development"
Economy is like the foundation of a house, it’s not built for its own sake, but to support the whole house and the people in it. The economy must serve the common good—for all of us, in an integrated way.
The primacy of politics: "We need a political order that’s going to give proper direction to the economy."
"We see how difficult it is to make a political system function today."
The economy is a good tool but a bad master. It must serve, not rule.
The problem with unrestrained free markets
Understanding the vision of human flourishing implied in the free market economy
"The Ultimatum Game": An experiment in behavioral economics
Relational beings in the economy; relationships really count in economic interactions
Beings in relation; understanding the humanity at the core of economics
How theology, biology, and economics all suggest cooperation and relationally is built into human beings.
Long term ideas that impact our concept of work and the human person
Rarum novarum and solidarity between workers and owners, and solidarity between workers together
Solidarity as a strategy for affirming dignity among all humanity
"The shape of human flourishing and how to reach it"—Charles Taylor on Fratelli Tutti
"Let us dream as a single human family.” Pope Francis
What is Pope Francis’s vision for a full and flourishing life?
Human rights, human development and resources, moral and spiritual goods
Increasing diversity, having dialogue with each other and living together in real encounter, loving each other within diversity

Dreaming of a Different World: Friendship, Dignity, and Solidarity in Pope Francis's Fratelli Tutti (Brothers & Sisters All) / Nichole Flores Feb 06, 2021

“Here we have a splendid secret that shows us how to dream and to turn our life into a wonderful adventure. No one can face life in isolation… We need a community that supports and helps us, in which we can help one another to keep looking ahead. How important it is to dream together… By ourselves, we risk seeing mirages, things that are not there. Dreams, on the other hand, are built together. Let us dream, then, as a single human family, as fellow travelers sharing the same flesh, as children of the same earth which is our common home, each of us bringing the richness of his or her beliefs and convictions, each of us with his or her own voice, brothers and sisters all." (Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti)

Last year, in the midst of a global nightmare, Pope Francis invited the world to dream together of something different. He released Fratelli Tutti in October 2020—a message of friendship, dignity, and solidarity not just to Catholics, but "to all people of good will"—for the whole human community. In this episode, social ethicist Nichole Flores (University of Virginia) explains papal encyclicals and works through the moral vision of Fratelli Tutti, highlighting especially Pope Francis’s views on faith as seeing with the eyes of Christ, the implications of human dignity for discourse, justice and solidarity, and finally the language of dreaming together of a different world.

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Show Notes

Read the entire text of Fratelli Tutti online here
What is a papal encyclical? For “All people of good will”—not just Catholics
Examining the signs of the times, e.g., Fratelli Tutti will always be connected to its global context during a pandemic.
What is Fratelli Tutti? What does its title mean?
Brothers and Sisters All: Using Italian, a particular language, as a pathway to the universal, rather than traditional Latin title
Pope Francis’ roots in Latin America: How his particularity as Latin American gives him a universal message; local and communal belonging; neighborhoods contributing to the common good
Seeing/Gazing: Faith as seeing with the eyes of Christ (Lumen Fidei)
Undermining human dignity in social media discourse; the failure of grandstanding rather than encounter
Solidarity as a dirty word: conflicts within Catholicism about how to understand and apply justice and solidarity in real life
Solidarity requires encounter with the other
Social friendship and fraternity
Human dignity in the tradition of Catholic social ethics
Dreaming together: fighting against the temptation to dream alone, inviting us to imagine; cultivating a conversation that forms collective imagination and aesthetic reality.

About Nichole Flores

Radical Humility: Forgetting Oneself as a Path to Flourishing Jan 31, 2021

Philosopher Kent Dunnington exposes the radical roots of Christian humility, exploring the centrality of humility to Christian ethics, the goal of humility in eliminating one’s own self-concern, why humility remains so appealing and so appalling, and how to respond to the abuse and weaponizing of humility to oppress. Interview with Evan Rosa.

Join us in taking hold of life that is truly life.

Will you partner with us in helping people envision and pursue lives worthy of our shared humanity?

Give to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: faith.yale.edu/give

About Kent Dunnington

Kent Dunnington is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Biola University in La Mirada, CA. He teaches and writes in the areas of virtue ethics and theological ethics. Other research interests include addiction and criminal justice, inspired by his experiences teaching in prison. He is author Addiction and Virtue: Beyond the Models of Disease and Choice and Humility, Pride, and Christian Virtue Theory. He also contributed an essay entitled "How to Be Humble" to The Joy of Humility: The Beginning and End of the Virtues.

Show Notes

What’s so gripping about humility?
Radical, entire sanctification and radical expressions of Christianity
Thinking about the virtues
Virtues as a way of thinking about Christian influence on culture
What makes humility a lightening rod?
Self-regard, human weakness and need
Humility: Mark of failure, or a trait that marks right relationship with God?
How human anthropology and human flourishing influences your views of humility
Pagan perspectives on humility
You’d expect that humility would lose its appeal, but many contemporary thinkers continue to laud it
Humility as pro-social, promoting horizontal relationships
Augustinian humility: Humility as central for vertical relationship with God and the gateway to Christian orientation toward the world
Love and humility: The love of God is an offense to pagan sensibilities.
Jesus’s humility as Jesus’s weakness
"We often forget just how deep Jesus’s weakness went… it’s almost like Jesus doesn’t have a self apart from the will of the Father."
"The striking thing about Jesus is that he seems to be free of this whole project of having a self that could be identified over and against someone else."
Definition of radical humility: no-concern about status and entitlements (cf., Roberts and Wood)
Humility as a balancing act between excessive pride and excessive servility
The radical humility of desert mothers and fathers—“they weren’t concerned with defining it, they were concerned with living it."
Abba Macarius and the Unwed Mother—“I discovered I had a wife."
Humiliation and serious critiques of humility as a cover for patriarchy and lauding servility and denigration
Clarifying the horizontal scope of radical humility: Desert mothers and fathers took on radical humility for themselves, not as a guide for leading others.
“If you’re someone who thinks Jesus’s life is the shape of the good life, then it becomes a pressing question: How far am I willing to go? Am I really willing to give up myself in love of other people?"
“Do I really believe that selfless love is the shape of a good human life?"
Resisting the temptation to repackage a safer humility
“Pretty much anytime you find yourself espousing the virtue of humility to someone else, you’re on the wrong track."
“I don’t think we have to be humble, but we can be. It’s a frightening invitation, but if it’s true it’s incredible that we could be freed from our concern to make ourselves significant enough to merit love."
Christianity and power
"I’m wary of turning humility into a virtue that can be leveraged for social gain. I still think of it primarily in terms of something that helps find our way into being creatures."

God’s Love Made Delicious: Food, Hospitality, and the Gift of Eating Together / Norman Wirzba & Matt Croasmun Jan 23, 2021

"Cooking is a declaration of love ... food is God’s love made delicious." Theologian Norman Wirzba reflects on the threats of our faulty logic of food and our disordered and disconnected relationship to eating and nourishment, and imagines a theology of food grounded in membership, gift, and hospitality. Interview with Matt Croasmun.

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About Norman Wirzba

Norman Wirzba is the Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Theology at Duke University. His teaching, research, and writing happens at the intersections of theology and philosophy, and agrarian and environmental studies. He is the author of several books, including Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating (2nd Edition), From Nature to Creation, and The Paradise of God: Renewing Religion in an Ecological Age, and his most recent book, This Sacred Life: The Place of Humanity in a Wounded World, will be published in 2021. In his spare time he likes to bake, play guitar, and make things with wood. For more information visit his website at normanwirzba.com.

Show Notes

Introduction
Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating—a picture of what eating can be, connecting us to the world, to each other, to God.
When it comes to eating in America these days, how are we doing?
Anonymity and ignorance. We are disconnected from food, we’re not encouraged to know where food comes from or how it came to be.
"Eat food, not too much, mostly vegetables."
Good eating is not solely a matter of personal virtue or vice. It’s part of a complicated system, agricultural strategy, and political process we’re involved in.
Food is central to human flourishing, but if it’s only a market commodity, we end up with a faulty logic that drives a sinister food industry.
You can only sell so much: therefore, preservatives
If food is primarily to be digested, we have foods that are, in principle, indigestible. It tastes good, and never makes you full. It’s the perfect food commodity. The food system is developed to take advantage of you as a unit of consumption.
What is eating for?
Membership as a eucharistic mode for changing the way we conceive of food and the good.
Eating is a daily reminder of our need.
Fruits of the spirit that ought to animate our relation to membership.
Mutual belonging (Willie Jennings, The Christian Imagination)
How disconnection from the land leads to alienation and loneliness.
Attention to geography and sources of life; how do we cultivate awareness and proper attention?
Robin Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass—the White American presence has always been “this is not home.” Therefore, “The land we live on and are blessed by does not love us.” Think about what kind of compensation must follow to this kind of alienation.
Racial components of agriculture and food. "You cannot tell the story of agriculture apart from the story of slavery.” Agricultural labor and the objection to embodiment.
Embodiment and food.
Essential work, abstraction from bodies, and disembodied labor.
"We don’t want to know, because to have to know these things implicates us in how we shop for food."
God creates a world in which creatures eat.
What’s communicated through a meal prepared for you? You matter.
God invites us into hospitality, and food and eating can teach us that nurturing welcoming presence.
Food as gift. Submitting oneself to "the grace of the world.”
"Food is God’s love made delicious."
"Life has always proceeded by hospitality."
“Eating and cooking … cause us to stop and say, ‘It’s not all vicious. Maybe our living together can also be a celebration.’"
"All eating involves death.” How do you square the gift of food with the death it entails?
The first virtue of humility—because I don’t know, and because I understand vulnerability, I must live in a more humble, patient way.
What does policy look like when it comes through the lens of humility, dependence, gift, and vulnerability?
The story of a meal—its cultivating, growing, cooking, gathering, eating, enjoying, and nourishing.
You can’t homogenize people’s experience of food.
Sabbath, time, place: Slowing down to notice the goodness of the world God has given us. Thoughtfulness, intention, attention, presence, honoring each other
Who is invited to the table? Communal living, kinship, and community in a welcoming world. Abraham Heschel’s “an opening for eternity in time."
How can we honor the life that feeds us? Start simple. Soup and bread to celebrate the goodness of the world.

Patience with Yourself: Resisting the Temptation to Curate Yourself and Finding the Courage to Embrace Imperfection Jan 17, 2021

Thanks for listening to For the Life of the World. To support the show, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture by clicking here.

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This is that time of year when the little demon of self-criticism and self-denigration wakes up and starts nagging you for letting your new year’s resolutions slip a little. Or maybe you’re not there yet. You’re powering through, waking up early, working out hard, eating right, reading more, living your best life. Hey. Good on you. Go get it.

But regardless, whether you find yourself nailing it or failing it, do you have the patience and the necessary courage to accept yourself at every moment you try to improve?

This week, Ryan McAnnally-Linz and Miroslav Volf discuss an obscure but incredibly timely passage from an old lecture given by the great Karl Rahner, the German Jesuit priest and one of the most notable Catholic theologians of the 20th century—he was instrumental, for instance, in the theological developments of the Second Vatican Council.

Miroslav once heard Rahner give a talk about patience, and has passed along the wisdom of that lecture, and now we’re passing it on to you. Miroslav even translated a passage from the German text, and reads it here (you can also find it in our show notes).

In this episode, Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz reflect on Karl Rahner's admonition to be patient with oneself. The discussion begins by recognizing the gap between who you are now and who you aspire to be, and proceeds with the need to keep the tension alive, working and bearing with your limitations, and exploring the freedom of a serene patience with oneself. Serenity is not acquiescence to vice or bad habits. But it represents a courageous long-term peace with your imperfections—an effort to recognize oneself as rooted in divine love and grace and acceptance, even as you pursue a vision of a better self.

Show Notes

New Year’s Resolutions and the need to be patient
Karl Rahner’s “Intellectual Patience with Oneself” (translated from German to English by Miroslav Volf)
Minding the gap between who you are and who you aspire to be
Narcissism, complacency, and resignation
Miroslav’s friend’s motto for graduate school: “Courage to Imperfection!"
Patience is not merely a private interior thing—there is a public effect of bearing with oneself that leads to bearing with others.
The courage to public imperfection
Cultivating a secure sense of self grounded in God’s love
We can live with imperfection knowing that we are accepted as we are
Release yourself from the grip of the performed, curated self
How patience with oneself applies to the struggle to improve through New Year’s Resolutions
Reflect on which self you want to nurture and don’t give up on the tension between who you are and who you aspire to be.
Constant pressure to improve quickly, as opposed to acceptance of limitations and imperfections
Keep the tension alive, work with your limitations, and explore the freedom of a serene patience with oneself.
You cannot do whatever you want, and the lie that you can leaves you exposed to the deep pain of failure and limitation.
“You are not at stake.” Limits are there. They are to be worked with rather than hated or abhorred.
"I’m not divine. I’m human."

Karl Rahner, “On Intellectual Patience with Oneself”

in Schriften zur Theologie, 15, 303ff.

(Abridged version of the first few paragraphs that deal with patience with oneself in general, of which intellectual patience with oneself is one dimension)

Translated by Miroslav Volf

That we need … patience with ourselves, seems to me a self-evident thing, in fact one of those self-evident things which in reality turn out to be difficult to achieve. Perhaps there are people who don’t think they need patience with themselves because they are in full agreement with who they are and with what they do. But I hope that we will not envy the “good fortune” of such simple-minded people. If we are honest with ourselves, we are [all] the kind of people who, rightly, are not fully finished with ourselves, and also the kind of people who cannot establish the state of their full agreement with ourselves on command or through some psychological trick. Because a full agreement with ourselves is neither given nor within our power to achieve, we need to have patience with ourselves. The person in us, who we actually are, greets with pain, the person in us who we want to become… We are now on the way, we live between a past and a future, and both, each in its own way, are out of our full control. We never have all things together which we need to live; we are always historically conditioned, socially manipulated, biologically threatened—and we are aware of this. We can try to suppress the knowledge of this state of existence; we can try to let things that we cannot change just be there as surd elements of our lives; or we can misuse joyous experiences of life as analgesics against the uncanny tensions between who we are and who we should be; or we can interpret these dissatisfactions as depression which we either have simply to suffer or which we can medicalize ourselves against.

But when we muster the courage to face these tensions [between who we are and who we aspire to become], when we acknowledge them and accept them … then we have come to have patience with ourselves, to accept that we are not in pure agreement with ourselves… Many believe that they have patience with themselves and that this patience is the most ordinary of things. But if we were to look at such people more carefully, we would see that they do not take on patiently the pain of their tensions, that they don’t face them without ether embellishing or hating them, but that they flee from them into the banality of everyday life … that what has triumphed in them [over these tensions] is an unrecognized despair or despairing resignation, that they, in the end, believe that life has no meaning. We would also see that they do not actually have patience as they behold the questionableness of their existence, but are seeking ways to look away and find surrogates for patience, which, they believe, make it possible for them to live.

Those who are truly patient endure in reality their existential tensions, take them on, accept the pain they cause… Those who are patient are patient with their impatience; serenely, they let go of the final “agreement” between who they are and what they aspire to become. They do not know where this serenity, in which they let themselves be, comes from… Those who are patient are serene and therefore free.

We will not further explore the question about what it is that we ultimately fall upon when practicing such serene patience. Some people will think that the stance rests on “Nothing”; resting on “Nothing,” they can be victorious over tense conflicts of finite realities in their own lives. Others are persuaded, that “Nothing,” when one gives it its proper sense, is of no use, that it can have no power to give peace. Instead, they believe that when we serenely accept our tensions [between who we are and what we aspire to become], then, whether we are aware or not, we have come to rest on what in everyday use of the word we call God.And when we really understand that word [God], the we see that the letting oneself “fall” into the silent incomprehensibility which is God “succeeds” because God receives in grace those who let themselves fall into serene patience with themselves.

Violence, Shame, Fear, Anger, and Lost Civic Friendship / Willie Jennings, David French, Marilynne Robinson, Robert George, and more Jan 09, 2021

What is the state of Christianity and Democracy in America? We mined the past 6 months of episodes for the most timely, relevant, and even strangely prescient reflections on faith and politics in America. Past guests Willie Jennings, David French, Marilynne Robinson, Robert George, and Samuel Perry and Andrew Whitehead, and Arlie Hochschild each offer perspectives we need to understand the political moment through the eyes of faith and culture.

Here’s the breakdown of our episode today—it’s really a “best of" for faith and politics in America today.

Episode Contents / Show Notes

3:33 - Theologian Willie Jennings on crowds, mobs, fear, and anger
14:17 - Sociologists Samuel Perry and Andrew Whitehead on Christian Nationalism, identity, and violence
20:01 - Novelist Marilynne Robinson on Christianity and democracy
23:17 - Political commentator David French on political exhaustion, culture war, and the role of faith in political division
34:22 - Legal scholar Robert George on the breakdown of civic friendship
44:32 - Sociologist Arlie Hochschild on building shelters from shame and crossing a bridge to empathy

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Episode Introduction

Hello friends and listeners. Thanks for tuning in to the show. This week, in light of the tension and need for perspective, we’re turning to some of the more significant points of relevance from some of our past episodes. We’ve got plenty more fresh conversations and reflections coming your way in 2021, but this week has seemed to just catch us all. And if you haven’t yet heard Miroslav Volf deliver our joint statement from the staff of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture on Sedition at the Capitol, then check out that 10-minute episode as well.

As we’ve searched for words to understand, words to grieve the violence and death, words to evaluate, critique, and condemn, and words to forgive, to heal, to unite what seems unifiable—the words often come up empty, lacking, half-hearted.

It’s reminiscent of the piercing words of the prophet Jeremiah, a hot take if ever there was one, as he condemns those who have “treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying “Peace, peace’, when there is no peace. They acted shamefully, they committed abomination; yet they were not ashamed, they did not know how to blush.” He goes on, “Thus says the Lord: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls” (Jeremiah 6:14-16).

As we walk together, seeking where the good way lies, these ancient paths, trod by so many before us, let’s not give up on a hope against hope, a hope for things that we most certainly now do not see. There is no peace, but we need to envision it. We must be the instruments of that peace.

Sedition in the Capitol: Wounded Pride, Lies that Incite Violence, Losing Connection to Reality, and Longing for Peace / Miroslav Volf & Colleagues Jan 07, 2021

Miroslav Volf and the staff of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture respond to the lies, provocation, and violence at the Capitol building on January 6, 2021.

Show Notes

"The most responsible thing to say about the President’s and the attackers’ actions is that they were without qualification wrong. To praise, to condone, to excuse, or to ignore them is to 'call evil good… put darkness for light… put bitter for sweet' (Isaiah 5:20)."
At the heart of the current effort to deny and overturn the results of the presidential election is the wounded pride of a man who cannot handle the truth of his own imperfection and the fact that he lost a fair democratic contest.
There is a sorrowful, pathetic smallness to this petty woundedness even as it produces momentous—and tragic—consequences. Faced with painful realities that conflict with his self-image but that he cannot control, President Trump has given himself over to wishful thinking, conspiracy theories, and falsehood. He has constructed a pseudo-truth to fit the needs of his immense but fragile and wounded pride.
We must commit firmly to the truth, even and especially when it hurts our pride, when we lose, and when it calls for sacrifice.
We must orient ourselves toward peace and bearing with one another, being ready to forgive, as we have been forgiven. Indeed, our commitment to the truth is never at odds with love of neighbor. Peace is in fact unintelligible and unimaginable apart from the truth of Christ.
We must stand up for the downtrodden, marginalized, and afflicted, speaking and acting on their behalf, for their good, for their healing, and for their inclusion in flourishing.
We must never compromise or distort Christian faith in service to the idol of political power.
We must restore confidence in our democracy and trust in each other. Suspicion and conspiracy theories have distorted and disconnected us from reality.
We must live constantly from the deep truth that our worth doesn’t come from victory, triumph, or any other kind of power or influence. Our worth is secured by the love of God for us.
May we all become instruments of peace in this time of conflict.

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Christian Witness in Turbulent Places / Miroslav Volf with Mike Cosper Jan 02, 2021

Mike Cosper, host of Cultivated, a podcast about faith and work, interviews Miroslav Volf about his vocation as theologian. They discuss Miroslav's youth in Croatia and his family's influence on his spirituality and theology, as well as the urgent need for faithful witness in our turbulent times. Original air date: November 2, 2020.

Show Notes

“I had parents who were extraordinary spiritual human beings, not in a sense that they were total exemplars of holiness, but there was kind of an honesty about the spiritual life”
His father “experienced God’s love in the midst of Hell” on a socialist death march
“A vivid representation of what faith can do, what God can do”
Volf’s early experience of the Church via his father’s ministry
“Oh, what an incredible thing. To devote one’s life to helping people who are so much on the margins”
Volf traveled as a translator: “I realized there that one could be cool and the believer as well”
“To my shame and chagrin, it's the being possible to be cool and a believer that opened up space for me to enter. And then slowly I was getting deeper into faith”
“How am I supposed to behave and how should I speak to these people? That made it a little theologian in me”
“I haven't regretted a single time, single date, single hour, the choice that I've made”
He studied with Moltmann in graduate school
“We became friends and he proved very important in my life”
“He said to me, Miroslav, take something that moves people and shine the light of the Gospel on it”
While teaching at Fuller, he started to think about Exclusion and Embrace
Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, a Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation
The fall of the Berlin Wall, how to address a war about religious identity?
Luke 15:11-32, The Prodigal Son, family, community, and belonging
Forgiveness, victimization, and community
The importance of boundaries: “they define who we are”
The political division underneath the racial division, are we able to build bridges?
Can we enter into the position of the other?
Hannah Arendt - “forgiveness is the only way to reverse the flow of history”
How we deal with forgiveness – we must name the wrong as wrong
“Trump is an embodiment of paganism” - Volf
Alain de Benoist, On Being a Pagan
Pagans don’t like to sacrifice for others, Trump thinks: ‘I do what benefits me ‘
“Trump’s God is my Devil” –Volf
Evangelical paganism
Is this new or is this an unmasking?
“The problem is not that people commit sin. It's the pretense of holiness when there's exactly otherwise happening”
“Jesus has become a moral stranger to us, everything that mattered to him seems not to matter to us, and everything that matters to us as a culture seems not to have been important to him”
Reclaiming morality

---

Introduction from Cultivated, featured on Christianity Today

(Click here to listen on ChristianityToday.com.)

Miroslav Volf’s writing is considered some of the most significant theological work of the last century. He was born into a family of Pentecostal Christians in Croatia, under oppressive Communist rule, and a “minority of a minority” (as he would later describe it). For almost four decades, his writing has been a testament to the power of the gospel for reunification and healing in the aftermath of war and political turmoil, as well as a vision for human flourishing in an experience of Trinitarian love.

On this episode, we talk about his emergence as a theologian, the development of his work, and his perspective on the turbulent times we’re experiencing today.

Cultivated is a production of Christianity Today.

This episode was produced by Mike Cosper

It was edited by Mark Owens.

Theme song is by Roman Candle

Music is by Dan Phelps and Roman Candle

The Reason We Follow the Star: Learning from the Magi How to Give, How to Receive, and How to Be Human / Drew Collins Dec 26, 2020

How can the Magi of Matthew 2—the Three Wise Men "bearing gifts" and "traversing afar"—help us understand faith and reason, giving and receiving, the nature of God, and how to be human? Drew Collins offers some new perspective on a familiar Christmas story.

Introduction and Notes

Merry Christmas friends—for this week, we’re dropping a double dose of Christmas reflections from the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. We’ll be hearing from Matt Croasmun and Drew Collins, both of whom are Associate Research Scholars and lead our Life Worth Living and Christ & Flourishing initiatives, respectively.

In this episode, I interview Drew Collins about the Magi of Matthew Chapter 2—these wise men from the east come to pay Jesus homage, but in so doing, they offer for us an outside perspective on the wonder and the weirdness of Christmas. hey’ve been lauded through centuries of Christian theology for both their reason and their faith, but W.H. Auden’s treatment of their intentions in his beautiful Christmas Oratorio, For the Time Being, brings into clearest brightest view why they followed the star, and offers us something to aspire to. Auden gives them the lines:

To discover how to be truthful now...

To discover how to be living now….

To discover how to be loving now...

To discover how to be human now …. Is the reason we follow this star.

And well, in that sense, we’re all magi. Trying to learn how to be human now.

"Matthew 2:1-12 asks us, in other words, to confront the possibility that those outside of our particular Christian communities might offer us new ways of understanding of who Jesus is, while at the same time revealing new insights into the identities of our non-Christian neighbors.”

"The Christian faith affirms that God is a gift giver. We can say more. For God’s giving is so radical, so total, that even in God’s receiving the gifts we bring, however paltry and imperfect, God is also giving. In receiving the gifts of the Magi, or in affirming our receiving of them on God’s behalf, God is giving us hope that our own lives, scruffy and flawed though they might be, might be received by others as giving, like the Magi, greater insight into who Jesus is and might be received and redeemed by God in the coming of God’s Kingdom.”

Santa, God, and the Obligation to Rejoice / Matt Croasmun Dec 26, 2020

Santa doesn't just want you to be happy. Santa needs you to be happy. Matt Croasmun explains how the contemporary Christmas myth—the Gospel of Christmas according to St. Nick—sets emotional norms that are vastly different from the Gospel of Christmas according to St. Paul.

Ignore These Walls: Faith that Leads to Freedom in Zimbabwe / Evan Mawarire & Miroslav Volf Dec 20, 2020

Evan Mawarire is a Pentecostal minister and democratic activist in Zimbabwe. He is founder of #ThisFlag Citizen's Movement and has been instrumental in standing up to corruption, injustice, and poverty in Zimbabwe. Miroslav Volf interviews Pastor Evan about his story of faith that leads to activism; the transformation he experience while being unjustly arrested, detained, and tortured in maximum security prison; and what it means to live a life worthy of our humanity.

Show Notes

Introduction and clip from #ThisFlag viral video
How Evan Mawarire became a Pentecostal minister
#ThisFlag movement - united around the symbolism of the Zimbabwe flag
Compassion, mercy, and other biblical values that can be practiced across all levels
“If we don’t stand up, our children will hold us to account one day, and say ‘Why did you do nothing?’"
"I was asking people to shut down the government in 48 hrs."
The other side of fear is possibility
The atrocities of Robert Mugabe: abduction, silencing, torture, murder, citizen fear-based self-policing
#ThisFlag Campaign Slogan: “If we cannot cause the politician to change, then we must inspire the citizen to be bold."
Pentecostalism and Political Activism: Apostolic Faith Movement, Reinhard Bonnke
Pastor Evan’s detention and torture in maximum security prison
How encounters with prison inmates transformed Pastor Evan
“Look at the walls that are holding you back, and understand that there is a bigger prison that holds you back: the prison of your mind… Ignore these walls, behave as if they do not exist."
What is a life worth living?

About Evan Mawarire

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Black Joy and Oppressive Humility / Stacey Floyd-Thomas Dec 12, 2020

Social ethicist Stacey Floyd-Thomas offers a womanist perspective on how humility can go terribly wrong, when it's hung over the heads of the humiliated, marginalized, and oppressed. This criticism of the traditional Christian virtue helps clarify the role of joy as the ultimate virtue of Black life, the centrality of black folk wisdom, and the beauty of black sisterhood. Interview by Ryan McAnnally-Linz.

Links

About Stacey Floyd-Thomas

Strangers in Our Own Land: Empathy Walls, Deep Stories, and Shelters from Shame / Arlie Hochschild Dec 05, 2020

Arlie Hochschild discusses her book, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, reflecting on how 2020 has made our mutual political alienation worse, and how we can implement deep listening, emotion management, hospitality, and create shelters from shame. Interview by Evan Rosa.

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We’re passionate about making this work consistently accessible to a people who are genuinely concerned with he viability of faith in a world wracked with division, contested views about what it means to be human and what it means to live life well. If you’re in a position to support our show financially, and are looking for some year end opportunities, please consider partnering with us. We rely on the generosity of individuals like you to make our work possible. And if you’re not, please continue listening and engaging the content and let us know what you’re interested in. But if you can give, if you’re truly passionate about supporting podcasting that’s all about pursuing—really living—lives that are worthy of our humanity, then consider a gift to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. Visit faith.yale.edu/give (or find the link in the show notes) to make a year end contribution. It’s our joy to bring these shows to you; and we’d invite you into that same joy of supporting this work. As always, thanks for listening, and we’ll be back with more, next week.

Episode Introduction

How do we understand each other’s political lives? It’s all too easy to depend on the consistent narratives of bafflement at the political stranger. How could you possibly have voted for [fill in the blank]. I have no idea how you could support [you know who]. Maybe to stay baffled is a defense mechanism. It keeps the stranger strange. If you rely consistently on your inability to fathom another’s behavior or reasons or motivations—or the fears that underlie them all—maybe that helps you cope a little better.

Our guest on the show today turned off all her alarms, set aside the narrative of confusion, and set out to learn about the political other, when around 10 years ago, she began regular visits to Lake Charles, Louisiana, a working class Tea Party stronghold that followed suit with Trump support in 2016—suspicious of the government, struggling for their economic flourishing, feeling the whole time that they were being cut in line, that they were unseen, unrecognized, dishonored, alienated in a hidden social class war.

Sociologist Arlie Hochschild is Professor Emerita in Sociology at the University of California Berkeley and author of Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. In this episode, I ask Arlie about her experience of intentionally identifying her own ideological bubble, forging out to scale a wall of division, bafflement and hostility to find empathy, turning off her political and moral alarms and attuning her mind to hear the desires that inform the deep story of her friends in Louisiana. We discuss political division, resentment, and alienation; how the Trump presidency and subsequent 2020 loss to Biden has continued to make strangers in their own land; she explains the emotional roots of political beliefs and tribalism—especially those held by her conservative friends, the blind spots of progressive views of conservatives, and finally curiosity, humility, emotion management, and putting oneself in perspective. Thanks for listening. —Evan Rosa, from the introduction

Show Notes

How Arlie Hochschild decided to reach out to Tea Party Republicans from within her media bubble, befriend them, and then write a book about understanding how emotion informs political anger, resentment, and Trump support
The paradox of biting the hand that feeds you
Moving beyond political appearances and surface tensions
How to create a shelter from shame in order to connect and disagree in fruitful ways
What it was like to cross the empathy bridge, to meet people who live in a different bubble, who live with a different sense of what is true
Meeting Republican women in Lake Charles, Louisiana
The appeal of Rush Limbaugh: fighting against “feminazis,” “environmental wackos,” and “socialists.” And the deepest reason: protecting southern Republicans from the shame of coastal elites
Turning off one’s alarm system for the sake of genuine encounter across division, deep listening
When to turn the alarm system back on
“Things have grown worse”: One’s own government as a foreign occupying force
The deep story: we can’t do politics without understanding the deep mythology that informs it.
The right wing deep story: Waiting and being cut in line, Obama’s role, Trump’s role, and liberation from shame
Shaming the shamers: Trump’s appeal to those who have been "cut in line"
Belong before you believe: How tribalism drives the political drama of America
The religious overtones of Trumpism: Trump has connected with Hochschild's friends in Louisiana not only as their liberator, but their righteous sufferer, their shelter from shame.
A giant, hostile shame machine: counter-shaming has a backfire effect: “Our shelter from shame is being attacked by the shamers."
What is the greatest felt need for political combatants? What will discuss the vicious cycle?
Recognition of the other across disagreement; finding an opportunity for common ground that we so dearly need right now; encountering the better angels of the political other
Blind spots: Social class, particular economic value, and the wonder inspired by the skill of the working class
The Virtues of Climbing the Empathy Wall and Encountering Others’ Deep Stories: Curiosity, Humility, Emotion Management as a Service to Society, Putting Oneself in Perspective
Recalling the feeling of being a stranger in order to practice an emotional hospitality that makes space for the deep stories of the other

Joyful Recognition, All Is Gift: Four Perspectives on Gratitude in 2020 / Stacey Floyd-Thomas, Sarah Schnitker, Jessica Hooten Wilson, Miroslav Volf Nov 28, 2020

Defining gratitude as joyful recognition, the courage to be grateful, comparing gratitude for self-help vs gratitude in prayer, resilience, seeing all as gift and everything as grace. Featuring: Stacey Floyd-Thomas, Sarah Schnitker, Jessica Hooten Wilson, and Miroslav Volf.

Show Notes

1:07 - Miroslav Volf
Our gratitude for you listeners!
Sometimes complaint comes easier than gratitude, requiring the courage to be grateful.
Misconceptions about gratitude: repayment of debt, obligation to the giver, a strategy for happiness or subjective well-being.
Miroslav’s view of gratitude: Joyful recognition
Gratitude is "joy over the giver, joy over the gift, joy over having received the gift and having been set into relation to the giver marked by freedom.”
6:45 - Stacey Floyd-Thomas
Slow down and focus on what matters most
Despite what may seem grim in this moment, redeem now as a holy time.
Gratitude as not merely a disposition but an essential duty of defiance and determination that keeps us bound to our first duty: to care for our neighbors as our very best selves.
Maya Angelou: “Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you say your nightly prayer, and let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.”
10:18 - Sarah Schnitker
Praying gratitude together as more than self-help
The difference between gratitude as prayer and gratitude as a tool for feeling happier
14:30 - Jessica Hooten Wilson
“Thank you for the fleas.” Corrie Ten Boom’s The Hiding Place
1 Thessalonians: “Give thanks in all circumstances."
"All is gift. Even sufferings of many kinds are gifts if we offer them up and allow God to redeem them."
Cultivate a gracious imagination that sees all as grace

A recent review from one of our listeners:

"So much is happening and our society has rules where we often check our deepest meaning systems at the door. This works until a year like this year when we need to draw on much deeper resources, and we want a way to connect as a community. This group seems committed to softening those isolating norms, and showing us all what that could look like to do so with love and respect." (Donnied48, 10/5/2020, via Apple Podcasts)

Civic Friendship, Courageous Humility, and Seeking Truth Together / Robert P. George Nov 21, 2020

Legal scholar Robert P. George comments on the meaning of friendship across disagreement, the need for public virtues of courage and humility, and how to address political polarization and hateful divisions through seeking the truth, thinking critically and openly, and respecting the dignity and freedom of the other. Interview by Evan Rosa.

Episode Introduction (Evan Rosa)

How do we heal from 2020? Yes, how do we heal from this pandemic, but how do we heal from the political rifts deeper than we can remember? How do we heal from physical distance that has isolated and alienated us from embodied presence and genuine connection with others? How do millions of public school children heal from remote learning and the psychological impact of disconnection?

How do we heal in a moment like this?

We’ve been trying to tackle this question in a variety of ways on the podcast, and we'll continue in upcoming episodes.

This week, we’re sharing a conversation I had with Robert P. George, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.

We spoke just a few weeks before the election, really, as the frenzy and vitriol and worry started to peak. We spoke about American division and the punishing and apparently unrelenting hatred that can be on display in the disgust one side mutually feels for the other, even in the birthplace of modern democracy, where the idea of personal dignity grounds our freedom to live together. I asked him about what it means to achieve friendship across deep disagreement—something he’s become widely known for in his close friendship and collaboration with Cornel West. We spoke about the virtues of citizenship, including humility and courage; specifically the courage to stand for what you think is right even at the horror of being thought heretic in your tribe. This kind of homelessness from the tribe, especially for Christians who find themselves in tension with their tradition. He reflects on seeking the truth in a world where anyone can portray themselves as an expert and facts are no longer commonly regarded as such. I asked him to offer some practical steps toward mutual understanding and civil discourse, which prizes collaborating around a pursuit of the truth far over mere victory for power’s sake.

The kind of divisions we feel now—whether social distance or political distance—won’t be mended and healed with one strategy. So we’ll be bringing a variety of perspectives to bear on the question of healing. But the way Robert George frames civic friendship that shares a value for the truth and a commitment to respect for the other… maybe there’s some potential there. Thanks for listening today.

Show Notes

How do we heal from the Pandemic? From the disconnect?
American division and the unrelenting hostility of one side for the other
Is friendship across division possible?
The virtues of citizenship
Humility and courage
Homelessness from your own tribe
Civic friendship with respect for the other
Mitt Romney, “politics have moved away from spirited debate to a vile, vituperative, hate-filled morass that is unbecoming of any free nation, let alone the birthplace of modern democracy.”
The breakdown of civic friendship
“If we fail to treat each other as civic friends, and instead as enemies, then everything is up for grabs every time there’s an election”
Seeing the other as more than just the sum total of their politics
“If we wrap our emotions too tightly around our convictions, then we become dogmatists. Then we become unwilling to consider the possibility that we might be wrong and that a critic might be right”
Infallibility and disagreement, how the other becomes a ‘bad person’
The virtue of genuine humility
“It takes humility to recognize that I might be wrong, even about the most important things”
The difference between politeness and civility
Honoring the other person as a rational creature like oneself
“You can’t have an open mind unless you have intellectual humility”
Miroslav Volf – “We must have porous boundaries of the self – having enough of an identity to have something to offer other people, but being flexible enough to let others in to shape you. That’s the gift of rationality”
How does one properly approach debate?
Is there a light in which the most opposing view to your own makes sense?
Plato -“The point of arguing is for truth, not for victory”
“Ideally you become your own best critic. But it takes courage”
“We base our communities around our convictions. If you are an honest, independent thinker, it’s very likely your thinking will take you out of step with your communities. You can become a heretic very fast”
We don’t want to be excommunicated!
If you’re a truth seeker, you will sometimes be out of step with the communities that are important to you
“Humility, open-mindedness, and courage. That’s what’s going to be needed”
How Christian Americans feel in tension with tradition when they try to seek a life that is both public and faithful
“Political cleavages don’t seem to run between religions, but rather run across them”
“The left and the right are hard categories in the age of Trump, but roughly, the hostility between these wings is ferocious”
Each views the other side as having betrayed their religious communities’
The concept of tribe
Gustave La Bon - “We are in the age of the crowd”
Gustave La Bon - “Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual. In a crowd, he is a barbarian that is a creature acting by instinct"
‘Group think’
“Truth seeking is all about being challenged and unsettled, you can’t do it without that”
He tells students, “discover, learn, what are the best writings against the positions you hold?”
Rethinking and revising ones beliefs
“Do you have any good friends who really see things differently? And if you don’t, go find them”
The first question must be, where do you come from? What were your parents like?
Humanizing the other
“Where are the limits? Would you befriend Hitler? IT’s a fool’s errand to try to befriend Hitler, but we don’t need to agree with someone to respect someone”
“The ability of friendship to survive profound differences is there, if we let it happen”

About Robert P. George

Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He has served as chairman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), and before that on the President’s Council on Bioethics and as a presidential appointee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. He has also served as the U.S. member of UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST). He is a former Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States, where he received the Justice Tom C. Clark Award. A graduate of Swarthmore College, he holds J.D. and M.T.S. degrees from Harvard University and the degrees of D.Phil., B.C.L., D.C.L., and D.Litt. from Oxford University. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Professor George is a recipient of many honors and awards, including the U.S. Presidential Citizens Medal, the Honorific Medal for the Defense of Human Rights of the Republic of Poland, the Canterbury Medal of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the Sidney Hook Memorial Award of the National Association of Scholars, the Philip Merrill Award of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, the Bradley Prize for Intellectual and Civic Achievement, the Irving Kristol Award of the American Enterprise Institute, the James Q. Wilson Award of the Association for the Study of Free Institutions, Princeton University’s President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, and the Stanley N. Kelley, Jr. Teaching Award of the Department of Politics at Princeton.

He has given honorific lectures at Harvard, Yale, the University of St. Andrews, Oxford University, and Cornell University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and holds twenty-one honorary degrees, including honorary doctorates of law, ethics, science, letters, divinity, humanities, law and moral values, civil law, humane letters, and juridical science.

Rabbi Sacks on Etching Everyday Existence with the Charisma of Holiness / Jonathan Sacks & Miroslav Volf Nov 14, 2020

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks was a British Jewish Rabbi, philosopher, politician, and author of more than 30 books. In this conversation, Miroslav Volf interviews Rabbi Sacks about Jewish perspectives on human flourishing, joy, sabbath and work, and the deeply communal and particular nature of Jewish faith as a witness to the common good. Rabbi Sacks died on November 7, 2020. May his memory be a blessing.

This episode starts with a 12-minute reflection and memorial from Miroslav Volf, followed by a 40-minute conversation with Rabbi Sacks.

For a video of the full conversation, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWpQ-23OBtU&t

Show Notes

The Jewish vision of a life worth living: life going well, life led well, life feeling as it should.
Following the Mosaic Law, as a means to etching everyday life with the charisma of holiness.
“How would you take an ordinary life, and imbue it with a sense for the transcendence?"
The Hebrew Bible’s focus on “life down here”—building a sense for God’s presence here and now, as opposed to only in the afterlife.
The Law exists because “you did not serve God with joy and goodness of heart, out of the abundance of all good things."
"The product of the life well lived is joy."
"Joy in Judaism is always done in the company of others… a kind of shared celebration. … Everyone’s got to feel included to be a Jewish joy."
“God is somebody very close. This is not a philosopher’s God. … This is God as next-door neighbor."
Sabbath and Joy: The End Not of Work, but the End of Striving
Sabbath is “as if you were guests at God’s table."
"Sabbath is the most remarkable of all utopias because it’s now."
Sabbath is a celebration of the good of merely being and being in God’s being: Liminal space, a time out of time.
How our personal lives of flourishing fit into the larger vision of flourishing at society as a whole
Communal life. Faith in Judaism as “the redemption of our solitude."
Closeness to God as the summum bonum (the highest good”) of Judaism.
Creation, Revelation, and Redemption in Judaism
"Judaism is a religion of protest against the world’s first great empires."
Ecclesiastes as the best critique of modern consumerism
On failure and human imperfection. "Judaism is a religion of forgiveness. God empowers us to fail."
"The routinization of charisma” and constant access to divine forgiveness
The role of punishment in Judaism, divine vengeance, and “why do the righteous suffer?"
Victor Frankl and "the will to meaning”—history is not just what Joseph Heller (Catch-22) “A trash bag of random coincidences, blown in the wind."
The life worth living is a life suffused with meaning.

About Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

Rabbi Sacks is the author of over 30 books. His most recent work, Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times (2020), was a top ten Sunday Times bestseller. Past works include: Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence; The Great Partnership: God, Science and the Search for Meaning; The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations, winner of the Grawemeyer Prize for Religion in 2004 for its success in defining a framework for interfaith dialogue between people of all faith and of none; To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility; and A Letter in the Scroll: On Being Jewish, winner of a National Jewish Book Awards in 2000. Rabbi Sacks was knighted by Her Majesty The Queen in 2005 and made a Life Peer, taking his seat in the House of Lords in October 2009. He died on November 7, 2020.

Mixed Feelings: Poetry and Faith for Our Time / Christian Wiman & Miroslav Volf Nov 07, 2020

Poet Christian Wiman and theologian Miroslav Volf, both colleagues and friends, discuss poetry's ability to give voice to the mixed feelings of life today, talking about the mash-up of home and exile, joy and sorrow, saint and sinner; and Wiman reads some of his favorite poetry from his upcoming anthology, Home: 100 Poems.

Poet Christian Wiman is Professor of the Practice of Religion and Literature at Yale Divinity School. He’s the author of several books of poetry, including Every Riven Thing, Hammer is the Prayer, and his most recent, Survival Is a Style. His memoirs include the bracing and beautiful My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer, and He Held Radical Light: The Art of Faith, the Faith of Art. He edited an anthology of 100 poems on Joy a few years ago, and is currently putting finishing touches on another 100 poems on Home.

Our guest last week, the novelist Marilynne Robinson, says of Wiman, "His poetry and scholarship have a purifying urgency that is rare in this world. This puts him at the very source of theology, and enables him to say new things in timeless language, so that the reader’s surprise and assent are one and the same.”

Show Notes

On being nowhere, absence, place, and home
Simone Weil: “We must take the feeling of being at home into exile, we must be rooted in the absence of a place."
Christian Wiman’s home
The resonance of objects and persons
Completing a poetry anthology about home during a pandemic
The ubiquity of home in poetry
"The Niagara River” by Kay Ryan
Individual life joining with collective life, the circularity and rhythm of lyric poetry; searching for a remembrance of home
William Wordsworth: “Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come”
“Innocence” by Patrick Kavanagh
"To be a poet is to be in exile." What is it to be a believer?
"Poets are not poets most of the time, the rest of the time they’re poor slobs like everybody else."
Living in and attending to our exile: Abraham “living in tents, awaiting the city, whose architect and builder is God”; Jesus sleeping in the boat in the storm.
Gillian Rose, Love’s Work and Nietzsche’s "tragic joy”; writing when she was dying of cancer and viewing faith as unmaking oneself.
"The Bennett Springs Road” by Julia Randall: “The bird that sang I am."
What is the right relationship of security to precarity?
“In a Time of Peace” by Ilya Kaminsky
How do we live lives of joy while there’s suffering all around us?
“Shema” by Primo Levi
Alexander Schmemann’s “bright sorrow"
Marilynne Robinson’s model of creating characters with credible lives of faith‚ credible for the very fact that they are attentive to the suffering around them.
W.H. Auden: “A good poem is the clear expression of mixed feelings."
"Taking life by the throat"
Both/And Life
“Filling Station” by Elizabeth Bishop—“Somebody loves us all."

Marilynne Robinson on This Political Moment / Interview with Miroslav Volf Oct 31, 2020

This is a political moment characterized by stridency, suspicion, resentment, anger, and despair—where shared commitments to truth, debate, free speech, and simple good faith in one another (these core elements of democratic society)—these are under threat of outright rejection by those in power. But the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson sees an opportunity for putting aside the resentment, suspicion of the other, and despair, and instead renewing a love of democracy, grounded in the sacredness of the person, and she sees more hope in a patriotism closer to familial love than America-first Christian nationalism.

To watch the video of this conversation, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUMN011pamw

Show Notes

Pursuing theology instead of literature
America as a family
The incredible singularity of the human being
“When we don’t treat someone with respect, we impoverish them."
How does the sacredness of humanity apply to our political moment?
Christian Nationalism and the founding of America.
The crises of Christianity and democracy
What democracy makes possible for human beings.
Democracy, Education and Honoring the Sacred in Humanity
An anthology of the brilliance of humankind
Structural wrongs and personal morality
“I miss civilization, and I want it back."
Truth, trust, and being available to each other
"Honor everyone."
Truth, conspiracy, and demonism (QAnon, blood libel, and twisted fantasies that prevent rational engagement)
Primordial goodness, fallenness, and the bearing of original sin on democracy
Suspicion, twisting the truth, and returning to seeing each other with eyes of grace
Costly grace and Marilynne Robinson’s love of her characters
Our political challenges are challenges about our humanity
Pagan values in Trumpian politics
Transitioning from fighting for others’ rights to fighting for our own rights
The relation between Marilynne Robinson’s Christian identity and her political identity / Reformation Christianity and political progressivism
Retrieving the beauty of the faith
“The deepest kind of deep thought is sustained by Christian tradition. It’s a condescension.”
Jesus as moral stranger—"almost everything important to us, wasn’t important to him; almost everything important to him, isn’t important to us."

Marilynne Robinson is an award-winning American novelist and essayist. Robinson was born and raised in Sandpoint, Idaho. Christian spirituality and American political life is a recurring theme in Robinson's fiction and non-fiction.

In a 2008 interview with the Paris Review, Robinson said, "Religion is a framing mechanism. It is a language of orientation that presents itself as a series of questions. It talks about the arc of life and the quality of experience in ways that I've found fruitful to think about."

She has been writer-in-residence or visiting professor at many universities, included Yale Divinity School in Spring 2020. She currently teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. She has served as a deacon, and sometimes preaches, for the Congregational United Church of Christ. Robinson lives in Iowa City. ‍

Miroslav Volf is the Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and is the Founder and Director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. He was educated in his native Croatia, the United States, and Germany, earning doctoral and post-doctoral degrees (with highest honors) from the University of Tübingen, Germany.

He has written or edited more than 20 books, over 100 scholarly articles, and his work has been featured in the Washington Post, NPR, Christianity Today, Christian Century, Sojourners, and several other outlets. Some of his more significant books include: Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (1996/2019), Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace (2006), Allah: A Christian Response (2011), After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (1998), A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good (2011), The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World (2006/2020), Flourishing: Why We Need Religion in a Globalized World (2016), For the Life of the World: Theology that Makes a Difference (2019, with Matthew Croasmun).

Understanding Black Politics: Faith, Representation, and Black Political Voices Oct 24, 2020

Political scientist Andra Gillespie (Emory University) discusses the significance of black politics in 2020, including the need to fix disproportional representation, ideological sorting in party politics, the experience and salience of racial identity as a grounding factor for black political engagement, pursuing justice through the political process, and bringing political science to bear on lives of faith.

Show Notes

Disproportional representation of African-Americans in Congress
Ideological Sorting, Partisanship, and Race
“Welcome to America’s Freedom Church”: How Rev. Raphael Warnock, the pastor of MLK’s Ebenezer Baptist Church is leading the Georgia U.S. Senate race
Pursuing Justice in the Political Process: Voting Rights, Disenfranchisement, and Representation
Political rules and doing the right thing
Vocation and Christian public engagement
The role of faith in ideological sorting, and faith in black politics

Follow Andra Gillespie on Twitter

Learn more about the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference

Faith 2020: Seeing Christianity in Political Context / Michael Wear & Miroslav Volf Oct 17, 2020

Obama's 2012 director of faith-outreach, Michael Wear, joins theologian Miroslav Volf for a conversation on faith and politics in 2020 and beyond. They discuss the connection between the personal and the political in their own lives; why Christians should care about politics; the public responsibility that comes with democratic citizenship; compromise and personal integrity; the challenge of religious and political identity that converges around the common good; ambivalence and political homelessness; and the important challenge and prospect of finding joy in what is, while hoping for what seems impossible.

Click here to listen to Michael Wear and the Faith 2020 podcast

Click here to subscribe to Michael Wear's Reclaiming Hope email newsletter

About Michael Wear

Michael Wear is a leading strategist, speaker and practitioner at the intersection of faith, politics and public life. He has advised a president, as well as some of the nation’s leading foundations, non-profits and public leaders, on some of the thorniest issues and exciting opportunities that define American life today. He has argued that the spiritual health and civic character of individuals is deeply tied to the state of our politics and public affairs.

As one of President Obama’s “ambassadors to America’s believers” (Buzzfeed), Michael directed faith outreach for President Obama’s historic 2012 re-election campaign. Michael was also one of the youngest White House staffers in modern American history: he served in the White House faith-based initiative during President Obama’s first term, where he led evangelical outreach and helped manage The White House’s engagement on religious and values issues, including adoption and anti-human trafficking efforts.

Today, Michael is also the founder of Public Square Strategies LLC, a sought-after firm that helps religious organizations, political organizations, businesses and others effectively navigate the rapidly changing American religious and political landscape. Michael previously served as Chief Strategist and member of the executive team for the AND Campaign, and is the co-author of Compassion and Conviction: The AND Campaign’s Guide to Faithful Civic Engagement, alongside Justin Giboney and Christopher Butler.

Michael’s first book, Reclaiming Hope: Lessons Learned in the Obama White House About the Future of Faith in America, offers reflections, analysis and ideas about role of faith in the Obama years and how it led to the Trump era. In 2020, Michael was the co-author, alongside Professor Amy Black, of a major report on “Christianity, Pluralism and Public Life in the United States” that was supported by Democracy Fund. He also writes for The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Catapult Magazine, Christianity Today and other publications on faith, politics and culture. Michael is a Senior Fellow at The Trinity Forum, and he holds an honorary position at the University of Birmingham’s Cadbury Center for the Public Understanding of Religion. Michael and his wife, Melissa, are both proud natives of Buffalo, New York. They now reside in Northern Virginia, where they are raising their beloved daughter, Saoirse.

Always, Always On: Technology, Digital Life, and New Media / Angela Gorrell Oct 11, 2020

How do visions of flourishing life converge in the new media landscape? Theologian Angela Gorrell (Baylor University) reflects on the challenges and opportunities of technology and digital life, especially those that reveal to us who we are, who we are becoming, and to whom we belong.

Show Notes

The purpose of Always on: Practicing Faith in a New Media Landscape
- New media: not just social media, but entertainment, productivity, tools, and more
How to develop interested conversations about the impact of new media on moral, relational, political, and spiritual life.
How do visions of flourishing life converge in the new media landscape?
Understanding (and exploiting) human psychology in new media business
Seeking joy through affirmation and recognition
Becoming curious and open to conversations about new media.
The idolatry of technology
The chief task of adolescence growing into healthy adulthood: Identity and belonging—Who am I? Whose am I?
Recognition has become malformed in the new media landscape.
The threat of diminished humanity through new media
Being one’s real self online and in-person
The importance of participation in order to act redemptively online
Numbness, anxiety, and depression that comes through passivity
When will you disengage from new media? When will you engage and participate?
Developing a rhythm of life that appreciates human hybridity of physical and mental mediated life
Ask: How can I nurture connection in digital spaces in meaningful ways?

About Angela Gorrell

Dr. Angela Williams Gorrell is Assistant Professor of Practical Theology at Baylor University's George W. Truett Theological Seminary. Prior to joining the faculty at Baylor University, she was an Associate Research Scholar at the Yale Center for Faith & Culture, working on the Theology of Joy and the Good Life Project, and a lecturer in Divinity and Humanities at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. She is an ordained pastor with 14 years of ministry experience. Dr. Gorrell is passionate about finding issues that matter to people and shining the light of the Gospel on them. She is currently working on a book that shares findings of the joy project while addressing America’s opioid and suicide crises. Dr. Gorrell’s expertise is in the areas of theology and contemporary culture, education and formation, new media, and youth and emerging adults.

How to Destroy a Debate: Winning, Democracy, and the Very Possibility of Public Discourse / Matt Croasmun, Ryan McAnnally-Linz, Miroslav Volf Oct 03, 2020

In this episode, Matt Croasmun, Ryan McAnnally-Linz, and Miroslav Volf discuss the Trump-Biden presidential debate from September 29, 2020, and its implications for public discourse and the very possibility of democratic deliberation.

And yes, we know that that is not the headline anymore. The truth is stranger than fiction—again. The fact is lots of people are still sick. This pandemic is real.

But we’re not trying to keep up with the latest headlines. The purpose of every single episode of this podcast is to help you envision and pursue a life that is worthy of your humanity.

And we think there’s something to important to say about what we saw (or maybe more appropriate—what we can’t unsee) in the presidential debate. Something deeply significant for what it means to share common life together and jointly pursue the fullest vision of flourishing we can imagine.

Earlier this week, we saw the symptoms of a truly unhealthy public discourse. But we are not referring to the aggressiveness or the intensity. The conditions for debate assume that we contend, fiercely even, for what we take to be right. But what makes this country’s public discourse so sick, so fragile, is something that has infected it from within—something that threatens the very possibility of debate.

Now, in on this conversation, these two points are foundational, and both come from Miroslav’s book, Flourishing: Why We Need Religion in a Globalized World

We have two basic responsibilities if we’re contending for particular normative visions of flourishing in a democracy. That is, if you have a vision of the good life and you think it’s right.

First, we need to commend our vision of flourishing life—we ought to defend it robustly.

And second, we must help maintain the possibility of pluralistic discourse—disagreement, debate, deliberation—about flourishing life.

So, we uphold our views, articulate them, defend them, and extend them. But we encourage dialogue. We listen carefully. We’re intellectually hospitable. We’re humble and open-minded and ready to learn.

And if we are not prepared to maintain the possibility of public discourse, or if indeed we imitate the behavior on display earlier this week, well, that’s how you destroy a debate.

Show notes

The two responsibilities for flourishing in the public square:
- 1. Commend your vision of flourishing life.
- 2. Help maintain the possibility of pluralistic discourse about flourishing life.
The game of democratic liberalism: self-referreeing, calling your own fouls, and when a pick-up game threatens to devolve to a brawl.
What goods are there in maintaining pluralistic discourse itself?
Truth matters for a certain kind of vision of humanity.
- Virtue doesn’t need adornment because it is its own greatest ornament. (Seneca)
- "Democratic practices are expressions of our deep humanity.” (Miroslav Volf)
What are the deep Christian commitments that cohere well with democratic values? Why should a Christian care about the rules of the democratic game?
- "Because Christians value the salvation of the soul!” (Miroslav Volf)
Should Christians see winning in democratic politics as advancing the interests of God?
- Seeking whatever means achieve political ends is radically un-Christian.
- The basic commitment is to love one’s neighbor.
- Listening as a Christian practice of love and hospitality. (Luke Bretherton: Christ and Common Life)
What is the goal of debate? Does the debater listen only to rebut? Or does the debater listen to become wiser?
Bad faith actors
Getting drawn into the maelstrom. "They go low, we go high"
"Be careful not to saw off the limb you’re sitting on."

How Political Division Impacts Christian Unity / Miroslav Volf #AskMiroslav Sep 26, 2020

Miroslav Volf and Evan Rosa take listener questions about how to live faithfully in this political moment, focusing especially on questions of how political division impacts Christian and civil unity.

Featuring:

Miroslav’s social media bio gloss of the Prayer of St. Francis: "Before I tweet, I pray: Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.”
Dr. Bethany Keeley-Jonker: "I'm struggling to balance unity in the body with my firm conviction that the Trump presidency is hostile to my most deeply held Christian values.”
Ramiro Medrano: "How can we foster unity in the body of Christ in the midst of division? How does one challenge the “brethren” to consider a different perspective? How can we correct bad theology and doctrine, when both sides use (or should I say abuse) Scripture to justify their position? I’m aware that much of this is based upon poor discipleship and interpretation. However, the polarization is further encouraged from the pulpit."
- Disagreement
- Mutual vilification
- Unwillingness to listen
- Neither in spirit of public discourse nor of Christ
The role of pastors in moral and political persuasion
Cordell Patrick Schulten: Can the Stoic and Christian takes on adiaphora (“Indifferents” or “Non-essentials”) help reduce the amount of political friction?
Anonymous: "Other than by avoidance, how do we sustain friendships in the midst of political/partisan differences?"
- Rebelling against the temptation to reduce human beings to their political opinions

What is really worth wanting? / Matt Croasmun Sep 20, 2020

Is what you want really worth wanting? We often settle for procedural and productivity thinking—life hacks, listicles, and tips and tricks that offer the life of your dreams. We max out our search in the shallow water of seeking answers to the questions “what do I want and how can I get it?” But Matt Croasmun (Director of the Life Worth Living Program at Yale College) suggests that if we—a society in crisis—want to live lives worthy of our humanity, we need to ask the deepest question possible and let it inform our thinking: What is truly worth wanting?

Show Notes

How can I live the life that I want?
Matt’s former dream of being a musician
“I was more interested in being famous than in being good”
Self-formation versus self-obsession
“Giving up my dream to be a composer is either the most courageous or the most cowardly thing I’ve ever done”
“The fundamental question is, do I have the right dreams?”
The worthiness of our dreams
What path is worthy of my humanity? My life’s devotion?
"We live answers to the deeper questions, even if we couldn't give you those answers if we were asked point blank.”
Autopilot versus intuition
“Whenever we aren't all that reflective about our actions, this is the infamous unexamined life”
Feeling stuck
Reflection can actually streamline our daily routines
Is effectiveness what we’re after?
“If your ends are bad, then more effective means are hardly the solution”
“The great lie of 21st century is that the effectiveness question is the most profound question we can ask. The truth is: It’s merely the most profound question we’re able to answer."
“Some of those means landed men on the moon. I mean, we’re pretty good at it”
We crave knowledge of the good life
Do we want a life of ecstatic joy or peaceful serenity?
Independence or interdependence?
“Self awareness is a lonely place”
“The answer sadly is not within; navel gazing is insufficient”
Accountability to something outside ourselves
Moana, Disney, and community versus individuality
“This can be deeply relieving when we've been on this sort of self-help merry-go-round”
The great wisdom traditions as as sources of knowledge and relevance
“Act courageously in the world, take risks with our actions, with our lives “
“It's easy to have so-called courage without any humility”
What we've learned with our minds needs to be inscribed in our bodies
Perhaps our practices are actually smarter than some of our best ideas
Orienting our everyday desires around what we know to be true
“There are many processes along the way of reforming the heart, reforming our strategies, reforming our habits”

Watch the video:

The Home and Homelessness of God / Miroslav Volf and Drew Collins Sep 12, 2020

In this episode, Miroslav Volf and Drew Collins discuss home as a source of joy and humanity; the way we organize and order our homes for hospitality; and the homelessness of God and what that means for humanity.

For many, the first thought of home is the threat of its negation: homelessness. Still others think of the stress and anxiety—sometimes even at life-threatening levels—of being at home. For some home is grounding, a place of safety and growth, it is embrace. For others, home is hostile, unsafe and risky, it is exclusionary. This episode features discussions of:

The theological and moral significance of home
The meaning of Jesus's homelessness
Marie Kondo's philosophy of joy and home organization
Dorothy Day's voluntary poverty and "personal maximalism"
Home as a place for embrace, joy, and care

Supporting Sacrificial Love: Learning How to Fight a Pandemic from the Army's Chief of Chaplains / Major General Thomas Solhjem Sep 06, 2020

Matt Croasmun interviews the U.S. Army Chief of Chaplains: Major General Thomas Solhjem about whatever transferable wisdom we might apply from armed conflict to our war with Covid-19. They discuss how to cultivate courage, human fragility and loss of control, stories of bravery and love when life is on the line, and how to support the spiritual lives of the men and women of the armed forces.

Chaplain (Major General) Thomas L. Solhjem is the Army’s 25th Chief of Chaplains. He leads the Chaplain Corps in providing religious support to the Army’s Soldiers, their Families, and Civilians.

The views that Major General Thomas Solhjem discusses in this interview are his own and do not represent the United States Department of Defense or the United States Army, which have permitted his appearance on this podcast episode.

How Jazz Teaches Faith & Justice / Julian Reid & The JuJu Exchange Aug 30, 2020