Trinity Forum Conversations

Latest Episodes:

Hope in an Age of Anxiety Dec 26, 2023

Show notes

We are in an anxious age. By some estimates, a third of all Americans will struggle with anxiety in their lives, and nearly 20% currently suffer from an anxiety disorder. For those suffering the mental distortions of anxiety, life can be difficult, and hope elusive. And for many Christians who have tried and failed to stop their slide into fear and worry by simply “laying down their burdens,” they may feel an added sense of spiritual failure as well.

We’re joined on our podcast by psychiatrist Curt Thopmson and theologian Curtis Chang who help us explore a counterintuitive approach to understanding our anxiety:

I believe the Bible and Jesus's own life invites us to treat [anxiety] not as a problem to make go away, but precisely as a signal. A signal, an invitation, what I call an opportunity, an invitation to walk through anxiety, to actually experience it in the way that actually we were designed to by God for spiritual growth in Jesus, where we actually meet Jesus more deeply, precisely in our anxiety.

It's not that we have to make anxiety go away, and then finally, then we're like qualified to somehow be with Jesus. It's that actually in our experience of anxiety, that's where we encounter Jesus most deeply and encounter the truths about ourselves most deeply.

This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2023. Watch the full video of the conversation here. Learn more about Curt Thopmson and Curtis Chang.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

The Anxiety Opportunity: How Worry is the Doorway to Your Best Self, by Curtis Chang

The Age of Anxiety, by W.H. Auden

The Anatomy of the Soul, The Soul of Shame, The Soul of Desire, by Curt Thompson

Jonathan Haidt

Richard Schwartz

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl

Wrestling with God, by Simone Weil

Augustine's Confessions

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

The Long Loneliness, by Dorothy Day

How to Know a Person with David Brooks
Trust, Truth, and The Knowledge Crisis with Bonnie Kristian
Hope in an Age of Anxiety with Curtis Chang & Curt Thompson

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.

Caroling Christmas and Christian Formation with Keith Getty Dec 19, 2023

Show notes

During Advent and Christmastide–and at all times–how can we understand and fully experience the formative power of music? And amid distraction and anxiety, how can we keep Christ at the center of our hearts as we sing?

As Keith Getty explains, Christmas carols are not only about festivity, but also formation. For all of the delight they bring, they stand as musical masterpieces that teach deep truths, embed them within our memory and consciousness, unite a disparate people in praise, and cultivate and orient our sense of joy:

“We're fearfully and wonderfully made. We remember tunes and we forget sermons, not because we're bad people, but it's because of how God made us. The carols are special because repetition is a form of liturgy. And each Christmas, the liturgy of singing provides such an opportunity for us.” - Keith Getty

This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded earlier this month. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Keith Getty here.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

Sing! How Worship Transforms Your Life, Family, and Church, by Keith and Kristen Getty

John Lennox
Winston Churchill

Charles Wesley

Felix Mendelssohn

Jeremy Begbie

Alistair Begg

Isaac Watts

John Calvin

Keith Getty is an extraordinary hymn writer, musician, and catalyst for the modern hymn movement. He joined us for a special Trinity Forum Online Conversation to explore music, formation, and beauty which we're pleased to bring you now as a special podcast during this season of Advent.

This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded earlier this month. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Keith Getty here.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

Sing! How Worship Transforms Your Life, Family, and Church, by Keith and Kristen Getty

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

Bright Evening Star, by Madeleine L'Engle

Why God Became Man, by Anselm of Canterbury

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard

The Strangest Story in the World, by G.K. Chesterton

Handel's Messiah

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.

Advent: The Season of Hope with Tish Harrison Warren Dec 12, 2023

Show notes

The season of Advent calls us to remember the incarnation of Christ into our world while anticipating his future return. Yet what does Advent have to tell us about our present “now and not yet” moment?

In her new book Advent: The Season of Hope, priest, author, and Trinity Forum Senior Fellow Tish Harrison Warren draws our attention towards the ways the church reflects and represents the incarnation of Christ, and how our waiting can be transformed from drudgery to joy by the object of our hope:

The only way that waiting can be transformed to this thing that is full of joy, that has anticipation, that is hopeful and not just drudgery or sorrow is if the character of the one we are waiting for, or who is asking us to wait in this case, is trustworthy, and if what we're waiting for is worth the wait. - Tish Harrison Warren

This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in December of 2023. Watch the full video of the conversation here. Learn more about Tish Harrison Warren.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

Liturgy of the Ordinary, by Tish Harrison Warren

Prayer In the Night, by Tish Harrison Warren

Advent: The Season of Hope, by Tish Harrison Warren

Receiving the Day, by Dorothy Bass

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

Bright Evening Star, by Madeleine L'Engle

Why God Became Man, by Anselm of Canterbury

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard

The Strangest Story in the World, by G.K. Chesterton

Handel's Messiah

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.

How to Know a Person with David Brooks Nov 28, 2023

Show notes

In a society where so many feel unseen and unknown, how do we become the kind of people who deeply see and know those around us? The conflict and division in our society demonstrate the need for people committed to pursuing human connection, even across lines of difference. What can we do – as individuals and in community – that will help us really understand the people in our lives?

David Brooks, author of How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, joined us to explore what it means to know others and to be known by them:

When I ask people, tell me about a time you've been seen, they tell me with bright eyes and joy in their face, they tell me about time somebody totally got them. Because seeing someone, if I see potential in you, you'll see potential in yourself. If I beam my attention on you, you'll blossom. And so it's just super powerful to feel seen. But it's also powerful and fantastic to feel like you're the seer.

This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2023. Watch the full video of the conversation here. Learn more about David Brooks.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

Bobos in Paradise, On Paradise Drive, The Social Animal, The Road to Character, The Second Mountain, and How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, by David Brooks

Frederick Buechner

Iris Murdoch

Dan McAdams

Mónica Guzmán

E. M. Foster

Jennie Jerome

William Gladstone

Benjamin Disraeli

Harry Nyquist

Andy Crouch

Michael Gerson

Man's Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl

Thornton Wilder

Oprah Winfrey

Kate Murphey

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl

Wrestling with God, by Simone Weil

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.

After Babel with Jonathan Haidt and Andy Crouch Nov 14, 2023

Show notes

We were made for relationship — to be seen, loved, known, and committed to others. And yet we increasingly find ourselves, in the words of sociologist Jonathan Haidt, “disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.”

On our podcast Haidt and bestselling author Andy Crouch pair up to explore how the technology era has seduced us with a false vision of human flourishing—and how each of us can fight back, and restore true community:

“A person is a heart, soul, mind, strength, complex designed for love. And one of the really damaging things about our technology is very little of our technology develops all four of those qualities.” - Andy Crouch

We hope you enjoy this conversation about the seismic effects technology has had on our personal relationships, civic institutions, and even democratic foundations — and how we might approach rethinking our technologies and reclaiming human connection.

This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2022. Watch the full video of the conversation here. Learn more about Jonathan Haidt and Andy Crouch.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

The Happiness Hypothesis, by Jonathan Haidt

The Coddling of the American Mind, by Jonathan Haidt

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt

Culture Making, by Andy Crouch

Playing God, by Andy Crouch

Strong and Weak, by Andy Crouch

The TechWise Family, by Andy Crouch

My TechWise Life, by Amy and Andy Crouch

The Life We're Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World,by Andy Crouch

Ernest Hemingway

Francis Bacon

Howard Hotson

Greg Lukianoff

Wolfram Schultz

The Sacred Canopy, by Peter L. Berger

Epictetus

Marcus Aurelius

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

Brave New World, by Alduous Huxley

Bulletins from Immortality: Poems by Emily Dickinson

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard

Politics and the English Language, by George Orwell

The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt

City of God, by St. Augustine of Hippo

Children of Light and Children of Darkness by Reinhold Niebuhr

On Happiness, by Thomas Aquinas

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society

Special thanks ...

Trust, Truth, and the Knowledge Crisis Oct 31, 2023

Show notes

The question “How do I know what’s true?” comes up with increasing frequency and urgency in our time of angry polarization, deliberately-stoked outrage, and earned distrust. There is money to be made and a growing market for the kind of misinformation that reinforces our views and confirms our preconceptions — as well as a large price to be paid:

“We like to tell ourselves that we're consuming this political media because we're going to be good citizens and we're going to be well informed and have, you know, very rational opinions and all sorts of flattering things like that. But in practice, what our behavior suggests is that that's not actually why we're consuming this media.

“We're consuming it because of how it affects us emotionally and how it makes us feel better about ourselves than other people. How it excites us, how it sort of inflames us.”

Drawing on her experience as a journalist, Bonnie Kristian joined us in October 2022 to explore the sources that contribute to widespread confusion and conspiracy thinking. She offers insight into ways to combat misinformation and pursue truth in our own lives, families, and church communities, and we hope you’ll find this conversation encouraging, and practical.

This podcast is an edited version of an evening conversation recorded in 2022. Watch the full video of the conversation here. Learn more about Bonnie Kristian.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What it Means to Follow Jesus Today, by Bonnie Kristian

Untrustworthy: the Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community, by Bonnie Kristian

Hannah Arendt

N.T. Wright

Thomas Aquinas

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt

City of God, by St. Augustine of Hippo

Children of Light and Children of Darkness by Reinhold Niebuhr

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

On Happiness, by Thomas Aquinas

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.

Healing a Divided Culture with Arthur Brooks Oct 17, 2023

Show notes

Healing a Divided Culture with Arthur Brooks

In his book, Love Your Enemies best-selling author, thought leader, and professor Arthur Brooks blends cutting-edge behavioral research and ancient wisdom to offer a better way to bridge divides and mend relationships.

In March of 2022, The Trinity Forum hosted an Evening Conversation with Brooks to help us explore just how to love those we disagree with and be agents of redemption and reconciliation amidst a divisive time. Arthur unpacked several of the strategies necessary to overcome such cleavages and restore harmony, and the moral courage required:

“We often hear today, in our culture of activism and anger, that real courage is standing up to the people with whom you disagree, sticking it to the people with whom you disagree publicly. That's moral courage.

That's wrong. That is maybe a perfectly fine thing to do. You should stand up and say the things that you believe. But that's not moral courage.

You know what moral courage is? My father taught me this as a kid. Moral courage is standing up for the people with whom you disagree. Standing up to the people with whom you agree on behalf of those with whom you disagree. That's moral courage”.- Arthur Brooks

We hope this conversation kindles in you a deeper affection for your neighbors, and a greater desire to see the divisions in our communities and our nation be healed.

This podcast is an edited version of an evening conversation recorded in 2022. Watch the full video of the conversation here. Learn more about Arthur Brooks.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

Love your Enemies, by Arthur Brooks

Strength to Strength:Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life, by Arthur Brooks

Arthur Schopenhauer

John and Julie Gottman

Dalai Lama

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

City of God by St. Augustine of Hippo

Children of Light and Children of Darkness by Reinhold Niebuhr

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.

Justice, Mercy, and Overcoming Racial Division Oct 03, 2023

Show notes

Justice, Mercy, and Overcoming Racial Division with Claude Alexander and Mac Pier

A recent Gallup poll found that over 70% of Americans are both worried about and deeply dissatisfied with the racial tensions and divisions in the country. And yet when those numbers are broken down, you’ll find that around a third of white Americans consider a race to be a significant problem in the country, compared to around three quarters of African Americans and nearly 60% of Latinos.

Given these differences both in perception as well as the many differences of opinion that are embedded in it, how do we understand and live out the biblical mandate to love our neighbor? How do we learn to know and love our neighbor across difference?

Dr. Mac Pier and Bishop Claude Alexander join our podcast to help us think deeply about our various spheres and stations and how through intention and vulnerability, we can begin to heal divides, overcome injustice, and create new places of mercy and flourishing:

“It's really important for those of us that have had opportunities to really think about what is our role in making things right…and in God's commitment to that. And just as God met our need for justice on the cross, he invites us to meet the need for justice in community with one another.” - Mac Pier

We hope this conversation inspires you to deepen your commitment to being an agent of reconciliation right where you are. Because as Dr. Pier shares, it’s a “radically powerful thing when we become enveloped relationally and affectionately by people that are different from ourselves.”

This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in November of 2021. Get a full transcript and watch a video of the conversation here. Learn more about Bishop Alexander and Dr. Pier.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

Required: God’s Call to Justice, Mercy, and Humility to Overcome Racial Division, by Bishop Claude Alexander and Dr. Mac Pier

Necessary Christianity: What Jesus Shows We Must Be and Do, by Claude Alexander

A Disruptive Gospel: Stories and Strategies for Transforming Your City, by Mac Pier

A Disruptive Generosity: Stories of Transforming Cities through Strategic Giving, by Mac Pier

A Disruptive God: Encounter Psalm 23 and Discover God's Purpose For You, by Mac Pier

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

City of God by St. Augustine of Hippo

Children of Light and Children of Darkness by Reinhold Niebuhr

Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Long Walk to Freedomby Nelson Mandela

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.

Beyond Ideology with Peter Kreeft and Eugene Rivers Sep 19, 2023

Show notes

What is ideology? What are the consequences of an era when seemingly every human issue is viewed through an ideological lens?

In October of 2021, the Trinity Forum and Comment magazine partnered for an evening conversation to explore precisely these questions. Cherie Harder and Anne Snyder moderated a conversation with philosopher Peter Kreeft and Rev. Eugene Rivers to unpack the nature and implications of ideology’s reign in our present culture — both what it’s doing to our intellectual vitality as a society, but perhaps more urgently, what it’s doing to our civic and organizational life across sectors and geography:

“So from a Christian point of view, what's the most important and first thing we must do in order to save Western culture or Western civilization?...Well, I think the first answer is stop idolizing it. Stop making the salvation of Western civilization your summum bonum, your final end, and religion a means to it. Religion is not a means to politics.” - Peter Kreeft

This wide ranging conversation takes on the spiritual dimensions of our ideological age, and centers our hope not in politics, but squarely in the love of God in Christ. Dr. Kreeft and Rev. Rivers call us back to the first things, asking us to look afresh at our political commitments, and to see the image of God in the face of our neighbor.

This podcast is an edited version of an evening conversation recorded in 2021. Get a full transcript and watch a video of the conversation here. Learn more about Dr. Peter Kreeft and Rev. Eugene Rivers.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

Christianity for Modern Pagans, by Peter Kreeft

Three Philosophies of Life, by Peter Kreeft

Suma of the Suma, by Peter Kreeft

If Einstein Had Been a Surfer, by Peter Kreeft

The Philosophy of Jesus, by Peter Kreeft

Doors in the Walls of the World, by Peter Kreeft

Socrates

Elizabeth Anscombe

The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis

Donald Williams

The Dust of Death, by OS Guinness

Frantz Fanon

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Abraham Heschel

The End of Ideology, by Daniel Bell

Exodus and Revolution, by Michael Walzer

Francis Schaeffer

Carl F. Henry

James Boyce

John J. DiIulio

Achieving our Country, by Richard Rorty

St. Augustine

Billy Graham

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

City of God by St. Augustine of Hippo

Children of Light and Children of Darkness by Reinhold Niebuhr

Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Brave New World, by Alduous Huxley

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.

The Decadent Society with Ross Douthat Sep 05, 2023

Show notes

Decadence isn’t a word most of us use on a daily basis, and yet author and columnist Ross Douthat believes that it perfectly captures the state of a largely stagnant and sclerotic American culture.

In his book, The Decadent Society, Douthat explores both the meaning of decadence and the trajectory that led us there. But in addition to diagnosing our state of cultural stagnation, he points with great hope toward societal renewal:

“I think the escape from decadence is probably a dynamic thing where technology, politics, and religion are all sort of operating together, but it's hard to imagine it happening without a really strong religious element within it.” - Ross Douthat

This conversation is being released for the first time as part of our podcast series on the Challenges of Modernity, and we hope you’ll both enjoy it and that it provokes you to consider those paths toward societal renewal that give Douthat hope.

This podcast is an edited version of a conversation recorded in 2020. Learn more about Ross Douthat.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

The Decadent Society: How we Became Victims of our Own Success, by Ross Douthat

From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, by Jacques Barzun

Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen

Steven Pinker

Brave New World, by Alduous Huxley

Robert Gordon
Karl Marx

Rod Dreher

Rob Bell

James Pike

Pope Francis

Peter Thiel

Martin Luther

Ignatius of Loyola

Watership Down by Richard Adams

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

City of God by St. Augustine of Hippo

Children of Light and Children of Darkness by Reinhold Niebuhr

Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Brave New World, by Alduous Huxley

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.

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