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“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 RobinsonMarilynne Robinson’s New York Times article, “What Literature Owes the Bible” (2011)Reading Genesis as the singular ancient literature that it isThe Bible (and Genesis) as theodicyHow Calvin and Luther influenced Robinson’s approach to GenesisThe benefit of reading Genesis as a wholeThe story of JosephThe fractal nature of the bibleUnsparing, 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 GodGod’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 humanityNoah 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 lifeThe 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 DisenchantmentProvidence 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 worldThe possibility of human encounterProduction Notes
This podcast featured Marilynne Robinson and Miroslav VolfEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Emily BrookfieldA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
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-conferenceGet your copy of White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy: https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324094876Production Notes
This podcast featured Rev. William Barber and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, with Ryan McAnnally-LinzEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Kacie BarrettA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
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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 manyRowan Williams on Julian as one of the greatest English language theologiansWho 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 himWhat 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 virtuositySo 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 textMargery 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 traumaThe 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 cellDo 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 prayerThe 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 practice16 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 PlatonismJulian as a Trinitarian thinkerWhat 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 belovedA Short Play: The Lord and the Servant (from the long text)Chapter 51 of the Long TextRed herrings in Julian; the medieval trope of enumeratingThe 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 detailsThe Fall, the “Felix Culpa” or the “Happy Fault,” and the servant in the holeGod looks without blame and that complicates church teaching on sin; layers in the narrative, God, humanity, ChristBeing drawn into the puzzling and the pondering experienced by Julian inspired by her writing; finding comfort in a loving God that we cannot see clearlyHow 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 churchJulian 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 NorwichThe 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-LinzEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Kacie Barrett, and Macie BridgeA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
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 CollegeDallas Willard Ministries (Free Online Resources)Dallas Willard, The Spirit of DisciplinesWillard as both spiritual formation teacher/pastor and intellectual/philosopherGary Moon, Becoming Dallas WillardDallas Willard MinistriesConversatio DivinaPhenomenology—“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 practicesAn 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 realityDallas 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 HusserlThe philosophical tradition of “saving the appearances”Mind-world relationshipThe affinity between concepts and their objectsDallas 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 worldAgency in our choice to know God and pursue knowing GodThe role of sincerity and honesty in shared realityRichard 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 injusticeMoral relativism vs moral absolutism—which is the problem today?Moral absolutism is often not rooted in knowledge, but a feeling of certaintyDallas Willard, *The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge* (also available here)Social causes for moral knowledge having disappeared from public lifeMoral knowledge provides the place to stand for justiceWhat is it to be a good person?Emmanuel Levinas and the face of the otherDallas 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 JesusWillard’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 lifeFrederica 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 PorterEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Alexa Rollow & Kacie BarrettA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
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 othersCeltic 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 worldWhat 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 soulBetween 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 responseJesus going to the margins, ignoring tribal boundaries and turning the other cheekSin and ReconciliationThe 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 valuableRoom for uncertainty and poetry—we beat up our souls, keep ourselves distractedContemporary life is angry and greedyContempt is a poison for our souls and relationships and humanityStress and anxiety as a constantChristian non-violence traditionWe must feel our emotions - process them through the shared rituals of our communitiesDesire 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 evilThe 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 connivenceGratitude is a medicine for greedOf 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 desireAcadia, spiritual apathy, and heavy distractionAttention and discipline are formationThe 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 lifeDivine Love, ultimate loveBaptism as a reminder of our death - love remainsQuiet space shared with others; honesty, vulnerability, emotional processingProduction Notes
This podcast featured Elizabeth OldfieldEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Kacie Barrett and Alexa RollowA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
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 NeumannElizabeth 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 studiesPublic service as a way to live out the faithWorking for George W. Bush campaigns for governor and president—federalism, conservative, to the states: faith-based community initiatives and Bush’s compassionate conservative agenda9/11 as a moment of changeWorking in Homeland Security, specifically in the Domestic Terrorism UniteInstances 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 criminalNo way to designate domestic terrorism groupsThe 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 aimsWe 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 violenceHow did you experience perspective shifts?COVID in 2020, protests against COVID procedures, and the protests surrounding the murder of George FloydWeaponizing of crisis by Trump administration for re-election campaignThe ANTIFA movement; authoritarian responses from Trump that were illegal and unconstitutional; no longer anyone in the room to tell him noJanuary 6 highlighted a security failure that was both day of as well as a result of 20 years of ignoring a threat from withinWould 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 activityChristian 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 actionViolence is not the option taught by Jesus and the ScripturesViolence has a historic presence in the Christian traditionChange in the presence of Christianity in society that is unsettling for some, but cannot be an excuse for extremists and violent actionWhat are the prospects of keeping it a peaceful community?Building protective factors and systems for healing brokennessUnmet 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 communitiesThe Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan HaidtMotivated by emotions and experience—critical thinking is a vital skillWe are in a perpetual state of anger; we are called to not stay angryProcessing anger properly; being better at lament and grieving in a biblical wayTim 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 wayThe Lord can meet us in our anger; he will take it when we bring it to him and ask for helpWhat 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 NeumannEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Alexa Rollow & Kacie BarrettA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
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 particularlyIdentifying and naming disagreementPractical limits of human relationship as a reality of disagreementWhy 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 lawThe 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 relationshipsWhat 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 possibleHumility in competing visions of truth and what is best for the world; no good or bad, just different persuasionsA desire for certainty which fear and laziness underlineI 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 decisionsApplying the approaches that are taught in law schools in every day lifeThree branches of government and checks and balancesLoss of human relationships with colleagues in Congress and the increase of them in the Supreme CourtPolitical dissent and political dissidentsWhen to disagree?Protests, assemblies, and activismThe privilege of dissent in the United StatesSocial pressures, social stigma, and the confidence and responsibility to dissentHow 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 reciprocityQuestion of belief, right belief and orthodoxyDifferences matter, especially in theological conversation, but that doesn’t mean we should rest in certaintyLearning and granting grace to ourselves and one anotherLesslie Newbigin - confidence not certaintyHow 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 PersuasionHow 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 madeLet conversations linger and take time and happen over multiple meetings - making the commitment to be together and be in conversationBuilding trust in disagreeing well - acknowledging the relationalDon’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 friendshipMixing the serious with the playful and the mundaneFriendship as an important element of discourse and disagreementProduction Notes
This podcast featured John InazuEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Alexa Rollow & Kacie BarrettA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
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 lifeThe hustle; pursuing what we think goodness is supposed to look likeA disrupting takes placeSpiritual maturity; writing into a neglect in women’s discipleshipThe rejection and harassment experienced by women acting as theologians - spiritual abuseHelp 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 abuseAbuse: when people are okay with harming you for their own gain and power, where you are the costLimiting feelings of possibility; a shrinking of the person and questioning of their belongingDiane Langberg on the elements of personhood (https://www.dianelangberg.com/shop-books/)Agency, voice, and sense of selfDiagnosing disillusionment; a lot of dull signs leading up to it, somethings just not rightDesperation, loss, depression, fight, panic, pretending or rejecting/deconstructing to move onNaming 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 facadesSanctified imagination and communityWe need to recapture our imagination as a way to combat disillusionmentWalter 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, scarringSong of Songs and unlocking the imagination and intimate love of GodScripture in which a women’s voice and experiences are given center stageSong 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 usVulnerability in the position and in the naming of our experiencesBeholding 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 holisticAwe 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 disillusionmentHope is disruptive and subversive, but gloriously so.Production Notes
This podcast featured Aimee ByrdEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Kacie BarrettA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
“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 motherhoodAudre 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 especiallyThe Great Migrations from the SouthGrandmother worked as an elevator operator, a job traditionally associated with with black womenAlways made a way for her grandchildren to have fun and set aside money for them after high school - making sure they felt importantAccountable 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 survivalBeloved 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 youTo parent Black, the love and the harsh truthResurrection Hope: A Future Where Black Lives Matter by Kelly Brown Douglas (https://orbisbooks.com/products/resurrection-hope)Having these conversations with her own sonPhilandro 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 childrenNot thinking it as THE conversation but one piece of intergenerational dialogueMother 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 contestedMoynihan 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 MartinWe 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 HUGHESWell, 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.
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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 hopeJesus Christ as the human face of God: “Without Jesus Christ, I would not believe in God."God is present in the midst of sufferingDiscovering and being discovered by GodMoltmann’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 jubilationContrasting joy with American optimism and the pursuit of happinessChristianity as a unique religion of joy, in virtue of the resurrection of ChristJoy 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 gratitudeLove 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 joyPassionate God of the Hebrew Bible or Absolute God of Greek Metaphysics?An apathetic God makes apathetic people; the compassion of God makes compassionate peopleA 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 VolfEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan Rosa & Ryan McAnnally-LinzProduction Assistance by Alexa Rollow & Kacie BarrettA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
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 FarmerEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Alexa RollowA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
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 toGet your copy of Liberty’s Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of AssemblyClick here to download a free version of Liberty’s Refuge.The First AmendmentIntroducing 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 ClashThree historical points about interpreting the assembly clauseThe grammar of the assembly clauseAssembly and Petition are two distinct rightsThe right of associationThe right of privacyAssembly is the right of associationWhere 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 expressionUnderstanding the “peaceable” side of assembly“The best law enforcement understand that there has to be some breathing space.”Reform mode vs revolution modePolicing assembly as more of an art than a sciencePeaceable assembly and collective belonging“Civil liberties are for losers.”Practical steps to upholding peaceable assembly as a right and civil libertyExercise your rightsDefend the rights of everyoneAbout 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 InazuEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, and Tim BergelandA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
"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, DesireRecitation: EpigraphUsing poetry as a means to record the COVID-19 PandemicUsing words to process emotionHuman desire for more; greedThe internet as a driving force for consumptionConsumerism feeding climate changeBreaking the cycle by retrieving the sacred“Bless” is not a word used easily in our cultureRecitation: Pest 12Gratitude within anxietyRecitation: Pest 20Stewarding the earthRecitation: Habitat 13What is worthy of our desire?The “stabilitas” of being where you areWanting acquisitiveness more than the sacredTruly being known versus being famousRecitation: Behind the Screen 17Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious GenerationRecitation: Behind the Screen 20The temptation towards certaintyRecitation: Behind the Screen 1Trusting 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 dreamReordering and re-educating our desireUnity and Denise Levertov’s concept of “One-ing”Production Notes
This podcast featured Micheal O’SiadhailEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, and Tim BergelandA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
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 analysisSpiritual formation through the works of Flannery O’ConnorHow to read for a flourishing life“Greenleaf” by Flannery O’ConnorFlannery 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 MetamorphosisMrs. May’s blinds as hiding pieces of reality, shutting out GodThe spiritual truth of the story is concealed when not read attentively and intentionallyFlannery’s writings defying instant gratification“The wrong kind of horror”The development of American consumerismShowing versus enjoying violenceSacramental readingThe Holy FoolThe Violent Bear It Away as a hymn to the eucharistO’Connor requires spiritual reading.A summary of “Greenleaf”Pierced by the bull, a violent union of Savior and sinnerO’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 KaramazovOpening to the world with the knowledge of GodPentecostalism 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 WilsonEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, and Tim BergelandA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
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.
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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 PrayerJoy Clarkson’s SubstackMetaphor embedded throughout thought and languageAre you a machine? Are you a tree?Hidden negation within metaphorsBill 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 negationComplexity of the worldPosture of humilityLiteral 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 shortPseudo-Dionysus the AreopagiteUnspeakability of things and the radical particularity of languageJulian of Norwich, Jesus as the source of motherhood: “Jesus our true mother.”Bobby McFerrin’s “The 23rd Psalm”Metaphors about humanityHumanity as machines vs humanity as treesMechanical metaphors for humanity fall short and become dangerous when it implies that we are only as good as our productivityTrees are an older and more mysterious metaphor for human beings.Security and success—top dog vs underdogMetaphor: 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 environmentThe 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 DeiPhenomenological 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 ClarksonEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, & Tim BergelandA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
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.
"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 UtopianismSole-salvific figure: Not Christ, but the PartyChinese 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 thoughtReligion’s contemporary influence in Chinese public lifeLin 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 principlesHistorical impacts of religion in Chinese public life—particularly in Confucianism and Buddhism and eventually ChristianityPeng 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-LinzEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, & Tim BergelandA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
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.
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 CroasmunEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Macie Bridge, and Tim BergelandA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
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“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 feelingsWhere does love come in?Martin Luther and Philip MelanchthonPhilip Melanchthon’s 1521 Loci Communes: Defining human nature through the “affective power”Affect versus rationality at the center of Christian lifeCredibility, plausibility, and livability of ChristianityAuthenticity and the disparity between values and beliefs and real lives.Doctrine of GraceEnabling 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 languageHow the aesthetic impacts the acceptance of ideasDurable conceptsWhere theological doctrine comes fromSimeon 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 experienceSourcing emotional and experiential data for theological reflectionErnst 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 desireEmotional experience as inadequate tool on its ownNoticing 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 TrinityKaren Kilby’s “apathetic trinitarianism”Pentecostalism, affect, and playEstablishing a spiritual connection between you and GodTouch, sweat, and movementNemi Waraboko’s The Pentecostal Principle: Ethical Methodology in New SpiritOpenness to new things, dynamismPlay and graceAn embarrassment of play, in the best way possibleThe 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 ZahlEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, & Tim BergelandA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
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 IdentityChristianity and Critical Race Theory: A Faithful and Constructive ConversationAbout Robert Chao RomeroAsian-Latino HeritageSpiritual Borderlands and liminalityThe 500-year history of the Brown ChurchFr. Antonio de Montesinos and the first racial justice sermon in the AmericasBartolome De Las Casas and concientización (repentance, metanoia)Mision IntegralChristianity & Critical Race TheoryThe four basic tenets of Critical Race Theory and how Christians can understand them in light of the GospelHope and eschatological vision for justice and unityThe imago DeiProduction Notes
This podcast featured Robert Chao RomeroEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, and Tim BergelandA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give - もっと表示する
